Mungo Man: 42,000-year-old Aboriginal remains to be reburied
The remains of 108 Aboriginal people who died about 42,000 years ago will be reburied in outback Australia, years after they were first dug up without permission. These include the remains of Mungo Man, which was famously discovered in 1974 and helped rewrite Australia’s history.
The remains of Mungo Man are carried in a casket made from a 5000-year-old red gum
The decision comes after the federal government finalised a four-year-long formal assessment of the reburial.
But some indigenous groups claim they were not consulted in this process.
Between 1960 and 1980, there was a flurry of archaeological finds. During this time, researchers found the remains of 108 Aboriginal individuals in Lake Mungo and Willandra Lakes, part of the Willandra world heritage area about 750km (470 miles) west of Sydney, including the remains of an aboriginal man that was dubbed Mungo Man.
His remains were the oldest evidence of humans living in Australia and the evidence of the first recorded ceremonial burial, a sign that there had been a long history of civilisation as early as 42,000 years ago.
This record was later broken when another 65,000-year-old site was discovered in other parts of the country in 2017.
Lake Mungo in the Willandra region in Australia is where the 42,000-year-old remains of the indigenous Australians were found.
However, the future of the 108 ancient people’s remains is still a matter of debate.
Campaigners say many remains removed without permission are yet to be returned, with some housed in museums overseas. In the case of Mungo Man, indigenous Australians said the removal of his remains caused great pain.
Reflecting the sensitivity around this issue, Mungo Man was finally returned to where it was found in the first place, Mungo National Park in 2017 after being kept at the storage of the Australian National University in Canberra.
But in 2018 the Australian government decided to rebury all 108 remains – in what they described as an effort to accommodate the wishes of Aboriginal groups.
On Wednesday, the Australian government has finally approved the reburial of the remains, which will be buried at 26 anonymous locations in national parks in the coming months.
“Forty-two thousand years ago Aboriginal people were living – and thriving – on the edge of what was then a rich lakeside. In the last four decades their remains have been removed, analysed, stored, and extensively investigated in the interests of western science.”, Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley said.
While the government asserted that they had listened to the local Aboriginal community, some of the community members feel let down by the whole process.
Local papers quoting some locals said they felt “bitter disappointment” as not all the owners of the remains were consulted for the crucial decision involving their ancestors.
Michael Young, a Paakantyi man from the community, said the central government continued to make decisions without them, according to an ABC News report.
Metal detectorists have made a “remarkable” discovery unearthing two Bronze Age axe heads on land owned by a farmer in Wiltshire. Kay Stevenson, from Winterbourne in South Gloucestershire, said the finds could be about 4,000 years old.
BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL The axe heads are several thousands of years old
“I knelt down and dug it up, then realised it looked like an axe head.”
“I didn’t realise the significance of what we found until we spoke to Bristol Museum, it’s bonkers thinking about it,” she said.
THE PUNK METAL DETECTORISTS
Ms Stevenson said she stumbled across the heads while out walking with friends
Ms Stevenson found the heads on 24 March with her partner Ade Rice.
Together they call themselves the Punk Metal Detectorists.
“I was absolutely hooked after trying it out once and I haven’t looked back since,” she said.
On this occasion, she said they were wandering about with friends when “all of a sudden” they found the axe heads.
“I knelt down and dug it up. I walked on a little bit further and found another one.
“Ade immediately knew they were Bronze Age axe heads.”
‘Incredibly important artefacts’
The axes date back to some of the earliest metalworking in Britain, and finding two in one location was unusual, according to Kurt Adams, Finds Liaison Officer for Gloucestershire and Avon.
“Bronze Age finds are incredibly rare,” he said.
“When we do see finds they tend to be later Bronze Age.”
The heads are being stored in Bristol Museum and the case is with a coroner who will establish the reward value.
Mr Adams said it was “a fantastic find”.
“They date to 2,200 BC to 1,800 BC, so they’re around 4,000 years old.
“They were used for cutting down trees.
“They are incredibly important artefacts for this country,” he added.
Man discovers “alien” creature’s corpse washed up on Australian beach
A weirdly bloated creature, whose head has been defleshed and body looks more like a swollen, discoloured beast of a myth than anything real, washed up on an Australian beach last week. And though it’s anybody’s guess the identity of the stranded corpse, experts contacted by Live Science have some ideas.
Alex Tan, of Queensland, Australia, was taking a stroll on Maroochydore Beach when he made the startling discovery. Speaking into his phone camera at the time (on April 1), he said, as shared on Instagram, “I’ve stumbled across something weird.
This is like one of those things you see where people claim they’ve found aliens.” The camera then quickly pans away from Tan’s face to reveal the bald, bloated creature with claws, a long tail and an exposed skull.
In the video’s comments, users speculate that the creature could be anything from a possum (as Tan believes), to a dehydrated kangaroo, and of course, an alien. Wilder guesses on social media include “mini-Chupacabra” or an “extinct marsupial.”
Despite having mentioned aliens in the original video posted to his Instagram, Tan doesn’t seem to believe the creature has an extraterrestrial origin. “THE PEOPLE NEED ANSWERS. I’m still guessing it’s a possum — my bet of a chicken parmi for any expert that can prove me wrong still stands,” he wrote(opens in new tab) after posting the video.
Tan, in a later interview with the social media news outlet Storyful(opens in new tab), said that the animal had “humanlike hands, a long lizard tail, nose like a possum, and patches of black fur.”
So far, there has been no consensus as to what the creature might be. Russell Bicknell, a marine biologist at the University of New England in Australia told Live Science that he thinks it is either a kangaroo or a wallaby. Whatever it is, he said, is “very waterlogged,” likely having been washed out to sea during recent flooding in the area.
“I’d say it’s a Brushtail possum, Trichosurus vulpecula, that has lost all its fur,” Sandy Inglesbly, a mammalogy collection manager at the Australian Museum, told Live Science in an email. Inglesbly suggests that the skull “certainly” matches that of a brushtail as well as the proportions of the limbs and tail to the body.
However, this is neither the first nor the last, time an unidentifiable or bizarre-looking creature will be found washed up onshore. In 2013, a 30-foot-long giant squid washed up on a Spanish beach, while in 2020 an even larger one appeared in South Africa. Marine biologists identified the creatures as Architeuthis dux, the largest marine invertebrate on the planet.
In May 2021, an inky-black fish with gnarly teeth and an appendage protruding from its head appeared on a beach in California; the animal was later identified as a Pacific footballfish.
And in 2015, a 15-foot-long decomposing “sea monster” washed ashore in Maine that was identified as a basking shark.
In all cases, the unidentified monster is always identified. It remains to be seen what Tan’s discovery is, but all evidence points to “not alien,” despite how bizarre the creature might look.
Did another advanced species exist on Earth before humans?
Our Milky Way galaxy contains tens of billions of potentially habitable planets, but we have no idea whether we’re alone. For now, Earth is the only world known to harbour life, and among all the living things on our planet, we assume Homo sapiens is the only species ever to have developed advanced technology.
But maybe that’s assuming too much.
In a mind-bending new paper entitled “The Silurian Hypothesis” — a reference to an ancient race of brainy reptiles featured in the British science fiction show “Doctor Who” — scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the University of Rochester take a critical look at the scientific evidence that ours is the only advanced civilization ever to have existed on our planet.
“Do we really know we were the first technological species on Earth?” asks Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rochester and a co-author of the paper. “We’ve had an industrial society for only about 300 years, but there’s been complex life on land for nearly 400 million years.”
If humans went extinct today, Frank says, any future civilization that might arise on Earth millions of years hence might find it hard to recognize traces of human civilization. By the same token, if some earlier civilization existed on Earth millions of years ago, we might have trouble finding evidence of it.
In search of lizard people
The discovery of physical artefacts would certainly be the most dramatic evidence of a Silurian-style civilization on Earth, but Frank doubts we’ll ever find anything of the sort.
“Our cities cover less than one per cent of the surface,” he says. Any comparable cities from an earlier civilization would be easy for modern-day palaeontologists to miss. And no one should count on finding a Jurassic iPhone; it wouldn’t last millions of years, Gorilla Glass or no.
Finding fossilized bones is a slightly better bet, but if another advanced species walked the Earth millions of years ago — if they walked — it would be easy to overlook their fossilized skeletons — if they had skeletons. Modern humans have been around for just 100,000 years, a thin sliver of time within the vast and spotty fossil record.
For these reasons, Frank and Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at Goddard and the paper’s co-author, focus on the possibility of finding chemical relics of an ancient terrestrial civilization.
Using human technology as their guide, Schmidt and Frank suggest zeroing in on plastics and other long-lived synthetic molecules as well as radioactive fallout (in case factions of ancient lizard people waged atomic warfare). In our case, technological development has been accompanied by widespread extinctions and rapid environmental changes, so those are red flags as well.
After reviewing several suspiciously abrupt geologic events of the past 380 million years, the researchers conclude that none of them clearly fit a technological profile. Frank calls for more research, such as studying how modern industrial chemicals persist in ocean sediments and then seeing if we can find traces of similar chemicals in the geologic record.
He argues that a deeper understanding of the human environmental footprint will also have practical consequences, helping us recognize better ways to achieve a long-term balance with the planet so we don’t end up as tomorrow’s forgotten species.
Then again, he’s also a curious guy who’s interested in exploring more far-out ideas for finding Silurian-style signatures: “You could try looking on the moon,” he says.
Lunar archaeology
The moon is a favoured target of Penn State University astronomer Jason Wright, one of a handful of other researchers now applying serious scientific thinking to the possibility of pre-human technological civilizations.
“Habitable planets like Earth are pretty good at destroying unmaintained things on their surfaces,” Wright says. So he’s been looking at the exotic possibility that such a civilization might have been a spacefaring one. If so, artefacts of their technology, or technosignatures, might be found elsewhere in the solar system.
Wright suggests looking for such artefacts not just on the lunar surface, but also on asteroids or buried on Mars — places where such objects could theoretically survive for hundreds of millions or even billions of years.
SpaceX’s recent launch of a Tesla Roadster into space offers an insight into how such a search might go. Several astronomers pointed their telescopes at the car and showed that, even if you had no idea what you were looking at, you’d still quickly pick it out as one weird-looking asteroid.
Finding technosignatures in space is an extreme long shot, but Wright argues that the effort is worthwhile. “There are lots of other reasons to find peculiar structures on Mars and the moon, and to look for weird asteroids,” he says. Such studies might reveal new details about the history and evolution of the solar system, for instance, or about resources that might be useful to future spacefarers.
If the efforts turn up a big black obelisk somewhere, so much the better.
Skeleton of Roman mercenary and medieval remains found buried in Wales
The 1,700-year-old skeleton of a Roman mercenary has been unearthed next to a newly-built road in the Welsh countryside. Archaeologists discovered the mercenary buried with his sword alongside Iron Age farming tools, ancient burial sites, and the remnants of roundhouses.
A total of 456 skeletons have been recovered from the site on Five Mile Lane near Barry, South Wales, including five likely to date to the Roman period.
Among them were the mercenary and his military regalia, along with the remains of one man who had been decapitated and his head placed at his feet.
Improvement work on Five Mile Lane led to the ‘significant’ and ‘surprising’ finds, with three sites being excavated.
The earliest features found were several Bronze Age burnt pits, along with a Late Bronze Age crouch burial and artefacts from the period, including a flint arrowhead.
The 1,700-year-old skeleton of a Roman mercenary has been unearthed next to a newly-built road in the Welsh countryside
Archaeologists discovered the mercenary buried with his sword alongside Iron Age farming tools, ancient burial sites, and the remnants of roundhouses. Pictured is a Roman villa unearthed by archaeologists
An Early Bronze Age beaker was also discovered to the north of the burial mound.
After the mid-to-late Bronze Age activity, the next known settlement on the site occurred during the Late Iron Age to the early Roman transition period. Roman pottery decorated with a leaping animal – possibly a lion or panther – was also unearthed.
Council officials brought in specialist archaeology firm Rubicon Heritage Services to manage the digs on the road leading to Cardiff Airport.
‘From a ceremonial and funerary landscape in the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, through to farming in the Iron Age and being part of a wealthy Roman farmstead, to a Medieval burial ground which reused the earlier burial mound, and finally to the post-medieval agricultural landscape we see today, the archaeologists were able to trace the development of this swathe of land, uncovering many surprises along the way,’ the company said.
Mark Collard, of Rubicon Heritage Services, added: ‘It was a privilege for our team to have delivered a project which added so many new discoveries about the archaeology and history of the Vale of Glamorgan.
‘We’re very pleased to be able now to share the results in such an accessible format with the communities of the area.’
Pictured here is a piece of Roman pottery which was also found at the scene by archaeology firm Rubicon Heritage Services
In the 1960s, a prehistoric settlement that developed into a Roman villa was excavated following the discovery of crop marks visible from the air.
Whitton Lodge is thought to have been occupied from about 50 BC to the 4th century AD, at the close of the Roman period.
Throughout its lifetime the settlement was characterised by changing layouts made up of three to five buildings, archaeologists have said, but during the Roman period, it formed the focus of a farmstead.
The archaeologists were assisted by the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff University, Cadw and the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust.
Emma Reed, of Vale of Glamorgan Council, said: ‘It’s great to learn that the archaeological study at Five Mile Lane has uncovered such a detailed history of the area.
‘The scheme has uncovered fascinating and at times surprising remains, that help us to understand the shaping of the agricultural landscape that we see today.’
After they are analysed and documented, the artefacts will be given to the National Museum of Wales. An academic report on the finds is also due to be published later this year.
Judahite Elite in Jerusalem Drank Wine Flavored With Vanilla 2,600 Years Ago
Analysis of smashed wine jars in Jerusalem houses destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. finds unexpected flavour in jars that the rich reused
Ancient wine and amphorae.
In the year 586 B.C.E., the Babylonians laid waste to Jerusalem in a fury at the rebellion by King Zedekiah of Judah. Ahead of which, we learn – at least some of the elites in Jerusalem were drinking their wine flavoured with exotic vanilla, archaeologists revealed on Tuesday.
This startling discovery was a result of residue analysis of shattered wine jars from the time of King Zedekiah, found in two destroyed buildings in Iron Age Jerusalem, researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority announced. Signals of vanilla were found in five of eight jars, says Dr. Yiftah Shalev of the IAA.
The reconstructed wine jars from the time of King Zedekiah, which were found to contain traces of vanilla.
Its presence was a surprise, but not a shock in the sense that traces of vanilla had been detected in graves in Megiddo dating to the Bronze Age, around 500 years earlier, Prof. Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University explains.
Discover the secrets of the Middle East
These jars date to the Iron Age. In some cases, their handles are marked with the rosette seal impression of the Kingdom of Judah. That symbol indicates that the clay jar and its content, the wine, were the possession of the royal Judahite administration.
How secure is the identification of the vanilla? One hundred per cent, Gadot answers. But where the flavouring came from is anybody’s guess. Harvested as pods produced by vanilla plants, it isn’t known to have been cultivated back then and had to be harvested from the wild. It could have originated in Madagascar or another part of tropical Africa, or India, and then reached Iron Age Judah by long-distance trading from either source.
The rosette seal impression of the Kingdom of Judah, on a wine jar handle.
Long-distance trading was common then, by sea and by land. From that perspective, finding spices from far, far away is plausible. In this case, the researchers believe the bean was likely imported via Arabia, through the trade route crossing the Negev Desert: possibly under the auspices of Assyrians, or their heirs the Egyptians, or even, possibly, the Babylonians.
Wine-bibbing was common, but vanilla was not: “Its discovery in so many jars in Jerusalem stresses the relative wealth of the residents of Jerusalem at the time,” Shalev says – at least before the irate Babylonians arrived and levelled the city.
Wine evoked mixed feelings in biblical times, as it does today. Psalms 104:15 extols its virtue: “And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, making the face brighter than oil” – a lovely sentiment. The book of Isaiah admonishes: “Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink; that justify the wicked for a reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him” (5:22-23). Hosea is worse: “Harlotry [sensual idolatry], wine, and new wine take away the heart” (4:11). You stand warned.
Cinnamon in Phoenicia
No trace of other spices was detected in these Judahite wine jars, Gadot and Shalev confirm. But it bears noting that the locals of the Levant were augmenting their range of flavours from overseas going back to the Bronze Age, if not before. Cinnamon has been detected in Phoenician flasks found at Tel Dor from 3,000 years ago. The cinnamon residue was in wine jugs, mark you, but in tiny vessels with narrow necks and a capacity of about three tablespoons.
Remnants of the smashed wine jars in Jerusalem.
Restored wine jars.
The wine jars analyzed in the new study have been dated to roughly the time of King Zedekiah, whose rebellion against the Babylonian overlords about 2,600 years ago did not go well. The vessels were found inside two destroyed buildings, in two different digs in the City of David. The Israel Antiquities Authority is excavating “Beit Shalem” on the eastern slopes of the City of David hill. The other, a joint venture by the IAA and TAU, is at the site formerly known as the Givati parking lot, west of the hill.
All the jars contained chemicals typical of wine, and two, as said, had signals of vanilla bean and seem to have been placed in storage rooms in the two buildings. Both of the buildings show the marks of the furious destruction and the jars had, fittingly to the occasion, been smashed. But residue analysis, a technique that has taken off in recent years, could identify molecules adhering to the clay.
The analysis was performed by Ayala Amir, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University, performing the tests in laboratories at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, and Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan. “Vanilla markers are an unusual find, especially in light of the fire that occurred in the buildings where the jars were found. The results of the analysis of the organic residues allow me to say with confidence that the jars contained wine and that it was seasoned with vanilla,” she said.
Ortal Chalaf and Dr. Joe Uziel were the excavation directors on behalf of the IAA who uncovered one group of jars, on the eastern slopes of the City of David hill. “The opportunity to combine innovative scientific studies examining the contents of jars opened a window for us, to find out what they ate – and, in this case, what they drank – in Jerusalem on the eve of the destruction,” they stated.
The second set of jars was found by Gadot and Shalev beneath the Givati parking lot, where a sort of surviving two-story building was unearthed. The researchers suggest it may have been an administrative building, which, unlike today’s equivalents, apparently had a wine cellar. More than 15 jars were found there, as well as other storage vessels.
The analysis also revealed that the ancients sensibly reused their pottery jars – big clay jars are a labour to make and lug about. Some of the jars produced signals of having previously held olive oil (the manufacture of olive oil goes back at least 8,000 years).
In short, finding jars of wine is no surprise; discovering that some of the jars had also been used to store olive oil is horse sense. But, as the archaeologists put it: finding vanilla in the wine is amazing.
Stolen Darwin journals returned to the Cambridge University library
A pair of Charles Darwin’s iconic notebooks have been returned to their rightful home more than 20 years after they were mysteriously stolen. The contents of the notebooks include the naturalist’s first doodle of the “tree of life,” which he sketched out decades before formulating his theory of evolution by natural selection.
One of the recently recovered notebooks features Charles Darwin’s first sketch of the “tree of life.”
The notebooks are part of the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library in the U.K., which contains journals, manuscripts and more than 15,000 letters written by Darwin.
The journals were originally stored in the library’s high-security Special Collections Strong Rooms but were removed from storage in November 2000 for a photoshoot. Library officials assumed that the notebooks had been returned to safety after the photoshoot, but during a routine audit in January 2001, librarians discovered that the notebooks were missing.
The library staff initially suspected that the notebooks had been misplaced, but in 2020, the staff conducted a new search for the documents — the largest in the library’s history — and came up empty-handed. The library concluded that the notebooks had most likely been stolen, Live Science previously reported.
But now, they’ve finally turned up: Librarians found the notebooks on March 9 outside the door of a fourth-floor office in the 17-story building.
The journals were swathed in plastic wrap and left in a box inside a bright-pink gift bag, along with a printed note that read “Librarian Happy Easter X,” according to a statement from the library.
“My sense of relief at the notebooks’ safe return is profound and almost impossible to adequately express,” Jessica Gardner, a librarian at Cambridge University Library, said in the statement. “I was heartbroken to learn of their loss, and my joy at their return is immense.”
The leather-bound notebooks are in “remarkably good condition,” and all the pages are accounted for, according to the statement. Experts think the notebooks have barely been handled, and a special analysis of the ink has confirmed that the notebooks are almost certainly genuine, according to the BBC.
The notebooks are part of the “Transmutation Notebooks,” a collection of journals in which Darwin first laid out his ideas of how animals transmute, or change, over time, which we now know is the result of adaptations caused by genetic mutations in DNA.
The recently recovered books were the second and third instalments of the Transmutation Notebooks and are labelled “B” and “C.” Darwin wrote the Transmutation Notebooks in 1837, when he was 28 years old, shortly after returning from his five-year voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle.
Both of the recovered notebooks are on a library table.
The standout feature of the notebooks is a sketch of a rudimentary tree of life in notebook B showing how species diverge from a common ancestor over time, above which he simply wrote, “I think.” This was more than 20 years before Darwin published his theory of evolution in the book “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. “They may be tiny, just the size of postcards, but the notebooks’ impact on the history of science cannot be overstated,” Gardner said in the statement.
The library will reunite the notebooks with the rest of the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library, alongside the archives of other famous scientists, such as Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking, according to the statement.
The three scientists are also buried right next to each other at Westminster Abbey in London, Live Science previously reported.
Members of the public can see the notebooks when they go on display as a part of the “Darwin in Conversation” exhibition showcasing Darwin’s letters and notebooks at Cambridge University Library in July.
The exhibition will also be transferred to the New York Public Library in 2023. Digital copies of the two notebooks, B and C, can be viewed online.
The two Darwin notebooks were anonymously returned to where they were taken from in a box in a pink gift bag, along with an envelope signed, “Librarian Happy Easter X.”
Police are continuing to investigate the notebooks’ disappearance, but currently, there are no clues as to who stole the notebooks or where they have been for the past 20 years.
Turkish experts find 4 Umayyad epigraphs in the ancient city Knidos
MUĞLA
Four inscriptions made of marble and limestone from the Umayyad period have been unearthed during the archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Knidos in the western province of Muğla’s Datça district.
The excavations have been carried out in the ancient city under the direction of Professor Ertekin Doksanaltı from Selçuk University’s Archaeology Department, with a team of 40 people consisting of geologists, architects, restorers, art historians, biologists, anthropologists, and excavation workers.
Four inscriptions were determined to belong to the Umayyads, who ruled in the city of Knidos between 685 and 711.
One of the epigraphs belonging to the Umayyad period was unearthed during excavations in the ancient city of Knidos, Muğla, Turkey.
It has been determined that the names of tribes that would participate in the Umayyad expedition to Istanbul, as well as commanders and administrators, are written on the four inscriptions found during the excavations.
Doksanaltı said that excavations have been carried out since 2016 in the ancient city of Knidos within the framework of the 12-month excavation project of the Culture and Tourism Ministry.
This collage shows epigraphs belonging to the Umayyad period unearthed during excavations in the ancient city of Knidos, Muğla, Turkey, on April 3, 2022.
Stating that amazing archaeological discoveries were made during the excavations, Doksanaltı said: “On the first day of Ramadan, Knidos presented us with a beautiful gift. Four new Umayyad inscriptions were unearthed during the archaeological excavations.
These inscriptions, which are the largest remains of early Islam in Western Anatolia, contain names of tribes, commanders, and rulers who participated in two of the three expeditions organized by the Umayyads to Istanbul.
Knidos, which offers many new data from the ancient period, showed how important it can be in terms of Islamic historiography with its data that will shed light on the early periods of Islam.”
Stating that the inscriptions vary in length from 15 centimetres to 1 meter, Doksanaltı said that the examinations continue on the artefacts.
Founded by Greek settlers, Knidos became an important cultural and political centre after the fifth century B.C. because of being a busy trading hub in the region.
The city was also famed for its association with Aphrodite and for its famous statue of the goddess, sculpted by Praxiteles of Athens.
