Taiwan finds 4,800-year-old fossil of mother cradling baby
The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.
Archaeologists in Taiwan have found a 4,800-year-old human fossil of a mother holding an infant child in her arms, museum officials said on Tuesday.
The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.
“When it was unearthed, all of the archaeologists and staff members were shocked. Why? Because the mother was looking down at the baby in her hands,” said Chu Whei-lee, a curator in the Anthropology Department at Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science.
The excavation of the site began in May 2014 and took a year to complete. Carbon dating was used to determine the ages of the fossils, which included five children.
The Origins of the Mummified Mother and Baby
The scientific excavation began in 2014 and took about a year to complete.
A team of archaeologists led by Chu Whei-Lee of Taiwan’s National Museum of Science was working on a Neolithic site 6.2 miles (10 kilometres) inland from Taiwan’s western coast.
Today, that area is called Taichung City but the site itself has been dubbed An-ho. Experts believe shorelines have shifted over the years and that An-ho was once a coastal village.
Indeed, over 200 shark teeth have been found in the site’s dwellings, however, whether these teeth were practical, decorative, or spiritual is not known. The inhabitants of An-ho were most likely Dabenkeng people.
“The Dabenkeng people were the first farmers in Taiwan, who may have come from the south and southeast coasts of China about 5,000 years ago,” says Chengwha Tsang of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “This culture is the earliest Neolithic culture so far found in Taiwan.” Taiwanese Dabenkeng culture featured corded ware pottery and stone adzes.
While the Dabenkeng lasted until the 3rd millennium BC in Mainland China, Taiwanese Dabenkeng lasted only until around 4,500 BC.
Yet from Taiwan, the Dabenkeng spread across Southeast Asia and Oceania, bringing their culture and language with them.
“They were probably the earliest ancestors of the Austronesian language-speaking people living nowadays in Taiwan and on the islands of the Pacific,” said Tsang.
Treasures and lead coffin found in the ancient Roman mausoleum
An ancient mausoleum with the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain has been discovered. Archaeologists found a huge amount of litharge – a lead oxide and by-product of silver extraction – which suggests a clan was melting down metal to get at its precious material. The 15 kilos of litharge discovered at Grange Farm, an excavation site in Gillingham, Kent, is the largest amount ever uncovered at a Roman Britain site.
An ancient mausoleum with the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain has been discovered.
The 15-year research project was triggered following excavations in 2005 and 2006, prior to a house-building.
The 15-year research project was triggered following excavations in 2005 and 2006, prior to a house-building. The earliest evidence for occupation at Grange Farm occurs during the Late Iron Age, about 100BC before the site grew into a small Roman rural settlement in the late first century AD, and the settlement evolved until the 5th Century AD when it was abandoned.
Metal extraction took place at one end of a building, with fireplaces in the middle, and at the other end high-status domestic use. Researchers say that it was likely a large clan who were also working the land, hunting, raising animals and metalworking.
An archaeological dig at Grange Farm in Gillingham, Kent, where an ancient mausoleum has been discovered
The ancient mausoleum that was host to the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain
As the 3rd and 4th centuries in the Roman world operated on a gold and silver economy, the control of those metals was closely tied to imperial taxation.
This is why the investigators believe the silversmithing may have been done illicitly. Dr James Gerrard, senior lecturer in Roman Archaeology at Newcastle University, said: ‘Was that legal? Was that supervised?’
‘Quite why people were refining silver from silver-rich base metal alloys is a mystery.
‘Quite what the objects being melted down were is a mystery too.
‘They probably weren’t coins, as the bronze coinage had too little silver in it.
‘We might expect that the refining of silver here was either being done officially by the ‘Roman state’ or perhaps illicitly. It’s an unusual aspect of the site.
‘Maybe they were making silver objects like the ingots in the Canterbury Treasure.’
An officially stamped Roman British silver ingot, produced between the 4th and 5th centuries AD, weighing 353 grams (0.78 pounds). The stamped inscription reads EX OFFE HONORINI, which translates “from the workshop of Honorinus.” It was found in 1777 with two gold coins of Emperor Arcadius and one of Honorius, and dates to the end of the Roman period in Britain.
The investigators also discovered a monument, which would have stood at almost the height of a two-storey house, proving the occupant was very high-status. In the lead coffin, investigators found a middle-aged to elderly woman, who may have been a leader or chief of the clan.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘The mausoleum is a house for the dead.
‘It’s basically a funerary monument. It probably dates back to the late 3rd Century or early 4th Century AD, and it was a stone building structure, probably with a tile roof. It was probably quite tall – certainly visible from the Medway – perhaps about the height of a two-storey house or a little less. It’s quite unusual in that it had a tessellated pavement of plain mosaic – a plain red colour – which is really unusual for Roman Britain.
‘This middle-aged to the elderly lady was buried there in a lead-lined coffin. She was probably local from the isotope analysis we did on the teeth. The silver suggests wealth. The mausoleum is wealth. It takes resources to build the structure like the mausoleum and it takes resources to put someone in a lead coffin. She had quite a hard life though. She had osteoarthritis but she lived to a good age and was buried with reverence. I think she was quite a high status. She was no peasant and she was someone with clout locally. Further evidence of wealth comes from gold jewellery found in the rubble of the mausoleum – including a necklace or bracelet made of gold filigree double-loop links threaded with polyhedral faceted beads of variscite.
Evidence of wear and modification suggests it may have been a necklace turned into a bracelet for a child, and it’s not known if it would have come from the mausoleum itself or sarcophagi possibly located next to it. Unusually, the mausoleum stayed intact until the 11th or 12th Century with the Anglo-Saxons left the ancient Roman structure alone. But it was not unoccupied, as the researchers found the mausoleum had been taken over by owls.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘We think during the 5th Century the grave is disturbed.
‘We don’t know why that was – and then the building stayed up until the Norman Conquest.’
‘We’ve got tawny owl pellets. The building becomes ruinous and then you’ve got owls living here.
‘It’s the end of the Roman Empire, the mausoleum is abandoned and the owls take up residence – we can’t be too precise about when that was but it would have been somewhere between the 5th and 10th Century. The researcher said he believes the monument was left alone by the Anglo-Saxons who may have used it as a navigational structure for people coming down the River Medway.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘If the building is visible from the Medway it might be a navigational structure for people coming down the river. It’s the 5th Century and water was more important as a means of travel.’
At the site, the team uncovered in all 453 Roman coins, 20,000 fragments of pottery weighing a quarter of a ton, and 8,000 animal bones. The mausoleum was moved after Domesday in 1086 when the land – recorded as having pasture, a tidal mill and six unfree peasants – was given to Bishop Odo of Bayeaux, half-brother of William the Conqueror.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘The site then becomes the medieval manor.
‘Probably what happened was they reused the stone from the building to build a chapel. At 1122, the manor was called Grenic, then Grenech in 1198, Grenge in the 14th Century, and more recently it became known simply as Grange Farm.
The Grange Farm dig produced considerable evidence of high-end silversmithing including this Saltern Hearth with a group of fired clay pedestals.
Dr Gerrard added: ‘It’s the end of a long process,’ he said. ‘I started my involvement in 2005 as a site assistant and digger on a short-term contract. I was in my late 20s. It’s 15 years later and I’m in my early 40s and I’m a senior lecturer at Newcastle University. It’s been with me a long time – it’s part of my career. For all the other people in the report, it’s been a huge part of our lives..’
Part donkey, part wild ass, the kunga is the oldest known hybrid bred by humans
The kungas of Syro-Mesopotamia were ancient equines that roamed the region 4,500 years ago. Arriving long before domesticated horses did, the stocky horse-like animals were highly valued and used for pulling four-wheeled wagons into battle, reports James Gorman for the New York Times.
The elite used the highly-prized, donkey-like creatures for travel and warfare.
Having been depicted in mosaics and their value recorded in cuneiform on clay tablets, researchers suspected the prestigious kunga was a type of hybrid donkey. Still, their proper classification in the animal kingdom remained unknown until now.
A genetic analysis using ancient skeletal remains, genetic material from the last surviving Syrian wild ass, and an investigation of the evolutionary history of the genus Equus revealed that the kunga was the cross of a female donkey (Equus Africanus asinus) and a male Syrian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemippus), reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo.
The find is the earliest human-made hybrid documented in the archaeological record and suggests that kungas were bred to be faster and more robust than donkeys and more manageable than wild asses, which are also called onagers or hemiones, per a French National Centre for Scientific Research statement. Scientists published details of the genetic analysis this month in Science Advances.
In the early 2000s, archaeologists first uncovered the kunga remains in a 4,500-year-old royal burial site, Umm el-Marra, located in Aleppo, Syria, reports Science’s Tess Joosse.
Dozens of equine skeletons that did not match the features of any known equine species were found buried next to royals. Study co-author Jill Weber, an archeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, suspected that the skeletons may have been kungas because marks on the teeth and patterns of wear suggested the animals were purposely fed instead of being left to graze and wore bit harnesses in their mouths, Tom Metcalfe reports for Live Science’s.
“From the skeletons, we knew they were equids [horse-like animals], but they did not fit the measurements of donkeys, and they did not fit the measurements of Syrian wild asses,” says study author Eva-Maria Geigl, a genomicist at the Institut Jacques Monod, to Live Science. “So they were somehow different, but it was not clear what the difference was.”
The Nineveh panel, Hunting Wild Asses (645-635 B.C.E.) from the British Museum in London. The art depicts ancient Mesopotamians capturing wild hemiones for breeding.
Harsh desert conditions poorly preserved DNA from the 25 skeletons obtained from the Umm el-Marra site, so researchers use advanced sequencing methods to compare the bits and pieces of DNA, Science reports.
Researchers then compared the results to an 11,000-year-old equid sample taken from the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site in Turkey and genetic material taken from a preserved museum specimen of the last surviving wild Syrian ass that went extinct in 1929, per Gizmodo.
Using Y-chromosome fragments, the team found that the kunga’s paternal lineage belonged to the Syrian wild ass and matched the species of the sample from Turkey. They also confirmed donkeys were the maternal lineage, Gizmodo reports.
According to a statement, the elite used the highly-prized, donkey-like creatures for travel and warfare. They may have been considered status symbols or exchanged as royal gifts. Ancient texts from the kingdom of Ebla and the Diyala region in Mesopotamia detail the prices of obtaining the hybrid animal, which cost six times the amount for a donkey, according to the study.
Other cuneiform texts also describe animal husbandry programs used to breed the kunga, Science reports.
Like other hybrids in the animal kingdom, such as the mule or the liger, the kunga was sterile. They had to be intentionally bred by mating a female donkey with a male wild ass, per Gizmodo. Because the strong-yet-stubborn male wild asses could run faster than donkeys, capturing these animals alone highlights the technical capabilities of the ancient Mesopotamian societies.
The breeder’s clear choice to use a female donkey also revealed the sophistication of the mating plan for combining different characteristics that these ancient societies found desirable. Since the mother was domesticated, it also would have been easier to keep her in captivity as the offspring were raised, Science reports.
“This is a great example that shows the level of organization and management techniques needed to keep these animals alive,” says zooarchaeologist Benjamin Arbuckle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not involved with the study, to Science. “It’s very much like modern zoo management.”
World’s Oldest Pants, Turfan Man’s Trousers, was Made through Three Weaving Techniques
What little rain that falls on a gravelly desert located in western China’s Tarim Basin evaporates as it hits the blistering turf. Here, in this parched wasteland, lie the ancient remains of people who made one of the biggest fashion splashes of all time. Herders and horse riders who buried their dead in the Tarim Basin’s Yanghai graveyard pioneered pants making between roughly 3,200 and 3,000 years ago. Their deft combination of weaving techniques and decorative patterns — displaying influences from societies across Eurasia — yielded a pair of stylish yet durable trousers now recognized as the oldest such garment known in the world (SN: 5/30/14).
This pair of approximately 3,000-year-old pants, the oldest ever found, displays weaving techniques and decorative patterns that were influenced by cultures across Asia, researchers say.
Now, an international team of archaeologists, fashion designers, geoscientists, chemists and conservators has untangled how those trousers were made and painstakingly created a modern replica. The vintage slacks weave a tale not only of textile innovation but also of how cultural practices fanned out across Asia, the researchers report in the March Archaeological Research in Asia.
“A diversity of textile techniques and patterns of different local origins, traditions and times merged into something new in this garment,” says archaeologist and project director Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. “Eastern Central Asia was a laboratory where people, plants, animals, knowledge and experiences from different directions and sources came … and were transformed.”
Fashion icon
One man brought the pants to scientists’ attention without uttering a word. His naturally mummified body, as well as the preserved bodies of more than 500 others, was uncovered during excavations conducted by Chinese archaeologists since the early 1970s at the Yanghai cemetery.
He sported an outfit that consisted of the trousers, a poncho belted at the waist, one pair of braided bands to fasten the trouser legs below the knees, another pair to fasten soft leather boots at the ankles and a wool headband with four bronze disks and two seashells sewn on it. A leather bridle, wooden horse bit and battle-axe that had been placed in his grave indicated he had been a horse-riding warrior. Researchers now call him Turfan Man because the Yanghai site lies about 43 kilometres southeast of the Chinese city of Turfan.
A woven reproduction of Turfan Man’s outfit, worn here by a model, includes a belted poncho, pants with braided leg fasteners and boots.
Of all of Turfan Man’s garments, his trousers stood out as truly special. Not only were they older by at least several centuries than any other examples of such gear, but the Yanghai pants also boasted a sophisticated, modern look. The pants feature two leg pieces that gradually widen at the top, connected by a crotch piece that widens and bunches in the middle to increase leg mobility.
Within a few hundred years, mobile groups across Eurasia began wearing pants like those at Yanghai, other archaeological finds have shown. Woven leg covers connected by a flexible crotch piece eased the strain of riding horses bareback over long distances. Not surprisingly, mounted armies debuted around that time.
Today, people everywhere don denim jeans and dress slacks that incorporate the design and production principles of the ancient Yanghai trousers.
In short, Turfan Man was the ultimate trendsetter.
Fancy pants
Despite being so fashion-forward, the ancient Yanghai horseman left researchers wondering how his remarkable pants had been made. No traces of cutting appeared on the fabric, so Wagner’s team suspected that the garment had been woven to fit its wearer. A close examination of Turfan Man’s trousers revealed a combination of three weaving techniques, the scientists report in the new study. A re-created version of the find — fashioned by an expert weaver from the yarn of coarse-wooled sheep similar to those whose wool was used by ancient Yanghai weavers — confirmed that observation.
Much of the garment consists of twill weave, a major innovation in the history of textiles.
Twill changes the character of woven wool from firm to elastic, providing enough “give” to let a person move freely in a pair of tight-fitting pants. The fabric is created by using rods on a loom to weave a pattern of parallel, diagonal lines. Lengthwise warp threads are held in place so that a row of weft threads can be passed over and under them at regular intervals. The starting point of this weaving pattern shifts slightly to the right or left for each ensuing row so that a diagonal line forms.
A twill weave like that used to make the oldest known pants in the world is illustrated here. Horizontal weft threads pass over one and under two or more vertical warp threads, shifting slightly on each row to produce a diagonal pattern (dark gray).
Variations in the number and colour of weft threads in the twill weave on Turfan Man’s trousers were used to create pairs of brown stripes running up the off-white crotch piece, the researchers found.
Textile archaeologist Karina Grömer of the Natural History Museum Vienna says she recognized twill weave on Turfan Man’s trousers when she examined them around five years ago. Grömer had previously reported that pieces of woven fabric found in Austria’s Hallstatt salt mine, where such delicate textiles preserve well, displayed the oldest known twill weave. Radiocarbon dating places the Hallstatt textiles between around 3,500 and 3,200 years old — roughly 200 years before Turfan man sported his britches.
People in Europe and Central Asia may have independently invented twill weaving, says Grömer, who did not participate in the new study. But at the Yanghai site, weavers combined twill with other weaving techniques and innovative designs to create high-quality riding pants.
“This is not a beginner’s item,” Grömer says. “It’s like the Rolls-Royce of trousers.”
Consider the ancient trousers’ knee sections. A technique now known as tapestry weaving produced a thicker, more protective fabric at these joints, the researchers found. A third weaving method was used on the upper border of the pants to create a thick waistband.
Other features of the trousers involved an unusual twining method, in which two differently colored weft threads were twisted around each other by hand and laced through warp threads, creating a decorative, geometric pattern across the knees that resembles interlocking T’s leaning to the side. The same twining method produced zigzag stripes at the trousers’ ankles and calves.
Wagner’s team could find only a few historical examples of such twining, including borders on cloaks of the Maori people, an Indigenous group in New Zealand.
Yanghai artisans also showed their ingenuity in designing a formfitting crotch piece that was wider at its centre than at its ends, Grömer says. Trousers dating to a few hundred years later than the Yanghai find, found in several parts of Asia, often consist of woven legs connected by square fabric crotch pieces that resulted in a less comfortable and flexible fit. In tests with a man riding a horse bareback while wearing a re-created version of Turfan Man’s entire outfit, the trousers fit snugly yet allowed the legs to clamp firmly around the horse.
Today’s denim jeans are made from one piece of twill material following some of the same design principles as those favoured by Yanghai pants makers three millennia ago.
Ancient trousers (partly shown at bottom) from China’s Tarim Basin display twill weaving that was used to produce alternating brown and off-white diagonal lines at the tops of the legs (far left) and dark brown stripes on the crotch piece (second from left). Another technique for manipulating threads enabled artisans to create a geometric pattern at the knees (second from right) and zigzag stripes at the ankles (far right).
Clothes connections
Perhaps most striking, Turfan Man’s trousers tell a story of how ancient herding groups carried their cultural practices and knowledge across Asia, spreading seeds of innovation. For instance, the interlocking T pattern decorating the ancient horseman’s pants at the knees appears on bronze vessels found in what’s now China from around the same time, roughly 3,300 years ago, Wagner’s team says. The nearly simultaneous adoption of this geometric form in Central and East Asia coincides with the arrival in those regions of herders from West Eurasian grasslands riding horses that they domesticated 4,200 years ago or more (SN: 10/20/21).
Pottery found at those horse riders’ home sites in western Siberia and Kazakhstan displays interlocking T’s as well. Any deeper meaning this pattern held aside from its artistic appeal remains unknown. But West Eurasian horse breeders probably spread the interlocking T design across much of ancient Asia, Wagner and her colleagues suspect.
Similarly, a stepped pyramid pattern woven into the Yanghai pants appears on pottery from Central Asia’s Petrovka culture, which dates to between around 3,900 and 3,750 years ago. The same pattern resembles architectural designs that are more than 4,000 years old from western and southwestern Asian and Middle Eastern societies, including Mesopotamian stepped pyramids, the researchers say. Tapestry weaving such as that observed on Turfan Man’s trousers also originated in those societies.
It’s no surprise that cultural influences from throughout Asia affected ancient people in the Tarim Basin, says anthropologist Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis. Yanghai people inhabited a region at a crossroads of seasonal migration routes followed by herding groups starting more than 4,000 years ago (SN: 3/8/17). Those routes ran from the Altai Mountains in Central and East Asia to Southwest Asia where Iran is located today. Excavations at sites along those routes indicate that herders spread crops across much of Asia too (SN: 4/2/14).
By around 2,000 years ago, herders’ migration paths formed part of a trade and travel network running from China to Europe that became known as the Silk Road. Cultural mixing and mingling intensified as thousands of local routes throughout Eurasia formed a massive network.
Turfan Man’s multicultural riding pants show that even in the Silk Road’s early stages, migrating herders carried new ideas and practices to distant communities. “The Yanghai pants are an entry point for examining how the Silk Road transformed the world,” Frachetti says.
Looming questions
A more basic question concerns how exactly Yanghai clothes makers transformed yarn spun from sheep’s wool into Turfan Man’s trousers. Even after making a replica of those pants on a modern loom, Wagner’s team is unsure what an ancient Yanghai loom looked like. No remnants of those devices have been found. The researchers suspect a loom constructed to be operated from a sitting position would have made it possible to create intricate, twined patterns. Experiments with different weaving devices are the next step in untangling how Turfan Man’s trousers were made, Wagner says.
It’s clear, though, that the makers of these ancient pants blended several complex techniques into a revolutionary piece of apparel, says archaeologist and linguist Elizabeth Barber of Occidental College in Los Angeles. Barber has studied the origins and development of cloth and clothing in West Asia.
“We truly know so little about how clever the ancient weavers were,” Barber says. Turfan Man may not have had time to ponder his clothes makers’ prowess. With a pair of pants like that, he was ready to ride.
The Israel Museum has acquired over 1,200 ancient silver Persian coins, among the earliest known currency from the area, including what the museum has identified as the world’s oldest Jewish coin.
A 5th-century silver drachm from Persian era Palestine with a gorgoneion on the obverse (left) and a lion and bovine on the reverse (right). Above the lion are the Aramaic letters yod, heh and dalet — Judea.
The coins, dated to the 5th and 4th centuries BCE when the region was controlled by the Persian Empire, constitute “the largest collection in the world of Persian-period coins.”
The collection includes a number of previously unknown varieties, the museum said. Chief among the rare artefacts is a silver drachm, an ancient coin based upon the Greek drachma, which, in clearly legible Aramaic script, bears the word yehud, or Judea.
“It’s the earliest coin from the province of Judea,” the museum’s chief curator of archaeology, Haim Gitler, said in an interview with The Times of Israel, calling the 5th-century silver drachm the “first Jewish coin.”
The coin collection dates to the period a century or more after the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Cyrus II (the Great) conquered and annexed the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. The Persians ruled the Levant for the next two centuries until Alexander of Macedon stormed through and toppled their empire. Roughly a century before Persia conquered the Middle East, the earliest known currency was minted from electrum — a silver-gold alloy — in Lydia, western Asia Minor.
The idea of precious metal coinage spread across the empire. Judea, Samaria and Philistia, part of the satrapy of Syria and Jerusalem, began minting their own coins shortly thereafter. The 3.58 gram yehud coin — a hair or two lighter than today’s one shekel coin — was reportedly found in the hills southwest of Hebron and was bought at auction by New York antiquities collector Jonathan Rosen.
Rosen, “one of the world’s most important private collectors of Mesopotamian art” according to The New York Times, agreed to donate his entire collection of Persian-era coins to the museum in March 2013. The acquisition was completed in November. Apollo, an international art magazine, ranked the collection among the top museum acquisitions of 2013.
Although there are a handful of other examples of coins bearing the name Judea, Gitler said the silver drachm was a “unique coin” in its design, and was likely minted in Philistia, the coastal plain encompassing the modern cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon and Gaza, for use in the province of Jerusalem. “Only later did Judea start to mint its own coins,” he said.
Then, as now, Judea, Samaria and Philistia sat at the crossroads of civilizations and at the far reaches of the Persian Empire, and local artisans would imitate styles from coins that arrived from abroad.
The coinage represented in the collection consequently exhibits a stunning array of artistic influences from Persia, Greece, Anatolia and Egypt. Many coins feature owls, a symbol closely associated with the goddess Athena, both of which appeared on Greek drachmas in antiquity. Other coins bear images of deities, heroes, mythical beasts and animals familiar to the Middle East — including camels, horses, cows, eagles, and lions.
The Judean drachm’s iconography is representative of the local fusion of artistic designs. Emblazoned on its obverse is a gorgoneion, a Greek icon of the head of a gorgon that serves as a talisman against evil, but its hair is stylized like the Egyptian goddess Hathor. On the reverse side is a lion astride a cow with the Aramaic letters yod, heh and dalet. The exact meaning of the coin’s iconography remains undetermined.
Based on the stylization of the gorgon head, which in earlier incarnations was demonic and bestial and over the centuries became more anthropomorphic, and the style of the Aramaic script, Gitler dated the coin to the early 4th century BCE.
“We barely have any information or texts describing the Persian period in Palestine, so almost all that we know comes from these coins,” he said. Gitler explained that the tiny images engraved in silver offer a glimpse into the appearance, manner of dress and language spoken by inhabitants of the region at the time.
It is clear from the collection that the die-engravers of Persian Palestine who designed the coins demonstrated a proclivity for creative expression unseen elsewhere in the empire, creating a “local flavour” of coinage, Gitler said. Coins from Tyre and Sidon, just up the coast, have a much smaller variety of styles.
A Philistian drachm from the late 5th century BCE in the collection employs a clever example of “optical trickery” in its design, he noted.
When turned 90˚ counterclockwise, the lion on the coin’s reverse becomes the helmet of the bearded man, and its paws become the man’s hair. Gitler said such illusions were fairly common, noting that a Samarian coin from the same period showed the head of a bearded man whose face is composed of two faces in profile. Hidden owls also roost within the designs of other creatures.
The obverse of a Samarian drachm with a lion (left) which, when turned 90˚ (right), becomes a bearded man.
“The coins really show us a variety of motifs which is unequaled” in the Persian Empire, Gitler said. “It shows that the people who were designing these coins weren’t just making the coins because they had to do them, but they enjoyed doing it.”
A selection of coins from the collection is now on display in the Israel Museum’s Archaeology Wing, including the lion optical illusion coin shown above.
“Of course in the future we’ll start incorporating more of the collection,” he said, voicing interest in holding an exhibition of a selection of the coins in the collection which he said would be “even more amazing” than the White Gold exhibit in 2012 that showcased the world’s earliest electrum currency.
Chinese explorers discovered America before Columbus?
History may be rewritten as new evidence suggests ancient Chinese explorers landed on the New World around 2,500 years before Christopher Columbus, contrary to popular belief that the Italian seafarer ‘discovered’ America.
History may be rewritten as new evidence suggests ancient Chinese explorers landed on the New World around 2,500 years before Christopher Columbus, contrary to popular belief that the Italian seafarer ‘discovered’ America.
John Ruskamp, a research doctorate in Education Illinois, claims to have spotted petroglyphs or carvings high above a walking path in Albuquerque’s Petroglyph National Monument in the US state of New Mexico.
The carvings, a series of inscriptions with Asian characters, struck him as unusual.
“After consulting with experts on Native American rock and ancient Chinese writing scripts to corroborate his analysis, I’ve concluded that preserved by the readable message was likely these petroglyphs inscribed by a group of Chinese explorers thousands of years ago,” Ruskamp was quoted as saying by the New York-based Epoch Times.
Spanish daily ABC reported on Friday the carvings could reveal that the Chinese stepped on that region before the sailors who came in known caravels.
Ruskamp’s thesis enabled him to write a book and make good money and now, the author claims to have deciphered inscriptions that corroborate his new theory, it said.
To date, over 82 Ruskamp-identified petroglyphs have matching unique ancient Chinese scripts not only at multiple sites in Albuquerque, but also nearby in Arizona, as well as in Utah, Nevada, California, Oklahoma, and Ontario.
“Collectively, I believe that most of these artefacts were created by an early Chinese exploratory expedition” though it appears that some reproductions were made by native people for their own purposes, he said.
One ancient message, cartouche or carved tablet preserved by three Arizona petroglyphs, translates as: “Set apart (for) 10 years together; declaring (to) return, (the) journey completed, (to the) house of the Sun; (The) journey completed together.”
At the end of this text is an unidentified character that might be the author’s signature, the report said.
Ruskamp said the mixed styles of Chinese scripts found in the petroglyphs indicate that they were made during a transitional period of writing in China, not long after 1046 BC – hundreds of years before Columbus arrived at the New World in 1492.
It is difficult to physically date petroglyphs with absolute certainty, notes Ruskamp.
Yet the syntax and mix of Chinese scripts found at two locations in original correspond to what experts would expect to use explorers from China some 2,500 years ago.
Large Cache of Embalming Materials Discovered in Egypt
A team of Egyptologists from Charles University in Prague made the discovery in the western part of the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Abusir in the spring of last year when exploring a group of large shaft tombs located there.
The collection of large ceramic vessels, containing residues of various materials used during the mummification ritual, was found in one huge shaft, carefully placed in 14 layers.
The deposit, which dates back to the 6th century B.C., also included some other objects, says Jiří Janák from the Institute of Egyptology, who was one of the members of the research team:
“Among the objects, we found there were other smaller vessels as well as pieces of ashes from a fire that burned somewhere near the place where the person was mummified. We also found remnants of natron, a substance that the Egyptians used to dry the dead body.”
Experts also found residues of resins, oils or myrrh in the amphora-shaped containers. In addition to these, the deposit also contained four so-called canopic jars made of limestone, that were used for storing the viscera removed from the body during the embalming process.
“What we found were empty canopic jars, which had not yet been used. Interestingly, there were inscriptions on them including the name of the owner. That’s what helped us identify the person to whom this deposit belonged.”
So far, experts from the Czech Institute of Egyptology have only opened a part of the nearly 400 sealed vessels.
This year, they are going to continue to analyse the ceramic containers and their contents.
Another part of the team will be examining the adjacent structure right next to the mummification deposit. That will most likely be the tomb of the deposit’s owner, who, according to the inscriptions on the jars, was named Wahibre-mery-Neith.
The team of Czech Egyptologists has been working on the site in Abusir already since the 1960s and has one of the largest archaeological sites loaned by the Egyptians to foreigners, explains archaeologist Veronika Dulíková:
“Imagine an area that’s about two square kilometres in size. We have an amazing concession here with enormous potential.
We estimate that only around ten per cent of the total area has been explored so far.”
The burial site at Abusir has been continuously used throughout the whole of ancient Egypt’s history. Czech experts believe that the new discovery will shed more light on the process of mummification.
Researchers Find a Lost Subterranean World in a Cave Beneath Antarctica
The 24th Ukrainian expedition members to Antarctica have managed to trace down a cave that had long been lost. The subterranean formation is three times larger than previously thought and features several lakes and a river, as reported on September 10 by the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
The subterranean world is found inside the Cave of a remote place, the Island of Galindez.
The Cave was actually found long ago when the first Antarctic expeditions took place. Through time, experts lost track of the Cave, and it was forgotten. The Ukrainian expedition has revealed that the Antarctic cave was actually three times larger than previously thought.
A Lost Subterranean World
Ukrainian researchers exploring the Cave. Image Credit: Press Service of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
The entrance at the time was on the opposite side of the island and under the top of a glacier near the Vernadsky Research Base. However, the glacier collapsed, and the entrance was sealed.
The chief of the 24th Antarctic expedition, Igor Diki, explained that it took quite some time to find the Cave entrance again.
A researcher standing inside the mysterious Cave. Image Credit: Press Service of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
“There were several failed attempts to find it from the side of the Penola Strait. But we were lucky to find the entrance from the side of the Wordie House, the former British base,” he revealed in a statement.
This fascinating subterranean world has three levels with a total width of around 200 meters. Inside the Cave, there is an ice river and two lakes; the explorers have revealed that the Cave is at least three times bigger than initially thought.
The frozen Cave was found by Ukrainian explorers.
In addition to that, the researchers claim to have discovered the plume of a bird that they say is definitely not that of a penguin.
This unexpected find was recovered and set to Ukraine for further testing. Researchers also took water samples from the frozen river and lake for hydrochemical analysis and further studies on the presence of viruses and bacteria and their environmental DNA.
The statement revealed that the ice samples would be stored for further research in Ukrainian laboratories.
The Cave turned out to be three times bigger than initially thought.
The Vernadsky Research Base has been operating since 1996 and was founded in 1953 on Galindez’s island by British researchers, who initially named the station Faraday.
Galindez Island owes its name to the ARA Uruguay corvette commander of the Argentine Navy, Captain Ismael Galíndez.
An explorer walking through the Cave.
The ship rescued the explorers from the third French Antarctic expedition that discovered the islet in the early twentieth century.
The Vernadsky Research base was named after Russian and Ukrainian mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945), the first president of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
