All posts by Archaeology World Team

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Mysterious footprints suggest Neanderthals climbed a volcano right after it erupted

Mysterious footprints suggest Neanderthals climbed a volcano right after it erupted

According to legend, the devil once took a walk down the side of a volcano in southern Italy, each step preserved forever in solid rock. The tracks are known as the “Ciampate del Diavolo“‘ or “Devil’s Trail” – but details published in 2020 reveal a less diabolical yet far more interesting story on how they came to be.

The mysterious footprints are well known to those living near Roccamonfina, an extinct volcano in southern Italy that hasn’t erupted in tens of thousands of years. Since 2001, researchers have sought to explain the dozens of impressions left by a small group of human ancestors and even a few animals snaking their way down the mountainside.

But a paper published in January 2020 suggested some individuals were actually heading back up. Over recent years numerous expeditions have provided detailed measurements on a total of 67 indentations left by the scuffle of feet, hands, and legs, all divided across three distinct tracks headed away from the mountain’s summit.

Thanks to the contributions by a team of scientists from institutes across Italy, we obtained details on a further 14 prints – these even larger than the others – some of which head up the mountain rather than down.

Radiometric and geological dating of the various rock strata has already established that the imprints were cast in the soft blanket of ash left in the wake of an eruption around 350,000 years ago, making them some of the oldest preserved human footprints on record.

But just who left these tracks? It’s impossible to say for certain based on an assortment of dull shapes pressed awkwardly in time-worn volcanic sediment.

There seemed to be at least five different bodies behind the marks. Further investigations could help whittle down ideas on the sex, body mass, and perhaps even heights of the trekkers.

Given our own Homo sapiens ancestors developed their characteristic traits only 315,000 years ago, we can be pretty confident they weren’t members of our own species.

But the researchers have some clues.

One of the clearer imprints provides clear evidence of a grown human male.

And the shapes of many of the footprints point to an interesting possibility. The broad nature of the hindfoot area, with the low rise of the arch, looks suspiciously like the feet of individuals buried in the Sima de Los Huesos “Pit of Bones”.

Mysterious footprints suggest Neanderthals climbed a volcano right after it erupted
Footprints on the Ciampate del Diavolo.

The owners of those 430,000-year-old remains have been a topic of debate of the years, progressing from Homo heidelbergensis to Neanderthal, to Denisovan, back to Neanderthal.

Assuming they truly are Neanderthals, it’s reasonable – even if not solid – to bet that the footprints were left by a gang of young Neanderthal adults.

Still, the researchers were careful about jumping to conclusions.

“We have decided to keep the attribution to a specific species still pending,” lead researcher Adolfo Panarello told New Scientist’s Michael Marshall back in January 2020.

Just what inspired an ancient group of hominids to go trouncing through the cooling soot and debris after the mountain violently blew its lid is anybody’s guess, though it’s clear from the impressions that nobody was in a hurry.

Based on the leisurely pace of around 1 meter per second (3.2 feet per second), the handful of footsteps heading uphill, and a scattering of basalt artefacts found in the vicinity, we might imagine this was just another day in the life by an active volcano.

Slowly treading barefoot through material freshly deposited by a 300 degree Celsius (572 Fahrenheit) flow of billowing pyroclastic insanity isn’t exactly for the faint-hearted either, no matter how tough your soles might be.

Going on a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the researchers estimated the blanket would need to have cooled to at least 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), meaning at least several hours needed to have passed between an eruption and the trek.

READ ALSO: NEANDERTHALS WERE ALTERING THE LANDSCAPE AT LEAST 125,000 YEARS AGO, NEW EVIDENCE SUGGESTS

We might well imagine members of a community living in the shadow of a mountain known to occasionally spew out hot clouds of poisonous gas and muddy ash, with a small band setting across a familiar path to check out the carnage.

Perhaps disaster tourism isn’t a recent thing, after all.

This research was published in the Journal of Quaternary Science.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

A Pregnant Ancient Egyptian Mummy Has Been Discovered in a Shocking World First

A Pregnant Ancient Egyptian Mummy Has Been Discovered in a Shocking World First

A team of Polish scientists say they have discovered the only known example of an embalmed pregnant Egyptian mummy. The discovery was made by researchers at the Warsaw Mummy Project and revealed in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Thursday.

A Pregnant Ancient Egyptian Mummy Has Been Discovered in a Shocking World First
Polish archaeologists described the discovery as “really special”

The project started in 2015, uses technology to examine artefacts housed at the National Museum in Warsaw. The mummy was previously thought to be a male priest but scans reveal it was a woman in the later stages of pregnancy.

Experts from the project believe the remains are most likely of a high-status woman, aged between 20 and 30, who died during the 1st Century BC.

The scans of the pregnant mummy revealed a mummified fetus, as seen in these abdominal scans of her remains

“Presented here is the only known example of a mummified pregnant woman and the first radiological images of such a foetus,” they wrote in the journal article announcing the find.

Using the foetus head circumference, they estimate it was between 26 and 30 weeks when the mother died for unknown reasons.

A CT scanner and radiologists have been assisting the archaeological work

“This is our most important and most significant finding so far, a total surprise,” team member Wojciech Ejsmond of the Polish Academy of Sciences told the Associated Press.

Four bundles thought to be wrapped and embalmed organs were found within the mummy’s abdominal cavity but scientists say the foetus had not been removed from the uterus.

The scientists said it was unclear why it had not been extracted and embalmed separately, but speculated spiritual beliefs about the afterlife or physical difficulties with removal may have contributed.

‘The Mysterious Lady’

Researchers from the mummy project have dubbed the woman as the Mysterious Lady of the National Museum in Warsaw because of conflicting accounts around her origins.

They say the mummified remains were first donated to the University of Warsaw in 1826. The donor alleged the mummy was found in royal tombs in Thebes, but researchers say it was common in the 19th century to falsely ascribe antiquities to famous places to increase their value.

Inscriptions on the elaborate coffin and sarcophagus had led 20th Century experts to believe the mummy inside was that of a male priest named Hor-Djehuti.

But now scientists, having identified it as female with scanning technology, believe the mummy was at some point placed in the wrong coffin by antiquity dealers during the 19th Century when looting and re-wrapping of remains were not uncommon.

Amulets, thought to be items known as the Four Sons of Horus, accompany the mummified body

They describe the condition of the mummy as “well-preserved” but say damage to the neck wrappings suggest it was at some point targeted for valuables.

The experts say at least 15 items, including a “rich set” of mummy-shaped amulets, were found intact within the wrappings.

One of the researchers on the project, Dr Marzena Ożarek-Szilke, told the Polish state news agency that her husband had first spotted what appeared to be “a little foot” on one of the scans.

She told the outlet that the team hope next to study small amounts of tissue to establish the woman’s cause of death.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Archaeologists Discover ‘Lost,’ 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian Sun Temple

Archaeologists Discover ‘Lost,’ 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian Sun Temple

Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed the remnants of a lost “sun temple” dating back to the 25th century BCE. Experts believe it to be one of just six such temples erected as a shrine to sun god Ra during the Old Kingdom, although to date, only two other sun temples have been found.

Archaeologists Discover ‘Lost,’ 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian Sun Temple
The site of the Nyuserra sun temple in Abu Ghurab.

The structure was discovered below a separate temple—itself one of the other known sun temples—at Abu Ghurab, roughly 12 miles south of the capital city of Cairo.

The newer temple is thought to have been built between 2400 and 2370 BCE by Nyuserra (also referred to as Nyuserre and Niuserre), an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who ruled during the Fifth Dynasty. 

The structure was first excavated by archaeologists in 1898. It turns out, however, that they didn’t uncover all that the site had to offer. 

“The archaeologists of the 19th century excavated only a very small part of this mud-brick building below the stone temple of Nyuserra and concluded that this was a previous building phase of the same temple,” Massimiliano Nuzzolo, the archaeologist who co-led the dig, told CNN this week. “Now our finds demonstrate that this was a completely different building, erected before.” 

The Nyuserra sun temple in Abu Ghurab.

From the older temple, the archaeologists uncovered a pair of columns from a portico and an entrance threshold, all made of limestone.

Nuzzolo—who is an assistant professor of Egyptology at the Warsaw-based Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures—explained that Nyuserra likely used the bones of the previous temple to erect his own. 

“We knew that there was something below the stone temple of Nyuserre, but we don’t know if it is just another building phase of the same temple or if it is a new temple,” the archaeologist elaborated for the Daily Telegraph.

“Actually, the fact that there is such a huge, monumental entrance would point to a new building. So, why not another sun temple, one of the missing sun temples?”

Nuzzolo and his team also uncovered seals engraved with the names of kings, as well as dozens of beer jars. The latter vessels have been dated to the mid 25th century BCE, meaning they were created well before Nyuserra’s construction.

These findings were featured in an episode of the series Lost Treasures of Egypt that aired on the National Geographic channel last weekend. However, whoever was responsible for building the older temple remains an unanswered question.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

U.S. Repatriates Looted Artifacts to Italy

U.S. Repatriates Looted Artifacts to Italy

Italy’s culture minister on Thursday welcomed the return of 201 prized antiquities valued at over 10 million euros ($11 million) that had been located in prestigious U.S. museums and galleries after being illegally trafficked in recent decades.

They were among thousands of antiquities seized from traffickers or returned to Italy this year in major operations that also targeted trafficking rings in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.

Of the 201 works returned by U.S. officials earlier this month, 161 have been repatriated to Italy while 40 are on exhibit at the Italian Consulate General in New York through March 2022.

“These artworks will not end up, as has happened many times in the past, all in one big museum,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini told a press conference. Instead, they will be returned to the places where they were stolen for display in museums there.

“This too is a great homecoming operation that will add value to our extraordinary country as a vast museum.

They are artworks of absolute importance that will attract people to those places and territories,” Franceschini said.

The U.S. haul includes 96 pieces that had been in the collection of the Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art, including ancient pottery and amphora; a terracotta statue titled dating from the 4th century BC seized from a New York gallery; and six items returned from the Getty Museum, including a large ceramic Etruscan vessel.

The Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art at Fordham University surrendered about a hundred looted antiquities to the Manhattan D.A., including this hydria, or water jar, featuring the labours of Hercules.

Most of the stolen cache was traced to the activities of Edoardo Almagia, an Italian native who was living in New York.

Charges against him in Italy in 2006 were thrown out due to the statute of limitations, but a judge in Rome in 2013 ordered the seizure of all his antiquities in both New York and Naples.

He remains at large in Italy, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

One major operation secured nearly 800 objects from ancient Daunia, which was located in the Gargano peninsula in northern Puglia, while another broke up a trafficking ring of artefacts from southern Italian civilizations operating in northern Europe.

Thirteen people are under investigation in that case, which led to the recovery of 2,000 artefacts.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Priceless Art Found In Paris Apartment Vacant Since 1939

Priceless Art Found In Paris Apartment Vacant Since 1939

Caked in dust and full of turn-of-the-century treasures, this Paris apartment is like going back in time. Having lain untouched for seven decades the abandoned home was discovered three years ago after its owner died aged 91.

The woman who owned the flat, a Mrs De Florian, had fled for the south of France before the outbreak of the Second World War. She never returned and in the 70 years since it looks like no one had set foot inside.

The property was found near a church in the French capital’s 9th arrondissement, between Pigalle red-light district and Opera.

Priceless Art Found In Paris Apartment Vacant Since 1939
Back in time: The flat near the Trinité church in Paris between the Pigalle red-light district and Opera

Experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions which included a painting by the 19th-century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.

One expert said it was like stumbling into the castle of Sleeping Beauty, where time had stood still since 1900. ‘There was a smell of old dust,’ said Olivier Choppin-Janvry, who made the discovery.

But he said his heart missed a beat when he caught sight of a stunning tableau of a woman in a pink muslin evening dress.

The painting was by Boldini and the subject a beautiful Frenchwoman who turned out to be the artist’s former muse and Mrs de Florian’s grandmother, Marthe de Florian, a beautiful French actress and socialite of the Belle Époque.

Under a thick layer of dusk lay a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century objects including a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini
Untouched: The cobweb-filled flat was discovered in the 9th arrondissement of Paris
Treasure trove: Behind the door, under a thick layer of dusk lay a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century objects, including the Boldini painting that sold for £1.78million
When the owner died aged 91, experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions
Mrs de Florian fled Paris before the outbreak of war in 1939, which saw the Nazis invade France and reach Paris on June 14. Pictured here, German officers and Parisians mingle near a sidewalk cafe on the Champs Elysees on Bastille Day in 1940

Marthe de Florian was an actress with a long list of ardent admirers whose fervent love letters she kept wrapped neatly in ribbon and were still on the premises.

Among the admirers was the 72nd prime minister of France, George Clemenceau, but also Boldini.

The expert had a hunch the painting was by Boldini, but could find no record of the painting.

‘No reference book dedicated to Boldini mentioned the tableau, which was never exhibited,’ said Marc Ottavi, the art specialist he consulted about the work.

When Mr Choppin-Janvry found a visiting card with a scribbled love note from Boldini, he knew he had struck gold. ‘We had the link and I was sure at that moment that it was indeed a very fine Boldini’.

He finally found a reference to the work in a book by the artist’s widow, which said it was painted in 1898 when Miss de Florian was 24.

The starting price for the painting was £253,000 but it rocketed as ten bidders vyed for the historic work. Finally, it went under the hammer for £1.78million, a world record for the artist.

‘It was a magic moment. One could see that the buyer loved the painting; he paid the price of passion,’ said Mr Ottavi.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Rare 200-million-year-old dinosaur footprints discovered on a beach in Wales, scientists believe

Rare 200-million-year-old dinosaur footprints discovered on beach in Wales, scientists believe

Dinosaur footprints found on a Welsh beach could have been made more than 200 million years ago, experts believe. Palaeontologists at the Natural History Museum believe the footprints – known as a trackway – date back to the Triassic period and were most likely left by an early relative of the famous Diplodocus.

Rare 200-million-year-old dinosaur footprints discovered on beach in Wales, scientists believe
The footprints were most likely left by an early relative of the Diplodocus

The footprints were discovered on a beach in Penarth in April last year by youth worker Kerry Rees, who was taking her daily lockdown stroll having recently moved to the area.

Kerry, from Ferndale in the Rhondda, was aware of the area’s history of dinosaur discoveries – with a fossilised skeleton of a distant cousin of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex found on the same stretch of coastline back in 2014 – and sent pictures of the footprints to the Natural History Museum for experts to investigate.

Museum palaeontologists Dr Susannah Maidment and Professor Paul Barrett were initially sceptical of the report – but now believe that the footprints are from the late Triassic era.

“We get a lot of enquiries from members of the public for things that could be trackways but many are geological features that can easily be mistaken for them,” said Dr Maidment.

“However, from the photographs, we thought they were a fairly good contender for something that could be tracked and that it would be worth taking a look.”

Kerry Rees discovered the trail whilst out walking on the beach in Penarth

After visiting the site to examine the discovery, Prof. Barrett said: “We believed the impressions we saw at Penarth were consistently spaced to suggest an animal walking. We also saw displacement rims where mud had been pushed up.

“These structures are characteristic of active movement through the soft ground.”

Researchers now think that the impressions are an example of Eosauropus, which is a name not of a dinosaur, but a type of track thought to have been made by a very early sauropod or near sauropod-relative – the group of dinosaurs that later included the Diplodocus.

“We know early sauropods were living in Britain at the time, as bones of Camelotia, a very early sauropod, have been found in Somerset in rocks dated to the same period,” said Dr Maidment. “We don’t know if this species was the trackmaker, but it is another clue which suggests something like it could have made these tracks.”

Experts visited the site to examine the discovery

Dinosaur trackways can provide information about how herds moved, as well as the way an animal may have walked – but there is not much existing evidence akin to the trail of footprints discovered in Penarth.

“These types of tracks are not particularly common worldwide, so we believe this is an interesting addition to our knowledge of Triassic life in the UK,” concluded Prof. Barett.

“The record of Triassic dinosaurs in this country is fairly small, so anything we can find from the period adds to our picture of what was going on at that time.”

The coastline has a history of dinosaur discoveries

The footprints are not the first to be discovered in Wales in 2021, with a four-year-old girl stunning palaeontologists finding an “internationally important” print on a trip to the supermarket.

Lily Wilder was walking along the coast between Barry and Sully with her father Richard when she spotted what experts have called “the finest impression of a 215 million-year-old dinosaur print found in Britain in a decade”.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

‘Incredible’ 3,000-year-old Bronze Age roundhouse discovery dubbed ‘Britain’s Pompeii’

‘Incredible’ 3,000-year-old Bronze Age roundhouse discovery dubbed ‘Britain’s Pompeii’

The discovery of the “best-preserved” Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain was carried out by archaeologists excavating a site in East Anglian Fens, Cambridgeshire, back in 2016.

But to this day, Prof Alice Roberts, who presents the television programme Digging For Britain and has seen spectacular digs unearthed up and down the country, said this could be the best dig she has ever covered. She told Express.co.uk: “It is one of my favourite sites ever, it was just incredible.“

Cambridge University archaeologists digging at Must Farm quarry, in Whittlesey, uncovered the charred oak roof timbers of a roundhouse, conserved in stunning detail.

The wooden house is part of a 3,000-year-old settlement of family homes that would have been built on stilts above the water.

Prof Roberts said: “It is so unusual to have buildings from the Bronze Age first-of-all, wood preserved so you can actually see the whole structure of those roundhouses and several of them.

“And then it was the fact that it had gone up in flames and then fallen into the water and obviously nobody has gone back to collect anything from the site and afterwards you wonder what happened to the inhabitants of the village.

'Incredible' 3,000-year-old Bronze Age roundhouse discovery dubbed 'Britain's Pompeii'
A 300-year-old roundhouse from the Bronze age was dubbed ‘Britain’s Pompeii”
They are some of the “best-preserved” Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain

“Because of that, you have got all the contents of those houses as well, and that is what I found utterly astonishing.“

The roundhouses, made out of wattle, reed and timber, and their contents collapsed into the water and into the river silt. Archaeologists say the speed and brevity of the event led to an almost instant entombment of the material.

Prof Roberts said: “Normally you just find scattered metal objects, bone objects and that kind of thing.

“But because of the incredible preservation, it went much further than that.“

The village was built about 1,000 years before the Romans settled in Britain.

The village was built about 1,000 years before the Romans settled in Britain. The surviving settlement was made up of five wooden roundhouses built closely together. Its discovery gives fantastic domestic detail into how ancient Britons arranged their homes, from cooking, to storage to crafts.

Prof said: “There was a fragment of a basket with little bundles of looked like twine inside it. It looked like a craft basket that had just fallen over inside somebody’s house.

“There were beautiful pieces of fabric, amazing pieces of textile that looked like very fine linen.

Prof Roberts comments come as her new series of Digging For Britain is set to air at the beginning of January 2022.

It was like somebody had gone to Bronze Age John Lewis and bought a whole dining set.”
Around 30 or so people lived in nine or ten wooden roundhouses erected on stilts on a platform

“It’s just a range of cultural artefacts. It was like somebody had gone to Bronze Age John Lewis and bought a whole dining set. Rather than one or two bowls, there were a whole set of different sized bowls with different functions. It was amazing.”

Duncan Wilson, Historic England’s chief executive said back in 2016: “A dramatic fire combined with subsequent waterlogged preservation has left to us a frozen moment in time.

“This site is of international significance and its excavation really will transform our understanding of the period.”

The site has been dubbed “Britain’s Pompeii,” although the Roman town-city was much larger (a plot of over 60 hectares with a population of approximately 11,000).

But in the English Fens, it was just a small river community of around 30 or so people living in nine or ten wooden roundhouses erected on stilts on a platform by the water.

Like the “Britain’s Pompeii” find, which featured on the series several years ago, the latest season of the show is jam-packed with stunning finds too.

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

Archaeologists stunned by ancient Babylonian device: ‘More advanced than we thought’

Archaeologists stunned by ancient Babylonian device: ‘More advanced than we thought’

Babylon was the city where some of the most influential empires of the ancient world ruled. For a long time, it was the capital of the Babylonian Empire, and was considered to be the global centre of commerce, art and learning, and is even estimated to have been the largest early city in the world — perhaps the first to reach a population of more than 200,000 people.

Today, it resembles more of an archaeological excavation site in progress and has only several thousand residents and a few villages within its boundaries. It holds some of the greatest secrets of the ancient world, including the Tower of Babel, which is first mentioned in Genesis in the Bible.

In 1894, Edgar Banks, an American archaeologist, discovered a stone device and sold it to antique collector George Plimpton. He eventually passed it on to Columbia University in the 1930s, and the tablet is today known as Plimpton 322.

Archaeologists stunned by ancient Babylonian device: 'More advanced than we thought'
Archaeology: Researches have been stunned by the Babylonian tablet
Babylon: The ancient city is located in modern-day Iraq

At the time, researchers did not realise how important the tablet was, and it was not until 1945 that experts realised it contained Pythagorean triples.

But then the tablet was forgotten, and it was not until this year that Dr Daniel Mansfield, from the University of New South Wales, Australia, was given access to it, revealing the full extent of the device’s wonder.

Speaking to the BBC’s reel exploring the tablet, titled, ‘Evidence ancient Babylonians were far more advanced than we thought, he described it as the, “most interesting, most sophisticated mathematical document from the ancient world”.

It tells us that past civilisations understood mathematics a lot better than we thought.

In particular, it shows how the Mesopotamians understood Pythagorean triples at a level of sophistication “that we never expected”, according to Dr Mansfield.

Ancient tablet: The clay tablet shows how the Babylonians used Pythagorean triples

Traditionally, the history of geometry starts in Ancient Greece, where astronomers used the technique to understand the movement of celestial bodies through the night sky. The most famous relation in geometry is the relation between the sides and the hypotenuse of a right triangle, in modern times known as Pythagoras’ Theorem.

But, as Dr Mansfield noted: “In reality, elements of this understanding are apparent throughout history.”

The tablet proves that about a thousand years before the Greek astronomers were looking at the night sky, Babylonian surveyors had their own unique understanding of right triangles and rectangles.

But, rather than using the technique to look at the night sky, they applied it on the ground in day-to-day life.

They did not have what we today call the theorem.

Pythagoras: Some of the calculations found on the tablets
Dr Daniel Mansfield: The Australian researcher further deciphered the tablet’s engravings

Instead, they knew all the particular cases where the theorem held true, myriad examples of rectangles that had pleasant, easy to manage measurements. New research from Dr Mansfield and his team has since shed light on a long-standing mystery: how the ancient Babylonians may have actually used these tablets.

He explained: “This tablet shows us that the application is actually surveying, these people are making boundaries and making really accurate boundaries using their understanding of geometry.

“Pure mathematics is the study of mathematics for its own sake.

Ancient history: One of the tablets that were used during the research project

“But it’s often motivated by the problems of the day.

“Plimpton 322 arguably fits into this category because we see a mathematician generating all these rectangles and then analysing them to see which ones have regular sides, which is a relevant problem in contemporary surveying.”

The tablet shows us that Babylonian surveying became a lot more accurate during this time.

Mesopotamia: The region is believed to have been at the centre of global commerce, art and culture