All posts by Archaeology World Team

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

‘Exceptionally high’ number of decapitated bodies found at Roman burial site

‘Exceptionally high’ number of decapitated bodies found at Roman burial site

'Exceptionally high' number of decapitated bodies found at Roman burial site
One of the decapitated skeletons found at Knobb’s Farm.

Ancient Romans left an enduring mark on present-day Britain. Crumbling stone walls across the island speak to their once-vast empire. But a cemetery uncovered in Cambridgeshire highlights another legacy of Roman rule — its brutality. Here, archaeologists discovered a high number of decapitated skeletons, likely belonging to people who somehow offended their conquerers.

Archaeologists from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit made the discovery at Knobb’s Farm in Cambridgeshire, some 70 miles north of London. There, between 2001 and 2010, they unearthed three Roman-era cemeteries from the third century.

But these cemeteries stood out. Of the 52 burials, 17 were decapitated, and 13 were buried face down. And now, researchers are pointing out the significance of the macabre site.

“Knobb’s Farm has an exceptionally high proportion of decapitated bodies and prone burials (33 per cent and 25 per cent) when compared with burial grounds locally and across Roman Britain,” noted a study published in the journal Britannica in May 2021.

The people buried at Knobb’s Farm also seemed to have died violent deaths. Isabel Lisboa, the archaeologist who led the excavations, noted that they were likely alive when beheaded.

A graphic showing that this skeleton was hit with a “blow was directed obliquely downwards from behind and to the left,” indicating that he was kneeling when he died.

Some of the skeletons even bore marks of more extreme violence. One man had several deep cuts in the back of his skull, suggesting that someone had subdued him with a sword before chopping off his head. And one woman’s skeleton bore cut marks on her face, arms, and legs.

“It is not possible to distinguish whether [her injuries] were made immediately before death (resulting from, for example, torture or flaying) or after death (for example, from corpse mutilation, post-mortem ‘punishment’ or ritual de-fleshing of the body),” noted the study.

So why does Knobb’s Farm contain so many beheaded skeletons? It likely has to do with both the age of the skeletons and their location.

Some decapitated skeletons had their skulls placed at their feet, perhaps to keep their spirits from rising.

For 400 years — until about 410 A.D. — the Roman Empire ruled over present-day England. But their grip on power started to slip in the third century. As a result, anyone who dared defy the Romans could face extreme punishment.

“Any hint of insurrection against the Roman state would’ve been dealt with extremely violently,” explained Chris Gosden, a professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford.

Indeed, the number of crimes in Britain that Romans felt worthy of the death penalty more than doubled in the third century — and quadrupled in the fourth century.

As such, researchers also noted that Roman cemeteries of the first and second centuries contained roughly 5 per cent decapitated bodies. But cemeteries that date between the third and fifth centuries contain almost 10 per cent.

Archeologists at the burial site.

Plus, the people who worked at Knobb’s Farm served a particularly important purpose to the Roman Empire — they helped supply the Roman Imperial Army. They bore unusual scrutiny from authorities.

“Roman laws seem to have been applied particularly harshly at Knobb’s Farm because it was associated with supplying the Roman army, so there were many decapitations,” explained Lisboa.

“Crimes normally would have been let go, but there were probably tensions with the Roman army.”

Because people living in the area supplied meat and grain to Roman troops, Roman authorities harshly punished any wrongdoing. Crimes that merited the death penalty, according to Gosden, could range from murder and theft to merely desecrating a shrine.

Over the centuries, the charges brought against those killed at Knobb’s Farm have been lost. But archaeologists do have a couple of clues about the people themselves. By studying their DNA and tooth enamel, researchers believe that Romans recruited people from far-flung regions like present-day Scotland, and the Alps.

And because they were buried among non-decapitated skeletons, researchers suspect that they had people who loved and cared for them.

“They were not buried as outcasts — they were buried in the normal rite with miniature pots around their heads,” Lisboa noted.

Indeed, despite the brutality of Roman rule in England, it seems that the Romans did allow their subjects one small mercy. Roman law permitted friends and families of executed criminals to request their bodies’ return for a proper burial.

AFRICA, WORLD

Discovery of oldest human decorations — thought to be 82,000 years old

Discovery of oldest human decorations — thought to be 82,000 years old

The discovery of small perforated seashells, in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco, has shown that the use of bead adornments in North Africa is older than thought. Dating from 82,000 years ago, the beads are thought to be the oldest in the world.

As adornments, together with art, burial and the use of pigments, are considered to be among the most conclusive signs of the acquisition of symbolic thought and of modern cognitive abilities, this study is leading researchers to question their ideas about the origins of modern humans.

The study was carried out by a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers at CNRS, working with scientists from Morocco, the UK, Australia and Germany.

It was long thought that the oldest adornments, which were then dated as being 40,000 years old, came from Europe and the Middle East. However, since the discovery of 75,000-year-old carved beads and ochers in South Africa, this idea has been challenged, and all the more so with the recent discovery in Morocco of beads that are over 80,000 years old. The discoveries all indicate the presence of a much older symbolic material culture in Africa than in Europe or the Middle East.

Dated at 82,000 years old, the beads, which were unearthed by archaeologists in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, north-east Morocco, consist of 13 shells belonging to the species Nassarius gibbosulus. The shells have been deliberately perforated, and some of them are still covered with red ocher. They were discovered in the remains of hearths, associated with abundant traces of human activity such as stone tools and animal remains.

The shell beads.

The mollusks were found in a stratigraphic sequence formed of ashy sediments. They were dated independently by two laboratories using four different techniques, which confirmed an age of 82,000 years.

Led by Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, a researcher at the National Institute of Archaeological and Heritage Sciences (INSAP, Morocco)and Nick Barton of the University of Oxford (UK), a multidisciplinary team has been carrying out an in-depth study of the site for the past five years.

Two CNRS researchers have been especially involved in the study of the shells: Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d’Errico, belonging respectively to the ‘From prehistory to the present: culture, environment and anthropology’ unit (PACEA, CNRS / Université Bordeaux 1 / INRAP / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication) and the ‘Archaeologies and sciences of Antiquity’ unit (ArScAn, CNRS / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / Universités Paris 1 and 10).

They were thus able to reveal that the shells had been gathered when dead, on the beaches of Morocco, which at that time were located over 40 km from the Cave of Pigeons. By taking into account the distance of the coast at that time and the comparison with natural alteration of shells of the same species on today’s beaches, the two scientists inferred that prehistoric humans had selected, transported and very probably perforated the shells and coloured them red for symbolic use.

Moreover, some shells showed traces of wear, which suggests that they were used as adornments for a long time: they were very likely worn as necklaces or bracelets or sewn onto clothes.

Noticing that the beads belong to the same species of shell and bear the same type of perforation as those uncovered in previous excavations at the palaeolithic sites at Skhul in Israel and at Oued Djebbana in Algeria, Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d’Errico were thus able to confirm the validity of these two discoveries.

Everything, therefore, seems to indicate that 80,000 years ago the populations of the eastern and southern Mediterranean shared the same symbolic traditions. To back up this hypothesis they point to other sites in Morocco where Nassarius gibbosulus beads from the same period are also found.

In addition, the two researchers point out that there is a remarkable difference between the oldest beads from Africa and the Near East on the one hand, and from Eurasia on the other. Unlike Africa and the Near East, where only one or two types of shell are found, in Eurasia from the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic onwards tens or even hundreds of different types of beads have been described.

Additional Information

1) Among the stone tools associated with the shells there are sharp biface points that are typical of Aterian technology in North Africa. They were probably used as spearheads. The animal bones were left-over food remains and are mainly identified as wild horses and hares.

2) A stratigraphic sequence is a sequence of strata.

3) These beads were attributed by the same authors to archaeological strata at the site dating back 100 000 years, based on geochemical analysis of material stuck to the shells. However, the date of the first digs at the site (which were carried out in the 1930s) made it impossible to formally prove the stratigraphic provenance of the objects. This study resulted in an article in Science in June 2006.

4) The bead found at this site came from an archaeological stratum more than 40 000 years old and was dates thanks to stone tools found in the same location: the tools are typical of the period dating from 60 000 to 90 000 years before the modern era.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

The shackled skeleton may be the first direct evidence of slavery in Roman Britain

The shackled skeleton may be the first direct evidence of slavery in Roman Britain

The shackled skeleton may be the first direct evidence of slavery in Roman Britain
The Great Casterton Roman burial shackles were found locked around the skeleton’s ankles.

His ankles secured with heavy, locked iron fetters, the enslaved man appears to have been thrown in a ditch – a final act of indignity in death.

Now the discovery of the shackled male skeleton by workers in Rutland – thought to have been aged in his late 20s or early 30s – has been identified as rare and important evidence of slavery in Roman Britain and “an internationally significant find”.

It was also desperately grim, said Chris Chinnock, one of the archaeologists working on the project, but was important because it “forces us to ask questions that we wouldn’t ordinarily ask”.

Builders came across the bones when they were constructing a conservatory at a house in Great Casterton. Police were called and subsequent radiocarbon dating showed the remains were from between AD226 to AD427.

Archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) were called in and have been researching the skeleton, with their findings published on Monday in the journal Britannia.

No one doubts that slavery existed during the Roman occupation of Britain but discovering direct archaeological evidence is another matter. Most of what is known come from inscriptions. “To have the opportunity to study the body of a person who quite probably was a slave is really important,” said Michael Marshall, a finds specialist at Mola.

Roman soldiers direct people to build a road in Roman Britain. From a painting by Paul Hardy.

The Great Casterton discovery is the first of its type in Britain, described by researchers as the clearest case of a burial of an enslaved individual found in the UK. “This burial is exceptionally unusual,” said Marshall.

Precisely who the man was will never be known but a number of informed guesses can be made. “It could be the dead person was somebody who had earned the ire of other people,” said Marshall. “Equally it could be that the people who buried him were tyrannical and awful. We can’t really understand the moral dimensions.”

The team have been examining a number of theories including that the shackles might have been added after the man died to demean him or brand him as a criminal in the afterlife.

The few skeletons found with shackles in other countries are normally the victims of natural disasters and have not been buried. That is not the case in Great Casterton, say archaeologists.

The burial position is an awkward one, said Chinnock, with the skeleton slightly on his right side and his left side and arm elevated on a slope. There is a Roman cemetery just 60 metres away, suggesting a conscious decision not to bury him properly. The likely explanation is that he has been thrown in a ditch and covered over.

A diagram of the Great Casterton shackled burial.

Chinnock, an expert in ancient bones, said the man appeared to be between 26 and 35 and had led a physically demanding life. A bony spur on an upper leg bone may have been caused by a fall or blow or be the result of a life filled with excessive physical activity. The injury had healed by the time he died and the cause of his death remains unknown.

The Mola team say the identity of the man will never be known but “the various pieces of evidence present the most convincing case for the remains of a Roman slave yet to be found in Britain”.

A number of questions remain around the Great Casterton man but it was clear, Marshall said, that it was “extraordinary” evidence of mistreatment. “For living wearers, shackles were both a form of imprisonment and a method of punishment, a source of discomfort, pain and stigma which may have left scars even after they had been removed.”

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It was difficult to get away from the conclusion that the people who disposed of the shackled man “really hated him and were really keen to make that obvious, whether to other people or in the longer, more spiritual sense”.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Los Millares- The Largets Known Fortified Neolithic Settlement in Europe

Los Millares- The Largets Known Fortified Neolithic Settlement in Europe

Just 17km from Almería between Santa Fe de Mondujar y Gádor lies Los Millares, the largest known European fortified Neolithic settlement, dated c. 3,200-2,300 BC. The site includes a settlement and a cemetery with over 80 megalithic tombs.

Los Millares- The Largets Known Fortified Neolithic Settlement in Europe

Three walls and an inner citadel with an elaborate fortified entrance make up part of extensive fortifications at Los Millares. Thirteen nearly circular enclosures were forts protecting it. Within the three walls are 80 passage graves.

Los Millares was constructed in three phases, each phase increasing the level of fortification. The fortification is not unique to the Mediterranean area of the 3rd millennium; other sites with bastions and defensive towers include the sites of Jericho, Ai, and Aral (in Palestine) and Lebous, Boussargues and Campe of Laures (in France).

It consists of a settlement, guarded by numerous outlying forts and a cemetery of passage tombs and covers around 5 acres. 

Three concentric walls with four bastions surrounded the settlement itself; radiocarbon dating has established that one wall collapsed and was rebuilt around 3,025 BC. A cluster of simple dwellings lay inside the walls as well as one large building containing evidence of copper smelting.

Finally, the fortified citadel at the very top of the spur has only been investigated so far by means of various pilot trenches, which have revealed walls up to six metres thick, confirming the great importance of the structure. Within its grounds, there is a deep hollow, which is thought to be a water cistern but so far has not been excavated.

Los Millares was discovered in 1891 during the course of the construction of a railway and was first excavated by Luis Siret in the succeeding years.

Antonio Arribas and Fernando Molina from the University of Granada later excavated Los Millares from 1978-1995, and analysis continues on the massive amounts of information collected.

The strategic sequence of the site shows that the settlement went through various phases of occupation. The first was during the early copper age (3,200 to 2,800 B.C.) when the three interior walls were constructed.

The second was during the middle copper age (2,800 to 2,450 B.C.), when the innermost wall was demolished and the outer wall constructed, together with most of the small forts outside the settlement itself. Finally, in the late copper age (2,450 to 2,250 B.C.) the first bell beakers appeared, a form of pottery that was produced henceforth on a large scale in the village.

During this late period, some profound social upheaval brought about a gradual decline in the size of the settlement, whose inhabitants gradually retired towards the fortified citadel. The site appears to have been finally abandoned around 2,250 B.C.

Over eighty megalithic tombs are visible outside the settlement. The majority are of the type mentioned above, but tombs without corbelled roofs also exist.

The chronology of tomb construction and use is unclear, but analysis of tomb forms, sizes, numbers of burials, contents, and distributions suggests that the dead were selected for interment and that social ranking had emerged, with higher-ranked groups being buried in tombs located close to the settlement.

Similar Tholos Tombs are common in Mycenaean remains, and a connection is commonly suggested. They are also present at other places in Spain, noticeably at the Cueva de Viera, which sits beside the great Cueva de Menga passage mound. Holed stones are also a common feature of dolmens in the Caucasus region of Russia where hundreds are visible.

Large sheets of slate that were punched through and rounded off to make the entrances we see today, divided entrances. The chambers of the Tholos were lined with vertical slabs of slate, often painted red, sometimes with small niches present (used for the burial of children). The graves were finally covered over with conical mounds of earth and stones.

Many were given an outer skirting of slabs or masonry to strengthen the structure. Almost all the tombs were orientated east of southeast, except for a small group of seven mounds that were orientated southwest.

The tombs were collective with the number of skeletons discovered ranging from a dozen to over a hundred. Burial offerings included objects such as ivory and ostrich eggshell, copper tools, pottery vessels, arrowheads and flint knives.

The presence of such great quantities of mineral resources in the region is likely to be part of the reason for the existence of Los Millares in the first place. The parallel with the Minoans continues in the addition of arsenic as an antioxidant to their copper products. Arsenic is readily available in the local region of Sierra de Gador. Among the buildings dedicated to specialised activities, two areas have been identified as having once housed metallurgical workshops. While along the northern stretch of the outer wall there are several squares and round buildings dedicated to this, the best-preserved workshop is situated in a large rectangular building attached to the inner facade of the third line of fortification. Of considerable size, about 8m long by 6.5m wide, it was built with a solid masonry technique, with a door opening to the east. Inside are the remains of three structures: a mass of 1.3m in diameter with fragments of copper ore, a furnace delineated by a ring of clay with a depression at its centre to put the pot furnaces, and a small structure with slabs of slate in its northeast corner. It is suggested that this building was never roofed, as there is no post-holes present.

BRAZIL, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Satellite Images Aided the Discovery of an Ancient Civilization Buried in the Amazon

Satellite Images Aided the Discovery of an Ancient Civilization Buried in the Amazon

Long before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, one of the world’s largest rainforests teemed with people who transformed the woods around them, according to archaeologists who have found new evidence of farms, settlements and roads buried beneath the flora of Brazil’s Amazon Basin.

Satellite Images Aided the Discovery of an Ancient Civilization Buried in the Amazon
An aerial photo shows an earthwork located in the Upper Tapajos Basin of Mato Grosso Brazil.

A retiree poring over online satellite images led archaeologists to the ancient earthworks, the most recent in a series of finds made possible by satellite imagery, airborne radar, and drone-mounted cameras that are making ecologists and conservationists abandon longstanding notions of the Amazon as a virgin wilderness.

“It is all one type or another of the human-influenced forest,” said anthropologist Michael Heckenberger at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who wasn’t part of the new project. In the Amazon, “they were weaving their cities out of the forest itself.”

The findings include 81 pre-Columbian clusters of earthworks in the Upper Tapajos Basin, located along the southern rim of the Amazon in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

Dating to 1250‒1500 A.D., the sites range from small ditched enclosures to large settlements with multiple mounds, plazas and causeways, the archaeologists said.

Francisco Nakahara, a retired financial manager in São Paulo who studies free online satellite photos as a hobby, first spotted the traces of circular earthworks, the researchers said. The archaeologists, who reported their findings in Nature Communications Tuesday, then catalogued the discoveries using Zoom Earth and Google Earth.

To verify the finds, the team surveyed and excavated 24 sites, unearthing potsherds and decorated ceramics. In surrounding fields, they found widespread evidence of distinctive dark enriched soil—a blend of charcoal and nutrients unlike normal Amazon earth—suggesting the land was used for intensive farming.

“It is likely that many of these sites were fortified settlements,” said archaeologist Jonas Gregorio de Souza at the U.K.’s University of Exeter, who was the lead author of the study. “These regions, once considered marginal, were probably very densely populated.”

At their height, the settlements may have been home to as many as one million people. Most of them likely succumbed to diseases brought by European explorers and slavers, while the forest reclaimed their homes, roads and plazas, the scientists said.

“Many parts of the Americas now thought of as pristine forest are really abandoned gardens,” said Colorado State University archaeologist Christopher Fisher, who uses aerial laser radar to explore sites in Central America covered by the forest canopy. “When you are on the ground, you cannot really see the landscape. You need a bird’s-eye view.”

A field archaeologist stands in a ditch that forms part of a large enclosure that once may have encircled a fortified village in the Upper Tapajos Basin.

Last year, researchers from Brazil, the U.K. and Canada led by Jennifer Watling at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at the University of São Paulo announced their discovery of 455 huge earthworks spread across hundreds of thousands of acres in the nearby Brazilian state of Acre. They also date to pre-Columbian times.

Outlined by ditches up to 12 yards wide and 12 feet deep, these circular and square enclosures are known as geoglyphs were carved into the soil within woodlands that had been managed for thousands of years, the scientists said. Until exposed by modern deforestation, they had been concealed for centuries by the surrounding rainforest.

And in the headwaters of the Xingu River in the Amazon basin, Dr. Heckenberger and his colleagues discovered remains of broad highways and dozens of fortified pre-Columbian villages. The area between these urban centres had been cultivated or managed as parkland, he said.

Such ancient human disturbances still affect the forests today, altering patterns of growth and the mix of tree species. That in turn can make it difficult for climate scientists to judge how much carbon from greenhouse emissions can be absorbed by the Amazon rainforest every year.

“These forests may be much younger than we think they are,” said ecologist Crystal McMichael at the University of Amsterdam, who wasn’t involved in the latest research.

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

Melting Norwegian glacier releases 500-year-old perfectly preserved wooden box full of candles

Melting Norwegian glacier releases 500-year-old perfectly preserved wooden box full of candles

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a beeswax candle used to assist Vikings to find their farms in a 500-year-old wooden box discovered in a perfectly preserved form when a glacier in Norway melted.

Archaeologists removed the tight lid of the pine box with the leather straps, uncovered in Norway’s Lendbreen ice patch, discovering the candle that was essential to Vikings hundreds of years ago.  

The team suggests the box – which was first uncovered in 2019 – was used to transport the long candles that were used by Vikings to light the path between their main farm and summer farm.

The Lendbreen ice patch has become a sought-out destination for archaeologists since 2011 when teams discovered thousands of artefacts sticking out from the melting Norwegian glacier.

At first, the team thought it was a tinderbox that was lost accidentally in the pass, but a further analysis proved otherwise, The History Blog reports.

The box found at the Lendbreen ice-patch containing a well-preserved beeswax candle.

‘It is radiocarbon-dated to AD 1475-1635, so 400-500 years old,’ glacial archaeologists from the Secrets of the Ice team shared in a statement. 

‘The content of the box was analyzed at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo: We were in for a big surprise – the content is beeswax!

‘What we are seeing inside the box is very likely the remains of a beeswax candle.’

Candle boxes were a common item among Vikings that were used to house expensive beeswax candles as Vikings made their travels to different farms. 

The melting glaciers, brought on by climate change, is creating a valuable archaeological site in Norway, which was an ancient passageway used by Vikings for thousands of years and littered with forgotten artefacts. 

The Lendbreen ice patch has produced more than 6,000 artefacts since archaeologists began investigating the area.

Last November, teams unearthed nearly 70 arrow shafts, plus shoes, textiles and reindeer bones on a mountainside in Jotunheimen, about 240 miles from Oslo.

Last November, teams unearthed nearly 70 arrow shafts, plus shoes, textiles and reindeer bones on a mountainside in Jotunheimen, about 240 miles from Oslo
Clothes, tools, equipment and animal bone have also been found by a team in Norway’s mountainous region.

Based on radiocarbon dating, the oldest arrows are from around 4100 BC, with the most recent dating from 1300 AD.

Clothes, tools, equipment and animal bone have also been found by a team in Norway’s mountainous region, according to the journal Antiquity. 

Researchers collected a haul of more than 100 artefacts at the site includes horseshoes, a wooden whisk, a walking stick, a wooden needle, a mitten and a small iron knife.

Although a warming world is revealing these extraordinary relics, archaeologists are in a race against time because the ice is what is keeping them preserved.

Archaeologist Regula Gubler told AFP in October 2020: ‘It is a very short window in time. In 20 years, these finds will be gone and these ice patches will be gone.’

‘It is a bit stressful.’

She explained that materials like leather, wood, birch bark and textiles can be destroyed by erosion.

And the only reason they have stayed preserved is because of the ice.

AFRICA, WORLD

The Prehistoric Rock Art of Tassili N’Ajjer, Algeria

The Prehistoric Rock Art of Tassili N’Ajjer, Algeria

Just Outside the Desert Oasis of Djanet, Algeria, there’s a national park brimming with pieces of the past. A trip through the alien-like landscape of Tassili n’Ajjer is like stepping into an open-air art gallery, where the sandstone rock formations become canvases for more than 15,000 prehistoric carvings and paintings.

The Dessert around Djanet

Tassili n’Ajjer shot into worldwide fame in the 1930s, not for its landscape but for the precious collection of ancient rock art in the area.

Since their discovery, more than 15,000 petroglyphs and paintings have been identified representing 10,000 years of human history and environmental change.

Petroglyph depicting a possibly sleeping antelope, located at Tassili n’Ajjer in southern Algeria.

One of the most striking features of these petroglyphs is the way they evolved with the change in the climate.

The oldest art belongs to the so-called “Large Wild Fauna Period” (10,000-6,000 BC) characterized almost entirely by engravings of animals such as hippopotamus, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and rhinos, depicting the abundant wildlife at a time when the Sahara was green and fertile.

Humans appear as tiny figures dwarfed by the immensity of these animals and are often shown holding boomerangs or throwing sticks, clubs, axes or bows.

Overlapping with this era is the Round Head Period (8,000-6,000 BC) where human figures with elaborate attires took dominance. These figures ranged from a few centimetres to several meters tall.

The majority of Round Head paintings portray people with round featureless heads and formless bodies. Some of the pieces seem to suggest shamanism with bodies flying through space or bowing before huge male figures that tower above them.

About 7,000 years ago, domesticated animals began to appear in art. This period is known as the Pastoral Period. Rock art from this period reflects a changing attitude towards nature and property.

Human figures became more prominent, and man was no longer shown as part of nature but portrayed as being above nature, yet able to derive sustenance from it.

Wild animals gave way to cattle and stock. Later drawings (3500 years ago) depicts horses and horse-drawn chariots. It’s unlikely that chariots were ever driven across the rocky Sahara, so researchers believe the figures of chariots and armed men are symbolic, representing ownership of land, or control of its inhabitants.

As the climate became progressively drier, horses were replaced by camels as evident from the rock art from the most recent period about 2000 years ago.

Tassili N’Ajjer lies about 500 meters above the level of the desert. The plateau can only be reached by climbing on foot, with camping materials and supplies drawn by donkeys and camels.

Large diurnal temperature variations and the absence of basic amenities make the trip extremely challenging, so only the young and the hardy attempt to reach it. Recent violence and insecurity in the country have further isolated Tassili N’Ajjer from the routes of most tourists.

Detail of a petroglyph depicting a bubalus anticus.
  • The Prehistoric Rock Art of Tassili N'Ajjer, Algeria
CANADA, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Oldest Horseshoe Crab Fossil Found, 445 Million Years Old

Oldest Horseshoe Crab Fossil Found, 445 Million Years Old

Few modern animals are as deserving of the title “living fossil” as the lowly horseshoe crab. Seemingly unchanged since before the Age of Dinosaurs, these venerable sea creatures can now claim a history that reaches back almost half a billion years.

The oldest horseshoe crab in the fossil record (Lunataspis aurora, left) is 445 million years old and was discovered in Ordovician strata from Manitoba, Canada. Horseshoe crab shells are made of protein and normally are not mineralized like typical fossils, making this a truly remarkable find. Despite the age of this fossil, it looks remarkably similar to the modern animal pictured to the right

In a collaborative research article published recently in the British journal Palaeontology, a team of Canadian scientists revealed rare new horseshoe crab fossils from 445 million-year-old Ordovician age rocks in central and northern Manitoba, which are about 100 million years older than any previously known forms.

Palaeontologist Dave Rudkin from the Royal Ontario Museum, with colleagues Dr. Graham Young of The Manitoba Museum (Winnipeg) and Dr. Godfrey Nowlan at the Geological Survey of Canada (Calgary), gave their remarkable new fossils the scientific name Lunataspis aurora, meaning literally “crescent moon shield of the dawn” in reference to their shape, geological age and northerly discovery sites.

Although they are more “primitive” in several aspects than other known horseshoe crabs, their resemblance to living forms is unmistakable.

The fossil horseshoe crabs were recovered in the course of fieldwork studies on ancient tropical seashore deposits, providing yet another important link to their modern descendants that are today found along warmer seashores of the eastern United States and the Indian Ocean.

One of the fossils of the new genus of horseshoe crab (Lunataspis aurora) was photographed underwater to show some of the fine details.

This is particularly significant, explains Rudkin. “Understanding how horseshoe crabs adapted to this ecological niche very early on, and then remained there through thick and thin, can give us insights into how ocean and shoreline ecosystems have developed through deep time.”

Today, marine shorelines worldwide are being threatened by human activity, and although some horseshoe crab populations are endangered, their enviably long record on Earth indicates that they have successfully weathered many previous crises, including the mass extinction that saw the demise of the dinosaurs and many other life forms 65 million years ago.

“We do need to be concerned about horseshoe crabs and many of the other unusual life forms found on marine shores,” said Dr. Young.

“Nevertheless, we can also be mildly optimistic that some of these things have demonstrated a toughness that may allow them to survive our abuse of these environments.”

Living horseshoe crabs are extensively studied, especially in the fields of ecology and medical research. The exciting discovery of these unusual early fossil relatives adds a new introductory chapter to their remarkable story.

David Rudkin is Assistant Curator in the Department of Natural History (Palaeobiology) at the Royal Ontario Museum and holds an appointment to the Department of Geology, University of Toronto, as a Lecturer in palaeontology.

Rudkin joined the former Department of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the ROM in 1975 and began working on fossils from the Burgess Shale in British Columbia.