Ancient Roman Road Discovered at the Bottom of Venice Lagoon
In the Venice lagoon, an ancient and now submerged road was unearthed in a location that would have been accessible by land 2,000 years ago during the Roman era.
Fantina Madricardo at the Marine Science Institute in Venice and her colleagues made the discovery after mapping the floor of an area of the lagoon called the Treporti channel.
“We believe it was part of the network of Roman roads in the northeast of the Venice area,” says Madricardo.
The remains of a Roman road have been found underneath Venice, according to a new Italian study.
In the 1980s, the archaeologist Ernesto Canal proposed that there are ancient human-made structures submerged in the Venice lagoon.
This suggestion prompted decades of debate, but couldn’t be confirmed until now as the previously available technology was insufficiently advanced to explore such a challenging environment.
“The area is very difficult to investigate by divers because there are strong currents and the water in the Venice lagoon is very turbid,” says Madricardo.
The team used a multibeam echosounder mounted on a boat to form a picture of what lies underwater. This device sends out acoustic waves that bounce off the lagoon floor, allowing the team to reconstruct images of whatever structures are down there.
Reconstruction of the Roman road in the Treporti channel in the Venice lagoon
The researchers found 12 structures up to 2.7 metres tall and 52.7 metres long that extended along 1140 metres in a southwest to the north-eastern direction in the configuration of a road.
The presence and layout of these structures suggest that there may have been a settlement in the area.
It was then submerged about 2000 years ago – partly due to human activity that diverted the flow of rivers and starved the area of the sediment that was needed to keep it above water.
“Presumably, the road is giving access to this rich environment.
The margins of the land and the water are full of resources that people might have been exploiting,” says James Gerrard at Newcastle University in the UK. “It’s not normal to find, if you like, ‘drowned’ landscapes or be able to study them in this kind of detail.”
Humans Lived in North America 130,000 Years Ago, Study Claims
Three years ago, a team of archaeologists in the United States proposed an extraordinary idea: the first human settlers in the Americas arrived at least 100,000 years earlier than we thought.
The evidence came from a collection of mastodon bones and ancient stones dating back to around 130,000 years ago, which appeared to have been hammered and scraped by early humans.
The remains were found in the suburbs of San Diego in the 1990s, and the researchers think that the nearby stones may have been used as hammers and anvils to work on the bones. But outside of that, no other traces of human activity were found.
Two mastodon femur balls, one face up and one face down, are among the remains found at the Cerutti site in San Diego.
Today, the Cerutti Mastodon (CM) site remains one of the most controversial archaeological digs in the world. For years, scientists have been going back and forth over the results and whether or not they indicate the presence of humans in North America 130,000 years ago, but the original authors are not giving up.
The team has now published a follow-up paper that claims to have found traces of ancient mastodon bones on the upward-facing sides of two cobblestones collected from the site. According to the paper, mastodon bones were indeed placed on top of these rocky ‘anvils’ and struck with some sort of hammer – presumably by humans. If the bones were merely in passive contact with the rocks, you would expect to see their influence everywhere they were touching, not just the top part.
A boulder discovered at the Cerutti Mastodon site was thought to have been used by early humans as a hammerstone.
There also doesn’t appear to be any modern contamination, the authors add. The ancient artefacts were found near a road work site, so some critics think the bones were broken and scraped by the activity of trucks and other similar disturbances.
While this is very much possible, researchers say it doesn’t explain the residue on the stones. When collecting bones and stones from the site, the team in San Diego claims to have taken great care. They say there was no opportunity for bone material to disintegrate or “float” into the air and onto a stone at the original site or in the lab afterwards.
Even in the soil, bone residues from these mastodons were discovered at much lower concentrations than what was measured on some parts of the cobblestones.
“Fossil bone residues documented with the Raman microscope were only found in residue extractions sampled from the potentially used surfaces and are therefore considered to be more likely use-related,” the authors write.
“As our investigations have indicated that the bone residues are less likely to originate from sediments or contact with bones in the bone bed as discussed above, the most parsimonious explanation is that the residues (and wear) derive from deliberate contact with bone. We consider this scenario to be the most likely.”
Still, there is one key missing ingredient: collagen. This is an important part of mammal bones, and if stones were used to break apart the mastodon skeleton, you’d expect to find some traces of collagen.
It’s very possible that the collagen in this case had already disintegrated from the passing of time. Or it could be that measurements simply didn’t pick up on its presence. But archaeologist Gary Haynes, who was not involved in the study, told Science News he thinks the more likely scenario is that road work vehicles buried these stones next to the mastodon bones, long after their collagen had disappeared.
He’s not the only one who’s sceptical. Today, most evidence suggests human settlers arrived in the Americas roughly 14,000 to 20,000 years ago. A date of 130,000 years is quite the claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence, which some scientists argue is lacking. A rebuttal to the original 2017 paper argued that other processes outside of human hammering produced bone damage, especially from heavy construction equipment.
Even before humans came along there was probably disturbance in the area. Over time, as fluvial deposits slowly covered the remains, these mastodon bones would have remained somewhat flexible, and this means they could have been trampled, displaced, fractured, abraded and reoriented by other mammals that used the ancient muddy watercourse.
A schematic of the Cerruit mastodon, showing recovered bones and teeth. Dan Fisher & Adam Rountrey, University of Michigan.
“The extraordinary claim by Holen et al. of prehistoric hominin involvement at the CM site should not be contingent on evidence that is open to multiple, contrasting interpretations,” the authors of the rebuttal argue.
“Until unambiguous evidence of hominin activities can be presented, such as formal stone tools or an abundance of percussion pits, caution requires us to set aside the claims of Holen et al. of prehistoric hominin activities at the CM site.”
Shortly afterwards, the original authors wrote a rebuttal to the rebuttal. In it, they argued that there is no evidence of fluvial deposits and that the bones were broken before they were buried and not trampled afterwards.
“Healthy scepticism is the foundation of good science, and the publication of this discovery is the beginning of a scientific debate, which I welcome and encourage,” Tom Deméré, a palaeontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum and one of the original authors, argued a few years ago.
“What I didn’t expect was the reluctance of scientists to engage in a two-way conversation to objectively evaluate our hypothesis.”
Archaeologist David Meltzer from Southern Methodist University is sceptical but open to the debate. He says he could be convinced that humans arrived in the Americas 100,000 years earlier than we thought, but that he hasn’t seen enough evidence yet.
“Given everything we know, it makes no sense,” he told Nature in 2018. “You’re not going to flip people’s opinion 180 degrees unless you’ve got absolutely unimpeachable evidence, and this ain’t it.”
Perhaps this new bout of evidence will help clear up some of that doubt. More likely than not, however, it will merely trigger a series of new rebuttals.
Traces of ancient rainforest in Antarctica point to a warmer prehistoric world
According to fossil roots, pollen, and spores recently found in West Antarctica, a thriving temperate rainforest existed around 90 million years ago.
The world was a different place back then. During the middle of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 65 million years ago), dinosaurs roamed Earth and sea levels were 558 feet (170 meters) higher than they are today. Sea-surface temperatures in the tropics were as hot as 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).
This scorching climate allowed a rainforest — similar to those seen in New Zealand today — to take root in Antarctica, the researchers said.
The rainforest’s remains were discovered under the ice in a sediment core that a team of international researchers collected from a seabed near Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica in 2017.
As soon as the team saw the core, they knew they had something unusual. The layer that had formed about 90 million years ago was a different colour. “It clearly differed from the layers above it,” study lead researcher Johann Klages, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, said in a statement.
An operator on the “Polarstern” ship drives the MeBo seabed drilling system using remote technology.
Back at the lab, the team put the core into a CT (computed tomography) scanner. The resulting digital image showed a dense network of roots throughout the entire soil layer. The dirt also revealed ancient pollen, spores and the remnants of flowering plants from the Cretaceous period.
Professor Tina van de Flierdt and Dr Johann Klages work on the sample of ancient soil.
By analyzing the pollen and spores, study co-researcher Ulrich Salzmann, a paleoecologist at Northumbria University in England, was able to reconstruct West Antarctica’s 90 million-year-old vegetation and climate.
“The numerous plant remains indicate that the coast of West Antarctica was, back then, a dense temperate, swampy forest, similar to the forests found in New Zealand today,” Salzmann said in the statement.
The sediment core revealed that during the mid-Cretaceous, West Antarctica had a mild climate, with an annual mean air temperature of about 54 F (12 C), similar to that of Seattle. Summer temperatures were warmer, with an average of 66 F (19 C). In rivers and swamps, the water would have reached up to 68 F (20 C).
In addition, the rainfall back then was comparable to the rainfall of Wales, England, today, the researchers found.
These temperatures are impressively warm, given that Antarctica had a four-month polar night, meaning that a third of every year had no life-giving sunlight.
However, the world was warmer back then, in part, because the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was high — even higher than previously thought, according to the analysis of the sediment core, the researchers said.
“Before our study, the general assumption was that the global carbon dioxide concentration in the Cretaceous was roughly 1,000 ppm [parts per million],” study co-researcher Gerrit Lohmann, a climate modeler at Alfred Wegener Institute, said in the statement. “But in our model-based experiments, it took concentration levels of 1,120 to 1,680 ppm to reach the average temperatures back then in the Antarctic.”
These findings show how potent greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide can cause temperatures to skyrocket, so much so that today’s freezing West Antarctica once hosted a rainforest. Moreover, it shows how important the cooling effects of today’s ice sheets are, the researchers said.
The context of the rope-making tool at the time of discovery in August 2015 .
Rope and twine are critical components in the technology of mobile hunters and gatherers. In exceptional cases impressions of string have been found in fired clay and on rare occasions string was depicted in the contexts of Ice Age art, but on the whole, almost nothing is known about string, rope and textiles form the Paleolithic.
A key discovery by Conard’s team in Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany and experimental research and testing by Dr. Veerle Rots and her team form the University of Liège is rewriting the history of rope.
The find is a carefully carved and beautifully preserved piece of mammoth ivory 20.4 cm in length with four holes between 7 and 9 mm in diameter. Each of the holes is lined with deep, and precisely cut spiral incisions.
The new find demonstrates that these elaborate carvings are technological features of rope-making equipment rather than just decoration.
Close up of the rope making tool from mammoth ivory from Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, ca. 40,000 years old .
Similar finds in the past have usually been interpreted as shaft-straighteners, decorated artworks or even musical instruments.
Thanks to the exceptional preservation of the find and rigorous testing by the team in Liège, the researchers have demonstrated that the tool was used for making rope out of plant fibers available near Hohle Fels.
“This tool answers the question of how rope was made in the Paleolithic”, says Veerle Rots, “a question that has puzzled scientists for decades.”
Excavators found the rope-making tool in archaeological horizon Va near the base of the Aurignacian deposits of the site. Like the famous female figurines and the flutes recovered from the Hohle Fels, the rope-making tool dates to about 40,000 years ago, the time when modern humans arrived in Europe.
The discovery underlines the importance of fiber technology and the importance of rope and string for mobile hunters and gatherers trying to cope with challenges of life in the Ice Age.
Prof. Conard’s team has excavated at Hohle Fels over each of the last 20 years, and it is this long-term commitment that has over and over again paid off, to make Hohle Fels one of the best known Paleolithic sites worldwide.
Hohle Fels and neighboring sites from the Ach and Lone Valleys have been nominated for UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status.
Rope making tool from mammoth ivory from Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, ca. 40,000 years old.
The excavations at Hohle Fels near Schelklingen in the Ach Valley are funded by the HeidelbergCement AG, the Ministry of Science of Baden-Württemberg and the Heidelberger Academie of Sciences.
Artifact Found in Germany Hints at Neanderthal Hunting Practices
Neanderthals from the Swabian Jura hunted horses and reindeer with hafted leaf-shaped stone points 65,000 years ago. The evolution of hunting is recorded by a recently found leaf tip from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hohle Fels Cave.
Hohle Fels. Leaf point
A team under the direction of Professor Nicholas Conard for the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment in southern Germany recovered the artefact underlying a layer dating to 65,000 years ago, which represents a minimum age for the find.
Microscopic studies document that this carefully made projectile point was mounted on a wooden shaft and used as a thrusting spear to kill a large game. Results of the excavations and analysis of the leaf point appear in two papers in this week’s publication of Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg and Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte.
“The new discovery represents the first time a leaf point has been recovered from a modern excavation, allowing researchers to study the fresh find with state-of-the-art methods,” says Conard. The last time researchers in the region recovered such artefacts was in 1936.
The chert artefact is 7.6 cm long, 4.1 cm wide, 0.9 cm thick and weighs 28 grams. Conard adds that “our results document how the tool was made, used and why it was discarded.” Thanks to a series of four ESR-dates the find is securely dated to over 65,000 years ago.
Until now finds of leaf points were interpreted as belonging to the period between 45,000 and 55,000 years ago, and belonging to the last cultural phase of the Neanderthals in Central Europe. Conard reports “The new results demonstrate that our assumptions about the dating of the cultural groups of the late Neanderthals were wrong and need revision.”
Dr. Veerle Rots from the University of Liège in Belgium conducted detailed microscopic analyses of the leaf point. Damage to the tip indicates that the artefact was used as a hafted spear point and that the spear was likely thrust into prey rather than being thrown.
Rots’ work documents how Neanderthals used plant-based glue and bindings made from plant fibres, sinew or leather to secure the leaf point to the spear. Neanderthals clearly used the spear for hunting. While they re-sharpened the tool it broke, leading to its discard.
Rots remarks “Neanderthals were expert stone knappers and knew exactly how to make and use complex technologies combining multiple parts and materials to produce and maintain deadly weapons.” Earlier fossil humans during the time of Homo heidelbergensis used sharpened wooden spears for hunting, but these spears lacked mounted stone points like those used by Neanderthals.
Hohle Fels. The chert artefact in finding a position.
The leaf point from Hohle Fels will be on display at the “Find of the Year” at the Museum of Prehistory in Blaubeuren from July 22 until January 2022.
“Hohle Fels is a remarkable site where after 25 years of excavation by the current team, spectacular discoveries from the period of the Neanderthals and early modern humans are still being made,” says Dr. Stefanie Kölbl, the director of the Museum of Prehistory.
The Museum of Prehistory in Blaubeuren is the central research museum for topics related to the UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Swabian Caves and for Ice Age Art.
It contains many of the earliest examples of figurative art including the Venus of Hohle Fels and the earliest musical instruments known worldwide.
Rock-Cut Chambers Unearthed in Turkey’s House of the Muses
Within the scope of ongoing excavations in the ancient city of Zeugma, located in the southeastern province of Gaziantep’s Belkıs district, two rock chambers have been unearthed in the area previously discovered and called the “House of Muses” due to the mosaics on its floor.
Professor Kutalmış Görkay, the head of the excavations, said that the rock chambers would be opened to visitors after the completion of the works.
The excavations, which started in 2005, are ongoing in the ancient city of Zeugma, which is located on the Euphrates River in the form of two cities facing each other.
Recently, two rock chambers were brought to light in the House of Muses, which was discovered in 2007.
Görkay stated that the rock chambers were found after the excavation of 16 meters of earth fill in the House of Muses, adding, “We excavated 16 meters of earth fill above the rock chambers that we identified and shifted the work in this direction.
After taking this weight on it, we started excavating inside the rock chambers. Work is still continuing in this chamber, where the earth inside was emptied. We will provide the protection and reinforcement of these chambers. In particular, there are risky cracks on the ceilings in the chamber.
We will complete the excavations in the other rock chamber this year, too. Later, we plan to open these areas to visitors by taking protective measures and ensuring room security with injections or steel structures.”
Pointing out that the rock chambers were used as dining rooms and that the mosaics unearthed from the house carry traces of intellectual life, Görkay said: “Muses are the most important personifications of classical Greek education, especially in antiquity.
In the mosaic found in this house, goddesses and personifications believed to contribute to Greek literature, history, poetry and music are depicted.
We named it the ‘House of Muses’ because of this mosaic. When we found the Muses mosaic in 2007, we decided to continue our work. The house shows us traces of the intellectual life of its owner at that time.”
Stating that the ancient city of Zeugma was one of the most important cities in Anatolia, especially on the Eastern Roman border, Görkay said that the excavations in the House of Muses, which have been ongoing since 2007, provided important information about the private lives, personal preferences and identities of the inhabitants of Zeugma.
“When we look at the places and the general structure of the house, we think that Zeugma belonged to a family having better than the middle-class economy.
These houses may have one or two courtyards. Courtyards are areas where air and water enter, where rainwater is collected and used as water collection basins. In these wet areas, we see more water-related scenes.
The courtyards of these houses were also used for dinner parties. The courtyards were filled with water, helping the house to stay cool during hot weather.
The two rock chambers found here may also have been used as dining rooms. We are currently working on reinforcement. We aim to open them to visitors as soon as possible,” he said.
In the frugal last meal of a man 2,400 years ago, scientists see signs of human sacrifice
When the Tollund man was discovered in a bog in Denmark 71 years ago, he was so well preserved that his researchers thought he was the victim of a recent murder.
The preserved body of the Tollund Man on display at the Silkeborg Museum in Silkeborg, Denmark.
It took archaeologists to reveal that he was thrown into the bog almost 2,400 years ago and was first hanged – a braided animal skin noose was still around his neck. The careful arrangement of body and face – his closed eyes and weak smile – suggested that he may have been killed as a human sacrifice, rather than executed as a criminal.
The suggestion that Tollund’s man was killed as a human sacrifice has now been reinforced by a study of the condemned man’s last frugal meal, made from a detailed investigation of the contents of his digestive tract: a porridge of barley, flax and pale persicaria.
The Tollund Man’s intestine content.
Pale persicaria seeds are the key to this Iron Age murder mystery, said archaeologist Nina Nielsen, head of research at the Danish Museum in Silkeborg and lead author of the study published Tuesday.
The plant grows wild among barley crops, but evidence from Iron Age grain storage shows that it was generally cleaned as a weed during threshing. This suggests that it was part of the “threshing waste” that was deliberately added to the porridge – possibly as part of a ritual meal for those condemned to die by human sacrifice.
“Was it just a regular meal? Or was the trash hype something you only included when people ate a ritual meal? Nielsen said. ” We do not know it. “
The contents of the preserved intestines of the Tollund man were examined soon after its discovery. But the new study refines that initial examination with much improved archaeological techniques and instruments.
The Tollund Man’s large intestine.
“In 1950, they were only looking at the well-preserved kernels and seeds, not the very fine fraction of the material,” Nielsen said. “But now we have better microscopes, better ways of analyzing material and new techniques. So that means we could get more information out of it. “
In addition to revealing the clue of threshing waste added to his last meal, the researchers found that it was probably cooked in a clay pot – pieces of overcooked crust can be seen in the tracks – and that it had also eaten fish. They also found he was suffering from several parasitic infections when he died, including tapeworms – likely from a regular diet of undercooked meat and contaminated water, Nielsen said.
Tollund Man is one of dozens of Iron Age bog bodies around 2,500 to 1,500 years ago that have been discovered across northern Europe. They were mummified in peatlands by the low oxygen levels, low temperatures, and water made acidic by the layers of decaying vegetation, or peat, therein.
A few appear to have been victims of accidents, possibly people who drowned after falling into the water. But most, like the Tollund man, were killed and deliberately placed in the bogs, with their bodies and features carefully arranged. Archaeologists believe they were selected as human sacrifices, possibly to avert impending disaster like famine.
Miranda Aldhouse-Green, professor emeritus of history, archeology and religion at Cardiff University in the UK and author of the book ‘Bog Bodies Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery’, said the seeds of pale persicaria and other traces of threshing waste in Tollund Man’s latest slurry are further evidence that he was sacrificed.
“It reinforces the idea that he was either humiliated by being given something disgusting and horrible to eat, or it actually reflected the fact that society was in a downward spiral where food was scarce,” she said. declared.
The idea that the victims of human sacrifices had somehow been “ashamed” before death was also reflected in their burials in bogs, instead of the usual burials in graves and dry graves, she said.
The preservative properties of peatlands were well known to people of the Iron Age – many archaeological objects from that era, including pieces of expensive pottery, were also deliberately deposited there – and it may be that the preservation of a bog body was intended to preserve it. to join his ancestors. The bogs were seen as gateways to another kingdom.
“If you put a body in the bog, it wouldn’t decompose – it would stay between the realms of the living and the dead,” Aldhouse-Green said.
There is evidence that threshing waste was added to the last meal of another Iron Age bog body found in Denmark in 1952, that of Grauballe Man, who was also said to have been killed as a human sacrifice. Although more than 100 bog bodies have been found, only 12 are well enough preserved that their last meals can be analyzed, Nielsen said, and she now hopes to seek further evidence of the ritual practice.
The ingredients of the Tollund Man’s last meal, in relative quantities: A) barley seeds, B) pale persicaria, C) barley fragments, D) flax, E) black-bindweed, F) “fat hen” seeds, G) sand, H) hemp-nettles, I) camelina, J) corn spurrey, K) field pansy.
The Man from Tollund now occupies a display case in a special gallery in the Silkeborg Museum, where Nielsen can see him almost every day.
“You are face to face with a person from the past,” she said. “He’s 2,400 years old, it’s really amazing.
12,000-Year-Old Natufian Village Unearthed in Jordan Valley
Remains of a Natufian building at NEG II: the wall of this structure is 90 cm high and is the best-preserved wall excavated thus far; it is composed of 5 courses of limestone and basalt stones; the wall tilts slightly away from the structure to the northwest and two large stones mark its base at the top of the Natufian occupation level; only the western side of the structure survived, yet the contour of the curve suggests a diameter of at least 5 m.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a prehistoric village in the Jordan Valley dating from around 12,000 years ago, The Hebrew University revealed on Wednesday.
The site, named NEG II, is located in Wadi Ein-Gev, west of the Sea of Galilee and south of the Golan Heights town of Katzrin, and is estimated to cover an area of roughly 1,200 square meters (three acres).
In a series of excavations, archaeologists found numerous artefacts pointing to a vast human settlement including burial remains, flint tools, art manifestations, faunal assemblage and stone and bone tools.
The NEG II site in the Jordan Valley where archaeologists from The Hebrew University have discovered the remains of a 12,000-year-old settlement.
While other sites from the same period have been unearthed in the area, the Institute of Archaeology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that NEG II was unique in that it contains cultural characteristics typical of both the Old Stone Age — known as the Paleolithic period — and the New Stone Age, known as the Neolithic period.
“Although attributes of the stone tool kit found at NEG II place the site chronologically in the Paleolithic period, other characteristics – such as its artistic tradition, size, the thickness of archaeological deposits and investment in architecture – are more typical of early agricultural communities in the Neolithic period,” said chief excavator Dr. Leore Grosman.
“Characterizing this important period of potential overlap in the Jordan Valley is crucial for the understanding of the socioeconomic processes that marked the shift from Paleolithic mobile societies of hunter-gatherers to Neolithic agricultural communities,” she added.
The Paleolithic period is considered the earliest period in the history of mankind.
The end of that era is marked by the transition to agricultural societies with the emergence of settled villages and the domestication of plants and animals.
According to Grosman, NEG II was likely occupied in the midst of the cold and dry global climatic event known as the Younger Dryas, when temperatures declined sharply over most of the northern hemisphere around 12,900–11,600 years ago.
Affected by climatic changes, groups in the area became increasingly mobile and potentially smaller in size, she said.
NEG II, however, shows that some groups in the Jordan Valley may have become larger in size and preferred town-like settlements to a nomadic existence.
Researchers said this shift in settlement pattern could be related to climate conditions that provided the ingredients necessary for prehistoric man to take the final steps toward agriculture in the southern Levant.
“It is not surprising that at a number of sites in the Jordan Valley we find a cultural entity that bridges the crossroads between Late Paleolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers,” Grosman said.
