Archaeologists searching for a royal palace in Germany have discovered a 1,000-year-old church constructed for Otto the Great (also called Otto I).
An aerial view of the church built for Otto the Great, along with nearby burials, is seen from the southwest.
Otto I, who lived from A.D. 912 to 973, consolidated and expanded the Holy Roman Empire. The empire, which was centred in Germany, controlled territory throughout central Europe.
Historical records indicated that a palace and church were built near Helfta in Saxony for the Roman emperor; and archaeologists with the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt started searching for it in May, they said in a German language statement.
During excavations at the church, archaeologists discovered this enamelled brooch from the ninth century.
Numerous burials and tombs were found around the church in Germany.
Royal church
The three-aisled church is about 100 feet (30 meters) long and was shaped like a cross, excavations revealed.
The church was destroyed during the Protestant Reformation that swept through Europe in the 16th century and led to the creation of new branches of Christianity, the archaeologists said in the statement.
The church and palace would have “dominated” the valley where they were built, the archaeologists said.
Among the artifacts found so far is a Romanesque bronze crucifix decorated with enamel that was made in Limoges in New Aquitaine (in modern-day France) in the 13th century, archaeologists said.
Archaeologists also discovered a large fragment of a church bell, an enamelled ninth-century brooch and numerous coins.
The archaeologists have also found several burials around the church, including some tombs made out of bricks.
Excavations and analysis of the remains are ongoing at the site. Right now, excavating the church is a priority, but historical records indicate that the palace is nearby and remains of it may be found as work continues.
Historical records say that while Otto I ordered the construction of the church and a nearby palace, he himself only visited it once when the church was inaugurated around A.D. 968.
The archaeologists noted that Otto I had numerous palaces with nearby churches located throughout his empire.
Felix Biermann, an archaeologist with the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt is leading the excavation team.
Excavation of King Khufu’s Second Solar Boat Completed in Egypt
Ahram Online reports that the excavation of the second Khufu solar boat discovered in a pit next to the Great Pyramid of Khufu in 1954 has been completed by a joint Japanese and Egyptian team of researchers.
Sakuji Yoshimura, the head of the Egyptian Japanese archaeological mission and president of Higashi Nippon International University, and Professor Emeritus of Waseda University have completed the excavation of the second Khufu Boat from the pit in which it was discovered beside Khufu pyramid in the Giza plateau.
Issa Zidan, the director-general of executive affairs for restoration at the Grand Egyptian Museum and the supervisor of the restoration work of the second Khufu Boat, explained that nearly 1,700 wooden pieces were extracted from 13 layers inside the pit, noting that the registration and documentation of all pieces have been done, as well as the initial restoration of most of these pieces was completed.
He also added that, so far, 1,343 pieces were transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum, where preparations are underway for starting the second phase that includes the final restoration work, as well as conducting the necessary studies for assembling and re-installing the boat that will be displayed next to the first one inside the new building dedicated for King Khufu’s boats, which is now being constructed at the Grand Egyptian Museum.
Omura Yoshifumi, the chief representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Egypt Office, said that the JICA will provide a $3 million grant for completion of the final restoration work and reassembly of the boat for its display in the museum, in addition to the $2 million grant that was provided in 2013, which supported the excavation and extracting process of the wooden pieces of the boat from the pit.
The project of restoring and extracting the wooden pieces of the second Khufu Boat is one of the largest restoration projects that represent the aspects of fruitful cooperation between Egypt and Japan, with the support of the JICA.
Cooperation between Egyptians and the Japanese in the Grand Egyptian Museum project started in 2006, when the JICA provided financial support through two soft loans of official development assistance for the construction of the museum at the request of the Egyptian government.
Since 2008, the JICA has been providing technical cooperation through the Egyptian Japanese joint conservation project for the restoration, documentation, packaging, and transfer of 72 artefacts — among which were some of King Tutankhamun’s collection — from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir and other sites to the Grand Egyptian Museum.
About 90 Japanese experts participated in this project, and a number of high-tech technical equipment were provided within the project, such as a digital microscope, a portable X-ray machine, and an electric forklift to carry heavy artefacts safely.
Ambassador Noke expressed his appreciation for the fruitful cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities led by Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled El-Enany and the sincere efforts of Major-General Atef Moftah — the general director of the Grand Egyptian Museum project — and the surrounding area to realise all this progress, stressing that the Grand Egyptian Museum is a symbol of Egyptian Japanese friendship.
From his side, Yoshifumi expressed appreciation for the Egyptian government’s strong leadership in making such great progress in the Grand Egyptian Museum’s construction and related works towards its opening, emphasising that he is proud that the JICA takes part in preserving the world’s treasures in Egypt to the future generations through this project.
Babylon knew secrets of the solar system 1,500 years before Europe
One of the clay cuneiform tablets found in Babylonia and Uruk, showing geometrical calculations for planetary trajectories.
The ancient Babylonians were known to have been advanced in arithmetic. Now analysis of clay cuneiform tablets found in Babylonia and Uruk shows they could predict the position of celestial bodies using advanced geometric techniques thought to have been invented in 14th-century Europe.
Specifically, the tablets show the ancient Babylonians were evidently intrigued by the position of the planet Jupiter, writes Mathieu Ossendrijver of Humboldt University, Berlin, in his paper “Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiter’s position from the area under a time-velocity graph”.
The tablets he describes are the earliest known examples of using geometry to calculate the future position of an object in space-time.
Discover the secrets of the Middle East
It is possible that the same techniques were discovered in Oxford, Cambridge, come the 14th century, in a geometric equivalent of convergent evolution (like wings in insects and in birds, which do not have the same origin but look similar and serve the same function). Or, the West may have learned the techniques somehow from the ancient Babylonian astronomers.
The clay tablets, which are practically intact, seem to date between 350 and 50 BCE. There are issues about provenance – Ossendrijver notes that they were “excavated unscientifically” and discuss general methodology, not mentioning specific astronomical phenomena that could be datable.
The writings describe two intervals after Jupiter appears along the horizon, projecting the planet’s position at 60 and 120 days.
The Babylonians had been thought to know only arithmetic concepts, yet these texts contain advanced geometrical calculations.
A cuneiform tablet with calculations involving a trapezoid.
Geometry began to develop far back in man’s history.
The eminently practical ancient Greeks used geometry to describe configurations in physical space, though it bears saying that the early history of ancient Greek geometry is unknown because no records remain.
Ancient Egyptians also had geometric knowledge, and had command of trigonometry, but were also believed to have confined their use of the science to workday problem-solving, such as calculating the area of a pyramid.
The ancient Babylonians on the other hand left ample records – over 450 relevant tablets, of which some 340 are tables with computations of planetary or lunar data. Another 110 tablets have computational instructions.
We now know they were using geometry in an abstract sense, to define time and velocity, Ossendrijver explains: “In all of these texts, the zodiac, invented in Babylonia near the end of the 5th century BCE, is used as a coordinate system for computing celestian positions.”
So, he concludes, the 14th-century European scholars in Oxford and Paris who had been credited with developing time-velocity geometric predictions were over a thousand years behind their ancient Babylonian peers.
Why would the Babylonians want to calculate the position of Jupiter, anyway? Probably because their priests used astrology to interpret the will of the gods (an alternative method was to “read” the livers of sacrificed animals): Not only time-velocity geometry but celestial divination as an orderly religious practice is believed to have begun with Babylonian culture.
Old Football Found On Beach Turns Out To Be An Iron Age Skull
Image kicking what you thought was part of an old football during a stroll on the beach – only to discover it was actually part of a human skull. That’s what happened to Anthony Plowright.
He was walking his two dogs on the beach near Binstead on the Isle of Wight when he discovered what turned out to be the upper part of a human skull, called the cranium.
The Isle of Wight coroners office sent the dark brown remains for carbon dating and discovered it was about 2,800 years old.
The skull, pictured here, belonged to someone who would have lived in the Iron Age, or about 2,800 years ago according to the Isle of Wight coroners office.
All that remained of the person was the upper part of the skull called the cranium – seen in this photo from the Isle of Wight coroner.
The skull was discovered on the 4th of June 2018 but the Isle of Wight Coroner, Caroline Sumeray has only just released her findings.
The carbon dating puts the cranium as belonging to someone who would have lived in the early Iron Age – between about 800BC and 540BC.
Mr Plowright said: ‘I thought it was part of an old football when I first saw it and so I booted it down the beach. I soon realised it wasn’t a ball.
‘I put it in a bag and took it home and emailed the police to tell them I had found it.’
‘I had absolutely no idea it was that old.’
The skull has been donated to the Isle of Wight Museum Service who say they are looking forward to studying it.
During the Iron Age, the people of the Isle of Wight were already trading with nearby communities through maritime links.
‘Recent discoveries suggest that the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight engaged in wider maritime activity within the Solent from prehistoric times, according to Stephanie Smith from the British Museum.
‘By the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Island was part of a vast maritime network of interaction between coastal southern Britain and the Continent, extending as far as the Mediterranean.’
The skull – pictured – has been donated to the Isle of Wight Museum Service who say they are looking forward to studying it
Archaeologists unearth a unique artifact at Fort Michilimackinac: a pocket knife
MLive reports that Lynn Evans of Mackinac State Historic Parks and her colleagues discovered a 3.5-inch-long pocketknife, or clasp knife, in a root cellar of the Southeast Rowhouse at Colonial Michilimackinac.
A long-running archaeological dig at a historic Michigan fort turned up a new treasure over the holiday weekend.
While digging near a post in a root cellar at Colonial Michilimackinac on July 4, archaeologists unearthed a 3 1/2-inch pocketknife, also known as a clasp knife.
A pocketknife, also known as a “clasp knife,” was discovered in an archaeological dig at Mackinaw City.
Dr. Lynn Evans, the curator of archaeology for Mackinac State Historic Parks, said the knife is about 1 inch high at the tip of the blade’s peak. According to Evans, the knife may be of French or British origin. Its exact age is currently unknown.
The knife’s discovery is the latest in a string of finds at Colonial Michilimackinaw, a reconstructed 18th-century fort and fur trading village now home to one of the nation’s longest-running archaeology programs.
Over the course of more than 60 years, annual seasonal digs have unearthed more than 1,000,000 artefacts.
The program’s current excavation site is located at what’s known as House E of the fort’s Southeast Rowhouse.
In recent years, other found artefacts have included a lead seal dating between 1717 and 1769, a brass sleeve button with an intaglio bust on it, a potential structural post dating to the original 1715 fort, an engraved “Jesuit” trade ring, a brass serpentine side plate for a British trade gun, complete remnants from a creamware plate, and other items.
Archaeologists are on site every day at the fort, weather permitting, throughout the summer.
Visitors can witness the archaeologists continuing their excavations at the site from early June until mid-August.
The best artefacts are on display at the fort’s “Treasures from the Sand” exhibit, as well as in the book Keys to the Past, written by Evans.
An overview of House E, the current dig site at Colonial Michilimackinac.
Hurriyet Daily News reports that 11 sets of human remains dated to some 8,500 years ago have been unearthed in northwestern Turkey by archaeologists who were called to the site when residents found pieces of ancient ceramics in the yard of their apartment building.
The site, likely to be one of the first spots of human settlements in western Anatolia, was first discovered after a Bilecik resident reported some ceramic fragments found there to the Archaeology Museum.
As a result of the field works that started after the discovery and continued for two years, 11 human skeletons, which are estimated to be 8,500 years old, and musical instruments with three holes from the same period were found in the yard of an apartment building.
Archaeologists also found wheat varieties used in making bread and pasta, as well as grains such as lentils, barley and vetch.
Associate Professor Erkan Fidan, the head of the excavation, said that the human skeletons found in the excavation area belonged to the oldest adolescent humans ever in the Neolithic era in western Anatolia.
“We have uncovered the first villages of human communities that came here 9,000 years ago and remained here for nearly 1,000 years,” Fidan said, adding that the people living in the region who know how to do agriculture also domesticated animals.
Fidan noted that they also found skeletons of other humans in the excavation field and that the skeletons would be examined in detail at Hacettepe University’s Anthropology Department Laboratory.
“In the very near future, we aim to learn many things about ages, genders, diseases these people had as well as the kind of food they ate,” he added.
The finds discovered during the excavation will be exhibited at the Bilecik Archaeology Museum after the completion of the restoration process and research works.
A 51,000-year-old engraved bone reveals Neanderthals’ capacity for symbolic behaviour
The toe bone of a prehistoric deer carved with lines by Neanderthals 51,000 years ago is one of the oldest works of art ever found, according to a study released Monday.
Micro-CT scans of the engraved bone and interpretation of the six lines in red that shape the chevron symbol. Highlighted in blue is a set of sub-parallel lines
The engraved deer bone from Einhorn-höhle.
The discovery is further evidence that Neanderthals — Homo neanderthalensis — were able to express symbolism through art — which was once attributed only to our own species, Homo sapiens.
“This is clearly not a pendant or something like that,” said Thomas Terberger, a professor and prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany, who co-authored a study of the object in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. “It’s clearly a decoration with a kind of symbolic character. … You might even call it the initial start of art, something which was not done by accident, but with a clear plan in mind.”
The bone was unearthed in a cave in the Harz Mountains of central Germany, about 150 miles southwest of Berlin. The front is carved with overlapping chevrons — lines in the shape of inverted V’s — that appear to point upward, and archaeologists have also discerned a line of smaller incisions on its lower edge, which seems to have served as its base.
“We were trying it out, and this object can stand alone on its base. It doesn’t shake or tip over or anything,” said archaeologist Dirk Leder of the Lower Saxony state office for Cultural Heritage, who led the excavations that discovered the bone. “It was probably left standing upright in a corner of the cave.”
The carved bone was unearthed alongside the shoulder blade bones of deer and the intact skull of a cave bear — rare objects that may have indicated that the assemblage had ritual meaning, he said.
Radiocarbon dating has established that the bone is 51,000 years old — older than any comparable works of art attributed to Neanderthals.
Archaeologists have also found ancient eagle talons used as pendants by Neanderthals, as well as cave paintings in Spain that may be older — their date is disputed. Terberger said, “In this case, for the first time, we have a reliably dated object.”
The Einhornhöhle — or “Unicorn Cave” — where the carved bone was unearthed has been famous since at least the 16th century; it is now a tourist attraction. It got its name from the fossilized bones found there, supposedly from unicorns, that were once ground up to make medicines.
The deer toe bone was found in Die Einhornhöhle, or Unicorn Cave, Lower Saxony, Germany.
Excavations since the 1980s have established that the cave was inhabited by successive generations of Neanderthals, from at least 130,000 years ago until about 47,000 years ago.
Later groups of Homo sapiens also inhabited the cave, but only much later, after about 12,000 years ago, Leder said. The earliest evidence for Homo sapiens in the southeast of Europe is from about 45,000 years ago, and it’s not thought that they arrived in central Europe until at least 10,000 years after that, he said.
The archaeologists can only guess at the meanings of the carvings — if they have any meaning at all. “This is quite unique,” Leder said. “We don’t see it anywhere in the Paleolithic literature.
“We were discussing different interpretations. … The shape could be like a female figurine with the head and the chest part, but then the chevron pattern to some of us looked like three mountains in a row — a landscape view,” he said.
Microscopic analysis of the bone shows that the carvings are very deep, which suggests that it was boiled to soften it before carving began. The species of prehistoric deer that the bone was from was also rare in the region at the time and extremely large, which could suggest that the artwork had special importance, he said.
The discovery is more evidence that Neanderthals weren’t just dumb cavemen, as scientists once believed, but that they were capable of artistic or symbolic expression — which was once thought to be unique to Homo sapiens, said Bruce Hardy, a professor of anthropology at Kenyon College in Ohio, who wasn’t involved in the latest study.
It’s likely that a lot of Neanderthal artistic objects were carved from wood — a much easier medium to work with than stone or bone — that has perished after many thousands of years, he said.
The increasing evidence of symbolic artistic expression by Neanderthals, as well as by later Homo sapiens, suggests that the hominin species that were the ancestors of both were also artistic, he said.
“If those two different groups also share a common ancestor, chances are that common ancestor also has some degree of symbolic ability, as well, which means it goes much further back,” he said.
Hardy’s own research has included the discovery of what seems to be a piece of Neanderthal string — a Stone Age technology not seen before. Archaeologist Andrew Sorensen of Leiden University in the Netherlands said that the analysis of the marks on the bone shows that they can’t have been the result of random gnawing by carnivores.
“The relatively regular angles of the intersecting lines is particularly convincing that these marks were created intentionally by Neanderthals,” he wrote in an email.
The possibility that the bone had been boiled to make it easier to work with was especially interesting, he said. His own research focuses on the use of fire by Neanderthals, which is also seen as evidence of their ability to use relatively advanced technologies.
Viking twin babies are found in Christian burial in Sweden
Live Science reports that seven Viking tombs were excavated in east-central Sweden ahead of a construction project. inside the tombs; they were likely Vikings who had converted to Christianity.
The eight people – four adults and four infants – were laid flat on their backs to rest in the Swedish town of Sigtuna. Pictured, one of the adults.
“The Christian character of the now-excavated graves is obvious because of how the tombs were laid out,” said Johan Runer, a project manager with Uppdrag arkeologi, a cultural resource management company, which led excavations of the site.
Most of the people had been buried flat on their back in an east-west position, whereas people who followed traditional Viking beliefs in this area of Sweden at this time tended to be cremated, Runer said.
Results of the Sigtuna dig are set to be presented in full in a report, according to Uppdrag Arkeologi. Pictured, the burial of a male adult surrounded by a stone cist – stones positioned in a box shape
The excavation site in the town of Sitguna, north of Sweden’s capital city Stockholm, from above
They also found deposits of charcoal and in some cases partially burnt caskets, suggesting fire rituals were involved in at least four burials.
“Such phenomena are rather common in Christian Viking period graves, but previously rather rare in Sigtuna,” Runer told Live Science in an email.
Stone cairns were also found on top of four of the tombs, one of which also was surrounded by a stone cist (stones positioned in a box shape) surrounding it.
“These features are previously not known from the town of Sigtuna,” said Runer, who noted that they are common among early Christian graves in this area of Sweden, which is located about 23 miles (37 kilometres) northwest of Stockholm.
Viking tragedy
The archaeologists say one of the tombs could contain the bodies of twins. “In one tomb, there were two very small infants of seemingly the exact same age,” Runer said. The team’s preliminary interpretation is that “this grave contains the tragic result of a late miscarriage of a couple of twins.”
The tombs also contained several interesting artefacts. One individual was buried with a “leather belt containing fittings of iron and silver-gilt copper alloy,” and silver coins were found in his mouth, Runer said.
Placing coins in a person’s mouth “is a rather common practice for Viking period Christian burials in middle Sweden,” he added. Another tomb contains “a beautifully ornated bone comb” found in a case, Runer said.
Archaeologists discovered the tombs in late April during a survey of an area where a house was going to be built.
The archaeologists excavated the site in May and are continuing to analyze the skeletons and artefacts. An osteologist is expected to examine the well-preserved skeletons in the fall.
