Eighth-Century Imperial Structure Uncovered in Japan
Archaeologists have excavated one of the largest ruins of a building ever found at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in this ancient capital. The Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties announced the findings at the government-designated special historic site on June 30.
It believes the structure was the centrepiece of a residence for emperors and crown princes during the late eighth century.
One expert said the building was likely a residence for female Emperor Koken (718-770).
Remains of a structure unearthed at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in Nara.
Archaeologists began examining a roughly 924-square-meter plot in the northern Toin district in March, according to the institute. Toin is located in the eastern part of the Heijokyu palace, the nerve centre of politics during the Nara Period (710-784).
They unearthed ruins of a rectangular-shaped structure, which spans 27 meters in an east-west direction and 12 meters in a north-south direction. Also found were 50 pits dug in the ground to place pillars into them. The holes are lined up about 3 meters apart.
The building, supported by pillars placed in a grid-like formation, likely served as a living space, according to the institute.
The researchers concluded that the structure stood there between 749 and 770 during the Nara Period, based on the characteristics of a pattern on roof tiles found in the pits.
Part of roof tiles retrieved from the ruins of a building excavated at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in Nara.
Ruins of what appears to be a cooking stove found among the remains of a structure unearthed at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in Nara.
During the building’s roughly 20-year lifespan, Koken ruled from 749 to 758 before abdicating in favour of Emperor Junnin. Koken, known to have favoured a Buddhist monk named Dokyo, again ascended to the throne as Emperor Shotoku from 764 to 770.
“Shoku Nihongi,” the imperially commissioned history text on the Nara Period, notes that Emperor Shomu (701-756), father of Koken, resided in Toin when he was crown prince.
The area was later used as a site to build a residence for emperors.
“Koken particularly liked Toin, according to Shoku Nihongi,” said Akihiro Watanabe, a professor of Japanese ancient history at Nara University. “I believe the (discovered) structure was her living space.”
The institute said it plans to post a video of the ruins on its official YouTube channel in late July.
New Dates Obtained for Italy’s Bronze Age “Infinity Pool”
According to a Live Science report, Sturt Manning of Cornell University and his colleagues have dated the Vasca Votiva, a pit lined with wood unearthed in Italy’s Po Valley.
Sediment show the timber-lined pit was filled with water; archaeologists think it formed an artificial pool that reflected the sky and that it may have been used for water rituals.
A mysterious wooden structure built in Italy more than 3,000 years ago may have been a Bronze Age “infinity pool” that reflected the sky during religious rituals to give onlookers the impression they were looking into another realm, according to new research.
One of the authors of the new study has even likened the pool to England’s famous Stonehenge monument, which also symbolically may have led people into another world.
The pool-like structure was likely built sometime between 1436 B.C. and 1428 B.C. — a time of great cultural change in the region, which reinforces the idea that was established for new ritual purposes, said Sturt Manning, an archaeologist at Cornell University in New York and one of the authors of a new paper describing the research.
“As you would have come up to this thing, as soon as you’d been able to start to see the surface, you would have seen effectively the edge of the land around the sky,” Manning told Live Science. “And as you got close to it, then you would have just been looking at the [reflected] sky — so you’d have, in a sense, entered another world.” Today’s infinity pools are similar in their reflective beauty.
Italian archaeologists discovered the structure in 2004 near the town of Noceto, just west of Parma in Italy’s northern Po Valley region. They called it “Vasca Votiva” — Italian for “votive” or “sacred” tank. The archaeologists noted that the pit was roughly 40 feet (12 meters) long, 23 feet (7 m) wide and more than 10 feet (3 m) deep. It had been excavated on a small hilltop and then lined with wooden poles, planks and beams; most of them were oak, but some were elm or walnut.
Layers of sediment showed that the structure had once contained water, although no channels to distribute water led away from it, and it seemed much too elaborate to have been just a reservoir for irrigation, Manning said. Previous research of ceremonial pots and wooden figurines found inside had revealed that the structure was built in the Bronze Age, probably between 1600 B.C. and 1300 B.C. But its exact age couldn’t be verified, and its purpose had been a mystery. The new study resolves some of that uncertainty.
The mysterious Bronze Age structure — a pit excavated from a hilltop and extensively lined with timbers — was unearthed by Italian archaeologists in 2004 near the town of Noceto.
Ancient timbers
Manning is a specialist in dendrochronology — the science of dating ancient wood — and he and his team joined the project with the hope that determining the age of the timbers used to line the Vasca Votiva could accurately reveal when it was built.
It’s a difficult task; wood quickly rots when it is exposed to oxygen, and the record of dates for the growth of trees in ancient times often depends on rare finds of logs in the layers of sediment beneath ancient rivers and bogs, Manning said.
The team studied the growth rings from the timbers and measured each ring’s levels of radioactive carbon-14, which is a naturally occurring fraction of the carbon that the trees absorbed while they were alive. The trees stopped absorbing carbon when they were cut down, and so the levels of carbon-14 that remain can be used to date when that happened.
Then, the team calculated when the timbers were harvested using “wiggle matching,” in which they compared the patterns of carbon-14 absorption — the “wiggles” — with the distinctive patterns from trees that grew elsewhere in northern Europe at different times.
That enabled them to determine that the true date for the Vasca Votiva structure was in the middle of the 15th century B.C., which corresponded to a time of tremendous cultural change in northern Italy.
The dominant society in the region at that time, the Bronze Age Terramare culture, was transitioning from a simpler period of individual small farms to a period of greater social complexity, with the development of larger settlements that became cultural centres and increased use of ploughing and irrigation for farmland, the researchers wrote.
The structure contained ceremonial pottery vessels and wooden figurines that had been carefully placed within it; they suggested it dated from the Bronze Age, between 1,400 and 1,600 years ago. (Image credit: Cremaschi et al, PLOS One)
Reflecting waters
The new dates reinforce the idea that the mysterious structure at Noceto was built for new ritual and religious purposes established in the area, Manning said. There was no sign that the tank had ever been used as a simple reservoir for irrigation, and it was much too elaborately built; also, the ceremonial pots and figurines found inside it showed it was used for ritual offerings, he said.
As well, a great deal of labour would have been needed to complete the elaborate Vasca Votiva, and the excavations have shown that it was the second such structure at the same hilltop site. The first was even larger, and started about 10 years before the later structure; but discarded tools and wood shavings suggest that it collapsed as it was being built and so the latest tank was built over it, he said.
A few similar ceremonial water features have been found elsewhere in the ancient world, such as the earlier “lustral basins” found at Minoan sites on Crete that date back to at least the 15th century B.C., although those were smaller and typically made of clay and stone.
But nothing like this infinity pool has been found in northern Europe. “To our knowledge, it’s unique in the area,” Manning said.
He likened the Vasca Votiva to the Neolithic Stonehenge monument in southern England. Although Stonehenge is on a much larger scale, “you have these avenues leading to a particular ceremonial place; you’re sort of leaving one world that you’re part of and creating an impression that you’ve moved and joined another one,” he said.
“It was like an infinity pool, in a sense, because it was up at the top of a hill; if you were standing near it, looking into it, you would see through the water and see some of the pots and other objects that have been deposited carefully in it,” Manning added. “But you would also be very much looking at the sky and the clouds above you; it’s hard not to think that this might have to do with rainfall and things like that.”
The introduction of whatever supernatural water rituals took place at the Vasca Votiva in ancient times seems to have been an attempt to gain favour with the deities responsible for water and rainfall – elements that would have been vital to early farming communities, he said.
“If it was just for irrigation or something, then fine, but it doesn’t seem to work for that,” Manning said. “It’s more about some group activity that they think is going to be beneficial, or that the gods are going to be pleased that they have done this.”
This footage shows a 4,500-year-old mummy which has been unearthed by archaeologists in Peru. She is believed to be a noblewoman and can be seen wrapped in burial cloths.
She was buried in the ancient fishing village of Aspero in northern Peru along with objects featuring carved details of both coastal and jungle animals like birds and monkeys.
Experts believe the discovery is hugely significant and will provide insights into the ancient Caral civilisation.
Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed a 4,500-year-old mummy of a noble woman
The images of the coastal and jungle animals indicate possible trade between Aspero and the city of Caral, the most ancient civilisation of its kind in South America and the precursor of the Incas.
The two regions are located 14 miles from each other.
Ruth Shady, director of the Caral Archaeological zone, explained the significance of the discovery
She said: “In the settlements of the Caral civilisation there are sometimes burials.
“The sacrifice of human beings are not regular, they’re very rare.”
“In this case, it is a woman of 40 to 50 years who was buried with evidence and objects that allow us to identify her as a woman of important social status,” she continued.
“Her remains were with offerings of objects brought from different places,” Ruth continued.
“These objects, carvings depict different images from the jungle.”
“What we can infer on the basis of recovered evidence of a society which began the stage of civilisation formation 5,000 years ago in relation to settlement dwellers in the Super Valley,” she added.
She was perfectly preserved
The Caral civilisation dates back to 2,600 BCE and its archaeological site reportedly predates Inca civilisation by some 4000 years.
1,200-Year-Old Telephone, Amazing Invention of the Ancient Chimu Civilization
As a nomadic cultural historian, my subjects have led me in wildly different directions. I spent every Friday for five years in a dim, dusty reading room in West Orange, New Jersey, formerly a laboratory on the second floor of Thomas Edison’s headquarters, deciphering the blunt-pencilled scrawls of the celebrated inventor.
Two years after my biography of Edison appeared, I found myself labouring up vertiginous stairs at daybreak in Mexico, photographing the faded ocher outlines of winged snakes etched into stone temples at the vast ruins of Teotihuacán. The daunting treks led to a book on Mesoamerican myth, Legends of the Plumed Serpent.
Those two disparate worlds somehow collided unexpectedly on a recent afternoon in the hushed, temperature-controlled precincts of the National Museum of the American Indian storage facility in Suitland, Maryland. There, staffers pushing a rolling cart ushered one of the museum’s greatest treasures into the high-ceilinged room.
Nestled in an acid-free corrugated cardboard container was the earliest known example of telephone technology in the Western Hemisphere, evoking a lost civilization—and the anonymous ancient techie who dreamed it up.
The gourd-and-twine device created 1,200 to 1,400 years ago, remains tantalizingly functional—and too fragile to test out. “This is unique,” NMAI curator Ramiro Matos, an anthropologist and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the central Andes, tells me. “Only one was ever discovered. It comes from the consciousness of an indigenous society with no written language.”
We’ll never know the trial and error that went into its creation. The marvel of acoustic engineering—cunningly constructed of two resin-coated gourd receivers, each three-and-one-half inches long; stretched-hide membranes stitched around the bases of the receivers; and a cotton-twine cord extending 75 feet when pulled taut—arose out of the Chimu empire at its height.
Right: A communication device created more than 1,000 years ago by the Chimu people of Peru (Travis Rathbone/Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian) Background: Chan Chan, Peru
The dazzlingly innovative culture was centred in the Río Moche Valley in northern Peru, wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the western Andes.
“The Chimu were a skillful, inventive people,” Matos tells me as we don sterile gloves and peer into the hollowed interiors of the gourds.
The Chimu, Matos explains, were the first true engineering society in the New World, known as much for their artisanry and metalwork as for the hydraulic canal-irrigation system they introduced, transforming desert into agricultural lands.
The god Naymlap on his boat, gold plate, Chimu 1000-1450 AD.
The artefact’s recent past is equally mysterious. Somehow—no one knows under what circumstances—it came into the hands of a Prussian aristocrat, Baron Walram V. Von Schoeler.
A shadowy Indiana Jones-type adventurer, Von Schoeler began excavating in Peru during the 1930s. He developed the “digging bug,” as he told the New York Times in 1937, at the age of 6, when he stumbled across evidence of a prehistoric village on the grounds of his father’s castle in Germany.
Von Schoeler himself may have unearthed the gourd telephone. By the 1940s, he had settled in New York City and amassed extensive holdings of South American ethnographic objects, eventually dispersing his collections to museums around the United States.
The sophisticated culture was eclipsed when the Inca emperor Tupac Yupanqui conquered the Chimu king Minchancaman around 1470.
During its heyday, the urban centre of Chan Chan was the largest adobe metropolis in pre-Columbian America. The central nucleus covered 2.3 square miles.
Chan Chan sculpture and architecture
Today, the angular contours of ten immense compounds, once surrounded by thick, 30-foot-high walls, are visible. The compounds, or ciudadelas, erected successively by ten Chimu kings, were subdivided into labyrinths of corridors, kitchens, courtyard gardens, wells, burial sites, supply rooms and residential and administrative chambers, or audiencias.
Like the Inca, Matos says, the Chimu were organized as “a top-down society; this instrument would have been made only for, and used by, a member of the elite, perhaps a priest.”
Walls within walls and secluded apartments in the ciudadelas preserved stratification between the ruling elite and the middle and working classes. The NMAI telephone, Matos says, was “a tool designed for an executive level of communication”—perhaps for a courtier-like assistant required to speak into a gourd mouthpiece from an anteroom, forbidden face-to-face contact with a superior conscious of status and of security concerns.
Contemplating the brainstorm that led to the Chimu telephone—a eureka moment undocumented for posterity—summons up its 21st-century equivalent. On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs strode onto a stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and announced, “This is the day I have been looking forward to for two and a half years.”
As he swiped the touchscreen of the iPhone, it was clear that the paradigm in communications technology had shifted. The unsung Edison of the Chimu must have experienced an equivalent, incandescent exhilaration when his (or her) device first transmitted sound from chamber to chamber.
Farmer Digs Up Stone Egyptian Stele Saluting Sixth Century BC Pharaoh
A farmer living near Ismailia in Egypt has uncovered a 2,600-year-old stela erected by pharaoh Apries, who ruled from about 589 B.C. to 570 B.C., the Egyptian antiquities ministry reported.
This stela, dating back about 2,600 years, was found in a farmer’s field near the city of Ismailia in Egypt. It contains 15 lines of hieroglyphic writing.
The farmer found this ancient slab of sandstone while preparing his land for cultivation, about 62 miles (100 kilometres) northeast of Cairo; he then contacted the Tourism and Antiquities Police about the discovery, the ministry statement said.
The stela is 91 inches (230 centimetres) long, 41 inches (103 cm) wide and 18 inches (45 cm) thick.
At the top of the stela is a carving of a winged sun disk (a disk that was sometimes associated with the sun god Ra) with a cartouche of Pharaoh Apries, with 15 lines of hieroglyphic writing below that, the statement said.
Apries, also known as Wahibre Haaibre, reigned during the 26th dynasty of Egypt (688 B.C. to –525 B.C.), a time when Egypt was independent and its capital was often located at Sais in northern Egypt.
Efforts are underway to translate the stela.
Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the stela appears to be related to a military campaign that Apries undertook east of Egypt.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (lived ca. 484-425 B.C.) claimed that Apries fought a losing war against the Phoenicians that left many Egyptian soldiers dead and sparked a civil war in Egypt that ultimately led to Apries being killed and replaced as pharaoh by a man named Amasis. Whether this stela will shed new light on these events is unclear.
These ancient weights helped create Europe’s first free-market more than 3000 years ago
Knowing the weight of a commodity provides an objective way to value goods in the marketplace. But did a self-regulating market even exist in the Bronze Age? And what can weight systems tell us about this?
Diffusion of weighing technology in Western Eurasia (circa 3000-1000 BC)
A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen researched this by investigating the dissemination of weight systems throughout Western Eurasia.
Their new simulation indicates that the interaction of merchants, even without substantial intervention from governments or institutions, is likely to explain the spread of Bronze Age technology to weigh goods. The results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
To determine how different units of weight emerged in different regions, researchers compared all the weight systems in use between Western Europe and the Indus Valley from 3,000-1,000 BC.
Examples of Western Eurasian balance weights of the Bronze Age. A: Spool-shaped weights from Tiryns, Greece (L Rahmstorf). B: Cubic weights from Dholavira, India (E Ascalone). C: Duck-shaped weights from Susa, Iran (E Ascalone). D: flat block weights from Lipari, Italy (N Ialongo).
Analysis of 2,274 balance weights from 127 sites revealed that with the exception of those from the Indus Valley, new and very similar units of weight appeared in a gradual spread west of Mesopotamia.
To find out if the gradual formation of these systems could be due to propagation of error from a single weight system, the researchers modelled the creation of 100 new units.
Taking into account factors such as measurement error, the simulation supported a single origin between Mesopotamia and Europe. It also showed that the Indus Valley probably developed an independent weight system.
The research demonstrated that if information flow in the Eurasia trade was free enough to support a common weight system, it was likely to be sufficient to react to local price fluctuations.
The weight systems that emerged between Mesopotamia and Europe were very similar. This meant that a single merchant could travel, for instance, from Mesopotamia to the Aegean and from there to Central Europe and never need to change their own set of weights.
The type of weighing scales a Bronze Age merchant would have carried with her when moving from one market to another to trade: suspended replica bone balance scale with flax strings and leather pouches, holding two replica weights in equilibrium
The merchant could trade with foreign partners while simply relying on approximating the weights. There was no international authority that could have regulated the accuracy of weight systems over such a wide territory and long time span. In Europe, beyond the Aegean, centralised authorities did not even exist at this time.
The researchers conclude that the emergence of accurate weight systems must have been the outcome of a global network regulating itself from the bottom-up.
“With the results of our statistical analysis and experimental tests, it is now possible to prove the long-held hypothesis that free entrepreneurship was already a primary driver of the world economy even as early as the Bronze Age,” explains Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf from the Institute for Prehistory and Early History, University of Göttingen.
Merchants could interact freely, establish profitable partnerships, and take advantage of the opportunities offered by long-distance trade.
“The idea of a self-regulating market existing some 4,000 years ago puts a new perspective on the global economy of the modern era,” says Dr Nicola Ialongo, University of Göttingen. He adds, “Try to imagine all the international institutions that currently regulate our modern world economy: is global trade possible thanks to these institutions, or in spite of them?”
A Greek Farmer Stumbled on a 3,400-Year-Old Tomb in His Olive Grove While Parking His Car
The Crete local was trying to park his vehicle when he accidentally unearthed the ancient Minoan grave. Sometime between 1400 and 1200 B.C., two Minoan men were laid to rest in an underground enclosure carved out of the soft limestone native to southeast Crete.
Both were entombed within larnakes—intricately embossed clay coffins popular in Bronze Age Minoan society—and surrounded by colorful funerary vases that hinted at their owners’ high status.
Eventually, the burial site was sealed with stone masonry and forgotten, leaving the deceased undisturbed for roughly 3,400 years.
Earlier this summer, a local farmer accidentally brought the pair’s millenia-long rest to an abrupt end, George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo. The farmer was attempting to park his vehicle beneath a shaded olive grove on his property when the ground gave way, forcing him to find a new parking spot.
As he started to drive off, the unidentified local noticed a four-foot-wide hole that had emerged in the patch of land he’d just vacated. Perched on the edge of the gaping space, the man realized he’d unintentionally unearthed “a wonderful thing.”
An ancient Minoan tomb was discovered in this hole in Crete. Courtesy of the Greek Ministry of Culture.
An ancient Minoan tomb was discovered in this hole in Crete.
According to a statement, archaeologists from the local heritage ministry, Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities, launched excavations below the farmer’s olive grove at Rousses, a small village just northeast of Kentri, Ierapetra, in southeast Crete.
They identified the Minoan tomb, nearly perfectly preserved despite its advanced age, in a pit measuring roughly four feet across and eight feet deep. Space’s interior was divided into three carved niches accessible by a vertical trench.
The eight-foot deep pit contained two ancient coffins and an array of funerary vases
In the northernmost niche, archaeologists found a coffin and an array of vessels scattered across the ground. The southernmost niche yielded a second sealed coffin, as well as 14 ritual Greek jars called amphorae and a bowl.
Two Minoan men were buried in the Crete tomb roughly 3,400 years ago
Forbes’ Kristina Kilgrove writes that the high quality of the pottery left in the tomb indicates the individuals buried were relatively affluent. She notes, however, that other burial sites dating to the same Late Minoan period feature more elaborate beehive-style tombs.
“These [men] could be wealthy,” Kilgrove states, “but not the wealthiest.”
Unlike many ancient tombs, the Kentri grave was never discovered by thieves, Argyris Pantazis, deputy mayor of Local Communities, Agrarian and Tourism of Ierapetra, tells local news outlet Cretapost.
In fact, the site likely would have remained sealed in perpetuity if not for the chance intervention of a broken irrigation pipe, which watered down the soil surrounding the farmer’s olive grove and led to his unexpected parking debacle.
“We are particularly pleased with this great archaeological discovery as it is expected to further enhance our culture and history,” Pantazis added in his interview with Cretapost. “Indeed, this is also a response to all those who doubt that there were Minoans in Ierapetra.”
According to Archaeology News Network, most Minoan settlements found on Crete are located in the lowlands and plains rather than the mountainous regions of Ierapetra. Still, a 2012 excavation in Anatoli, Ierapetra, revealed a Minoan mansion dating to between 1600 and 1400 B.C., roughly the same time period as the Kentri tomb.
This latest find offers further proof of the ancient civilization’s presence—as Mark Cartwright notes for Ancient History Encyclopedia, the Minoans are most renowned for their labyrinthine palace complexes, which likely inspired the classic Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.
According to legend, Queen Pasiphae of Crete gave birth to the Minotaur, a fierce half-man, half-bull hybrid, after falling for a bull sent to Earth by the Greek god Zeus.
The Minotaur, doomed to an eternity spent wandering the halls of an underground labyrinth and killing anyone it encountered, was eventually defeated by the demigod Theseus, who relied on an enchanted ball of thread provided by the king’s daughter, Ariadne, to escape the maze.
Much of the Minoans’ history remains unclear, but Forbes’ Kilgrove reports that natural disasters, including the eruption of the Thera volcano, an earthquake and a tsunami, contributed to the group’s downfall, enabling enemies such as the Mycenaeans to easily invade.
Analysis of the excavated Kentri tomb may offer further insights into the Minoan-Mycenaean rivalry, as well as the Cretan civilization’s eventual demise.
Have researchers found 30-million-year-old “Giant Rings” in the Bosnian mountains?
Through the last few decades, scientists have discovered a number of mysterious ancient giant rings at numerous locations in the Bosnian mountains.
According to the local population, it is believed that these “artefacts” date back to the era of the Pannonian Sea, and legends suggest these were used by giant beings who inhabited the area in the distant past ― millions of years ago!
Although the Pannonian Sea disappeared around 600 000 years ago, it was not a short-lived sea. In fact, it lasted for about 10 million years. Although, the sources on this duration differ ― some claiming that the sea lasted for over 30 million years. The Pannonian sea existed during the Miocene and Pliocene eras.
Recent discoveries point to a time when giants roamed the Earth. The mysterious giant rings that were found on top of mountains suggest that these were used by giant beings who inhabited the region millions of years ago.
Local residents have mixed feelings about these mysterious rings. Some have suggested a particularly simple explanation. According to some local residents, these “giant” rings belong to the Austro-Hungarian empire put in place to help the transport of timber across the harsh mountains of the region.
Large metal hoops that were used to moor ships during the Pannonian Sea are unknown to most today.
Those who support this theory point out that these giant rings were somehow placed inside the mountains at a time when the Pannonian Sea still existed. These giant rings were used to bind ships, and the region was used as a seaport.
There are legends in the region that speak of giants and their huge ships. There are assumptions that these giant rings were made by giants, ancient ship owners and sailors who inhabited the region in the distant past.
But is it possible that these rings are millions of years old? If so, how? What material are they made of? As there has been no “official” research done the possibilities are endless.
Local residents have stated that there are numerous other findings in the area which cannot be explained, and all of these findings are being deliberately hidden from the people.
These giant rings and giant rocks that seem to be finely carved are found at the hills around Vogosca between Breza and Vares, near Dubrovnik and in several places in eastern Bosnia. There are also four of these at Bjelasnica and Vlasic, Vranica, Prenj, Velez, then Majevica, Bukovica near Travnik, above Stolac. The locals stress how important it is to examine these findings.
Bosnia’s forest regions where the ancient rings and rocks are found.
The locals have talked about these mysterious rings for years, and there are mixed feelings when it comes to findings like these. While some suggest that it is literally impossible for these giant rings to be that old, others believe that this points to the fact that giants roamed the Earth in the distant past, and evidence of this can be found all over the world.
Those who firmly believe it is impossible for these giant rings to be that old point to the fact that the Pannonian Sea was located in the area of the Pannonian Plain about 30 million years ago. This sea disappeared around 600,000 years ago.
There simply would not be a good reason to create giant rings to bind ships to if these ships wouldn’t be able to reach these “ports”. Yet many people have seen the giant rings, but some suggest these were not used to tie boats to the coast.
At the time of the Pannonian Sea, there were no people, thus, who could have constructed the boats? So if there was no one to build a boat, who would have created the rings? The first hominins who built tools date back to around 200,000 years ago, the time gap between them and the Pannonian Sea is 400,000 years.
Kozara, where the giant rings were found, was an island in the Paratethyan ocean 50,000 years ago. As the Pannonian Sea withdrew, the coastlines appeared. This is why, Dragan Romčević, director of the National Park “Kozara” states that these giant rings can not be from this period.
Others suggest that these “giant rings” were put in place in the recent past and were used to secure “weather balloons” to the ground.
Large metal hoops that were used to moor ships during the Pannonian Sea are unknown to most today.
Dejan pelvis, a professor of history at the Prijedor Gymnasium believes that these rings of Kozara are one of those incredible mysteries associated to the past. All these mysteries share one and same fact ― that no one can accurately explain their origin and purpose. These findings are shrouded in mystery.
This is a topic on which scientists cannot offer explanations, simply because it lacks logical facts, and since science cannot explain these mysterious artefacts, people have no choice but to interpret the phenomena themselves, and then, everything becomes possible.
