All posts by Archaeology World Team

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Scientists Reveal a Perfectly Preserved 18,000-year-old Puppy Discovered Frozen in Russia

Scientists Reveal a Perfectly Preserved 18,000-year-old Puppy Discovered Frozen in Russia

An ancient dog finds in Russia in the Far East that he lived a glorious eighteen thousand years ago. It was found last year in a frozen mud near the city of Yakutsk in Siberia and has been given the affectionate name of “Dogor”.

Researchers carefully cleaned the specimen to reveal it was still mostly covered in fur

More surprising is that it is unusually good with intact fur, skin, whiskers, and eyelashes. It might look just like a sleeping old dog to the casual viewer!

The Russian Wolfhound, also known as the Borzoi breed, is a special dog of tremendous speed, known for the rather remote appearance, associated with Russia.

A quick online search showed that in Russia other dogs mixed wolves with hundreds of massive beast dogs that have been domesticated by patient owners. The owners insist these dogs are half-wolf; whether they’ve been genetically proven to be so is another matter.

That is what scientists believe they have found buried deep in the ice in the Far East reaches of Siberia; an almost perfectly preserved specimen that even retains its fur.

As yet, experts have not determined whether the animal is dog or wolf, but that riddle, they say, is half the fun of the quest. One thing is for sure, it looks like a puppy and perhaps is an evolutionary cross between wolf and dog.

The prehistoric puppy’s teeth, nose, the fur are all incredibly intact.

A piece of the puppy’s bone was immediately shipped off to Stockholm’s Centre for Paleogenetics to determine just what scientists were looking at.

They have determined the animal is 18,000 years old and is preserved perfectly, thanks to the ice in which it was buried.

The pup still has its whiskers, eyelashes, and nose intact.

“We have now generated a nearly complete genome sequence from it and normally when you have two-fold coverage genome, which is what we have, you should be able to relatively easily say whether it’s a dog or a wolf, but we still can’t say, and that makes it even more interesting,” said Love Dalen, professor of evolutionary genetics at the centre.

Whatever the animal’s true ancestry turns out to be, the remains now have a name that applies in either case: Dogor, which is Yakutian for a friend.

Dogor remains are now kept at a private facility, the Northern World Museum. Museum director Nikolai Androsov said, at Dogor’s unveiling to the media, “this puppy has all its limbs…even whiskers.

The nose is visible. There are teeth. We can determine due to some data that it is male” he said at the presentation of Dogor at Yakutsk’s famed Mammoth Museum, which specializes in ancient remains and specimens.

How the prehistoric puppy perished is so far unknown, although scientists do know he was just eight weeks old. Researchers will no doubt continue testing to learn all they can about the fascinating creature.

Russia’s the Far East has provided many incredible finds and animal remains for scientists who study ancient animals in recent years.

Buried deep within Siberia’s permafrost, remains of woolly mammoths, canines and other prehistoric animals are being discovered whenever the ice melts. Mammoth tusk hunters are oftentimes the ones who discover them.

Who knows? One day Dogor the prehistoric puppy may become part of a Russian children’s story, or the basis of a movie. He has already joined other furry, famous canines in getting worldwide attention.

ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

Massive Stones Unearthed in Shogun’s Garden in Central Japan

Massive Stones Unearthed in Shogun’s Garden in Central Japan

Eight massive stones, including one that weighs nearly ten tons, have been unearthed in the garden at Muromachi-dono, the so-called Flower Palace built by the Ashikaga Shogunate in A.D. 1381. 

A massive stone is unearthed in the garden of the former residence of the Ashikaga Shogunate during the Muromachi Period (1336-1573).

The largest stone is nearly 3 meters long and one of eight, seven of which are situated around the site of a pond in the former residence of the Ashikaga Shogunate.

On April 10 the Kyoto City Center for Archeological Research announced the findings. The Kyoto site of the Kamigyo Ward is called Muromachi-dono, also known as “Hana no Gosho” (Flower Palace).

The unearthed stones, which are unusually huge compared with those found at other garden sites of ruling elites, were undoubtedly intended to show off the great power wielded by the shogun and his family, Expert Said.

In 1381 the complex was completed at the request of the Third Shogun of Ashikaga Shogunate, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), and used as his and his successors’ residence and headquarters.

The site is estimated to have spanned around 7,600 tsubo, or about half the size of the massive Tokyo Dome in the capital’s Bunkyo Ward. One tsubo is equivalent to about 3.3 square meters.

The residence is also depicted in “Uesugi Rakuchu-Rakugai Zu” (Scenes in and Around the Capital), a national treasure. Kyoto in those days was the capital of Japan.

The eight stones were found in the southeastern part of the site and are deemed an especially important discovery.

They measure between 95 centimeters and 2.7 meters. Seven of them were situated close to each other.

The institute believes the stones were placed during the rule of the eighth Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436-1490), who also involved in constructing Kyoto’s fabulous Ginkakuji Temple (Silver Pavilion), based on an analysis of earthenware excavated from stratum in which they lay.

The residence is believed to have comprised a group of buildings in the north and a garden that centers around a pond in the south.

During the excavation, researchers also found that the pond stretched at least 45 meters north to south and about 60 meters east to west.

“Ashikaga Yoshimasa until now hadn’t been held in particularly high regard for his political skills because he triggered the Onin War (1467-1477), which was followed by the Warring States period,” said Hisao Suzuki, a professor of archaeology and history of gardens at Kyoto Sangyo University.

“This discovery shows that he excelled at fostering culture and engineering technology.”

The excavation was carried out from January through April 9 ahead of the construction of a building. 

Due to the new coronavirus outbreak, the excavation site will be backfilled, and no on-site briefing session for the public will be held.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Archaeological Sites Investigated in Northern Alaska

Archaeological Sites Investigated in Northern Alaska

Archaeologist Jeff Rasic of the National Park Service has investigated archaeological sites at Howard’s Pass, a several miles–wide tundra plateau located in the mountains of northern Alaska’s Brooks Range.

A National Park Service climate-observing station in Howard Pass, a broad crossing of the Brooks Range between Alaska’s North Slope and the Noatak River drainage.

The sites date back some 11,000 years and include traces of houses, tent rings, food-storage pits, tool-making debris, and cairns that may have been used to help drive caribou into hunting traps. 

Jeff Rasic is an archaeologist for the National Park Service who has sifted through wet soil near Howard Pass. The pass, named for U.S. Navy explorer William Howard (who traversed it during an expedition on April 21, 1886), is more than 100 miles from the closest villages today, Ambler and Kobuk, both to the south.

Howard Pass was not so quiet over the past 11,000 years. In the area, archaeologists have found hundreds of house remains, tent rings, food-storage pits, scattered stone chips from tool makers and cairns that resembled humans to help drive caribou into traps.

“People took advantage of caribou, fish, muskox, berries, waterfowl — and in the earliest period, probably bison,” Rasic wrote about Howard Pass, a tundra bench several miles wide that caribou from the Western Arctic herd still click through during seasonal migrations.

This food-rich area has another side to its character. Howard Pass’s Inupiaq name is Akutuq, a word for a treat made of whipped animal fat, sugar, and berries. Natives gave the pass that name because the wind-tortured snow patterns there reminded them of akutuq.

National Park Service scientists in 2011 installed a rugged weather station at Howard Pass as one of 50 similar climate stations in hard-to-reach parklands across Alaska. The stations are battery and solar-powered and send their data in blips to orbiting satellites.

That information has included — on Feb. 21, 2013 — a wind-chill temperature of minus 96.9 degrees Fahrenheit. The air temperature that day was minus 45.5 degrees F. The wind blew at a sustained 54 miles per hour.

“This was not an isolated event,” Pam Sousanes of the National Park Service said of the Howard Pass windchill. “Similar conditions have been recorded in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.”

The average wind chill for Feb. 12-16, 2014, was minus 84.5 degrees F when the highest wind gust through the pass was 103 miles per hour. Wind chills of minus 70 or lower have been recorded each year.

This low spot in the western Brooks Range becomes a wind tunnel when there a great atmospheric-pressure difference that exists between Alaska’s North Slope and the rest of the state. Cold air from the north rips southward though the pass.

“The wind chill can be so severe as to freeze to death caribou caught there by a winter storm,” wrote Ernest Burch in the book “Alliance and Conflict: The World System of the Inupiaq Eskimos.” “After every bad blow, the Eskimos used to go into the pass to look for well-preserved caribou carcasses.”

Sousanes and her colleague Ken Hill have replaced the wind monitor on the Howard Pass station every year; the steel mast that holds it up is pocked by rocks and ice.

Minus 100 degrees does not seem to mesh with human occupation; nor does a place with no firewood.

However, not only is the pass loaded with archaeological sites, a few of them are winter dwellings, Rasic said, with half the living area underground and featuring cold-trap tunnels at the entrances.

Why might people have chosen a spot with such inhumane conditions?

“It’s a reliable place to harvest caribou, and there are lakes with fish,” Rasic said. “If you are someone trying to escape clouds of mosquitoes, winds aren’t necessarily bad. And maybe a windswept place is good for winter travel — hard and crusty, good to get around on.”

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

Uprooted tree reveals a violent death from 1,000 years ago

Uprooted tree reveals a violent death from 1,000 years ago

The remain of a young man who died of what appears to be knife wounds sometimes between ad 1030 and 1200 was discovered tangled in the roots of a 215-year-old beech tree.

A hurricane erupted over the wild Atlantic shores of northwestern Ireland and fell a 215 years old beech tree in the middle of a County Sligo field straight out of the ground.

It was not the huge tree that drew widespread attention, but what was discovered snapped up in his twisted roots – half a human skeleton pulled out of his grave. It was not the massive tree.

After learning of the discovery of the bones, Ireland’s National Monuments Service called in archaeologist Marion Dowd to undertake a rescue excavation of the body that had, in essence, risen from the grave.

In her 20 years of academic and commercial work, Dowd had never seen anything like what she encountered at this site.

Excavating bones from tree roots.

Having just launched her own private firm, Sligo-Leitrim Archaeological Services, Dowd couldn’t have asked for a more bizarre maiden project. “

As excavations go, this was certainly an unusual situation,” Dowd says. “The upper part of the skeleton was raised into the air trapped within the root system.

The lower leg bones, however, remained intact in the ground. Effectively, as the tree collapsed, it snapped the skeleton in two.” The bones still in the burial plot were in a very well preserved condition.

After Dowd’s excavation, osteoarchaeologist Linda Lynch conducted a three-month analysis. Last week, the results of the radiocarbon dating revealed that the grave belonged to a young man between the ages of 17 and 20 who died during the medieval period between 1030 and 1200 A.D.

With a height of 5 feet, 10 inches, he was much taller than the average medieval person, which indicates he came from a family with a relatively high social status who could afford a nourishing diet.

However, he didn’t have an easy childhood as a mild spinal joint disease suggests he was involved in physical labor from an early age.

Dowd determined that the medieval teenager had received a formal Christian burial because his body was placed on his back in a traditional east-west orientation with his arms by his side.

While historical records indicate there was once a church and graveyard in the general area, no other bones or signs of additional burials were discovered in the immediate vicinity of the fallen tree.

Dowd estimates the grave was at least a foot under the ground and says the person who planted the beech tree around 1800 would have been unaware of the presence of a grave just below his feet.

Lower leg bones were in the grave, but the upper body was tangled up in roots.

It appears that the young man’s demise was a violent one. Dowd found two cuts to his ribs that were inflicted by a single-edged weapon, probably a knife.

She also discovered a visible stab wound to the left hand which suggests he may have attempted to defend himself from his attacker.

“This burial gives us an insight into the life and tragic death of a young man in medieval Sligo,” Dowd says. “He was almost certainly from a local Gaelic family, but whether he died in battle or was killed during a personal dispute, we will never know for sure.”

Dowd says there are no plans yet for further analysis of the bones, so this medieval murder mystery may endure.

The remains found beneath the uprooted tree will eventually be sent to the National Museum of Ireland in the capital city of Dublin.

AFRICA, SOUTH AFRICA, WORLD

Synchrotron X-ray sheds light on some of the world’s oldest dinosaur eggs

Synchrotron X-ray sheds light on some of the world’s oldest dinosaur eggs

In the most minor details, an international team of scientists led by the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa was able to re-construct the skulls of some of the world’s oldest documented 3D dinosaur embryos by using powerful and non-destructive ESRF synchrotron technology.

The skulls evolve as the crocodiles, ducks, turtles, and Lizards today. They are in the same order The results are published in scientific reports

In an article in Scientific Reports, the University of Witwatersrand releases 3D reconstructions of the nearly 2 cm long skulls of some of the oldest dinosaur embryos in the world.

Dinosaur egg concept Dinosaur 'Easter eggs' reveal their secrets in 3D thanks to X-rays and high-powered computers.
Dinosaur egg concept Dinosaur
‘Easter eggs’ reveal their secrets in 3D thanks to X-rays and high-powered computers.

Embryos, discovered in 1976, related to the legendary South African dinosaur Massospondylus carinatus (five-meter long herbivores nestled in the Free state region 200 million years ago in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park (Free State Region, South Africa).

The scientific usefulness of the embryos was previously limited by their extremely fragile nature and tiny size. In 2015, scientists Kimi Chapelle and Jonah Choiniere, from the University of Witwatersrand, brought them to the European Synchrotron (ESRF) in Grenoble, France for scanning.

At the ESRF, an 844 meter-ring of electrons travelling at the speed of light emits high-powered X-ray beams that can be used to non-destructively scan matter, including fossils.

The embryos were scanned at an unprecedented level of detail — at the resolution of an individual bone cell. With these data in hand, and after nearly 3 years of data processing at Wits’ laboratory, the team was able to reconstruct a 3D model of the baby dinosaur skull.

“No lab CT scanner in the world can generate these kinds of data,” said Vincent Fernandez, one of the co-authors and scientists at the Natural History Museum in London (UK).

“Only with a huge facility like the ESRF can we unlock the hidden potential of our most exciting fossils. This research is a great example of a global collaboration between Europe and the South African National Research Foundation,” he adds.

Up until now, it was believed that the embryos in those eggs had died just before hatching. However, during the study, lead author Chapelle noticed similarities with the developing embryos of living dinosaur relatives (crocodiles, chickens, turtles, and lizards).

By comparing which bones of the skull were present at different stages of their embryonic development, Chapelle and co-authors can now show that the Massospondylus embryos were actually much younger than previously thought and were only at 60% through their incubation period.

The team also found that each embryo had two types of teeth preserved in its developing jaws. One set was made up of very simple triangular teeth that would have been resorbed or shed before hatching, just like geckos and crocodiles today.

The second set was very similar to those of adults and would be the ones that the embryos hatched with. “I was really surprised to find that these embryos not only had teeth but had two types of teeth. The teeth are so tiny; they range from 0.4 to 0.7mm wide. That’s smaller than the tip of a toothpick!” explains Chapelle.

The conclusion of this research is that dinosaurs developed in the egg just like their reptilian relatives, whose embryonic developmental pattern hasn’t changed in 200 million years.

“It’s incredible that in more than 250 million years of reptile evolution, the way the skull develops in the egg remains more or less the same. Goes to show — you don’t mess with a good thing!,” concludes Jonah Choiniere, professor at the University of Witwatersrand and also co-author of the study.

The team hopes to apply their method to other dinosaur embryos to estimate their level of development.

They will be looking at the rest of the skeleton of the Massospondylus embryos to see if it also shares similarities in development with today’s dinosaur relatives.

The arms and legs of the Massospondylus embryos have already been used to show that hatchlings likely walked on two legs.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Three Well-Preserved Ancient Boats Unearthed in Serbia

Probable Roman shipwrecks unearthed at a Serbian coal mine

Uryadovy Courier reported that coal miners in Serbia recently dug up an unexpected surprise: three probable Roman-era ships, buried in the mud of an ancient riverbed for at least 1,300 years.

The largest is a flat-bottomed river vessel 15 meters long, which seems to have been built with Roman techniques. Two smaller boats, each carved out from a single tree trunk, match ancient descriptions of dugout boats used by Slavic groups to row across the Danube River and attack the Roman frontier.

The Kostolac surface mine lies near the ancient Roman city of Viminacium, once a provincial capital and the base for a squadron of Roman warships on the Danube River.

When the Roman Empire ruled most of Southern Europe, the Danube or one of its larger branches flowed across the land now occupied by the mine.

The three ships lay atop a 15-meter- (49-foot-) deep layer of gravel, buried under seven meters (23 feet) of silt and clay, which preserved them for centuries in remarkably good condition—or did until the miners’ earthmoving equipment dug into the steep slope to excavate for the mine.

“The [largest] ship was seriously damaged by the mining equipment,” archaeologist Miomir Korac, director of the Archaeological Institute and head of the Viminacium Science Project, told Ars in an email. “Approximately 35 percent to 40 percent of the ship was damaged.

But the archaeological team collected all the parts, and we should be able to reconstruct it almost in full.” With any luck, that reconstruction will help archaeologists understand when the three ships were built and how they came to rest in the riverbed.

Social distancing makes it hard to get a date

The large ship had a single deck with at least six pairs of oars, along with fittings for a type of triangular sail called a lateen sail. It would have carried a crew of 30 to 35 sailors, and apparently it had a lengthy career: traces of repairs to the hull suggest a ship with some miles under it. Iron nails and other iron fittings held the ship’s timbers and planks together, and they’ve survived for centuries thanks to the silt and clay that sealed the ship away from oxygen and microbes.

By contrast, the dugout longboats were much simpler craft. Korac described them as “rudimentary,” although one had carved decorations on its hull.

Although elements of the largest ship’s construction are Roman, Korac says those same shipbuilding techniques may also have been used by later Byzantine or medieval shipwrights. Without radiocarbon dating or geological analysis of the sediment layers at the site, it’s impossible to be entirely sure when the ships were built. Korac and his colleagues have sent wood samples from preserved oak trees buried nearby to a lab for analysis, but the COVID-19 pandemic has held everything up.

“Coronavirus is setting all actions now,” he told Ars.

But the odds are in favor of the Kostolac ship being Roman in origin. Historical documents don’t mention any ports or other navigation infrastructure in the area after Viminacium fell to invading groups in the 600s CE. If that’s the case, then these three ships, wrecked together in the former bed of the Danube, may record a snapshot of either commerce or conflict on the Roman frontier.

Fight, flight, or founder?

Given the site’s proximity to the Roman naval base at Viminacium, it’s tempting to imagine a battle on the Danube between a Roman warship and attacking Slavic fighters in dugout longboats. Historical sources don’t mention any river battles near Kostolac, but they do mention a couple of battles further upriver, near the Roman ports of Singidunum and Sirmium.

But while there’s no evidence to rule out the idea of dueling river warships in a fight to the death, there’s no evidence pointing to a battle, either. None of the vessels has any trace of fire or other combat damage, and nothing about the largest ship conclusively identifies it as a warship rather than an ordinary river transport. The ship’s crew left no personal belongings or artifacts aboard; there’s just the ship and its fittings, beautifully preserved but perfectly empty.

“The lack of finds prevents us from identifying the boat without further analyses,” Korac told Ars.

On the other hand, the dugout longboats, called monoxylons, were something like landing craft. “A monoxylon is not a combat ship. It is just a way to cross the river and invade on land,” Korac told Ars. “Facing larger ships, monoxylons could be easily defeated, as it is testified in sources from [the] 6th century mentioning a Roman fleet from Singidunum repelling barbarian attacks on the Roman Empire.”

Korac suggested one possible scenario for the shipwrecks: “The ships were either abandoned or evacuated. They did not sink suddenly with cargo,” he told Ars. “If these happened during the barbarian invasion and withdrawal of Roman troops, the ship could be abandoned and sunken in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy.”

For now, further excavations and analysis are on hold, but all three shipwrecks have been relocated to the nearby archaeological park.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

An archeologist and his team of nine students have been arrested in Peru

A Team of Archeologists Has Been Arrested in Peru for Violating Lockdown to Excavate Pre-Columbian Tombs

In Peru, an archeologist and his team of nine students were arrested for excavating on a pre-Colombian cemetery, following the national lock-up of that nation.

The group led by archeologist Pieter van Dalen was caught exploring during a state of emergency on Sunday 4 April at the Macatón Cemetery in the town of Huaral.

The team from the Regional Mayor of San Marcos University was taken into custody for breaking Peru’s extreme lock-down laws, despite claiming that they merely protected the national heritage left exposed to them in compliance with the Ministry of Culture.

Ruins in Hural in the Peruvian Andes.

The Peruvian minister of culture, Sonia Guillén, who is herself an archeologist, told local news outlet Canal N that she “deplores” the group’s actions in a time of national emergency. “It is regrettable and shameful,” Guillén said.

The archeological team had been given a permit to excavate at the archeological site about 50 miles north of the capital city of Lima, but the ministry of culture says in a statement that the permit had been “suspended” as a result of the current confinement period to protect public health, calling the subsequent breach an “irresponsible and unjustified action.”

“We call on the general population to respect all government provisions and especially to show commitment and solidarity with others,” the ministry says. 

Since the lockdown was imposed on March 16, more than 51,000 people have been arrested for flouting the rules, the Peruvian president Martin Vizcarra said on Monday.

The country has so far recorded nearly 3,000 cases of the virus and more than 100 deaths since it first broke out there in March.

Image courtesy the Ministerio de Cultura del Perú on Facebook

Van Dalen defended himself to the archeology magazine Lima Gris, explaining that when the state of emergency was declared, many tombs remained open, leaving valuable funerary items exposed to the elements or thefts.

In the interview, Van Dalen also claimed that the ministry of culture was aware that the team was continuing to work on the site in order to protect national heritage.

The archeologist says that he was left “between a rock and a hard place” because he signed a letter taking responsibility for any damage to the site between February and October 2020.

“If any of the people who travel through the archeological zone every day take any of these materials or destroy them, the ministry of culture will denounce me for the destruction of cultural heritage,” he said, adding that “the ministry of culture has not developed any protocol to safeguard these materials.” 

BIBLICAL, EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

New Crucifixion Evidence Sheds Light on the Death of Jesus Christ

New Crucifixion Evidence Sheds Light on the Death of Jesus Christ

A recent study about a man’s crucifixion in Northern Italy 2000 years ago that was only the second direct discovery of the man executed by such a method, is shedding light on how Jesus Christ was killed.

In 2007 in Venice, the skeletal remains were first discovered by Emanuela Gualdi, a medical anthropologist at the University of Ferrara, but recently published research explores more thoroughly how the man died.

The report, a collaborative effort by researchers from the Ferrara and Florence universities, examined a lesion and unhealed fracture on one of the heel bones of the man, suggesting that his feet had been nailed.

Right calcaneus from 1st c AD Gavello, Italy, showing possible evidence of crucifixion. This archaeological evidence has provided new clues to the death of Jesus. (Emanuela Gualdi-Russo & Ursula Thun Hohenstein / University of Ferrara )
The calcaneus of Yehohanon ben Hagkol, with transfixed nail, which provided insights into the death of Jesus.

“We found a particular lesion on the right calcaneus [heel bone] passing through the entire bone,” Gualdi said.

She noted that Roman crucifixions were made to cause as much pain as possible for a prolonged period, with prisoners and slaves having their feet and wrists nailed to a wooden cross, sometimes taking several days to die.

As the Romans often left the bodies to rot or be eaten by animals, little direct evidence of people who have died from crucifixions remains. In some cases, the victims were removed and buried, but the metal crucifixion nails would be salvaged from their bodies.

Gualdi said that in the case of the man discovered in 2007, his wrists appear to have been tied to the cross with a rope, which was also a method practiced at the time. The researcher noted that many questions remain around the man, given that he was buried directly in the ground without any burial goods, rather than being placed in a tomb.

Grave of the man from Gavello during excavation by the provincial archaeological superintendency.

“We cannot know if he was a prisoner, but the burial marginalization indicates that he probably was an individual deemed dangerous or defamed in the Roman society,” she said.

Genetical and biological tests of the remains have determined that the subject was between 30 and 34 years of age when he died, and would have been of below-average height and slim nature.

The first-ever direct discovery of a crucifixion victim was made during excavations of Roman sites in Jerusalem in 1968 when a 7-inch-long nail was found in the heel bone of a man in one of the tombs. Various researchers and experts have talked about the brutality Jesus Christ faced at His own crucifixion at the hands of Roman soldiers.

A depiction of Jesus Christ being scourged.

Lee Strobel, a Christian apologist and former legal journalist for the Chicago Tribune, released in 2016 an updated version of his New York Times best-seller The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus.

In the book, he teamed up with Dr. Alexander Metherell, a physician who detailed the gruesome details of how Jesus was tortured and killed on the cross.

Metherell explained in the book that when Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before he was captured, he sweated blood out of distress, which is a rare medical condition called hematidrosis.

“What this did was set up the skin to be extremely fragile so that when Jesus was flogged by the Roman soldier the next day, his skin would be very, very sensitive.

Roman floggings were known to be terribly brutal. They usually consisted of 39 lashes but frequently were a lot more than that …” he explained.

He said that Jesus’ wrists had nails driven through them, which would have held up His body, and went through the median nerve.

“Do you know the kind of pain you feel when you bang your elbow and hit your funny bone … well, picture taking a pair of pliers and squeezing (as he twists his hands) and crushing that nerve. The pain was absolutely unbearable,” he noted, adding that Jesus’ feet were also nailed.