All posts by Archaeology World Team

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Oldest evidence of humans in Greece is 700,000 years old, a quarter of a million years older than previous record

Oldest evidence of humans in Greece is 700,000 years old, a quarter of a million years older than previous record

Oldest evidence of humans in Greece is 700,000 years old, a quarter of a million years older than previous record
Stone tools crafted by hominins from and Choremi 7 in Greece.

Several prehistoric sites in Greece reveal that our human ancestors hunted hippos and elephants between 280,000 and 700,000 years ago. The oldest site pushes back the earliest known hominin presence in the region by up to 250,000 years.

It’s not clear which ancient hominin (a term that includes humans and our ancestors) used the site, but researchers suspect it was archaic Homo sapiens.

Sitting about 124 miles (200 kilometers) southwest of Athens, the Megalopolis Basin in Arcadia hosts one of the largest lignite mines in Greece. Although archaeologists have known for decades that the site harbored ancient fossils, little targeted excavation had been carried out.

Recently, though, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens launched a five-year excavation to better understand the context of the Megalopolis sites. 

Mining activity revealed five new sites in the basin, which “exposed the fossil-bearing sediments to a much greater depth, thus revealing older remains,” Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany and co-project lead, told Live Science in an email. 

The most recent site, Choremi 7, dating to around 280,000 years ago, yielded stone tools as well as deer bones with evidence of cut marks. Tripotamos 4, at 400,000 years old, had a large concentration of stone tools and evidence of new methods of stone working compared to older sites.

These sites are important for understanding the technological development of the Lower Paleolithic period (3.3 million to 300,000 years ago), according to a statement from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sport.

At a site called Marathousa 2 dating to 450,000 years ago, the researchers discovered evidence that ancient human relatives were killing and presumably eating hippopotamuses, as part of a hippo skeleton had stone tool cut marks on it. A nearby site, Marathousa 1, shows evidence of elephant butchering. 

An ancient deer skull, as found at Kyparissia site 4.

“The cut marked hippopotamus bones from Marathousa 2, which were also found together with a lithic artifact, are the only such findings from the Middle Pleistocene of southeast Europe,” Harvati said. The team found that megafaunal exploitation was likely common during this time period.

A surface survey showing the artificial levels of the Megalopolis lignite mine in Greece.

About 230 feet (70 meters) below the surface, the team discovered the site of Kyparissia 4. Dating to 700,000 years ago, it is the oldest archaeological site from the Lower Palaeolithic era in Greece.

The researchers found numerous stone tools as well as remains of extinct species of giant deer, hippo, rhino, elephant and macaque.  When glaciers covered much of Europe during a major ice age between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago, this region would have been ice-free.

The sites Kyparissia 3 and 4 in the stratigraphic sequence of the lignites.

“Our research reconstructing the paleoenvironment of the basin has indicated that it would have functioned as a refugium during Ice Age conditions,” Harvati said, “allowing animal and plant populations — but also hominin groups — to survive during harsh glacial times when they would have disappeared from more northern parts of the European continent.”

The “outstanding and highly unusual preservation conditions” in the Megalopolis basin mean that the team is recovering not only stone tools and fossils but also remains of small animals, wood, plant remains and even insects, according to Harvati.

The basin has provided evidence that spans almost the entire middle Pleistocene, an important discovery considering southeastern Europe is relatively unexplored for this time period.

“The Megalopolis basin therefore provides a crucial piece of the puzzle of human evolution in Europe,” Harvati said.

ASIA, LAOS, WORLD

86,000-year-old human bone found in Laos cave hints at ‘failed population’ from prehistory

86,000-year-old human bone found in Laos cave hints at ‘failed population’ from prehistory

86,000-year-old human bone found in Laos cave hints at 'failed population' from prehistory
Researchers at Tam Pà Ling cave in Laos have found a fragment of a human shinbone that is up to 86,000 years old.

Homo sapiens arrived in Southeast Asia as early as 86,000 years ago, a human shin bone fragment found deep within a cave in Laos reveals.

The finding comes from the cave of Tam Pà Ling, or Cave of the Monkeys, which sits at around 3,840 feet (1,170 meters) above sea level on a mountain in northern Laos. Human bone fragments previously found in the cave were 70,000 years old, making them some of the earliest evidence of humans in this area of the world. This discovery prompted archaeologists to dig deeper. 

The team did just that, finding two new bones, they reported in a study published Tuesday (June 13) in the journal Nature Communications. The bones — fragments of the front of a skull and a shin bone — were likely washed into the Tam Pà Ling cave during a monsoon.

Even though the bones were fractured and incomplete, the researchers were able to compare their dimensions and shape with other bones from early humans, finding that they most closely matched Homo sapiens rather than other archaic humans, such as Homo erectus, Neandertals or Denisovans.

Here we see different views of the skull fragment from Tam Pà Ling in Laos.

The researchers used luminescence dating of nearby sediments and uranium-series dating of mammalian teeth from the same layers to produce an age range for the human remains. Luminescence dating is a technique that measures the last time crystalline materials, such as stones, were exposed to sunlight or heat, while U-series dating is a radiometric technique that, similar to carbon-14 dating, measures the decay of uranium over time into thorium, radium and lead.

The skull, they estimated, was up to 73,000 years old, and the shin bone dates back as far as 86,000 years ago.

This early date is a remarkable finding, particularly because researchers have long debated the timing of Homo sapiens’ arrival in Asia. 

“Little to no anthropological research was done in Laos since the second world war,” study lead author Fabrice Demeter, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science in an email.

Debates about human colonization of Southeast Asia have taken place for decades as researchers have attempted to understand how and when humans crossed straits and seas to eventually end up in Australia.

Tam Pà Ling is therefore “a prime place to ask some of these questions about migration, since mainland southeast Asia really sits at the crossroads of East Asia and island SE Asia/Australia.” 

Tam Pà Ling, or Cave of the Monkeys, sits at around 3,840 feet (1,170 meters) above sea level in northern Laos.
The team used luminescence dating of nearby sediments and uranium-series dating of mammalian teeth from the same cave floor layers to date the human fossils.

While the genetic and stone tool evidence amassed to date strongly supports a single, rapid dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa sometime after 60,000 years ago, studies such as this one are producing evidence for earlier migrations, many of which may have been dead ends.

Michael B.C. Rivera, a biological anthropologist at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that “perhaps this was a group that dispersed to Southeast Asia and died out before they were able to contribute genes to today’s human gene pool. I find the narratives of these ‘failed’ populations interesting to add so that we aren’t just looking at the ‘successful’ ones that ‘made it’.”

No stone tools or other clues about these humans’ lifestyles have been found in Tam Pà Ling. But archaeologists working on the prehistory of Asia have long suspected that, even before 65,000 years ago, ancient humans were capable of reaching islands and making sea crossings to populate seemingly remote parts of the world, Rivera pointed out. 

“The claim that H. sapiens made it to this region pre-60,000 years ago is not new,” Rivera said, “but it is good to have further confirmation in our attempts to fill in gaps in the archaeological record.”

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

A broken pagan statue of the Greek god Pan was unearthed at early church ruins in Istanbul

A broken pagan statue of the Greek god Pan was unearthed at early church ruins in Istanbul

A broken pagan statue of the Greek god Pan was unearthed at early church ruins in Istanbul
The marble statue of the Greek god Pan is badly damaged and less than a foot high. Archaeologists think it was made before A.D. 330.

Archaeologists in Istanbul excavating the ruins of an early Christian church have unearthed a pagan statue of the Greek god Pan, who is depicted with goat horns and a naked torso as he plays a reed pipe. 

It is unlikely that a Christian church would have kept a statue of such a pagan god. Rather, archaeologists think the statue’s location is the result of a modern mistake.

The ruins are from the sixth-century church of St. Polyeuctus, which was one of the largest in Constantinople — as Istanbul was called before its conquest by Ottoman Turks in 1453.

In the 1960s, workers building a nearby road discovered the remains of the church by accident. After an excavation, archaeologists used backfill — earth used to fill holes and level ground — to cover up the ruins. It’s likely that the statue was part of that backfill, Mahir Polat, the deputy general secretary of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) told Live Science in an email.

The statue was found among the ruins of the St. Polyeuctus church in Istanbul, in “backfill” brought there from somewhere else in the city in the 1960s.

The new discovery comes only a few weeks after buried rooms and a tunnel were reopened beneath the St. Polyeuctus ruins, as the IBB redevelops the formerly derelict area into an archaeological tourist attraction.

Polat said the statue was found on June 1 on the northwest side of the main church building, in backfill about 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) below the surface. The marble statue is less than a foot (20 centimeters) tall and is badly damaged: only its head, torso, and arm remain. But its significance as a work of Classical art is still visible.

The statue appears to have been made during the Roman period, Polat said before Constantinople was founded in A.D. 330; further examinations might date it more precisely.

Archeologists think the statue was made during the Roman period, before Constantinople was founded in A.D. 330, and brought to the city as a decoration.

Wild Greek god

Pan was the mythical ancient Greek god of the wilds, woods, fields, shepherds, and flocks, according to the American classicist Timothy Gantz in “Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). He originally may have been a fertility deity, and his reputation included cavorting with nymphs, who were female nature deities bound to trees, streams, and other features of the landscape. 

Pan famously played a set of reed pipes — now called Pan pipes in his honor — and was typically portrayed as a mythical faun, with the cloven hooves, furry hind legs, and horns of a goat. (The devil in Christianity is often portrayed in the same way, and the British historian Ronald Hutton argues that isn’t an accident.) 

It’s likely the statue was brought to Contantinople between the fourth and the sixth centuries when Classical sculptures were used to decorate the palaces of aristocrats.
The passion for Classical sculptures in Constantinople faded after the sixth century as the city’s aristocrats became more interested in Christian culture.

According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the modern English word “panic” is derived from the god’s name, from the Greek word “panikon,” which means “pertaining to Pan.” Supposedly, Pan was responsible for making mysterious woodland sounds that “caused groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots.”

Archaeologist and historian Ken Dark of King’s College London, an expert on ancient Istanbul who wasn’t involved in the discovery, told Live Science the Pan statue was probably among the many Classical objects brought to Constantinople between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. “as works of art or for their historical interest.”

“None were displayed in churches or monasteries, but instead were used as ornaments in secular public places and aristocratic palaces,” he said in an email. “This statue was presumably deposited, broken, in the ruins of the church after the building had gone out of use.”

It isn’t known why Constantinople stopped importing such figures after the sixth century. Perhaps these artworks were increasingly seen as unchristian as the Byzantine aristocracy focused less on Classical culture and more on Christian culture, Dark said.

BOLIVIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Cal Orcko: A 300 Feet Wall With Over 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints

Cal Orcko: A 300 Feet Wall With Over 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints

There’s a wall in Bolivia that’s covered in thousands of dinosaur footprints, and it’s becoming a major tourist attraction

On the outskirts of the city of Sucre, in Bolivia, is a large cement plant, and when the quarry it uses was being expanded, workers discovered a huge vertical wall of rock with thousands of dinosaur footprints.

The site is called Cal Orcko (also spelled Cal Orko) and it´s the largest concentration of dinosaur tracks in the world.

The slab of limestone is enormous – 1.2 km long and 80 meters high, and has more than 5,000 footprints, with 462 individual trails made during the second half of the Cretaceous period.

The location used to be the shore of a former lake, that attracted a large number of herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs.

The creatures’ feet sank into the soft shoreline in warm damp weather, leaving marks that were solidified by later periods of drought. Wet weather then returned, sealing the prints below mud and sediment.

The wet-dry pattern was repeated seven times, preserving multiple layers of prints. Tectonic upheaval then pushed the flat ground up at the brilliant viewing angle that it is today.

Dinosaur footprints were first discovered in Cal Orcko by miners in 1985, but it was only between 1994 and 1998 that its importance was fully realized when a scientific team led by Swiss paleontologist Christian Meyer investigated the wall and certified the bed.

According to Christian Meyer, the discovery is an enormous contribution to humanity and to science, revealing data heretofore unknown and “documenting the high diversity of dinosaurs better than any other site in the world”.

The study of these footprints provided much information about the social behavior of dinosaurs. For example, it is possible to observe two lines of big footprints, with small footprints between them indicating that some baby dinosaurs were growing with their parents who protected their offspring.

The most spectacular track, however, is a 347 meters long line of prints belonging to a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex nicknamed “Johnny Walker” by researchers.

For the preservation of this site, a Cretaceous Park was opened in 2006 where there are exact replicas of the different species of dinosaurs that left their mark on the place, a museum, and a viewing platform 150 meters from the rock face.

It’s from this vantage point that you truly grasp the sheer scale and magnitude of Cal Orko.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A ‘Stonehenge-Like’ Structure Exists In Lake Michigan and is 9,000 Years Old

A ‘Stonehenge-Like’ Structure Exists In Lake Michigan and is 9,000 Years Old

While scanning underneath the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks, archeologists found something a lot more interesting than they bargained for.

While scanning underneath the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks, archeologists found something a lot more interesting than they bargained for: they discovered a boulder with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon,  as well as a series of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner.

Gazing into the water

Using remote sensing techniques is common in modern archaeology – scientists routinely survey lakes and ground for hidden structures.

At a depth of about 40 feet into Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, using sonar techniques to look for shipwrecks, archeologists discovered sunken boats and cars and even a Civil War-era pier, but among all these, they found this prehistoric surprise, which a trained eye can guess by looking at the sonar scans photos in this article.

“When you see it in the water, you’re tempted to say this is absolutely real,” said Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College who made the discovery, during a news conference with photos of the boulder on display in 2007. “But that’s what we need the experts to come in and verify.

The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures.

Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said.

Viewed together, they suggest the outlines of a mastodon-like back, hump, head, trunk, tusk, triangular-shaped ear, and parts of legs, he said.

“We couldn’t believe what we were looking at,” said Greg MacMaster, president of the underwater preserve council.

Specialists shown pictures of the boulder holding the mastodon markings have asked for more evidence before confirming the markings are an ancient petroglyph, said Holley.

“They want to actually see it,” he said. Unfortunately, he added, “Experts in petroglyphs generally don’t dive, so we’re running into a little bit of a stumbling block there.”

If found to be true, the wannabe petroglyph could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

The formation, if authenticated, wouldn’t be completely out of place. 

Stone circles and other petroglyph sites are located in the area.

The discovery was made back a few years ago, and surprisingly enough the find hasn’t been popularized at all, with little to no information available online, but I’ll be sure to update this post as soon as I can get ahold of more info. So, who’s from Michigan?

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Hundreds of Well Preserved Prehistoric Animals have been found in an Ancient Volcanic Ashbed in Nebraska

Hundreds of Well Preserved Prehistoric Animals have been found in an Ancient Volcanic Ashbed in Nebraska

An adult (3) rhino fossil lies next to a baby’s fossils. They are among hundreds of skeletons discovered at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park in Royal, Nebraska.

The watering holes attracted prehistoric animals among Nebraska’s tall grasslands. From horses to camels and rhinoceroses, with wild dogs looming nearby, animals roamed the savanna-like region.

Then, one day, it all changed. Hundreds of miles away, a volcano in southeast Idaho erupted. Within days, up to two feet of ash covered parts of present-day Nebraska.

Some of the animals died immediately, consumed with ash and other debris. Most of the animals lived for several more days, their lungs ingesting ash as they searched the ground for food. Within a few weeks, northeast Nebraska was barren of animals, except for a few survivors.

More than 12 million years later, a fossil was found in Antelope County, near the small town of Royal.

The skull of a baby rhino was discovered by a Nebraska paleontologist and his wife while exploring the area. The fossil was exposed to erosion. Soon after, exploration started in the area.

As more discoveries were made, the site grew into a tourist attraction. Today, people visit Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park to check out hundreds of fossils from 12 species of animals, including five types of horses, three species of camels, as well as a saber-toothed deer. The infamous saber-toothed cat remains a dream discovery.

Visitors view fossils inside the Hubbard Rhino Barn, a 17,500-square-foot facility that protects the fossils while allowing visitors to roam on a boardwalk. Kiosks provide information on fossils located in specific areas.

One level of the fossil beds was discovered at Ashfall Fossil Beds Park.

As you tour the barn, if a summer intern or paleontologist is nearby, they are open to discussing their work, as well as answering questions. During our visit, we learned that an intern had discovered a fossilized dog paw print.

Outside the barn, visitors can read facts about the area, including that mammoths migrated to North America about 1.5 million years ago.

A yellow flag in an area a short distance from the main walk to the barn indicates the discovery site of the rhino skull. Red flags showcase spots where additional fossils were discovered.

A yellow flag marks the site of the first skull discovery in 1971. The red flags indicate spots of additional fossil finds.

Visitor activities and views at Ashfall Fossil Beds

In addition to the Hubbard Barn, Ashfall Fossil Beds features a discovery area where children can cipher through the sand searching for their own fossil discoveries. A small barn is used for special exhibits, as well as classes.

Children play in a sandbox “searching” for fossils.

The visitors center houses some animal remains, as well as paleontologists working on recent finds. About 60 million years before the area was home to the savanna, Nebraska was part of a tropical sea.

Fossils found in the area include a plesiosaur, a mammal from the Jurassic Period. The fossils displayed were found on the Santee reservation, about an hour away.

Fossils from a plesiosaur were found near Santee, about an hour from the park.

Sculptures representing animals from the region are located around the state historical park. Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park kicks off its summer hours on Memorial Day weekend when it’s open daily through Labor Day. Otherwise, check the website here for hours.

A state park permit ($6 per vehicle for an in-state day permit or free with an annual pass) is required for visiting the park, in addition to the $7 entrance fee.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A new study shows Early Native Americans in Alaska were freshwater fishermen 13,000 years ago

A new study shows Early Native Americans in Alaska were freshwater fishermen 13,000 years ago

A new study shows Early Native Americans in Alaska were freshwater fishermen 13,000 years ago

A team led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers has discovered the earliest known evidence that Native Americans living in present-day central Alaska may have begun freshwater fishing around 13,000 years ago during the last ice age.

Ancestors of Alaska Natives, many of whose livelihoods still depend on freshwater fish such as salmon, may have started subsistence fishing as a response to fewer food resources during long-term climate change, Ben Potter and colleagues say.

The research offers a glimpse at how early humans used a changing landscape and could offer insight for modern people facing similar changes.

“We are looking at humans as ecologists do, as biologists do,” said Ben Potter, a UAF anthropology professor and co-lead author of the paper. “Even very early on, they are able to adapt to changing conditions.”

The study, published recently in the journal Science Advances, shows that people living between 13,000 and 11,500 years ago in what is now Interior Alaska relied on freshwater fish like burbot, whitefish and pike for food. The study builds on earlier UAF findings that documented salmon fishing by the same population of ancient humans.

Native Americans have relied on freshwater fish for thousands of years, but the origins of fishing in North America have been uncertain. Beringia, a region comprising present-day Alaska and Russia, was largely ice-free during the last ice age and is considered a key gateway to the Americas.

Burbot vertebrae from the Mead site are lined up.

“That discovery was really surprising because it was far from the ocean, in an area near the edge of salmon habitat,” said Potter. “That started us thinking: This could be a whole other angle on human ecology beyond large mammal hunting.”

To investigate, Potter et al. used a combination of DNA and isotope analyses to identify 1,110 fish specimens recovered from six human settlement sites – including in the Tanana, Kuskokwim, Susitna, and Copper River basins – in what was once eastern Beringia (central Alaska). They identified four main fish taxa – salmon, burbot, whitefish, and northern pike – whose earliest appearances dated to around 13,000 and 11,800 years ago.

These findings, along with well-documented fishing records from local Native Alaskans, suggest that early Native Americans may have started fishing as a response to environmental change during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. “Our data collectively suggest that changes in climate and ultimately key mammal resources during the Younger Dryas led to human responses of widening diet breadth to incorporate multiple species of freshwater and anadromous fish, setting a pattern that would be expanded upon later in the Holocene as fish, particularly salmon, became key resources to Alaska Native lifeways,” the authors write.

The bones were found inside homes and hearths and tended to be associated with base camps, rather than short-term hunting camps. They also were far from lakes and streams, so it’s unlikely that predators moved them.

The absence of fishhooks or spears at the sites suggests that the early Alaskans likely used nets and perhaps weirs to harvest the fish.

“This is a compelling, evidence-based case for freshwater fishing at the end of the last Ice Age,” Potter said.

Until the beginning of the Younger Dryas, people relied more on waterfowl to augment large game like bison and elk. When temperatures started dropping around 13,000 years ago, that changed.

“While we don’t know why the use of waterfowl diminished, we know that the climate was changing,” Potter said. “One of the ways the people were able to adapt is to incorporate these new species and new technologies. Burbot, in particular, can be caught in late winter and early spring, when food resources were most scarce.”

The solid tie to modern subsistence activities is also compelling, he said.

WORLD

This 5,500-Year-Old Sumerian Star Map Recorded the Impact of a Massive Asteroid

This 5,500-Year-Old Sumerian Star Map Recorded the Impact of a Massive Asteroid

An ancient Sumerian astronomer recorded on the clay tablet the events he observed on 29 June 3123 BC.

An ancient clay tablet housed at the British Museum has puzzled experts for more than 150 years. The Cuneiform tablet in the British Museum collection No K8538 is known as “the Planisphere.” Translated more than ten years ago, the clay tablet is an ancient Sumerian Star Map.

Researchers claim it describes an asteroid impact in ancient times. The clay tablet was recovered in the 19th century from the underground library of King Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, Iraq, by Sir. Henry Layard.

Translations and eventual analysis revealed stunning details. The ancient Sumerians etched on the surface of the clay tablet details revealing they observed a massive object, visible in space, as it smashed through Earth’s atmosphere and eventually impacted the planet.

The tablet is a copy of notes inscribed by an ancient Sumerian astronomer that observed the sky. He referred to the object coming from the sky as a “white stone bowl approaching…”

Part of a circular clay tablet with depictions of constellations (planisphere); the reverse is uninscribed; restored from fragments and incomplete; partly accidentally vitrified in antiquity during the destruction of the place where it was found. Found in Kuyunjik, ancient Nineveh, in the so-called “Library of Ashurbanipal.” Neo-Assyrian period.

The tablet is an astronomical work since it features intricate drawings of constellations and their names. Since its discovery, experts have been unable to fully understand what the Sumerian Astronomer wanted to convey. That changed with the appearance of computer programs that could help simulate trajectories and reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago. And it is precisely that way that experts finally understood what the Planisphere tablet refers to.

An ancient Sumerian astronomer recorded the events he observed on 29 June 3123 BC.

Experts found that fifty percent of the clay tablet refers to the position of the planets and weather conditions, like cloud cover. However, the other half of the tablet details how a massive object, large enough to be observed even though it was still in space, was seen approaching Earth.

The Sumerian astronomer decided the event was of great importance, so he accurately noted the object’s trajectory relative to the stars. And it turns out that the object observed by the Sumerian astronomer was most likely the asteroid that impacted Köfels, Austria.

According to experts, the astronomer accurately noted the object’s trajectory to an error of better than one degree.

Based on the observations made by the Sumerian astronomers, scientists have concluded that the object in question was most likely an asteroid over one kilometer in diameter. It was most likely an Aten-type asteroid that orbited relatively close to the planet given its orbit.

The data etched on the clay tablet explains why there isn’t an actual impact crater at Köfels. Observations indicate that the asteroid’s incoming angle was as low as six degrees. This suggests the space rock most likely clipped a mountain on its way down (most likely the tip of Gamskogel), causing the asteroid to disintegrate before reaching its final impact point.

Scientists explain that as it made its way down the valley, the asteroid turned into a gigantic fireball, around five kilometers in diameter. As it impacted Köfels, it produced extremely high pressures that caused the rock to pulverize.

However, since it was no longer a solid object, it did not leave an impact crater behind.