9,350-Year-Old Stonehenge-Style Monolith Found in the Mediterranean Sea
At least 9,300 years ago, Stone Age hunter-gatherers in a now-submerged area of the Mediterranean Sea accomplished a feat beyond what today’s experts thought possible for the time: they cut a 15-ton limestone pillar with precision, drilled holes in it and transported it nearly 984 feet (300 meters). The monolith is 39 feet (12 meters) long.
Underwater composite photographs taken from divers, showing the discovered monolith and some details. Top: full lateral view. Bottom: full view from above.
Oceanographers studying the Mediterranean seafloor in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily in 2012 found the monolith 131 feet (40 meters) deep.
In a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the researchers say this area became completely submerged about 9,300 years ago, give or take a couple of hundred years. Before that, the area was a shallow sea with an archipelago of several islands about halfway between the island of Sicily and the North African coast.
The area studied, the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank, is now undersea between Sicily and Tunisia.
So it is assumed the pillar was carved at least 9,300 years ago. Researchers were able to date the stone of the monolith by extracting shell fragments from it. They found it has the same composition and age as limestone about 330 yards away, suggesting it was transported this distance.
The researchers say the discovery of this submerged pillar may require scholars to rethink the idea of “technological primitivism” among hunter-gatherers.
Researchers say the discovery of this submerged pillar may require scholars to rethink the idea of “technological primitivism” among hunter-gatherers.
“This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in the Sicilian Channel region,” wrote Emanuele Lodolo and Zvi Ben-Abraham in their paper.
Lodolo and Ben-Abraham state that several factors lead them to believe the monolith or stone column was cut by humans and was not shaped by nature.
They write that the monolith has a regular shape and three regular holes of similar diameter. It is composed of limestone of a nature similar to rocks not far away from where it was transported, but it differs from the rocks in the immediate vicinity.
The submerged monolith
Underwater composite photographs taken from divers, showing the discovered monolith and some details. Top: monolith’s end. Middle: partial lateral view. Bottom: partial view from above.
“The presence of the monolith suggests extensive human activity in the [area],” they wrote. “It was cut and extracted as a single stone from the outer rectilinear ridge situated about 300 m [984 feet] to the south, and then transported and possibly erected. From the size of the monolith, we may presume that it weighs about 15 [tons].”
They did not speculate about the function of the monolith. But they assume it was in an important area, which is about halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. Sicily was inhabited possibly between 17,000 and 27,000 years ago, when there was a land bridge from the Italian mainland.
“The discovery of the submerged site in the Sicilian Channel may significantly expand our knowledge of the earliest civilizations in the Mediterranean basin and our views on technological innovation and development achieved by the Mesolithic inhabitants,” the authors wrote.
“The monolith … made of a single, large block, required cutting, extraction, transportation, and installation, which undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering.”
The researchers even went so far as to state that: “The belief that our ancestors lacked the knowledge, skill, and technology to exploit marine resources or make sea crossings, must be progressively abandoned.
The recent findings … have definitively removed the idea of ‘technological primitivism’ often attributed to hunter-gatherer coastal settlers.”
50 ancient coffins uncovered at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis
Egypt recently unearthed a funerary temple and the oldest coffins ever discovered in Saqqara, revealing more mysteries in the ancient burial ground and marking another significant find in the vast necropolis south of Cairo.
A mummy dating back to the New Kingdom found at the funerary temple of Queen Naert.
The country said a mission headed by prominent Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, the former minister of state for antiquities affairs, unearthed the funerary temple of Queen Nearit, the wife of King Teti — the first pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.
The mission also unearthed 52 burial shafts with more than 50 wooden coffins found inside. They date back 3,000 years, the oldest sarcophagi found in Saqqara.
Workers excavate a site during the official announcement of the discovery by an Egyptian archaeological mission of a new trove of treasures at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, Egypt, Jan. 17, 2021.
Left: Visitors walk past a wooden sarcophagus which is still buried;Right: An adorned wooden sarcophagus is displayed during the official announcement of the discovery.
“These coffins are wooden and anthropoid … many of the gods that were worshiped during this period were represented on the surface of the coffins, in addition to various excerpts from the Book of the Dead that help the deceased pass through the journey of the other world,” the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities said in a statement.
In recent months, Egypt unearthed hundreds of coffins of top officials and priests in Saqqara, all dating back to the more recent Late and Ptolemaic periods.
The new discovery is distinguished because older New Kingdom sarcophagi were found, the ministry has said. The New Kingdom period lasted from the 16th century BC to the 11th century BC, covering the 18th, 19th, and 20th Egyptian dynasties.
“The discovery confirmed that the Saqqara area was not used for burial during the Late Period only, but also during the New Kingdom,” the statement read.
Unearthed adorned wooden sarcophagi are displayed at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis.
Another “luxurious, mud-brick shrine” was also uncovered at a depth of 24 meters below the ground level, the deepest shaft found yet. Hawass said digging work will continue until the burial chamber is discovered.
“Inside the shafts, the mission discovered large numbers of archaeological artifacts and a large number of statues that represent deities such as the god Osiris and Ptah-Soker-Osiris,” the antiquities ministry added.
Egypt has carried out extensive digging operations in Saqqara in recent years, which resulted in a string of discoveries, including the unearthing of a 4,400-year-old tomb of royal priest Wahtye in 2018 and the discovery of hundreds of mummified animals and statues a year later.
Tourism & Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Enany said in November that Egypt can “find tombs and burial shafts in every single spot in this area,” referring to Saqqara, which is also home to 13 pyramids.
Egypt is hoping the findings can help revive the vital tourism industry, which took a fresh blow because of the COVID-19 pandemic just when it had begun to recover from the aftermath of uprisings and civil unrest in 2011 and 2013.
Hawass said the latest discoveries in the ancient necropolis will “make Saqqara an important tourist and cultural destination.”
“It will also rewrite the history of Saqqara during the New Kingdom,” he added.
An adorned wooden sarcophagus is displayed during the official announcement of the discovery.
Divers Exploring A 2,300-Year-Old Pyramid Have Found The Underwater Tomb Of A Powerful Pharaoh
Have you ever heard of having to use scuba gear to explore an ancient pyramid? we didn’t either until we came across the story of an archaeologist Pearce Paul Creasman. His story involves the study of an ancient race just as advanced as the Egyptians, who shared the same continent with history and culture just as rich and shrouded in mystery.
Get ready as the richest go underwater to explore the tomb of a pharaoh that once ruled the “kingdom of kush“. Before we dive right into our pyramid diving story, let’s back it up a bit and learn a little bit about pyramids first. Enormous architectural wonders were built all over the world, centuries before modern technology.
Pyramids were used by ancient peoples as both places of worship and as monuments and tombs of the dead. It’s estimated that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 pyramids still standing in the world today, they can be found on every continent on earth except for icy Antarctica. The most famous of course is the Great Pyramids of Giza in Cairo, Egypt. The largest stands at 455 feet. The ancient Egyptians built these amazing structures as tombs and monuments for their pharaohs.
Nuri pyramids.
Over in the Americas, many ancient tribes built step pyramids as temples for worshipping their gods. The famous El Castillo pyramid of Chichen Itza for example was built by the Mayans over eleven hundred years ago in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It was built as a temple to the serpent God Kukulkan.
In ancient Greece the Pyramid of hellinikon was built some 100 years earlier than the Great Pyramids of Egypt, its purpose remains unknown. In China there stands the great white pyramid of XI’AN, we know very little about it as the Chinese government has banned access to the structure but rumor has it that it could be twice the height of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
On the Australian continent there are two possible yet unconfirmed pyramid sites, the Gympie pyramid and Walsh’s pyramid, and as previously mentioned exactly zero on Antarctica, despite a recent debunked story about one the images turned out to be snow-covered pyramidal-shaped mountaintops.
A shabti found in the submerged chamber of a Kushite pyramid.
The country that holds the title for the most pyramids still intact is surprisingly not Egypt but its neighbor to the south on the African continent Sudan. Sudan is home to some two hundred and forty pyramids built by the ancient Cushite people. Sudan and the cushites also happen to be at the center of our archaeological story.
The kingdom of kush also referred to as Nubia was located in northeast Africa just south of ancient Egypt in modern-day Sudan and it had close ties to ancient Egypt. Its main cities were situated along the Nile River and two of its main tributaries the White Nile and the Blue Nile. If not for the formation of these waterways and their proximity to gold and iron ore deposits it’s likely humans would not have settled in this dry desert region.
The kingdom of kush lasted for over 1,400 years. First established circa 1070 BCE when it gained its independence from Egypt. In 727 BCE kush took control of ancient Egypt, ruling it until the Assyrians arrived in the next century.
Once the Roman Empire conquered Egypt, the kingdom of kush began to weaken and eventually collapsed sometime in the 4th century CE. The Cushite was very similar to the ancient Egyptians in many ways, sharing a religion, a form of government, and many aspects of culture.
They worshiped Egyptian gods and mummified their dead and entombed them in pyramids. Aside from the Pharaoh and other rulers the highest class in kush were the religious leaders the priests. Much like their Egyptian neighbor’s religion and a strong belief in the afterlife played an important role in the life of the Cushite people.
The pyramids that the Cushite people built to entomb their pharaohs and other important figures looked very similar to the ancient Egyptian structures. They did have a few key differences though for one they differed in size with the average cushite pyramid standing roughly 6 to 30 meters or 20 to 98 feet high while the average Egyptian pyramid was much taller at roughly 138 meters or 453 feet. There was also one other major difference while the Egyptians burial chambers were located inside the pyramidal structure itself the kush burial chambers were located underneath the pyramids buried below the structure.
One such leader buried in this matter was the Pharaoh Nastasen. He ruled the kingdom of kush from 335 to 310 BCE. The little that we do know about this Nubian King is from writings on stone tablets and a more few artifacts. The writings tell us that the highlight of his reign came when the Pharaoh Nastasen defeated an invasion from Upper Egypt and gained many spoils in his victory.
Once Nastasen crossed into the afterlife he became the last cushites, King, to be buried in the royal cemetery and necropolis at nepata. A glorious graveyard spanning more than seven and a half million square feet.
The site of the royal cemetery in the ancient city of nepata is now Karima, Sudan, located about one mile west of the Nile river bank. Seen from the sky one of its most commanding features is an arc of some twenty pyramids built between 650 BCE and 300 BCE. National Geographics Kristin Romy describes this arc of pyramids as a quote “strung together like gems on a delicate necklace”.
There are more than twenty pyramids at the site overall though. At least 60 Nubian kings and queens are buried there among hundreds of other individuals. The most famous resident is Pharaoh taharqa who ruled all of Egypt during the seventh century BCE. The Pharaoh Nastasen’s twenty-three hundred-year-old pyramid tomb the last of its kind stands at roughly thirty feet or 9.1 meters and was erected at one of the lowest points of elevation at the royal necropolis.
This is one of the reasons why Nastasen’s burial chambers are completely underwater. Why exactly? the pyramid’s proximity to the Nile River combined with both natural and man-made climate change has caused the groundwater levels to rise over the centuries. Submerging the tombs that are cut into the bedrock underneath the pyramids. Due to its low elevation nastasen’s tomb is among the most submerged.
Gold leaf found in the tomb.
Enter archaeologists Pearce Paul Creaseman. Creaseman holds the dual-title of both Egyptologist and underwater archaeologist yes indeed that is a thing, when Creasman first visited the royal cemetery back in 2018 he saw his unique skill set as an opportunity to explore the watery tombs and discover more than what was ever uncovered when the site was first explored nearly a century ago. Back then the water was only knee-deep now the water reached the ceiling of the tomb chambers.
After Creaseman and his team spent the better part of a year digging the staircases leading to nestasen’s tomb out from under sand they put on their scuba gear and headed into the murky waters. Creaseman had to make his way through a series of three chambers. While navigating in water thick with muddy sediment and making vision close to impossible.
When they reached the third and final chamber they discovered a treasure trove of artifacts including gold foil, shabti dolls, funerary figures whom the ancient Nubians believed would accompany the deceased into the afterlife. Also in the chamber the sarcophagus of the pharaoh Nastasen himself. The only problem that ceiling-high muddy water makes excavation and study of these artifacts highly problematic. Creaseman is optimistic though and now packed with experiences and knowing what to expect.
Their aim is to return to the site later in 2020 an attempt to excavate the burial chamber in what they themselves argue is an audacious and logistical challenge. Only then will we know the extent and value of the treasures inside this pyramid and perhaps eventually the dozens of others. Says Christman ” I think we finally have the technology to be able to tell the story of Nuri, to fill in the blanks of what happened here. it’s a remarkable point in history that’s so few know about it. it’s a story that deserves to be told.” So how about you would you take the plunge into those muddy waters to uncover ancient treasures?
Fossil Discovery Suggests the Pyramids and Sphinx Were Submerged Under Water
The entire region of the Giza Necropolis, including the pyramids and the Sphinx, shows erosion that some say suggests the area was once submerged by seawater. A unique fossil amplifies this theory.
For over two decades, archaeologist Sherif El Morsi has worked extensively on the Giza Plateau, and in 2013, he collaborated with founder and fellow scholar Antoine Gigal of Giza for Humanity to publish his controversial discovery of this fossil.
One of the first scientists to actually discuss the issue of plateau systems being older than previously thought was Dr Robert M. Schloch. In the early 1990s, based on water erosion patterns found both on the statue and the surrounding soil, he indicated the Sphinx was thousands of years older than usually thought, dating back to 5000-9000 B.C.
Morsi has been digging deeper into the mystery ever since. During one of his photo shoots documenting the erosion patterns of many of the megaliths in the area, he made a discovery that further suggests the area was submerged at one time.
“During my photoshoot of this ancient seashore line, I nearly tripped off a second level temple block,” said Mr Morsi in an article published on the Gigal Research website.
“To my surprise, the bulge on the top surface of the block that nearly made me the trip was a petrified exoskeleton of what seems to be an echinoid (sea urchin), which is a shallow sea marine creature.”
Morsi believes the Giza Plateau was once inundated by a sea surge. The Menkara temple site, in particular, may have once been an ancient lagoon when the high sea covered the Necropolis, the Sphinx, the temple complexes, and other sites.
Other scientists have suggested the echinoid in the limestone was exposed by erosion and the creature was part of the original limestone that formed 30 million years ago.
But, Morsi countered those claims and suggested that the creature was cemented, or petrified, in a relatively more recent time, citing evidence that the creature is lying gravitationally flat, that it’s in pristine condition, that it is within the intertidal range of the lagoon, and that it is a large specimen unlike the tiny specimens typically found in limestone blocks.
“We can clearly see the pristine condition and minute details of the exoskeleton perforation,” continued Morsi, “which means that this marine creature must have petrified from recent times. It is not a body fossil as most fossils are that date back to 30 million years, but petrified by the sediment deposits that have filled its hollow.”
The fossil was discovered at the Giza plateau. El Morsi and Gigal write: “We can clearly see the pristine condition and minute details of the exoskeleton perforation, which means that this marine creature must have petrified from recent times.”
The inundation, Morsi believes, was rather significant, reaching a maximum of about 245 feet (75 meters) over the current sea level and creating a shoreline spanning the Khafra enclosure near the Sphinx to the Menkara temple.
A rare, ancient photograph of the Sphinx before it was completely excavated.
Pitting and tidal notches due to waves and tidal ebbing pepper the stones in this area showing a 6.5-foot (2-meter) intertidal range, according to Morsi.
Moreover, at sites such as the Sphinx, the Sphinx temple, and the first 20 courses of the Great Pyramid, the stones are said to exhibit erosion due to deeper water saturation.
A Village and the pyramids during the flood-time, circa 1890.
On temple blocks, there are sediment and alluvial, or material, deposits seen in shallow sea beds and lagoons. As the water recedes, it creates an oozing spongy effect in the rock.
For an echinoid to reach 3 inches (8 centimeters), the size of the fossil, it would take about 15 years. Furthermore, the amount of sediments and alluvium deposits, as well as the intertidal erosion on the shallower areas, would takes centuries, suggesting the area was flooded for quite some time.
However, it’s difficult to determine the exact year of the flooding. Over the past 140,000 years, the sea levels have fluctuated by more than 400 feet (120 meters), as major ice sheets have grown and receded during glacial cycles, according to CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research.
Researchers Discover a 2 billion-year-old nuclear reactor in Africa
In June 1972, nuclear scientists at the Pierrelatte uranium enrichment plant in south-east France noticed a strange deficit in the amount of uranium-235 they were processing. That’s a serious problem in a uranium enrichment plant where every gram of fissionable material has to be carefully accounted for.
The problem lay in the ratio of uranium isotopes in their samples. Natural uranium contains three isotopes, always in the same ratios: uranium-238 (99.2744 percent), uranium-235 (0.7202 percent), and uranium-234 (0.0054 percent).
The problem was with the uranium-235 of which there was only 0.600 percent. Physicists soon traced the anomaly to the supply of uranium ore from Gabon in West Africa, which contained far less uranium-235 than the ore from anywhere else on the planet, a problem that caused some consternation among nuclear scientists.
So France’s top nuclear scientists began an investigation and, in the process, made one of the more remarkable discoveries in recent history. This kind of depleted uranium is only found inside nuclear reactors, which burn uranium-235. That set off a hunt for a reactor that could have produced this stuff.
On 25 September 1972, they announced that the depleted uranium had come from Gabon where nuclear scientists had discovered a 2 billion-year-old nuclear reactor at the site of the Oklo uranium mines near a town called Franceville. This was a naturally occurring deposit of uranium where the concentration of uranium-235 had been high enough to trigger a self-sustaining nuclear reaction.
Today, say Edward Davis at Kuwait University and a couple of pals who review the scientific history of the discovery at Oklo, one of the most extraordinary natural phenomena on the planet.
Since its discovery, the Oklo reactor has been a significant driver of important research in nuclear physics. In particular, physicists have used it to study how buried nuclear waste might spread through the environment. And since the reactor began operating some 2 billion years ago, they’ve also used it to study how the universe’s fundamental constants may have changed during that time.
But the first puzzle that physicists had to deal with in 1972 was how a naturally-occurring reactor could work at all. Nuclear scientists well know that reactors do not work with natural uranium because the level of uranium-235 is too low at only 0.7202 percent. Instead, the uranium-235 has to be enriched so that it is about 3.5 percent of the total. So how did so much end up at Oklo?
The Oklo Uranium mine in Gabon. Credit: European Nuclear Organisation
The answer to this puzzle is that uranium-235 has a shorter half-life than other uranium isotopes and so would have been present in much higher quantities in the Earth’s distant past. When the Solar System was created, for example, about 17 percent of uranium would have been the 235 isotopes. That percentage has fallen steadily since then.
When the ore in Gabon was laid down some 2 billion years ago, the concentration of uranium-235 would have been about 4 percent, more than enough for a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The idea is that when a neutron hits an atom of uranium-235, the atom splits producing two smaller nuclei and several neutrons. These neutrons go on to split other atoms in an ongoing chain reaction.
However, the liberated neutrons are high-energy particles that tend to fly away rapidly. So nuclear reactors usually contain a moderating material that slows down the neutrons so that they can interact with other uranium atoms. It turns out that water is a reasonable neutron moderator. So an important component of this natural reactor was the presence of water seeping through the uranium ore. And this had an interesting impact on the way the reactors operated.
Nuclear scientists believe that the Oklo reactors operated in pulses. As water flowed into the rock, it moderated the neutrons, allowing a chain reaction to occur. But this increased the temperature of the rock, boiling the water into steam which escaped. When this happened, the neutrons were no longer able to interact with and split uranium nuclei, and the chain reaction stopped. The rock then cooled allowing water to flow back in.
So the Oklo reactors operated in pulses. Today, nuclear scientists have calculated that the chain reaction probably lasted for 30 minutes and then switched off for about 2.5 hours, a pulsing process that continued for about 300,000 years. While they were on, the reactors were powerful devices. “The reactors likely operated under conditions similar to present-day pressurized water reactor systems, with pressures about 150 atmospheres and temperatures of about 300 degrees C,” said Davis and co.
French nuclear scientists carried out a detailed survey of the Oklo site, discovering not just one reactor zone but up to 17 of them over an area of several tens of square kilometers. Some of these were close to the surface and so had been influenced by weathering processes, while others were at depths of up to 400 meters and were more or less pristine.
In addition to the depleted uranium-235, these zones contained numerous fission fragments such as isotopes of zirconium, yttrium, neodymium, and cerium. The unusual ratios of these isotopes were an important indicator of what had gone on there almost 2 billion years earlier.
The presence of these fission by-products immediately piqued the interest of nuclear scientists, particularly in the US. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the nuclear industry is to find a way to deal with the highly radioactive waste that reactors produce. One idea is to bury it but that raises the question of what would happen to this waste over the millions of years during which it remains toxic.
The Oklo reactors were a natural test of this question. So US scientists, in particular, began a program to measure the way in which different fission products migrated away from the reactor zones. “One of the most important, and surprising, early findings was that uranium and most of the rare earth elements did not experience significant mobilization in the past two billion years,” said Davis and co. “Because the wastes were contained successfully in Oklo, it appears not unrealistic to hope that long term disposal in specially selected and engineered geological repositories can be successful.”
This evidence has since become one of the main arguments in favor of nuclear waste repositories such as the one planned at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Oklo has also become the focus of physicists studying the possibility that the universe’s fundamental constants may have changed over time. The reason that Oklo may be able to help is that it stopped operating over 1.5 billion years ago. So the nuclear processes that occurred at that time must’ve been governed by the fundamental constants as they were then.
In particular, physicists are interested in the fine structure constant which determines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. This in turn determines the way neutrons are absorbed in chain reactions and consequently the yields of different fission products.
The focus of most research has been on the amount of samarium-149 produced by these natural reactors. The data places bounds on how much the constant may have changed in the past. The consensus is that the data is consistent with the fine structure constant being actually constant although it doesn’t rule out tiny changes. Davis and co point out that the Oklo data can also constrain changes in other constants, such as the ratio of light quark masses to the proton mass. To date, this work is consistent with these constants being constant.
The Oklo story ends with a damp squib. After a period of intense interest in the early 1970s, mining continued at Oklo, and eventually, all the natural reactors were mined out. The one exception was a shallow reactor zone at a place called Bangombé, some 30 kilometers from Oklo, although this has largely been washed out by groundwater.
So these zones have been largely lost to science. That’s a shame. It also means that nuclear scientists are unlikely to get better data on natural nuclear reactors using advanced techniques than those available in the 1970s. No other natural reactors have been discovered anywhere on Earth, making Oklo unique. At least for the moment.
5,450 years old Egyptian knife known as Gebel el-Arak, made with an Ivory handle
This unique dagger from the late predynastic period consists of a light silex blade, sculpted using a highly sophisticated technique, and an ivory handle featuring carved bas-relief scenes. It is one of the oldest known examples of bas-relief sculpture.
The themes come from Nilotic as well as Mesopotamian traditions: animals, the hunt, lions overwhelmed by a figure, boats, and human combats.
A luxury object
Everything in this weapon illustrates luxury and technical expertise. The blade, made of extremely high-quality, light ocher slate, reflects an accomplished mastery of stone-cutting techniques. Parallel strips were removed on one side to form a regular pattern.
The other side of the blade is simply polished. Small areas were reworked to form a sharp serrated edge. Egyptian craftsmen used this meticulous technique for a short period only, between 3500 and 3200 BC.
This is the most accomplished example of the silex tool-making technique. Analyses of the handle determined that it is made of a hippopotamus tooth.
Only a small number of ivory dagger handles of this type, decorated with relief carving, exist. These were exceptional works, reserved to an elite.
Detail of warfare depicted on the Gebel el-Arak knife.
Men and animals
Detail of the battle and animal scenes on the Gebel el-Arak Knife.
One side of the richly carved ivory handle displays apparent hunting scenes filled with animals.
The blade is set into a carved hippopotamus tooth and has a central knob with a hole for attaching a cord. On one side is a bearded figure wearing a cap, standing between and subduing two lions. Below are two domesticated dogs and wild animals; a hunter seems to be catching an antelope.
Ripple-flaked side and polished side of the Gebel el-Arak Knife.
The other side depicts combats arranged in several registers. At the top are quasi-nude men wearing penis sheaths, in hand-to-hand combat. At the bottom, dead bodies are strewn between two different types of boats, both in use in Egypt during the Naqada period.
A key work
Animal life, hunting, and boating on the Nile are ancient themes that had already appeared on ceramics and paintings during the Naqada Period.
The bas-relief carving that appeared at this time on large contemporaneous palettes depicted more dynamic and less static scenes than images on earlier traditional ceramic pieces.
Furthermore, the battle theme appeared toward the end of this period, which is why researchers have tried to find a narrative link to historical events.
Today they are interpreted more as referential images, a catalogue of themes that were important to the ruling class during a period when the Egyptian state was taking shape.
As is often the case, certain motifs are variations of those from the contemporaneous Mesopotamian culture, such as the bearded figure of the priest-king (AO5718, AO5719) and the “Master of Animals” figure subduing two beasts. Direct or indirect contacts certainly existed between the two civilizations.
The design of superimposed registers and the conventions used to represent the human figure were used throughout the entire pharaonic period. This object illustrates the shift from the late predynastic period to the birth of the pharaonic civilization.
3-Billion-Year-Old Spheres Found in South Africa: How Were They Made?
In the small town of Ottosdal, in central North West Province of South Africa, miners working in pyrophyllite mines have been digging up mysterious metal spheres known as Klerksdorp Spheres.
This dark reddish-brown, somewhat flattened spheres range in size from less than a centimetre to ten centimetres across, and some of them have three parallel grooves running around the equator.
The most striking examples have the uncanny appearance of being something manufactured. But here is the kicker — these metallic objects have been dated to 3 billion years old, a time when the Earth was too young to host intelligent life capable of creating these spheres.
No wonder, these objects have attracted attention and speculation from not only the scientific community but various fringe groups including creationists and advocates of “ancient astronauts theory”.
Klerksdorp Spheres are often classified as “Out-of-Place Artifacts”, a term coined by an American naturalist and cryptozoologist to indicate objects of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in a very unusual or seemingly impossible context that could challenge conventional historical chronology by being “too advanced” for the level of civilization that existed at the time.
These objects claim to provide evidences that suggest the presence of intelligent beings well before humans were supposed to exist. Klerksdorp Spheres, however, aren’t out-of-place. Neither they are mysterious.
These spheres are actually concretion formed by the precipitation of volcanic sediments, ash, or both after they accumulated 3 billion years ago. Concretions are often ovoid or spherical in shape because of which they are commonly mistaken to be dinosaur eggs, or extraterrestrial debris or human artefacts, in this case.
Examples of calcareous concretions, which exhibit equatorial grooves, found in Schoharie County, New York.
The latitudinal ridges and grooves exhibited by Klerksdorp Spheres are also natural and are known to occur in concretions found elsewhere on earth.
Notable examples include “Moqui marbles” found within the Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah and carbonate concretions found in Schoharie County, New York. Similar concretion as old as 2.8 billion years were also found in Hamersley Group of Australia.
Many false claims have been made regarding these objects. An often-repeated claim is that testing by NASA found the spheres to be so precisely balanced that they could have only been made in zero-gravity.
Not only there is no record of NASA ever saying that the objects aren’t spherical at all as evident from these images.
Another claim is that the spheres are manufactured of a metal “harder than steel”, a statement which is rather meaningless as steel can vary in hardness depending on the type of alloy and treatment.
Specimens of Klerksdorp Spheres are housed in Klerksdorp Museum in Klerksdorp, a city about 70 km away from Ottosdal.
Moqui Marbles, hematite concretions, from the Navajo Sandstone of southeast Utah show similar grooves and shape.
Moeraki Boulders in New Zealand is another example of spherical concretion.
The lost city in the sands: Inside the ancient citadel of the Black Pharaoh’s which has pyramids to rival Egypt.
This is the lost city of Meroë in Sudan, with beautifully maintained pyramids as impressive as their more famous counterparts in Egypt. However, unlike the famed pyramids of Giza, the Sudanese site is largely deserted.
The pyramids at Meroë, some 125 miles north of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, are rarely visited despite being a Unesco World Heritage site.
Sanctions against the government of longtime President Omar al-Bashir over Sudan’s long-running internal conflicts limit its access to foreign aid and donations, while also hampering tourism.
The pyramids bear decorative elements inspired by Pharaonic Egypt, Greece and Rome, according to UNESCO, making them priceless relics, Unlike their more famous counterparts in Giza, Egypt, the Sudanese site is largely deserted and visited by very few tourists each year.
The site, known as the Island of Meroë because an ancient, long-dried river ran around it, once served as the principal residence of the rulers of the Kush kingdom – one of the earliest civilizations in the Nile region – and known as the Black Pharaohs.
Their pyramids, ranging from 20 feet to 100 feet tall, were built between 720 and 300 B.C. The entrances usually face east to greet the rising sun.
‘Egypt doesn’t have the monopoly on pyramids,’ said Eric Lafforgue, a photographer who travels the world documenting tribes.
‘Sudan has many of them and discovers new ones regularly. The most beautiful and impressive pyramids form the Meroë Necropolis.’
The Unesco World Heritage website describes the site as: ‘The heartland of the Kingdom of Kush, a major power from the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D.’
It explains that the property consists of the royal city of the Kushite kings at Meroe and the nearby religious site of Naqa and Musawwarat es Sufra.
Meroë and others bear the marks of more recent history, with many marked out by their flat tops – the result of being dynamited by Italian explorer Giuseppe Ferlini, who is 1834, came and pillaged the site.
The pyramids bear decorative elements inspired by Pharaonic Egypt, Greece, and Rome, according to Unesco, making them priceless relics.
However, overeager archaeologists in the 19th century tore off the golden tips of some pyramids and reduced some to rubble, according to Abdel-Rahman Omar, the head of the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum.
Tourists are few and far between in the forgotten pyramid village of Meroë in Sudan, with around 15,000 visiting a year
The ruins of a kiosk discovered in Naga, a religious site near to the ancient Kush city of Meroe, where the rulers were one of the earliest civilisations in the Nile region
Naga, where this sculpture of a ram was one of many discovered dating back to the first century B.C., forms part of the Unesco world heritage site with Meroe and religious site Musawwarat es Sufra
On a recent day, locals reported just a few tourists and white camels roaming the site, watched by a handful of security guards.
Sudan’s tourism industry has been devastated by economic sanctions imposed over the conflicts in Darfur and other regions.
Al-Bashir’s government, which came to power following a bloodless Islamist coup in 1989, has struggled to care for its antiquities.
Qatar has pledged $135 million to renovate and support Sudan’s antiquities in the last few years. But Mr Omar said Sudan still receives just 15,000 tourists per year.
