A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths
Mysterious bone circles consisting of hundreds of mammoths bones helped scientists understand how people survived the last ice age. According to a new analysis, the bones at one location in Russia were more than 20,000 years old.
25,000-year-old mammoth bone structure, Kostenki, Russia: 12.5 meters in diameter
The wall of the 30 ft building was constructed using a combination of 51 lower jaws and 64 individual mammoth skulls. There were also a small number of reindeers, goats, rabbits, dogs, red foxes, and arctic fox bones.
Researchers said the bones were most likely sourced from animal graveyards.
In the site, which is situated near the current village of Kostenki, some 500 km south of Moscow, an archeologist from Exeter University discovered remains of charred wood and other soft non-woody plants.
It indicates that people used to burn wood as well as bones for fuel, and the communities who lived there had learned where to forage for edible plants during the Ice Age.
Dr. Alexander Pryor, who led the study, said: “Kostenki 11 represents a rare example of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers living on in this harsh environment.
“What might have brought ancient hunter-gatherers to this site?
“One possibility is that the mammoths and humans could have come to the area en masse because it had a natural spring that would have provided unfrozen liquid water throughout the winter – rare in this period of extreme cold.
“These finds shed new light on the purpose of these mysterious sites.
“Archaeology is showing us more about how our ancestors survived in this desperately cold and hostile environment at the climax of the last Ice Age.
“Most other places at similar latitudes in Europe had been abandoned by this time, but these groups had managed to adapt to find food, shelter, and water.”
The last Ice Age swept northern Europe between 75-18,000 years ago and reached its coldest and most severe state around 23-18,000 years ago.
Most communities fled the region, likely due to a lack of prey to hunt and scarce plant resources they depended upon for survival, the scientists said.
The bone circles, of which more than 70 are known to exist in Ukraine and the west Russian planes, were eventually abandoned as the climate grew colder and more inhospitable.
Archaeologists previously assumed the circular mammoth bone structures were used as dwellings, but the new study, published in the journal Antiquity, suggests this may not always have been the case.
Prehistoric ‘Mantis Man’ Petroglyph Discovered In Iran
A rare rock carving found in Central Iran’s Teymareh rock art site (Khomein county) in Central Iran with six limbs has been described as part man, part mantis.
Invertebrate animals ‘ rock carvings, or petroglyphs, are rare, and entomologists have teamed up with archeologists to try and identify the motif.
We associated the carvings with others around the world and with the local six-legged creatures which its prehistoric artists could have encountered.
Entomologists Mahmood Kolnegari, Islamic Azad University of Arak, Iran; Mandana Hazrati, Avaye Dornaye Khakestari Institute, Iran; and Matan Shelomi, National Taiwan University teamed up with a freelance archaeologist and rock art expert Mohammad Naserifard and describe the petroglyph in a new paper published in the open-access Journal of Orthoptera Research.
The 14-centimeter carving was first spotted during surveys between 2017 and 2018, but could not be identified due to its unusual shape.
The Teymareh rock art site in central Iran (Markazi Province, Iran), where the petroglyph was found
The six limbs suggest an insect, while the triangular head with big eyes and the grasping forearms are unmistakably those of a praying mantid, a predatory insect that hunts and captures prey like flies, bees and even small birds.
An extension on its head even helps narrow the identification to a particular genus of mantids in this region: Empusa.
Even more mysterious are the middle limbs, which end in loops or circles. The closest parallel to this in archaeology is the ‘Squatter Man,’ a petroglyph figure found around the world depicting a person flanked by circles.
While they could represent a person holding circular objects, an alternative hypothesis is that the circles represent auroras caused by atmospheric plasma discharges.
It is presently impossible to tell exactly how old the petroglyphs are because sanctions on Iran prohibit the use of radioactive materials needed for radiocarbon dating. However, experts Jan Brouwer and Gus van Veen examined the Teymareh site and estimated the carvings were made 40,000–4,000 years ago.
One can only guess why prehistoric people felt the need to carve a mantis-man into rock, but the petroglyph suggests humans have linked mantids to the supernatural since ancient times.
As stated by the authors, the carving bears witness, “that in prehistory, almost as today, praying mantids were animals of mysticism and appreciation.”
Sarkubeh village (Markazi province, Iran) is the closes to the studied site human habitation
Scientists Extracted Liquid Blood From 42,000-Year-Old Foal Found in Siberian Permafrost
On an expedition to the Batagaika crater in Siberia a team of Mammoth tusk hunters uncovered the nearly preserved remains of a 42,000-year-old foal.
Instead, the young foal showed no signs of external damage, retaining its fur, tail and hooves and the hair on its leg and head, has preserved by the permafrost of the region or permanently frozen ground.
The Siberian Times reports that Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University and the Biotech sooam researcher in South Korea extracted blood and urine from the specimen, paving the way for further analysis aimed at cloning the long-dead horse and resurrecting the extinct Lenskaya lineage to which it belongs.
Scientists will take viable cells from the blood samples and grow them in the laboratory in order to clone the animal. Perhaps they will consider looking at SciQuip’s range of incubators to stimulate the growth of the cells.
Over the past month, scientists have made more than 20 unsuccessful attempts to extract viable cells from the foal’s tissue (Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University)
This task is harder said than done. More than 20 attempts to grow cells from foal’s tissue have been made by the team over the past month, but they were all unsuccessful, according to a recent report from the Siberian Times. Russian researcher Lena Grigoryeva said that the participants remain “positive about the outcome.”
The fact that the horse still has hair makes it one of the most well-preserved Ice Age animals ever found, Grigoryev tells CNN’s Gianluca Mezzofiore, adding, “Now we can say what color was the wool of the extinct horses of the Pleistocene era.”
In life, the foal boasted a bay-colored body and a black tail and mane. Aged just one to two weeks old at the time of his death, the young Lenskaya, or Lena horse, met the same untimely demise as many similarly intact animals trapped in permafrost for millennia.
The scientists extracted liquid blood samples from the 42,000-year-old animal’s heart vessels (Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University)
The foal likely drowned in a “natural trap” of sorts-namely, mud that later froze into permafrost, Semyon Grigoryev of Yakutia’s Mammoth Museum told Russian news agency TASS, as reported by the Siberian Times.
“A lot of mud and silt which the foal gulped during the last seconds of the foal’s life were found inside its gastrointestinal tract,” Grigoryev says.
Researchers collect liquid blood from the ice age foal found frozen in Siberian permafrost.
This is only the second time researchers have extracted liquid blood from the remains of prehistoric creatures. In 2013, a group of Russian scientists accomplished the same feat using the body of a 15,000-year-old female woolly mammoth discovered by Grigoryev and his colleagues in 2013, as George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo.
(It’s worth noting that the team studying the foal has also expressed hopes of cloning a woolly mammoth.) Significantly, the foal’s blood is a staggering 27,000 years older than this previous sample.
The NEFU and South Korean scientists behind the new research are so confident of their success that they have already begun searching for a surrogate mare to carry the cloned Lena horse and, in the words of the Siberian Times, fulfill “the historic role of giving birth to the comeback species.”
It’s worth noting, however, that any acclaim is premature and, as Dvorsky writes, indicative of the “typical unbridled enthusiasm” seen in the Russian news outlet’s reports.
Speaking with CNN’s Mezzofiore, Grigoryev himself expressed doubts about the researcher’s chances, explaining, “I think that even the unique preservation of blood is absolutely hopeless for cloning purposes since the main blood cells … do not have nuclei with DNA.”
He continued, “We are trying to find intact cells in muscle tissue and internal organs that are also very well-preserved.”
What the Siberian Times fails to address are the manifold “ethical and technological” questions raised by reviving long-gone species. Among other concerns, according to Dvorsky, scientists have cited the clone’s diminished quality of life, issues of genetic diversity and inbreeding, and the absence of an adequate Ice Age habitat.
It remains to be seen whether the Russian-South Korean team can actually deliver on its ambitious goal. Still, if the purported July 2018 resurrection of two similarly aged 40,000-year-old roundworms “defrosted” after millennia in the Arctic permafrost is any indication, the revival of ancient animals is becoming an increasingly realistic possibility.
A Farmer in India stumble upon something, that turns out to be a 5,000-year-old chariot
Farmers discovered fragments of pottery beside an ancient human skeleton in the village of Sinauli in Uttar Pradesh, India. The farmers didn’t know that it was an ancient burial ground dating back to the late Harappan period, about 5000 years ago. The Archeological Survey of India was quick to take up the sites for examination.
The excavations yielded findings that included 126 skeletons, bead necklaces, copper spearheads, gold ornaments, and a few anthropomorphic figures which were typical of Harappan settlements.
And since then Sinauli has been an intriguing site, as the findings can connect the dots and solve, at least, one possible shroud of the mystery of the past.
ASI has unearthed eight burial sites, the remains of two chariots and several artifacts, including three coffins, antenna swords, daggers, combs, and ornaments, among others. But what makes it so special
ASI has unearthed eight burial sites, the remains of two chariots and several artifacts, including three coffins, antenna swords, daggers, combs, and ornaments, among others.
Officials told The Times of India that the three chariots found in burial pits indicate the possibility of “royal burials” while other findings confirm the population of a warrior class here.
SK Manjul, Co-Director of Excavations and ASI’s Institute of Archaeology, Delhi told the publication, “The discovery of a chariot puts us on a par with other ancient civilizations, like Mesopotamia, Greece, etc. where chariots were extensively used. It seems a warrior class thrived in this region in the past.”
The findings of the Copper-Bronze age dating back to 2000-1800 BC, have opened up further research opportunities into the area’s history and culture.
The chariots and the coffins particularly intriguing as there have never been findings that dated this long ago. Further, the discovered coffins were found to be decorated with copper motifs, which has never been seen before.
The remains of the ancient chariot (Left) and the buried corpse (Right).
“For the first time in the entire subcontinent, we have found this kind of a coffin. The cover is highly decorated with eight anthropomorphic figures. The sides of the coffins are also decorated with floral motifs,” Manjul said.
Combined with this, the swords, daggers, shields, and helmet seem to suggest the existence of a warrior class with expertise in sophisticated craftsmanship.
The Copper weapons (left) and artifacts (right) unearthed in the site.
While it is difficult to ascertain the new findings unlike the 2005 ones, Manjul asserted that the chariots and coffins did not belong to the Harappan civilization.
He said the similarities could have been an outcome of the migration of the Harappans to the Yamuna and the upper planes during the late mature Harappan era.
In conclusion, Manjul told The Print, “The new discoveries, especially those of the chariots are a landmark moment since no such physical evidence has been found at a contemporary Harappan site.”
Chinese Boy Accidentally Finds 66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs
The Beijing Youth Daily revealed that a 9-year-old primary school student from Heyuan, South China’s Guangdong province, accidentally discovered what he suspected to be a dinosaur egg fossil while playing with his mom on the downtown riverbank.
Third-grade Zhang Yangzhe (pictured) made the extraordinary discovery while playing on the embankment of Dong River in Heyuan, southern China’s Guangdong Province
Huang Zhiqing, deputy director of the research department of Heyuan Dinosaur Museum, said they rushed to the scene with police after receiving the news.
A total of 11 “stone eggs” each about 9 centimeters in diameter were excavated, later verified as dinosaur eggs all dating back to the late Cretaceous age, according to the local museum.
Huang Zhiqing said houses were built at the place where the dinosaur eggs were discovered, so the soil softens as time flies. Dinosaur egg fossils that remain in good condition despite water and erosion are extremely rare.
Huang Zhiqing said the museum will organize manpower to clean and repair these dinosaur egg fossils. They will also find an appropriate time to re-examine and further excavate the abutment.
“Maybe we will discover new things,” Huang Zhiqing said.
Li said the child’s recognition of the dinosaur egg is inseparable from his education.
“Maybe because of the city’s environment, he is full of curiosity about everything related to dinosaurs,” she said, adding that he goes to libraries and museums to search for information he is curious about.
S. Korea identifies 4 Korean War soldiers from remains found in DMZ
The bones of the soldier and its relics were excavated in arrowhead ridge in the central section of the inter-Korean border in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province, a region of heinous battles in the 1950-53 Korean War that is now inside the Demilitarized Zone.
This photo, provided by the defense ministry on March 9, 2020, shows the remains of a South Korean soldier who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War. The remains were found at Arrowhead Ridge inside the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas during an eight-month government excavation project that ended in November 2019.
The Ministry for Defense, on Monday, has just named four soldiers killed in a war that has been identified.
A sergeant first class, a staff sergeant and two sergeants are believed to have died in the fourth battle that took place on Arrowhead Ridge, now inside the DMZ, about two weeks before a truce ending the Korean War was signed July 27, 1953.
A National Defense Agency for Killed in Action Recovery and Identification (MAKRI) taskforce conducted excavation work on the ridge, a central section of the inter-Korean border in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province, between April and November last year.
The team identified another three soldiers last year.
“Numerous items were found with the remains of the four soldiers, such as water bottles, ammunition, identification tags, insignias, certificates, bayonets, combat shoes, and helmets,” the team said in a press release.
“The four soldiers participated in the Korean War at the age of twenty. Among them, three were married and each had a child left behind with their wives.”
The team said the identification of the dead soldiers was possible thanks to genetic sampling conducted on around 40,000 bereaved family members. But it said it still needs to collect more samples.
Through the excavation conducted last year, the team found about 2,000 bones believed to be from over 260 soldiers as well as 67,000 war items in the DMZ area.
It is estimated that there the remains of over 10,000 war dead are in the area.
90,000-year-old human hybrid found in ancient cave
The idea of free love seems to have started even earlier than in the 1960s. A small bone fragment belonging to an ancient hominin called “Denny” by the team, who had a mother Neanderthal and a dad Denisovan-the two nearest extinct relatives of the living humans today, was discovered in an international team of researchers.
90,000-year-old bones provide the first direct evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and their close relatives the Denisovans.
The two races have been known to live on the Eurasian Mixed Continent, Neanderthals in the west of the continent until some 40,000 years ago and Denisovans in the east.
Previous genetic studies of ancient hominin remains have shown that they sometimes interbred, but Denny is the only known example of a first-generation child with equal parts Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA.
The bone fragment was found in 2012 at Denisova Cave in Russia and taken to the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig for genetic analysis, after being identified as a hominin bone due to its protein composition. It is thought that the bone is a fragment of the arm or leg of a young female, who would have been aged around 13 when she died some 90,000 years ago.
“It is striking that we find this Neanderthal/Denisovan child among the handful of ancient individuals whose genomes have been sequenced,” said Prof Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute. “Neanderthals and Denisovans may not have had many opportunities to meet. But when they did, they must have mated frequently – much more so than we previously thought.”
Genetic analysis of the bone indicates that the mother was more closely related to the 55,000-year-old Neanderthal remains found in the Vindija Cave in western Europe than those of another, the so-called Altai Neanderthal, that lived in the Denisova Cave at an earlier date. This means that Neanderthals must have at some point traveled between western and eastern Europe.
The team also found evidence in the genome that the Denisovan father had at least one Neanderthal ancestor further back in his family tree – between 8,000 and 17,000 years before Denny lived.
“An interesting aspect of this genome is that it allows us to learn things about two populations – the Neanderthals from the mother’s side, and the Denisovans from the father’s side,” said Dr. Fabrizio Mafessoni, also from the Max Planck Institute.
A reconstruction of what the Neanderthal-Denisovan Denny might have looked like when she was alive
Expert comment
Rebecca Wragg Sykes – Archaeologist based at the Université de Bordeaux
It’s hard to overstate the importance of finding Denny. A decade ago we had no clue that her father’s people even existed, much less that children like her existed.
In May 2010 the first Neanderthal genome was published, proving that rather than usurping them, early Homo sapiens made babies with them. But just the month before, samples from a tiny finger bone in Denisova Cave, Siberia revealed an entirely new hominin species.
Now known as D3, this bone was at least 10,000 years younger than Denny. Thanks to ancient DNA, today we’ve identified five Denisovans. But we know more about their history as a species than we do about their technology or even their appearance. Some of them had genes for dark hair, skin, and eyes, but how tall they were or what their faces were like are mysteries.
Despite all samples so far coming from one site, they were far from isolated. Both they and Neanderthals bred with H. sapiens, but in different times and places. Asians and Native Americans have more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans, which might reflect more interaction in that region, or elsewhere in a group which later moved eastwards.
Denisovan blood is even more unevenly distributed: living populations of Oceania and Australia have up to 25 times more than anywhere else. It’s clear we’re seeing only a fraction of the true picture.
Another extinction theory may soon bite the dust
Neanderthals and Denisovans weren’t shy of each other, either. D3’s genes showed interbreeding tens of thousands of years before she died. Denny’s father’s forebears were also making babies with Neanderthals up to 17,000 years earlier. Intriguingly, those far-off encounters were with a Neanderthal lineage different from that of Denny’s mother.
Finding the child of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan should make us sit up and think. Until now, most evidence has pointed to small, localized populations in both species. Added to this, studies mapping the distances that stone tools were moved from their source pointed to relatively limited territories.
On this basis, dominant theories emphasized Neanderthals as socially ‘exclusive’: avoiding outsiders, limited to topographic, cultural and genetic valleys. If that’s true, it’s unlikely we would ever find the result of such an encounter, so Denny is telling us something about these models is wrong.
Populations were likely small, so the startling fact of Denny’s parentage means the other part of the equation must be wrong: Denisovans and Neanderthals must have been quite keen on strangers. But how did populations who were happy to blend stay so distinct genetically? One theory is that mixed children had a tougher time reproducing, but we just don’t know yet.
Why does this matter? One of the most influential ideas about why the Neanderthals disappeared is that H. sapiens had more extensive territories – if we map the distances stone tools were carried, early H. sapiens come out ahead. But finding Denny strongly suggests stone tool mobility can’t be a real measure of sociability. Another extinction theory may soon bite the dust.
There are carvings found in the Angkor Wat temples that seem to resemble dinosaurs.
By the time that our ape ancestors split from the line that would produce chimpanzees, which happened about 4 million to 7 million years ago, non-avian dinosaurs had been extinct for more than 58 million years.
Birds, the descendants of one group of small theropod dinosaurs, are the only dinosaurs that survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. There are a number of people who reject the scientific view, however, and insist that humans and dinosaurs once lived together within the last 10,000 years or so.
These “young Earth creationists” twist Biblical passages to support their view that Tyrannosaurus rex lived peacefully in the Garden of Eden. They also supplement their beliefs with some rather spurious evidence—like a carving found on a Cambodian temple.
The famous ‘Tomb Raider’ doorway, Ta Prohm Temple, Angkor, Cambodia.
It is not known precisely when the carving was first noticed, but during the past several years, creationist groups have been a-twitter about a supposed carving of a Stegosaurus on the popular Ta Prohm temple in Cambodia. (The story recently reappeared on the “All News Web” site, an internet tabloid that specializes in tales of UFOs and other humbugs.) Since the temple was built around the end of the 12th century, some take this bas relief to suggest that Stegosaurus, or something Stegosaurus-like, survived until a few hundred years ago.
While certainly not proving their view that dinosaurs and humans were created together less than 10,000 years ago, it is consistent with their beliefs and is a favorite piece of evidence among creationists.
There is a substantial problem, however. Not only does creationism distort nature to fit a narrow theological view, but there is also no evidence that the carving in question is of a dinosaur.
If you look at the carving quickly and at an angle, yes, it does superficially look like a Stegosaurus than a kindergartener made out of play-doh.
As anyone who has spent time watching the clouds go by knows, though, an active imagination can turn something plain into something fantastic. If viewed directly, the carving hardly looks Stegosaurus-like at all. The head is large and appears to have large ears and a horn.
The Ta Prohm ‘dinosaur’.
The “plates” along the back more closely resemble leaves, and the sculpture is a better match for a boar or rhinoceros against a leafy background.
Even so, the sculpture only vaguely looks like a rhino or boar. We can be certain that it is not a representation of a living Stegosaurus, but could it be a more recent attempt at depicting a dinosaur? Indeed, it is quite possible that this carving has been fabricated.
There are many sculptures at the temple, and the origin of the carving in question is unknown. There are rumors that it was created recently, perhaps by a visiting movie crew (the temple is a favorite locale for filmmakers), and it is possible that someone created something Stegosaurus-like during the past few years as a joke.
Either way, the temple carving can in no way be used as evidence that humans and non-avian dinosaurs coexisted.
The Ta Prohm ‘dinosaur’ amongst other carvings.
Fossils have inspired some myths (see Adrienne Mayor’s excellent book The First Fossil Hunters), but close scrutiny of geological layers, reliable radiometric dating techniques, the lack of dinosaur fossils in strata younger than the Cretaceous, and other lines of evidence all confirm that non-avian dinosaurs became extinct tens of millions of years before there was any type of culture that could have recorded what they looked like.
As scientist Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, and in the case of modern dinosaurs the evidence just isn’t there.
