Rusty Blade Found In An Attic Turns Out To Be A Priceless Samurai Sword From The 12th Century.
The kohoki blade pulled from the attic of the Kasuga Taisha shrine.
If you’ve ever thought that your attic was just full of old junk, you may want to think again.
A rusty blade pulled from an attic decades ago was just revealed to be one of the oldest Japanese samurai swords in existence.
The sword was found covered in rust, in the attic of the Kasuga Taisha shrine in Japan.
Though the discovery of the sword actually took place in 1939, it was only this year that the shrine’s officials realized what the blade actually was.
During a ceremony that takes place every 20 years, the officials sharpened the blades to honor the traditional ceremony of shrine building.
When the blade was cleaned, the sword was discovered to be from the 12th century, making it one of the oldest in existence.
The kohoki blade is believed to be from the 12th century.
The 32-inch sword, known as a kohoki, was likely an heirloom sword, made for a samurai and passed down through his family.
Experts believe it was crafted during the Heian Period (794-1185) and given to the shrine as a gift sometime between the Nanboku-Cho Period (1336-1392) and the Muromachi Period (1338-1573).
The blade has a characteristic curved shape, which helped experts date it, as ancient Japanese swords, found in ruins or other temples, were known to be straight.
As well as the blade itself, experts have been studying the handle and the exterior portions of the sword.
Though there is no craftsman signature, some experts believe that the blade could have been made by a famed swordsmith known as Yasutsuna, as blades are known to have been made by him carry some of the same patterns as the kohoki.
Along with the kohoki, 12 other blades were found in the Kasuga Taisa shrine’s attic, though none as ancient or valuable as the kohoki.
After it was cleaned and examined, the sword was placed on display at the Kasugataisha Museum at the Kasuga Taisha shrine, where it will stay through the end of March.
The World’s Second Longest Wall, Kumbhalgarh Fort, is Right Here in India
We are all familiar with China’s Great Wall, the biggest wall ever constructed. It is a wall with a multitude of tales, including different historical and mythological assessments. In the past, Chinese inmates have been sent to serve their sentence.
It is likely that fewer individuals have heard about the Kumbhalgarh Fort and its adjacent wall, commonly agreed to be the world’s second-largest wall.
Kumbhalgarh is a place nestled in the western portion of India between 13 towering mountain peaks. More specifically, it can be found in Rajasthan State, approximately 50 miles from Udaipur City.
Found among the mountaintops, the Kumbhalgarh Fort is a 15th-century masterpiece built by Rana Kumbha. The site also counts as the birthplace of one of the greatest Mewar rulers and warriors are known as Maharana Pratap. However, this area was considered to be of high strategic importance long before the Kumbha dynasty came to prominence.
The very first fort to occupy the spot at Kumbhalgarh was there as early as the 6th century. Back then, it was King Samprati of the Maura Age who constructed it.
A majority of historians consider him a peace-loving ruler, and a very courageous king. He had managed to establish several Jain centers across different Arab countries, as well as Iran.
Kumbhalgarh is one of the many forts built by Maharana Kumbha (or just Rana Kumbha), under who Mewar had its greatest development
The massive gate of Kumbhalgarh fort called the Ram Pol (Ram Gate).
Many fondly call it “The Great Wall of India.”
It is not very clear though what happened in the region or with the site of the fort until the beginning of the 14th century. At that point, it was Alauddin Khiljii who occupied the area. He was one of the greatest Muslim rulers by far, running successful campaigns on the Indian subcontinent and acquiring territories that reached the most southern parts of it.
Kumbhalgarh, as it is today, was built and ruled by the Kumbha dynasty, which eventually brought prosperity and progress to the region. Unlike the Great Wall of China, which took more than 1,800 years to complete, the Great Wall of India, as the Kumbhalgarh is often referred to, took just a little less than a century to finish.
The wall extends over roughly 22 miles, while its width varies between 15 and 25 feet, which is still enough to accommodate up to eight horses across it positioned side by side. Moreover, Kumbhalgarh Fort also makes for the second most important fort in the area, coming after the Chittorgarh Fort.
Occupying its spot in the wilderness atop a hill, Kumbhalgarh sits at around 3,280 feet above sea level. The building activities had commenced in 1443 AD and the story goes that at first, it was very difficult for Kumbha to make the wall stand strong and tall.
Kumbhalgarh is also the birthplace of Maharana Pratap, a great king, and warrior of Mewar.
Aerial view of Kumbhalgarh
Legend has it that a couple of attempts were made to build the wall, but nothing really worked out. That is, until the moment a spiritual teacher supposedly came to give advice, saying that someone had to sacrifice their life in order for the wall to be successfully accomplished.
Several versions of the legend exist, and all of them tell of a different character who happened to sacrifice his life for the fort; either it was a pilgrim or a soldier, or the spiritual teacher and the pilgrim were one and the same person.
A person was chosen and beheaded in ritual practice, and the temple was constructed supposedly at the same spot where his head fell.
Distant view of the Kumbhalgarh Fort walls.
In remembrance of this significant sacrifice, there is a shrine and a temple named as “Hanuman Pol” today, standing at the main gate of the fortress, which is one of seven gates in total that guard the locality.
The complex incorporates at least 360 temples in its boundaries, including Jain and Hindu ones, as well as a prominent watchtower. The Badal Mahal Palace is certainly one of the most remarkable edifices of all within the complex, standing out with its beautiful green, white, and turquoise colors.
Jain Temples in the fort
Shiva temple inside Kumbhalgarh Fort.
Throughout its long history, Kumbhalgarh parted the kingdoms of Mewar and Marwar for a great period of time, serving as the ultimate refuge of several Mewar rulers.
Over the course of five centuries or more, Kumbhalgarh has been occupied only once, and it took the combined effort of several armies to occupy the locality. The occupation lasted for a mere two days, and apparently, it all happened because all the water resources had allegedly run out back at the fort.
Significant renovation on Kumbhalgarh took its course during the 19th century. At present, the site is opened for visitors to explore, whether that means reaching the most remote parts of the wall, or by just taking a look at the most mesmerizing view that opens from its most accessible point.
A Scientist Claims The World’s Oldest Pyramid Is Hidden in an Indonesian Mountain
When Dutch colonists became the first Europeans to discover Gunung (Mount) Padang in the early 20th century, they must have been awestruck by the sheer scale of their ancient stone surroundings.
Here, scattered across a vast hilltop in the West Java province of Indonesia, lay the remnants of a massive complex of rocky structures and monuments – an archaeological wonder since described as the largest megalithic site in all of Southeastern Asia.
But those early settlers couldn’t have guessed the greatest wonder of all might lay hidden, buried deep in the ground below their feet.
A Shocking Discovery At Gunung Padang
A close-up of the volcanic stones at Gunung Padang.
Located in the West Java Province of Indonesia, Gunung Padang doesn’t look like a pyramid. It looks like a large hill covered in broken columns of ancient volcanic rock, a kind of prehistoric graveyard where all the tombstones have been knocked down.
For many years, that’s all archeologists thought the site was. The Dutch colonizers who came across it in 1914 identified it as an ancient megalithic site, the remains of some stone monument prehistoric peoples had cobbled together on raised ground for a purpose lost to time.
While it was the largest megalithic site in Indonesia, it wasn’t nearly as significant as those in other places, and its stones weren’t the oldest; they were dated to around 2,500 years ago. Interest in the site was limited — that is, until 2010, when Danny Hilman Natawidjaja arrived on the scene.
The Gunung Padang site in the summer.
Hilman, a researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, thought there was more to the site than anyone suspected — and he was going to prove it. He would later tell LiveScience, “It’s not like the surrounding topography, which is very much eroded. This looks very young. It looked artificial to us.”
Using careful excavations and remote sensing techniques like ground-penetrating radar and seismic tomography, he and his team got to work.
What they found stunned the archeological community. The majority of the 100-meter hill is man-made — and it’s not actually a hill at all. It’s a terraced pyramid, built up over millennia by the oldest civilizations the world has yet discovered.
Pulling Back The Layers Of The World’s Oldest Pyramid
The Gunung Padang archeological site.
The structure under the hill appears to be massive: researchers estimate that it’s as much as three times larger than Java’s famous Borobudur Temple Compounds. But what purpose it served and whether there’s a tomb at its heart remain a mystery. Gunung Padang doesn’t give up its secrets easily.
The enigma is largely a result of the pyramid’s complexity: the site was inhabited and reworked multiple times, as evidenced by its distinctive layers.
The level just below the hill’s grassy modern surface appears to have been constructed by a society that occupied the region around 600 BCE. But they weren’t the first on the scene — not even close.
A diagram of the layers within the pyramid.
That society was simply papering over the work of another civilization, this one dating back to 4,700 BCE. Their work is buried some four or five meters below the surface.
And yet this group, too, was building off what their forebears had already done. Digging deeper into the hill reveals an entirely new layer, this one roughly 10 meters below the surface, that dates back to around 10,000 BCE.
The heart of the pyramid, the deepest layer, appears to have been constructed over millennia, with the oldest bits hailing from as far back as 25,000 BCE.
The Gunung Padang site in Indonesia.
If the carbon dating on this deepest section is correct, then Gunung Padang didn’t just beat the pyramids — it clocks in ahead of the first recognized civilization in Mesopotamia. It shows evidence of a settled society 12,000 years before the agricultural revolution.
The society that first built at the site of Gunung Padang even predates the last Ice Age, which ended in 11,500 BCE — a date that archaeologists have traditionally used to mark the beginning of the great human civilizations.
Nationalism And Skeptics Play Politics With Gunung Padang
Visitors explore the Gunung Padang site.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the discovery has been controversial. The nature of the find alone makes the stakes enormously high: Indonesia may be home to the earliest advanced civilization the world has ever uncovered. The find is a source of enormous pride to the Indonesian people and especially the government, which has spared no expense on the excavation.
Yet some suggest this enthusiasm has led Hilman and his team to come up with biased interpretations of the evidence they’ve uncovered. The team’s carbon dating procedures have fallen under scrutiny, and some believe the results don’t mean what the researchers claim they do.
Also raising eyebrows are the remains of what researchers believe was an ancient cement mixture used to glue Gunung Padang’s stones together. Its composition, a combination of clay, iron, and silica, suggests that iron-melting technology was in use well before the beginning of the Iron Age, drawing a picture of a society far more advanced than any other known to have existed at the time.
Several scientists, however, have spoken out against this conclusion, saying that the mortar isn’t necessarily man-made; similar compositions are found in nature. Vulcanologist Sutikno Bronto doesn’t even believe the structure is a pyramid: he thinks it’s the neck of a volcano near the site.
As this view of Mount Bromo illustrates, Java is a land of volcanoes — which has led some to suspect that the pyramid of Gunung Padang is really just the neck of one of the region’s many volcanoes.
There’s also the fact that nearby excavations haven’t turned up similar results. Less than 30 miles away, ancient bone tools dating back to 7,000 BCE were discovered in a cave. For some, it’s hard to believe that the builders of Gunung Padang could have been advanced enough to build pyramids while their closest neighbors were still carving tools from the bone.
Proponents of Hilman’s conclusions have suggested the answers might lie beneath the waves of the Java Sea. Millennia ago, when sea levels were lower, the ocean bed was land — and perhaps the home of the great society the research team envisions. But the sea has since swallowed the evidence of their existence, making concrete proof difficult to find.
In short, though Hilman and his researchers have put forward a compelling challenge to those who believe the prehistoric peoples of 20,000 years ago were simple hunter-gatherers, many remain unconvinced. The hunt for evidence continues, and the debate rages on.
Stolen 12th century Indian Buddha statue found in London
In what was held up as an example of India-UK collaboration across all sectors, Britain’s Metropolitan Police recently marked India’s Independence Day by handing back a rare Buddha sculpture stolen from India in 1961.
A bronze Buddha statue of the 12th century stolen from an Indian museum 57 years ago has surfaced in London and is now returning to the country.
The bronze statue with silver inlay is one of 14 statues stolen in 1961 from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) site museum in Nalanda and changed several hands over the years before surfacing at a London auction.
Once the dealer and the owner were made aware the sculpture was the same one that had been stolen from India, the Metropolitan Police said they cooperated fully with the Met’s Art and Antiques Unit and agreed for the piece to be returned to India.
“I am delighted to return this piece of history. This is an excellent example of the results that can come with close cooperation between law enforcement, trade and scholars,” said Met Police Detective Chief Inspector Sheila Stewart, who was accompanied by officials from the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport at the handover ceremony.
“Although this was stolen over 50 years ago, this did not prevent the piece being recognised and the credit must go to the eagle eye informants who made us aware that the missing piece had been located after so many years,” she said.
The statue was identified at a trade fair in March this year by Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) and Vijay Kumar from the India Pride Project, who then alerted the police. Sinha described the return of the “priceless Buddha” as a “wonderful gesture” and a particular honour given his own roots in Bihar.
“I hope it will now go back to where it originally belongs… On our Independence Day, it [return of the statue] highlights the multi-faceted cooperation between our two countries,” he said, after a Tricolour-hoisting ceremony to mark India’s 72nd Independence Day at the Indian High Commission in London.
Detective Constable Sophie Hayes, of the Met’s Art and Antique Unit, said it had been established that there was no criminality by the current owner or the dealer who had been offering the stolen statue for sale.
“Indeed, from the outset, they have cooperated fully with the police to resolve this matter and they have made the decision to return the sculpture via the police,” Hayes said. “We are delighted to be able to facilitate the return of this important piece of cultural heritage to India,” she added.
The Art and antique Unit was founded 50 years ago and are one of the oldest specialist units in the Metropolitan Police Service. The unit prides itself on a “long history of reuniting owners with their stolen property”.
Michael Ellis, UK Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, said: “As we celebrate India’s Independence Day, I am proud to highlight the latest example of the UK’s cultural diplomacy in action.
Thanks to the work of the Metropolitan Police’s Arts and Antiques Unit, we are one of the first countries to recover one of the 14 elusive Buddha statues stolen from Nalanda nearly 60 years ago.
“This underlines how law enforcement and the London art market are working hand in hand to deliver positive cultural diplomacy to the world.”
Valuable artefacts have been stolen from India over the centuries by colonial plunderers. However, the latest case involved a notorious smuggling ring. The model of a seated Indian God Vishnu was one of 14 statues taken from an archaeological museum in Nalanda, eastern India.
It is believed to have changed hands several times before it was unsuspectingly offered for sale and both the owner and the dealer agreed for it to be returned to India, for it to return to the place it was snatched from.
The recovered relic is a delicate artwork that depicts Buddha in the Bhumisparsha mudra —seated, with his right hand resting over his right knee, reaching toward the ground and touching his lotus throne.
The gesture symbolises the moment that Buddha summoned the earth as a witness to his enlightenment, and it is commonly represented in Buddhist iconography.
It was created using the specialist “lost wax” technique, which involves a wax model being made which can be used only once, as the wax melts away when the molten bronze is poured into the mould. This makes the statue an extremely unique piece of art and part of India’s ancient tradition.
The identity of the dealer and fair have been kept under wraps.
Ancient Underground ‘City’ Investigated By Iranian Archaeologists
Archeologists in Iran Open the Door to An Ancient Underground City
There are underground cities all over the planet, there are as many as 200 underground cities in Turkey alone.
That’s finding more subterranean cities in other parts of the world doesn’t come as a surprise.
Now, it has been reported how a group of archeologists has managed to open a door to an ancient underground city in Iran.
The underground city of Saleh Abad
The exact age of the underground city remains debatable, but archeologists estimate its anywhere between 800 to 1000 years old.
Scholars say that the subterranean city of Saleh Abad was most likely built in the 12th or 13th century when the Ilkhanate dynasty ruled the area.
During the initial works, ceramic pieces from that period were recovered among other artifacts.
Ahmad Torabi, a provincial tourism official who participated in the opening of the door to the city points out that the place was not made public when it was found three years ago in order to prevent possible looting before researchers could study the site.
“Now we need more time to investigate and explore this area,” Torabi said, explaining that the underground city may even have been used in modern times during World War II when entire families used it to hide from the Soviet armies.
A team of archaeologists has commenced an extensive research on a centuries-old underground “city”, which is located in Salehabad district of Hamedan province, west-central Iran.
“At the time when Russian soldiers crossed the area [during the World War II], the men of the region concealed their families in the underground city so that no one noticed their presence,” Torabi added.
The area where the underground city was discovered, Hamadan, is one of the oldest in Iran and was part of ancient Ecbatana, which was the capital of Media and a summer residence of the Achaemenian kings who ruled Persia from 553 to 330 BC.
This ancient city is not by far the oldest one discovered in the region. Experts have previously discovered subterranean cities in Iran (Samen and Arzan-Fu) and some of them are thought to date back more than 2,500 years.
During the refurbishment job of the Bateswar temple close Rushikulya rookery in Ganjam District of Odisha, on the east shore of India, buried artifacts of the 8th century are emerging.
The temple is located on the coastal sand dunes around eight km from the Kolkata-Chennai Highway near Humma.
According to Odisha State Archaeology department superintendent Sanghamitra Satpathy, with the financial support of the World Bank, Rs.1.64-crore renovation work was taken up at the Bateswar temple under the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project (ICZMP).
During the renovation, remnants of a Parvati temple were discovered from under the sand on the periphery of the Bateswar temple.
According to the priest of the Bateswar temple, some idols were also discovered from this newly-discovered small temple.
Steps to preserve the temple
Meanwhile, the State Archaeology department has decided to take necessary steps to preserve the newly-discovered temple.
Senior historian and retired head of history department of Berhampur University, Ashok Kumar Rath, who has researched on the archaeological remains of this region said the Bateswar temple as well as the newly-discovered temple on its premises belonged to the 8th Century.
“The two-chambered Bateswar temple has archaeological resemblance with Laxmaneswar, Bharateswar and Shatrughneswar temples of Bhubaneswar, which were also built in the 7th or 8th Century AD,” said Prof. Rath.
The recently-discovered 8th-century temple in Ganjam district of Odisha
According to him, this ancient temple was built during the Shilodvhav period of the Odisha history and was linked with the maritime history of this region.
The Bateswar temple also has some stone inscriptions in ‘Devanagari’ and ‘Kutila’ scripts that have become dull with time.
But as per the historians, these inscriptions are of later period, may be of 10th Century during the reign of Ganga dynasty.
During ancient times, ports existed at Palur and Ganjam near the Rushikulya rookery.
It is felt that based on the maritime activity in the region, an urban civilization may have existed in the area and Bateswar temple was part of it.
“More excavation around the Bateswar temple can reveal more information,” said Prof. Rath.
A drought revealed a palace thousands of years old submerged in an Iraq reservoir
As the waters of the Mosul dam reservoir in northern Iraq receded last fall, they revealed a stunning sight: a Bronze Age palace, many of its mud-brick walls and carefully planned rooms remarkably preserved.
The discovery of the ruins in the Mosul Dam reservoir on the banks of the Tigris River inspired a spontaneous archeological dig that will improve understanding of the Mittani Empire.
One of the least-researched empires of the Ancient Near East, the Kurdish-German team of researchers said in a press release.
The Mittani Empire is one of the least researched civilizations of the Ancient Near East.
“The find is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the region in recent decades,” Kurdish archeologist Hasan Ahmed Qasim said in a press release.
The palace would have originally stood just 65 feet from the river on an elevated terrace. A terrace wall of mud bricks was later added to stabilize the building, adding to the imposing architecture.
Ivana Puljiz, an archeologist from the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies, describes the palace, known as Kemune, as a carefully designed building with mud-brick walls up to two meters (6.6 feet) thick.
Some of the walls are more than two meters high, and various rooms have plastered walls, she added.
The team also found wall paintings in shades of red and blue, which were probably a common feature of palaces at the time but have rarely been found preserved.
“Discovering wall paintings in Kemune is an archaeological sensation,” she said in a press release.
“Kemune is only the second site in the region where wall paintings of the Mittani period have been discovered,” Puljiz told CNN in an email.
Photos of the clay tablets found at the site have been sent to Germany for translation.
Ten clay tablets covered in cuneiform, an ancient system of writing, were also discovered. High-resolution photos of the texts have been sent to Germany for translation.
“From the texts, we hope to gain information on the inner structure of the Mittani empire, its economic organization, and the relationship of the Mittani capital with the administrative centers in the neighboring regions,” Puljiz told CNN.
Archeologists first became aware of the site in 2010 when water levels in the reservoir were low, but this is the first time they have been able to excavate.
However, the site was submerged shortly after the dig, Puljiz said, adding: “It is unclear when it will emerge again.”
Qasim also worked on another project with the University of Tübingen, uncovering a Bronze Age city in northern Iraq in 2016. The team unearthed the city, which lies beneath what is now the small village of Bassetki in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, close to territory that was held by ISIS.
Days after the dig was completed, Iraqi security forces began their push to take Mosul back from ISIS.
Measuring a kilometer in length and 500 meters across (about 1,000 yards by roughly 550 yards), the ancient urban area features grand houses, a palace, an extensive road network, and a cemetery.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated where and how the text on the clay tablets would be analyzed.
The severed head of large wolf found perfectly preserved in Siberian permafrost 40,000 years after it died
Scientists estimate that the wolf lived 40,000 years ago.
The sensational find is believed to be the world’s first full-sized Pleistocene wolf, and due to the high quality of preservation, provides new insight into the extinct species.
You never know what you might encounter during a casual stroll in Siberia. Local resident, Pavel Efimov, was walking along the Tirekhtyakh River in the Russian Republic of Sakha when he came across something bizarre: a severed wolf head.
But upon closer examination by experts, they found that it wasn’t just the head of any kind of wolf, but that of a prehistoric predator which lived 40,000 years ago during the Ice Age.
“This is a unique discovery of the first-ever remains of a fully grown Pleistocene wolf with its tissue preserved,” paleontologist Albert Protopopov from the Republic of Sakha Academy of Sciences told The Siberian Times.
The head, which measures 16 inches in length and is larger than half the body length of a modern-day wolf, is astonishingly well-preserved with its fangs, thick fur, soft tissue, and brain intact.
Although this is not the first such discovery of an ancient wolf in the Siberian territory, other discoveries have typically been skull specimens or the remains of pups. This head is believed to be from an adult wolf aged between two to four years old when it died.
The incredible discovery was announced in a joint exhibition organized by Yakutian and Japanese scientists in Tokyo, Japan. Further analysis of the wolf’s DNA will be done by an international team of scientists at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
By examining the wolf’s ancient DNA, researchers hope to learn more about the evolution of ancient wolves to their modern iterations.
The researchers have time-stamped the impressive specimen to 40,000 years ago during the Pleistocene era.
Analyzing the specimen’s ancient DNA will allow scientists to learn more about the evolution of modern wolves.
In addition to some genetic analysis, the ancient wolf’s features will be reconstructed using a non-invasive x-ray with which the inside of the skull can be examined without destroying the head.
The Siberian permafrost, which includes areas in northern Canada, Alaska, and Greenland, has been host to other incredible archaeological finds in the past.
In fact, the team responsible for the recovery of this wolf head struck big in 2015 and 2017 with the discovery of several ancient cave lion cubs.
In 2017, one ancient cave lion cub was discovered around the same place by the Tirekhtyakh River in the Siberian permafrost territory.
Before then, researchers had already uncovered two other cubs — which scientists named Uyan and Dina — in 2015. The two cubs were unearthed on the banks of a different river still in the permafrost region.
“Everyone was amazed then and did not believe that such a thing is possible, and now, two years later, another cave lion has been found in the Abyiski district,” Protopopov said then.
Researchers dated all three cub specimens between 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, around the same time the ancient cave lion population became extinct.
CT scan of the wolf’s skull.
Like the wolf’s head, the lion cubs were incredibly well-preserved. The Cubs had all their limbs intact and showed no external injuries. The prehistoric animals were so perfect that they sparked a sudden interest among some scientists to clone the little beasts.
Just this past year, a 40,000-year-old extinct horse and 50,000-year-old wolf pup were also uncovered in the permafrost.
The ancient cave lion cubs were placed side-by-side with the new wolf specimen during the recent announcement by the researchers. The ancient wolf head has yet to ignite the same cloning discussion, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t in the future.
