Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Arrowhead from the Biblical Battle Discovered in the Hometown of the Giant Goliath’s

Arrowhead from the Biblical Battle Discovered in the Hometown of the Giant Goliath’s

Arrowhead from the Biblical Battle Discovered in the Hometown of the Giant Goliath’s

A bone arrowhead discovered in the ancient Philistine city of Gath might have been used and fired off by the city’s defenders as part of the last stand described in the Bible.

According to the Hebrew Bible, a king named Hazael), who ruled the kingdom of Aram from around 842 B.C. to 800 B.C., conquered Gath (also known as Tell es-Safi) before marching on Jerusalem. “Hazael king of Aram went up and attacked Gath and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem,” the Book of Kings says (2 Kings 12:17). 

Archaeological investigations in Gath, in what is now Israel, have revealed that major damage occurred in the late ninth century B.C., when the Bible claims Hazael destroyed Gath, which was home to the Philistines (Israel’s foes). Goliath, the giant warrior killed by King David, was born in Gath, according to the Hebrew Bible.

Archaeologists found a bone arrowhead in the ruins of a street in the lower city in 2019 that may have been shot by the city’s defenders in a desperate attempt to halt Hazael’s army from conquering Gath, according to an article published recently in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology.

The army of King Hazael of Aram may have passed through the lower city (shown here) while conquering Gath.

The arrowhead has an impact fracture on its tip, and the arrowhead “had been broken close to the mid-shaft, perhaps as a result of this impact,” the archaeologists said The damage suggests the arrowhead hit a target, they added. 

Desperate manufacturing in Gath

This arrowhead might have been made in a Gath workshop that was feverishly trying to make as many bone arrowheads for the city’s defenses as possible.

The workshop, which was discovered in 2006, is located roughly 980 feet (300 meters) away from where the bone arrowhead was found.

Inside this workshop, archaeologists uncovered several bones from the lower forelimbs and hind limbs of domestic cattle, suggesting that people in the workshop were in the process of making bone arrowheads.

“The assemblage represents bones at different stages of working — from complete bones, waste, to almost finished products,” the researchers wrote in the article. 

The defenders may have chosen cattle bone because the material was readily available and crafting a good arrowhead from it didn’t take long. One of the researchers, Ron Kehati, a zooarchaeologist with the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project made a replica of the bone arrowhead in about an hour, study co-author Liora Kolska Horwitz, who is also a zooarchaeologist with the project, told Live Science. 

This workshop “may have functioned as an emergency, ad hoc production center to supply arrowheads to fight the forces of Hazael of Aram, who put the site under siege,” the researchers wrote in the article.

The team plans to resume excavations at the site this summer and future discoveries may provide more clues to the fall of Gath.  

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

1,000-year-old brick tomb discovered in China is decorated with lions, sea anemones and ‘guardian spirits’

1,000-year-old brick tomb discovered in China is decorated with lions, sea anemones and ‘guardian spirits’

1,000-year-old brick tomb discovered in China is decorated with lions, sea anemones and 'guardian spirits'
The inner chamber of the ornate tomb is made of bricks shaped to look like carved wood.

A stunning brick tomb thought to be more than 800 years old has been discovered in northern China by workers renovating stormwater drains.

The tomb contained three bodies — two adults and one child — as well as several pottery items. One of these, a “land coupon” inscribed with writing, indicates that the tomb was built between A.D. 1190 and 1196, when the region was ruled by the Jurchen Jin or “Great Jin” state.

According to the Shanxi Institute of Archaeology, the tomb was unearthed by the workers in mid-2019 near the village of Dongfengshan, in Yuanqu County, about 400 miles (650 kilometers) southwest of Beijing.

Archaeologists from the institute then carried out an excavation to document the tomb, and a full report on the work was released in February, according to a press release from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS.) The south-facing tomb has similarities to others found in the region from the time, such as a ceremonial “gatehouse” on its northern wall, but it is relatively simple, according to the report.

Archaeologists say the tomb is similar to others in the area from the same time, but is relatively simple.
The entire structure of the tomb includes a buried “road”, a staircase, and a door to the inner chamber.
The square inner chamber of the tomb is capped by an octagonal spire made of stepped bricks.

The buried structure consists of a “tomb road” to a staircase that leads down to a door in the inner chamber, which is a square about 6.5 feet (2 meters) long on each side, beneath an elaborate octagonal spire made of stepped bricks. 

The entire chamber is faced with bricks shaped to look like carved wood, which the archaeologists say were not painted. The tomb also features ornate decorations on the walls, including lions, sea anemones, flowers and two figures that are thought to represent guardian spirits.

Archaeologists from the Shanxi Institute say the three bodies found there were those of two adults aged between 50 and 60 years old, and one child aged between 6 and 8 years old.

The tomb held the remains of three individuals – two adults, aged between 50 and 60 years, and one child, aged between 6 and 8 years.

Jurchen Jin

“Great Jin” was the second Chinese state of that name and it is often referred to as the Jurchen Jin state to distinguish it, said Julia Schneider, a professor of Chinese history at University College Cork in Ireland who was not involved in the tomb’s discovery.

Jurchen Jin emerged in about A.D. 1115 amid rebellions against the region’s earlier Liao Dynasty, and fell to the invading Mongols in 1234. But for the intervening century, it was one of the major powers in China.

Although many of its subjects were ethnically Han Chinese, Jurchen Jin was ruled by an imperial family that was ethnically Jurchen, a semi-nomadic people from northeast China related to the Manchu people, Schneider told Live Science. (The Manchu were an ethnic  native to China’s northeast and surrounding regions — called Manchuria — who conquered China and Mongolia in the 17th century and ruled for about 250 years.)

Two figures portrayed on the panels are thought to be guardian spirits; one of the figures is thought to be male and the other is thought to be female.

A census in 1207 gave the population of the Jurchen Jin state as 53 million people, but “probably less than 10% were Jurchen,” Schneider said.

“What makes the Jurchen Jin so interesting was that this was a multi-ethnic empire,” she said.

While many of its subjects were oriented toward Confucianism and other ideologies it considered “Chinese,” the Jurchen Jin state developed a distinctive script for the Jurchen languages and established dual administrations to oversee its Chinese and Jurchen subjects, she said.

Chinese tomb

A pottery “land coupon” inscribed with writing found in the tomb firmly dates its construction to between 1190 and 1196 A.D.

In the case of the tomb at Dongfengshan: “I’m not an archaeologist, but my idea is that this is a Chinese tomb, based on its location in the very south of the Jurchen state,” Schneider said.

That region was mostly populated by Han Chinese, rather than ethnic Jurchen. It was possible that Jurchen dead had been entombed there in the Chinese style, but “I don’t see anything, particularly Jurchen,” she said.

The statement from CASS said the land coupon meant the structure could be firmly dated, which would provide a basis for dating other Jurchen Jin structures and artifacts found in the region.

ASIA, WORLD

Deer stone discovered in Kyrgyzstan

Deer stone discovered in Kyrgyzstan

Deer stone discovered in Kyrgyzstan

A deer stone was found in the Tarmal-Sai settlement in the Kochkor district of the Naryn region in eastern Kyrgyzstan. Deer stones, also known as reindeer stones, are ancient megaliths with symbols carved into them.

Mongolia is rich with stone sculptures such as deer stones and complex heritage sites that belong to Bronze Age culture.

Deer stones name comes from their carved depictions of flying deer. Deer stones are a distinctive feature of the Saka era. A few deer stones have been discovered in Chui valley and Issyk-Kul Lake.

Deer stones will usually be found together with extraordinary monuments called khirgisuur, with slab burials or in some cases with petroglyphs forming a complex site.

Joldoshbek Butoshev, a resident of Tarmal-Sai, noticed a round stone with drawings while doing irrigation work and brought it home, thinking it might have historical significance.

Butoshev showed the discovery to a team of archaeologists visiting the region in 2022 under the direction of Oroz Soltobaev for research. The archaeologists determined that the stone was around 2000-2500 years old and suggested handing it over to a historical museum.

The stone is 1 meter long and weighs approximately 40-50 kilograms. On both sides of the stone, there are ritual sun signs, which are associated with the Saka and Wusun, who worshipped the sun.

According to the historian and founder of the historical museum in Kara-Suu village Bolot Boobek, the find is a deer stone that dates to between 2000 and 2500 years ago.

Deer stones are unique Bronze Age and Early Iron Age monuments found primarily in Mongolia and some Central Asian countries.

Deer stones represent the Bronze Age funeral practice, sacrificial ritual and ideology, and animal-style art that spread among ancient nomads.

Researchers believe these statues were dedicated to leaders and great warriors of a tribe.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Python May Have Been on the Neolithic Menu in Southern China

Python May Have Been on the Neolithic Menu in Southern China

This undated file photo shows a discovery site of prehistoric snake bones in the Zuojiang River basin, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Snake bones that date back to the Neolithic period, around 6,000 years ago, have been discovered in the Zuojiang River basin, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The longest single vertebra unveiled at the site represents an individual snake belonging to the species Python bivittatus. The vertebra indicates the snake’s overall body length exceeded 4.58 meters, surpassing the previous record in China for this species of 3.56 meters.

The new discovery has also helped shed light on on the history of hunting snakes in south China, which can be traced back to about 6,000 years ago.

Most of the unearthed snake bones had suspected burn marks on the surface, and the mammalian bones piled up alongside also showed signs of manual cutting or striking, said Yang Qingping with the Guangxi Institute of Cultural Relic Protection and Archaeology.

It has not been ruled out that prehistoric human beings in the area roasted food to process the meat, Yang added.

The research was jointly carried out by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Guangxi Institute of Cultural Relic Protection and Archaeology.

The relevant results have been published online in the international journal Historical Biology.

The Zuojiang River basin boasts rich animal and plant resources with complex and diverse landforms and multiple prehistoric cultural heritages. A group of rock paintings dating back over 2,000 years in the basin was included into UNESCO’s world heritage list in 2016.  

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

6,000-Year-Old Copper Fishhook Unearthed in Israel

6,000-Year-Old Copper Fishhook Unearthed in Israel

The copper fishing hook recently unearthed at a site near Ashkelon in Israel.

Shark was likely on the menu around 6,000 years ago in what is now Israel, according to researchers who uncovered a large copper fishing hook in a previously unknown ancient village.

Archaeologists unearthed the “shark hook” during a 2018 survey along the Mediterranean coast on the outskirts of Ashkelon, a city that was built on top of an ancient seaport of the same name and dates back as far as ancient Egypt.

Byzantine and Roman structures had previously been discovered at the site, which sits around 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from the sea. But the new excavations revealed parts of a village that date back around 6,000 years to the Chalcolithic period, also known as the “Copper Age,” which lasted between 4500 B.C. and 3500 B.C. in the region.

The hook is around 2.5 inches (6.5 centimeters) long and 1.6 inches (4 cm) wide, which is big enough to reel in sharks between 6.5 and 10 feet (2 and 3 meters) long, such as dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus), or large fish such as tuna, all of which are local to the Mediterranean.

However, given what marine biologists know about the deep-sea ecosystems in the region, sharks were a more likely target, according to The Times of Israel.

Dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) could have been reeled in using the newly discovered fishing hook.

The discovery is a “unique find” because most other fishing hooks uncovered from this time period are smaller and made from bone, Yael Abadi-Reiss, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority who co-led the excavation, said in a statement.

It’s possible that this is one of the first metal variants that people created in the region, considering copper was a relatively new material at the time, she added.

The village, which is not yet fully excavated, was large for its time period. As such, the residents likely had enough resources to have individuals who were dedicated to metalwork and fishing, Abadi-Reiss said.

However, other finds at the site, such as domesticated animal remains, suggest that the village’s main source of income and food would have been traditional agriculture.

“The rare fishhook tells the story of the village fishermen who sailed out to sea in their boats and cast the newly invented copper fishhook into the water, hoping to add coastal sharks to the menu,” Abadi-Reiss said.

The oldest fishing hooks ever discovered were made of bone and date back to around 42,000 years ago.

These prehistoric hooks, which were discovered in Southeast Asia on the island nation of East Timor in 2005, were also used to fish for tuna-size fish in the deep sea.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Chinese Paleontologists discovered a 170-million-year-old flower

Chinese Paleontologists discovered a 170-million-year-old flower

Chinese Paleontologists discovered a 170-million-year-old flower

Chinese paleontologists discovered fossils of an ancient plant dating back approximately 170 million years.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology recently announced the discovery of the earliest angiosperm known in Northwest China through the reexamination of fossil specimens.

The study was jointly worked on by the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou University, Ningxia Geological Museum, and Northwest University. The findings of this study were recently published in Life, an international biological journal.

The fossil flower buds are oval, 17 millimeters in length, and 9 millimeters wide, on a 15-millimeter-long stalk. There is a larch-like structure at the bottom, which is covered with flower petals, the researchers said.

The researcher in charge of the study said that flowers and fruits are part of the angiosperm family. Angiosperms are the most evolved, diverse, widely distributed, and adaptable group of plants today. There are 300,000 species of extant angiosperms around the world.

Fruits of Qingganninginfructus formosa and contained seeds.

The research team reexamined a Jurassic plant fossil from about 170 million years ago in the Northwest of China. The plant was previously thought to be a gymnosperm, named as Drepanolepis formosa Zhang, 1998.

In the latest study, the team used micro-CT technology to scan the fossil and found that the interior contained inverted ovules, which is a key feature for determining angiosperms.

The latest study found that an inverted ovule with two integuments is enclosed in each carpel or fruit, which is a key feature for determining angiosperms, and they named the fossil plant a Qingganninginfructus formosa.

The fossil plant is the earliest evidence of angiosperms in Northwest China. Its discovery indicates that angiosperms appeared and spread widely as early as 170 million years ago, during the Middle Jurassic, and reached a certain level of prosperity.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Paleonursery offers a detailed glimpse at life 518 million years ago

Paleonursery offers a detailed glimpse at life 518 million years ago

Paleonursery offers a detailed glimpse at life 518 million years ago

Fossilized specimens of thousands of undersea animals buried under a sedimentary avalanche 518 million years ago have been found near Kunming, China, many of which are of new species.

Paleontologists who found the fossil trove believe they’ve unearthed a Cambrian-era ‘paleonursery,’ according to their report in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, with more than half of the specimens juveniles.

The Haiyan lagerstätte—from the German for storage place,’ it refers to a sedimentary deposit with exceptionally well-preserved fossils—contains approximately 2,800 specimens from at least 118 species, including predecessors to modern-day insects, worms, crabs, jellyfish, sponges, and trilobites.

There were also specimens with preserved eggs, larvae, and appendages intact and the inner soft tissues still visible.

Of the species found, 17 were previously unknown species.

Fossil of a juvenile arthropod, Isoxys auritus, preserving the eyes and internal soft tissues.

“It’s just amazing to see all these juveniles in the fossil record,” said Julien Kimmig, collections manager at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery, Penn State. “Juvenile fossils are something we hardly see, especially from soft-bodied invertebrates.”

The Cambrian Period, which lasted 541 million to 485 million years ago, witnessed unprecedented climatic and biological changes, including the Cambrian explosion—the planet’s fastest and most extensive diversity of life in history.

There is a comprehensive fossil record from that time period when life existed solely in the water, but little of it depicts juvenile animals.

According to the researchers, each sediment layer in the lagerstätte represents a distinct ‘burial event,’ and while more recent strata have yielded some results, none equal the richness of the lowest level. It is unknown what triggered the burial event that wiped out the specimens at that level.

According to the team, it might have been caused by a fast change in oxygen levels or a storm that caused thick sludge to ‘wash down a hill and bury everything in its path.’

It may have killed them, but it preserved them so well that they are exposing bodily parts never seen before, including entire three-dimensional eyes.

According to the researchers, scientists may utilize CT scanning on these 3D characteristics to rebuild the fossils and extract even more information from the remains.

Scientists will be able to use this collection to study how these ancient animals developed from the larval to the adult stage.

Fossil of a juvenile arthropod, Leanchoilia illecebrosa, showing fine anatomical details of the appendages and preserving the gut tract.

“We’ll see how different body parts grew over time, which is something we currently do not know for most of these groups,” Julien Kimmig said. “And these fossils will give us more information on their relationships to modern animals. We will see if how these animals develop today is similar to how they developed 500 million years ago, or if something has changed throughout time.”

The fossils will also allow researchers to analyze how animals acted 500 million years ago, when the planet was somewhat warmer than it is today, and use it as a proxy for where the world is heading in terms of animal behavior in a warmer climate.

“In this deposit, we found the ancestors to most modern animals, both marine and terrestrial,” Julien Kimmig said. “If the Haiyan Lagerstätte is actually a paleonursery, it means that this type of animal behavior has not changed much in 518 million years.”

Xianfeng Yang, a paleobiologist at Yunnan University, China, led a team of Chinese researchers that collected the fossils at the research site. Additional contributors to this study include Dayou Zhai and Yu Liu, Yunnan University; and Shanchi Peng, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, and the Key Research Program of the Institute of Geology & Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

ARMENIA, ASIA, WORLD

Archaeologists uncovered a ‘golden tomb’ during excavations in Armenia

Archaeologists uncovered a ‘golden tomb’ during excavations in Armenia

Archaeologists uncovered a ‘golden tomb’ during excavations in Armenia

A team of archaeologists made up of Polish and Armenian scientists has discovered a “golden tomb” containing two skeletons in Metsamor, Armenia.

The team discovered the remains of three gold necklaces while excavating the grave of two people, most likely a couple (a man and a woman). The tomb dates back to Ramesses II’s rule over Egypt.

Metsamor is one of the most studied archaeological monuments of V-I century BC in the Armenian Highland, and throughout the Ancient Near East. It includes the Bronze-Iron Age settlement (citadel, city districts, and celestial observation platform) as well as the cemetery.

The land area exceeds 200 hectares. The site is located in the Ararat plain, about 35 kilometers west of Yerevan, in the Taronik administrative district.

The ancient site of Metsamor is the place where the oldest known gold jewelry in the territory of Armenia was found.

Discovery was a cist grave, meaning that the two skeletons were found in chambers dug in the ground and lined with large stones. Researchers also found the remains of a wooden burial bed.

Metsamor. View of the citadel.

“Their death is a mystery to us, we do not know the cause, but everything indicates that they died at the same time, because there are no traces of tomb reopening,” said the head of the research project, Professor Krzysztof Jakubiak from the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw.

The bones, according to archaeologists, were well preserved. Both skeletons had slightly crouched legs. According to preliminary estimates, the couple died between the ages of 30 and 40.

Professor Krzysztof Jakubiak believes that this is a unique find because the very richly equipped grave has not been robbed.

Archaeologists discovered over a hundred beads and gold pendants inside the tomb. Some of them look like Celtic crosses. There were also a large number of carnelian pendants.

“All these elements probably made up three necklaces,” said Professor Jakubiak.

The ancient site of Metsamor is the place where the oldest known gold jewelry in the territory of Armenia was found.

A dozen or so complete ceramic vessels and a unique faience flask were also found in the grave. The flask had not been made in the area. It was brought from the Syrian-Mesopotamian borderland, according to the researchers.

Archaeologists do not know who lived in Metsamor at that time (in the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE). The people who inhabited the large, fortified settlement there were not literate, so they left no texts. This makes identifying them difficult for scientists.

Jakubiak said: “But it was a very large settlement. Even fortifications made of huge stone blocks have survived to our times, encircling the so-called citadel on the hill. At the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, there was no other settlement in the region that could be compared in terms of importance and size.”