Researchers Use AI to Read Ancient Mesopotamian Texts
Scholars at Tel Aviv University and Ariel University, in Israel, have used artificial intelligence to translate fragments of ancient cuneiform texts on stone tablets into English with what they say is a high degree of accuracy.
They call the project “another major step toward the preservation and dissemination of the cultural heritage of ancient Mesopotamia.”
The scholars presented the first neural machine translation from Akkadian into English in the May issue of PNAS Nexus. Their results are “on par with those produced by an average machine translation from one modern language to another,” noted Arkeonews.
In the last 200 years, archaeologists have found hundreds of thousands of texts that tell the history of ancient Mesopotamia, most of them written in Sumerian or Akkadian, explained the authors. But most remain untranslated because of their vast quantity and the small number of experts who can read them, as well as the fact that most of the texts are fragmentary.
Furthermore, cuneiform signs are polyvalent, there are many different kinds of texts, and even the names of people and places can be written as complex sentences.
“First, let me state that we believe that A.I. will not replace philological work,” said Luis Sáenz, of the Digital Pasts Lab in the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Ariel University, one of the authors, in an email to Artnet News.
“We want to speed up the process. Our hope is that A.I. will eventually be able to help both Assyriologists and non-Assyriologists read cuneiform texts in the future.”
This is just the latest example of scientists using the newest tools to work with the oldest materials.
The University of Kentucky researchers developed an A.I. system to read scrolls that were incinerated when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79, and archaeologists in Italy are working on a robot that uses A.I. to reconstruct ancient relics from their scattered shards.
“There are, of course, limitations to the model,” says Sáenz. “The lack of context makes ancient languages difficult to translate since we only have fragments of texts. Fragments with only one or two lines are extremely difficult to work with for A.I.
The future will require more tools to digitize data published in papers in order to keep training the model and to improve the results. Also, a user-friendly web-based platform for the public is important.”
Storms uncover precious marble cargo from a 1,800-year-old Mediterranean shipwreck in Israel
Numerous rare marble artifacts have been found at the site of a 1,800-year-old shipwreck in shallow waters just 200 meters off the coast of the Israeli coastal town of Beit Yanai.
Approximately three weeks ago while swimming, recreational sea swimmer Gideon Harris took a dive of about four meters and stumbled upon a treasure trove of marble columns.
This is the oldest sea cargo of its kind ever discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean, dating back to the time of the Roman Empire.
The huge haul includes approximately 44 tons of Roman-period marble architectural pieces, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement.
The raw materials were most likely from Turkey and were on their way to a port in the southern Holy Land; archaeologists hope to find ship wood remains during excavations next week.
The marble blocks may have been intended to become part of an elaborate public building—perhaps a temple or theater.
An Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist checks out pieces of 1,800-year-old marble from a shipwreck off the shore of Beit Yanai in central Israel. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit
The IAA believes that this shipwrecked cargo, which was exposed during winter storms that swept away centuries of sand, is the oldest of its kind known in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The merchant ship was probably destined for a port along the coast of the southern Levant, but ran into trouble en route, Koby Sharvit, director of the underwater archaeology unit at the IAA, said in the statement.
Initial underwater site investigations have uncovered decorated Corinthian capitals, additional partially carved capitals, as well as a massive 6-meter marble architrave or door lintel in the ship’s hold.
An Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist checks out pieces of 1,800-year-old marble from a shipwreck off the shore of Beit Yanai in central Israel. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit
“From the size of the architectural elements, we can calculate the dimensions of the ship; we are talking about a merchant ship that could bear a cargo of at least 200 tons,” said Sharvit.
“These fine pieces are characteristic of large-scale, majestic public buildings. Even in Roman Caesarea, such architectural elements were made of local stone covered with white plaster to appear like marble. Here we are talking about genuine marble,” Sharvit explains.
Sharvit, the IAA’s underwater archaeology unit director, confirmed that there are no visible remains of the ship on the sea floor. He stated that the IAA will begin an underwater excavation with students from the University of Rhode Island next week in the hopes of discovering waterlogged wood from beneath the massive marble blocks, or a nearby underwater sand dune that may have buried and preserved parts of the ship.
Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit
Some of the first humans in the Americas came from China, study finds
During the second migration, the same lineage of people settled in Japan, which could help explain similarities in prehistoric arrowheads and spears found in the Americas (pictured), China and Japan.
Some of the first humans to arrive in the Americas included people from what is now China, who arrived in two distinct migrations during and after the last ice age, a new genetics study has found.
“Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool,” said Yu-Chun Li, one of the report authors.
Li added that during the second migration, the same lineage of people settled in Japan, which could help explain similarities in prehistoric arrowheads and spears found in the Americas, China, and Japan.
It was once believed that ancient Siberians, who crossed over a land bridge that existed in the Bering Strait linking modern Russia and Alaska, were the sole ancestors of Native Americans.
More recent research, from the late 2000s onwards, has signaled that more diverse sources from Asia could be connected to an ancient lineage responsible for founding populations across the Americas, including in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and California.
Known as D4h, this lineage is found in mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from mothers and is used to trace maternal ancestry.
The team from the Kunming Institute of Zoology embarked on a 10-year hunt for D4h, combing through 100,000 modern and 15,000 ancient DNA samples across Eurasia, eventually landing on 216 contemporary and 39 ancient individuals who came from the ancient lineage.
By analyzing the mutations that had accrued over time, looking at the samples’ geographic locations, and using carbon dating, they were able to reconstruct the D4h’s origins and expansion history.
The results revealed two migration events. The first was between 19,500 and 26,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheet coverage was at its greatest and climate conditions in northern China were probably inhospitable.
The second occurred during the melting period, between 19,000 and 11,500 years ago. Increasing human populations during this period might have triggered migrations.
It was during this second migration that the scientists found a surprising genetic link between Native Americans and Japanese people, particularly the indigenous Ainu.
In the melting period, a subgroup branched out from northern coastal China to Japan, contributing to the Japanese people, the study said, a finding that chimes with archeological similarities between ancient people in the Americas, China, and Japan.
Li said a strength of the study was the number of samples they discovered, and complementary evidence from Y chromosomal DNA showing that male ancestors of Native Americans lived in northern China at the same time as female ancestors made researchers confident of their findings.
“However, we don’t know in which specific place in northern coastal China this expansion occurred and what specific events promoted these migrations,” he said.
“More evidence, especially ancient genomes, is needed to answer these questions.”
A 7,000-year-old tomb in Oman holds dozens of prehistoric skeletons
The ancient tomb near Nafūn in Oman’s central Al Wusta province has been dated by archaeologists to between 6,600 and 7,000 years old. Nothing like it has been found in the region.
Archaeologists have found the remains of dozens of people who were buried up to 7,000 years ago in a stone tomb in Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula.
The tomb, near Nafūn in the country’s central Al Wusta province, is among the oldest human-made structures ever found in Oman. The burial area is next to the coast, but it is otherwise a stony desert.
“No Bronze Age or older graves are known in this region,” Alžběta Danielisová, an archaeologist at the Czech Republic’s Institute of Archaeology in Prague, told Live Science. “This one is completely unique.”
The latest excavations are part of a third year of archaeological investigations in Oman led by the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Danielisová is leading the excavations at the tomb for the institute, which is part of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS). The tomb itself was discovered about 10 years ago in satellite photographs, and archaeologists think it dates to between 5000 B.C. and 4600 B.C.
Ancient tomb
The tomb is beneath an earthen mound and built with walls of thin stone slabs, or ashlars. It was covered by a roof, also made of ashlars, that has now partially collapsed.
Skulls and bones from more than twenty bodies have been found in the tomb; archaeologists think they were deposited there at different times, after the bodies were left elsewhere to decompose.
Czech-led scientists are also investigating ancient sites in the Rub’ al Khali desert in Dhofar province, in the South of Oman.
A report on the project said the tomb’s walls were made with rows of thin stone slabs, called ashlars, with two circular burial chambers inside divided into individual compartments. The entire tomb was covered with an ashlar roof, but it has partially collapsed, probably because of the annual monsoon rains.
Several “bone clusters” were found in the burial chambers, indicating that the dead had been left to decompose before being deposited in the tomb; their skulls were placed near the outside wall, with their long bones pointed toward the center of the chamber.
Similar remains were found in a smaller tomb next to the main tomb; archaeologists think it was built slightly later. Danielisová said there is evidence that the dead there were buried at different times, and three graves of people from the Samad culture, who lived thousands of years later, were found nearby.
The next stage will be to carry out anthropological and biochemical assessments of the human remains — such as isotope analysis, a look at the differing neutrons in the nuclei of various key elements — to learn more about the diets, mobility and demographics of the people who were buried in the tomb, she said.
The team also hopes to find a nearby ancient settlement where the people may have lived.
Prehistoric Oman
The archaeologists are also investigating inscriptions found on rock faces near the tomb, but which were made many thousands of years later.
The investigations in southern Oman include landscape features like dry riverbeds and fossilized dunes that can tell them more about how the region’s climate has changed over millennia.
The archaeologists in southern Oman have also unearthed this stone hand-ax which may date from the first migrations of early humans out of Africa between 300,000 and 1.3 million years ago.
The work on the tomb is one of several archaeological projects in Oman being led by scientists from the Czech Republic.
According to a statement from the CAS, these projects include an expedition in southern Oman’s Dhofar province that has found a stone hand ax that may date back to the first early human migrations out of Africa, between 300,000 and 1.3 million years ago.
The scientists are using dating techniques provided by the Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS, the southern expedition leader Roman Garba, an archaeologist and physicist with the CAS, said in the statement. The same dating techniques will also be used to learn more about the roughly 2,000-year-old rows of stone “triliths” that have been found throughout Oman since the 19th century.
Although the triliths are only a few feet (less than 1 meter) tall and were built during the Iron Age, some recent news reports compared them to England’s Stonehenge.
The archaeologists are also investigating rock inscriptions near the tomb, although they were made thousands of years later, Danielisová said. Some of the symbols seem to be pictures, but others appear to be words and names. “We are still fuzzy about that,” she said.
“It’s really interesting stuff,” Melissa Kennedy, an archaeologist at The University of Western Australia, told Live Science. “It all goes to building up a better picture of what was happening in the Neolithic across the Arabian Peninsula.”
Kennedy was not involved in the latest expeditions in Oman, but she has researched “mustatils” — vast stone desert monuments of about the same age — in neighboring Saudi Arabia. Her team has also found similar tombs where several people were buried at this time, and both finds suggest that people were marking their territory from very early on.
“These kinds of tombs give us a great insight into family relationships and how they viewed death and perhaps life after death,” she said.
Thousands of bamboo slips (rectangles tied together to form books) have been discovered at the Hebosuo archaeological site in southwestern China’s Yunnan province.
The Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology announced that more than 10,000 ancient bamboo and wooden slips, known as jiandu, have been found at the more than 2,000-year-old Hebosuo Site in Kunming, Southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
Bamboo or wooden slips were bound together to create “books” that could be written on and rolled up like scrolls before the paper was invented and used extensively.
About 2,000 of them, or 1,300, are from the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.–220 A.D.), and 837 are seal impressions. In Western Han tombs, bamboo slips are frequently literary works and books about agriculture and medicine, but in this discovery, the majority of the writings are administrative.
The seal impressions are particularly noteworthy because they include official seals from 20 of the 24 counties ruled by the ancient Dian kingdom, a non-Han culture of agriculture-based settlements, and exceptionally sophisticated metal workers centered in modern-day Yunnan. Emperor Wu of Han annexed the kingdom in 109 B.C.
This combo photo shows bamboo and wooden slips unearthed from Hebosuo relics site dating back to the Bronze Age, in Kunming, southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
Some of the slips list the names of 12 counties, including “Dian Chi county” and “Jian Ling county,” that once belonged to the Yizhou Prefecture, which was established by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220). Wu did this after defeating the Dian Kingdom, which was established by an ancient ethnic group that lived along what is now the southwest border of Yunnan Province.
Other characters such as “county magistrate,” and “Dian Cheng” (prime minister of Dian management) were also discovered on the slips, Tao Zhongjun, a Chinese historian, told the Global Times on Tuesday, noting that such information shows a “well designed” social administrative system was used to govern the southwest border area.
Titles such as “Dian Cheng” reveal special political roles were set up by the Han government in the southwest area, said Jiang Zhilong, lead archaeologist on the Hebosuo project.
“Such discoveries are evidence that shows China was a unified country made up of multi-ethnic cultures,” Jiang noted.
Parts of the Analects of Confucius, the fundamental philosophical guide to Confucianism, were also found on the slips.
They also the content of the slips covers a wide variety of topics, including judicial documents and texts related to the administrative system, transportation, and ethnic relations.
The archeologists also found house ruins and road ruins suggesting roads as wide as 12 meters at the Hebosuo site, Jinning District of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, a core residential area of the ancient Yunnan region.
Israeli researchers create AI to translate ancient cuneiform Akkadian texts
Israeli experts have created a program to translate an ancient language that is difficult to decipher, allowing automatic and accurate translation from cuneiform characters into English.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Ariel University have developed an artificial intelligence model that can automatically translate Akkadian text written in cuneiform into English.
Experts in Assyriology have spent years studying cuneiform, one of the earliest known writing systems, in order to comprehend ancient Mesopotamian texts.
Dr. Shai Gordin of Ariel University and Dr. Gai Gutherz, Dr. Jonathan Berant, and Dr. Omer Levy of TAU trained two versions of the AI model – one that translates Akkadian from representations of cuneiform signs in Latin script and another that translates from unicode representations of the signs.
With a score of 37.47 on the Best Bilingual Evaluation Understudy 4 (BLEU4), the first version—which uses Latin transliteration—produced better results in this study.
This means that the model can produce translations that are on par with those produced by an average machine translation from one modern language to another.
Given that there is a cultural gap of more than 2,000 years in translating ancient Akkadian, this is a noteworthy accomplishment.
An ancient Assyrian tablet with writing in cuneiform from the Library of Ashurbanipal.
Researchers’ findings were published in the journal PNAS Nexus.
This new technology has the potential to revolutionize the study of ancient history by making it more accessible and open to a wider audience. In 2020, the same group of researchers created an AI model called “the Babylonian Engine.” The contemporary model is supposedly a better and reworked version of it.
Historians note that hundreds of thousands of clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, written in cuneiform, have been found by archaeologists, far more than can be translated by the limited number of experts who can read them.
Assyria was named after the god Ashur, the highest in the Assyrian pantheon. It was located in the Mesopotamian Plain (modern-day Iraq).
Assyria conquered the northern part of what is now Israel in 721 BC, capturing the Ten Tribes. These Jewish exiles coexisted with the Assyrians and used cuneiform writing.”
Archaeologists have identified three undiscovered Roman fortified camps across northern Arabia.
The University of Oxford School of Archaeology made the discovery in a remote sensing survey, using satellite imagery.
It said it could be evidence of an “undocumented military campaign” across southeast Jordan into Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Michael Fradley, who led the research, said: “We are almost certain they were built by the Roman army.”
In the report, published in the journal Antiquity, he explained his conclusion was based on the “typical playing card shape of the enclosures with opposing entrances along each side”.
Dr. Fradley added that the westernmost camp was significantly larger than the two camps to the east.
The research team believes they may have been part of a previously undiscovered Roman military campaign “linked to the Roman takeover of the Nabataean Kingdom in 106 AD, a civilization centered on the world-famous city of Petra, located in Jordan”.
A map shows the location of the three camps researchers say they have identified
The university’s Dr. Mike Bishop, an expert on the Roman military, said the camps were a “spectacular new find” and an important new insight into Roman campaigning in Arabia.
“Roman forts and fortresses show how Rome held a province but temporary camps reveal how they acquired it in the first place,” he explained.
Dr. Fradley added that the preservation of the camps was “remarkable”, particularly as they may have only been used for a matter of days or weeks.
Archaeologists still need to confirm the date of the camps through investigation on the ground, the researchers said.
The camps were identified by the university’s Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project and were later photographed by the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan project.
White grape pips found in the Negev dated may be the oldest of its kind worldwide
Researchers from the University of York, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Copenhagen provide new insight into the mystery of ancient Gaza wine.
Grape pips discovered in an excavated Byzantine monastery in Israel provide clues to the origins of the mysterious Gaza wine and the history of grapevine cultivation in desert conditions.
One of the seeds, which was most likely from a white grape, has been dated to the eighth century and maybe the oldest specimen of its kind ever found and recorded.
It is thought it could be linked to the sweet white wine – the Gaza wine – that archaeologists have seen references to in historical records but a lack of evidence of white varieties from the period has left uncertainty over its true origins, until now.
Researchers used genetic analyses to identify several different grape cultivars that were grown in Negev vineyards including both white and black grapes.
Dr. Nathan Wales from the University of York’s archaeology department commented that “this is the first time that genetics has been used to identify the color of an ancient grape and gives us a glimpse into the internationally famous Gaza wine during the period. It also gave us the opportunity to link ancient seeds with modern varieties that are still grown around the Mediterranean today.”
The wine was produced in the Negev and shipped across the Byzantine Empire.
“The modern winemaking industry is heavily reliant on a limited number of European grape cultivars that are best suited for cultivation in temperate climates.
Global warming emphasizes the need for diversity in this high-impact agricultural crop. Grapevine lineages bred in hot and arid regions, often preserved over centuries, may present an alternative to the classic winemaking grape cultivars,” the team wrote.
“Our study of a legacy grapevine variety from the Negev Highlands desert of southern Israel sheds light on its genetics, biological properties, and lasting impact.”
Since the wild vine’s domestication in Southwest Asia over 6,000 years ago, it has been primarily grown for wine.
The team wrote that viticulture (grape growing) and viniculture (winemaking) evolved along multiple historical pathways in various wine regions, producing a plethora of legacy cultivars.
Grapevines produced some of the highest profits of any crop in Byzantine times, and trade from the Negev, for example, with Lebanon and Crete, gave rise to modern varieties of red wine that are still produced in these areas today.
