Construction workers employed in road building near the Onon River in the Khentii province of Mongolia, have discovered a mass ԍʀᴀvᴇ containing the remains of many ᴅozᴇɴs of human coʀᴘsᴇs lying upon a large rudimentary stone structure.
Forensic experts and archaeologists were called to the site, which was revealed to be a Mongolian royal tomb from the 13th century that the scientists believe to be Genghis Khan’s.
The team of scientists affiliated with the University of Beijing has concluded that the numerous skeletons ʙuʀιᴇᴅ on top of the structure were most likely the slaves who built it and who were then мᴀssᴀcʀᴇᴅ to keep the secret of the location.
The remains of twelve horses were also found on the site, certainly sᴀcʀιғιcᴇᴅ to accompany the Great Khan in death.
A total of 68 skeletons were found ʙuʀιᴇᴅ together, almost directly over the top of a rather crude stone structure
The content of the tomb was scattered and badly deteriorated, presumably due to the fact that the site was located beneath the river bed for hundreds of years until the course of the Onon river changed in the 18th century. The ʀᴇмᴀιɴs of a tall male and sixteen female skeletons were identified among hundreds of gold and silver artefacts and thousands of coins.
The women are presumed to have been wives and concubines of the leader, who were κιʟʟᴇᴅ to accompany the warlord in the afterlife. The amount of treasure and the number of sᴀcʀιғιcᴇᴅ animals and people immediately led the archaeologists to consider that the site was certainly the ʙuʀιᴇᴅ site of a really powerful Mongol warlord.
After realizing an extensive set of tests and analysis, they were able to confirm that the ʙoᴅʏ belonged to a man aged between 60 and 75, who ᴅιᴇᴅ between 1215 and 1235 AD. Both the age, the date, the location, and the opulence of the site seem to confirm that the tomb does indeed belong to Genghis Khan
The simple rock dome discovered by the archaeologists was presumably ʙuʀιᴇᴅ beneath the Onon river for centuries.
The incontestable historical importance of Genghis Khan makes this new discovery one of the most important in the history of archaeology. Born Temüjin (which means “of iron”), he was the founder and ԍʀᴇᴀтκнᴀɴ (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise.
He is known for uniting the tribes of Mongolia and merging them into one before launching a series of military campaigns in cнιɴᴀ, Central Asia, the Middle East and even Eastern Europe.
He conquered more than 31 million square kilometres of land during his lifetime. His legacy has taken many forms besides his conquest and can still be found today, making him one of the most influential men in the history of mankind.
He connected the East and the West through the creation of the Silk Route, a trade route that would become and remain for centuries, the main network of trade and cultural transmission in Eurasia, opening long-distance, political and economic interactions between the civilizations.
Genghis Khan also has an incredible number of descendants, as some genetic studies have shown that he could be the direct ancestor of 1 human out of every 200 who are alive today. In Mongolia alone, as many as 200,000 of the country’s 2 million people could be Genghis Khan descendants.
Reconstruction Offers a Glimpse of the Face of “Penang Woman”
GEORGE TOWN: Five years after researchers from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) found a prehistoric human skeleton, dubbed the “Penang Woman”, believed to be at least 5,000 years old, they scored another major breakthrough.
Prehistoric 5,000-year-old ‘Penang Woman’ finally has a face
This time around, the same researchers have put a face to the Penang Woman using the Forensic Facial Approximation method. The skeleton was found during the construction of a gallery for the Guar Kepah neolithic site in Kepala Batas in 2017.
With the help of Cicero Moraes, a 3D graphics expert from Brazil, they used the 3D virtual reconstruction method to create the Penang Woman’s facial features based on a scientific date obtained from a CT scan performed on the skeleton.
The same team was also instrumental in reconstructing the facial features for the more than 10,000-year-old “Perak Man” using the same method last year.
Shaiful Idzwan Shahidan, the team’s correspondent author, said they took between three and four months to come out with the facial features, which was completed on July 5.
A paper, titled “Forensic Facial Approximation of 5000-Year-Old Female Skull from Shell Midden in Guar Kepah, Malaysia”, was published in the Journal of Applied Sciences on Aug 5.
Shaiful said when they found the skeleton back in 2017, one of their objectives was to conduct a more in-depth study about the life of the Penang Woman.
“We were curious to know how the Penang Woman really looked back then. From the facial features, we can tell that Penang Woman is possibly a mixture between the Australomelanesoid and Mongoloids.
“It is likely that the Guar Kepah population then was a mixture of the Australomelanesian and Mongoloid races,” he said.
Shaiful, however, said a more detailed study could be conducted if Malaysia brought back the 41 skeletons from three shell middens in Guar Kepah, which were excavated by British archaeologists between 1851 and 1934 and are currently at the National Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden, Holland.
When the Penang Woman skeleton was found in April 2017, researchers came across a skull, a femur bone and a rib cage beneath the floor of a house which had been demolished to make way for the gallery.
The skeletal remains were the first and only remaining Neolithic skeleton found in a shell midden in Malaysia. Shell middens refer to mounds of kitchen debris consisting mostly of shells and other food remnants and indicate ancient human settlements and are sometimes used as burial sites.
The remains were discovered in shell midden C with her arms folded and surrounded by pottery, stone tools and several types of shells, a sign of her important position in her society.
In total, 41 skeletons from three shell middens, identified as A, B and C in Guar Kepah, were excavated by British archaeologists between 1851 and 1934 and those skeletons are now at the National Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden, Holland.
The original Penang Woman is being carefully conserved in USM as it had to be in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment, which meant the skeleton currently showcased at the gallery is a replica of the original.
The cache of Ancient Knucklebones Discovered in Israel
In this vale of tears, any help peering into the future would be useful. Now, archaeologists report finding over 600 astragali – small bones from quadruped feet – in the ancient city of Maresha, central Israel. Dating to the city’s Hellenistic period some 2,300 years ago, what the bones were used for must remain in the realm of speculation. But there are clear indications that some were used to attempt to contact the gods and others were used to play games.
Ovine or caprine knuckle and ankle bones, or even artificial versions thereof – and sometimes small bones from cow feet or gazelle as well – were popular throughout the Levant and classical world, and even beyond. However, the amount found in recent excavations in Maresha was unusually large. Their discovery was reported recently in the British archaeological journal the Levant, by Dr. Lee Perry-Gal of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Prof. Adi Erlich of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa and Dr. Ian Stern of the Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem.
When one finds bones from the feet of herbivores in a cultural context, they’re usually remnants from meals, Perry-Gal points out. Sheep and goat have been staples in the Levantine diet since their domestication about 10,000 years ago in southeast Turkey. The hint to archaeologists that a bone is more than a bone is when it is found in disproportion, she explains.
Say you find a thigh bone; fine; with it you find a few toe bones, fine; if you find 500 toe bones per thigh bone, you have a phenomenon that begs interpretation, Perry-Gal says.
It bears adding that another vast collection of astragali had been discovered at Megiddo, about 680 of the things. Around the ancient world, sometimes astragali were found in the context of foundation deposits (built into the house foundations), likely because of their association with fortune (hopefully good).
Cave dwellings at the biblical site of Maresha, central Israel.
Forecasting and fun in Maresha
Located in the Judean foothills, Maresha appears in the Bible in the context of the inheritance of the tribe of Judah, which included – among many other cited names – “Libnah, and Ether, and Ashan; and Iphtah, and Ashnah, and Nezib; and Keilah, and Achzib, and Mareshah; nine cities with their villages” (Joshua 15:42-44). It was one of the cities King Rehoboam fortified, according to the biblical account, which also cites it as the site of Asa of Judea’s fight against an invading army led by Zerah the Ethiopian.
In the Hellenistic period from the fourth to the second centuries B.C.E., Maresha was not Judahite. It was a multicultural city with as many as four or five different populations living together, Perry-Gal says.
The profession, or art, of divination using knucklebones, is called astragalomancy and, at least in the historic period, the practice was based on markings on the bones: names of gods and goddesses, other words, numbers. The underlying theory is that casting dice – or in this case, small bones – is a way to invoke or contact the superpowers. How the osteo-mediated message from the invoked deity is interpreted is another matter.
Dr. Lee Perry-Gal of the Israel Antiquities Authority held some of the knucklebones discovered at Maresha.
Some believe cleromancy using bones goes back to prehistory, in some form, though if it was used before writing, the bones presumably wouldn’t have alphabetic cues. In any case, by the classical period astragali were so prized that “bones” sculpted in glass have even been discovered at Tel Kedesh in Galilee and in ancient Greece, also from the Hellenistic period in the third and second centuries B.C.E. Examples also exist of ersatz astragali in ivory, stone and metal. Bone astragali have also been discovered in ancient Jerusalem.
In fact, Perry-Gal observes, ethnographic studies find astragali used in games to this very day in Australia and the Near East, though just for games: presumably their users have gotten over the hope that deceased feet can serve in divination.
Back to Maresha, the site of the huge collection of astragali dates to the Hellenistic period. Bones for forecasting and fun, as well as some possibly employed in the hope of persuading the deity to torment other people, were found in artificial caves carved into the bedrock of the lower city. Many of the astragali were found, the archaeologists say, in large concentrations in specific caves.
Asked if none were found aboveground, Perry-Gal says Maresha consists of its upper part above ground, of which little remains following serial conquests (as is typical of this region). Beneath the homes, however, people carved caves in the soft limestone. There are hundreds of these caves, which served for sundry purposes, including storage for grains and water cisterns – and possibly worship.
In the context of the perennial unease and hostilities in the Middle East, “all the materials from the domestic areas above-ground were tossed into the underground areas. They became a time capsule,” Perry-Gal explains. So we cannot say whether the astragali of Maresha were used in the glare of sunshine or dank inner sanctums, only a small proportion of which have been excavated.
A burial cave from the Hellenistic period is located at Maresha.
Cops and robbers, Maresha style
But there are clues. “In Area 89, underground, there is a small altar with wall etchings, and there we found a huge collection of astragali and ostracons [pottery with writing on it],” Perry-Gal says. “This cave may have served as a place of worship. So the astragali there may not have fallen from above-ground.”
In worshipful contexts one finds astragali bearing the names of Aphrodite and Eros, the great Hera herself, Hermes, and others. Meanwhile, in the domestic neighbourhood of Maresha, the team found astragali bearing the name of Nike, the goddess of fortune, and speculate that those found in that context served to play games. “It’s a peek into their lives,” Perry-Gal says.
It bears noting that astragali around the ancient world usually weren’t marked at all; some bore names of divinities, which are associated with attempts at divination or worship; some bore numbers, which are associated with games; and some apparently served for that age-old hobby of cursing one’s enemies.
“During the Roman and Hellenistic period, astragali were used a lot in divination, at Maresha as well. This amount is extraordinary – especially ones with writing, names of gods and goddesses, found in the context of ostracons of prophecy,” Perry-Gal stresses.
Some of the words found on the “divination bones” found at Maresha.
Or parlor games. She suspects that astragali with words like “thief” on them were used in play. Some astragali were weighted with lead (much more than other metals) and likely served in gaming: they would roll better than mere bone, she observes.
Who might have used the astragali for play, prophecy or to (fruitlessly) implement a foul intention? No idea. “Maresha had Phoenicians and Idumaeans and Nabataeans and Jews, though it wasn’t Judahic,” she says. “We couldn’t associate the find with a specific ethos.”
It bears noting that all the ostracons, which are being studied by Dr. Stern, are in Aramaic and include curses and prophecies, but those astragali that bear writing do so in Greek.
Astragali found at Maresha. Their supposed powers of divination couldn’t save the Hellenistic city from its fate.
Curses? More like formulae: “If you do x, y will happen,” Perry-Gal explains. Sort of an attempt to cajole the gods into doing evil to somebody. Okay, Maresha wasn’t the only Hellenistic city in town. What was so special about it to warrant massive use of astragali – or, at least, such a vast collection of them, relatively speaking?
Possibly, the critical mass was achieved under special conditions of extreme multiculturalism (all those peoples): other places could also be mixed, but the extent here may have been unusual, Perry-Gal suggests. Under the pax Hellenistica, conditions were open, global, tolerant and maybe all that came together at Maresha, which really was a special place – this is the first place in the west that chickens seem to have been cultivated, she adds, back in the third millennium B.C.E.
Apparently the magic in the animal feet did not help the city folk foresee the future. Maresha underwent more upheavals and finally met its maker in the year 40 B.C.E., by the Parthians roaring out of ancient Iran, and activity would move next door to the city of Beit Guvrin.
East side of the rampart with the southern staircase
Archaeologists have discovered that the tumulus of Laona, an ancient burial mound, has been hiding an architectural structure that was built by experienced engineers to become a lasting mega-monument, the antiquities department said on Friday.
“The rare and mysterious tumulus, which until recently concealed the existence of the rampart, is a mega-monument whose construction would have required the mobilisation of a huge and experienced workforce under the guidance of expert engineers,” an announcement said.
The rampart, a broad embankment raised as a fortification, on top of which the mound was erected, is believed to be Cypro-Classical and built most probably at the end of the 4th century or early in the 3rd century BC.
The antiquities department said the 2022 field team “was met with another surprise” when the rampart, instead of turning to the west under the mound’s summit, was found crossing over to the north side with its wall following a descending north-west course, which is “in an excellent state of preservation”, it said.
The wall of the rampart exposed on the north slope of the mound
Together with the east section, the total length of “this rare defensive monument” is currently 160 metres and its internal area is at least 1,740 square metres.
The width of the rampart is 5 metres and it is built with stacks of mould-made mudbricks placed between parallel walls of unworked stones.
“From now on, a main goal of the Laona project is to show that Laona is a burial tumulus; also, to identify the political agent behind its construction,” the antiquities department said.
Laona, in the Paphos region, combines two monuments that are so far unique in the archaeology of Cyprus.
The royal dynasty that ruled Paphos to the end of the 4th century BC is credited for the construction of the rampart, which is chronologically and functionally related to the palatial and workshop complexes on the citadel of Hadjiabdoulla, only 70 metres to the south of Laona.
Sections of the floor of the rampart, that were exposed near the foundations of the wall, show that the bedrock had been levelled; a thick layer of river pebbles was placed on top of it and on top of that a layer of red soil, which is full of sherds.
The red soil is currently being analysed to determine whether it has the same consistency as the mudbricks.
A third staircase, less well-preserved than the two staircases on the east wall, was also discovered on the highest surviving sector of the rampart.
The steps are made of mudbricks, but for reasons of safety, their excavation was discontinued after the first five steps were exposed, the antiquities department said.
The mound of Laona. North side before the 2022 excavation
The 2022 fieldwork was carried out with specialised – both archaeology and technology – teams from the University of Cyprus and the Cyprus University of Technology aided by Professor Jacopo Tabolli from the University of Siena
Study Offers Insight Into Metallurgy in Ancient China
An analysis of a 2,300-year-old text and coins has helped researchers decipher ancient recipes for bronze, including two linguistically elusive ingredients.
Knife coins, which were in use in China around 400 BC, were some of the objects studied as researchers deciphered ancient recipes for bronze.
The Kao Gong Ji, the oldest known technical encyclopedia, was written around 300 BC and is part of a larger text called The Rites of Zhou. The ancient text includes six chemistry formulas for mixing bronze and lists items like swords, bells, axes, knives and mirrors, as well as how to make them.
For the past 100 years, researchers have struggled to translate two of the main ingredients, which are listed as “jin”and “xi.” Experts believed these words translated to copper and tin, which are key components in the bronze-making process. When researchers tried to re-create the recipes, however, the resulting metal didn’t match up with the composition of ancient Chinese artefacts.
Now, two researchers believe they have accurately identified the true meaning behind the mystery ingredients. The journal Antiquity published its findings on Tuesday.
The revelation allows for a better understanding of ancient bronze production — and opens up new questions about when this process began, given that large-scale bronze production happened long before the six recipes were shared in the Kao Gong Ji, said study coauthor Ruiliang Liu, curator of the Early China Collection at the British Museum in London.
In modern Chinese, jin means gold. But the ancient meaning of the word could be copper, copper alloy or even just metal, which is why it has been difficult to determine the specific ingredients.
“These recipes were used in the largest bronze industry in Eurasia during this period,” said Liu in a statement. “Attempts to reconstruct these processes have been made for more than a hundred years, but have failed.”
Chemical analysis
Liu and lead study author Mark Pollard analyzed the chemical composition of Chinese coins minted close to when the Kao Gong Ji was written. Pollard is the Edward Hall Professor of Archaeological Science at Oxford University and director of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art.
Previously, researchers had thought the coins were made by diluting copper with tin and lead.
The analysis showed that the chemical composition of the coins was a result of mixing two pre-prepared metal alloys, one made of copper, tin and lead, and the other copper and lead.
The two researchers concluded jin and xi were likely premixed metal alloys.
“For the first time in more than 100 years of scholarship, we have produced a viable explanation of how to interpret the recipes for making bronze objects in early China given in the (Kao Gong Ji),” Pollard said in a statement.
The findings have shown that ancient Chinese bronze-making relied on combining alloys instead of pure metals and that metalsmithing was more complex than previously thought.
“It indicates an additional step — the production of pre-prepared alloys — in the manufacturing process of copper-alloy objects in early China,” Liu said. “This represents an additional but previously unknown layer in the web of metal production and supply in China.”
Archaeologically, this additional step would have remained invisible if not for chemical analysis, the researchers said.
“Understanding the alloying practice is crucial for us to understand the exquisite bronze ritual vessels as well as the underlying mass production in Shang and Zhou societies,” Liu said.
Using this type of analysis could help researchers decipher other texts about ancient metallurgy from different cultures and regions in the future, the researchers said.
Freckled Woman with High Alcohol Tolerance Lived in Japan 3,800 Years Ago
More than two decades after researchers discovered the 3,800-year-old remains of “Jomon woman” in Hokkaido, Japan, they’ve finally deciphered her genetic secrets.
A facial reconstruction of the Jomon woman, who lived about 3,800 years ago in what is now northern Japan.
And it turns out, from that perspective, she looks very different from modern-day inhabitants of Japan.
The woman, who was elderly when she died, had a high tolerance for alcohol, unlike some modern Japanese people, a genetic analysis revealed. She also had moderately dark skin and eyes and an elevated chance of developing freckles.
Surprisingly, the ancient woman shared a gene variant with people who live in the Arctic, one that helps people digest high-fat foods. This variant is found in more than 70% of the Arctic population, but it’s absent elsewhere, said study first author Hideaki Kanzawa, a curator of anthropology at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
This variant provides further evidence that the Jomon people fished and hunted fatty sea and land animals, Kanzawa said.
“Hokkaido Jomon people engaged in [not only] hunting of … land animals, such as deer and boar, but also marine fishing and hunting of fur seal, Steller’s sea lions, sea lions, dolphins, salmon and trout,” Kanzawa told Live Science.
“In particular, many relics related to hunting of ocean animals have been excavated from the Funadomari site,” where the Jomon woman was found.
Who is Jomon woman?
Jomon women lived during the Joman period, also known as Japan’s Neolithic period, which lasted from about 10,500 B.C. to 300 B.C. Though she died more than three millennia ago — between 3,550 and 3,960 years ago, according to recent radiocarbon dating — researchers found her remains only in 1998, at the Funadomari shell mound on Rebun Island, off the northern coast of Hokkaido.
But Jomon woman’s genetics have remained a mystery all these years, prompting researchers to study her DNA, which they extracted from one of her molars.
Last year, the researchers released their preliminary results, which helped a forensic artist create a facial reconstruction of the woman, showing that she had dark, frizzy hair; brown eyes; and a smattering of freckles.
Her genes also showed that she was at high risk of developing solar lentigo, or darkened patches of skin if she spent too much time in the sun, so the artist included several dark spots on her face.
“These findings provided insights into the history and reconstructions of the ancient human-population structures in east Eurasia,” said Kanzawa, who was part of a larger team that included Naruya Saitou, a professor of population genetics at the National Institute of Genetics in Japan.
Now, with their study slated to be published in the next few weeks in The Anthropological Society of Nippon’s English-language journal, Kanzawa and his colleagues are sharing more of their results. Jomon woman’s DNA shows, for example, that the Jomon people split with Asian populations that lived on the Asian mainland between 38,000 and 18,000 years ago, he said.
It’s likely that the Jomon people lived in small hunter-gatherer groups, likely for about 50,000 years, Kanzawa noted. Moreover, the Jomon woman had wet earwax. That’s an interesting fact because the gene variant for dry earwax originated in northeastern Asia and today up to 95% of East Asians have dry earwax. (People with the dry earwax variant also lack a chemical that produces smelly armpits.)
Despite her differences from the modern Japanese population, Jomon woman is actually more closely related to today’s Japanese, Ulchi (the indigenous culture of eastern Russian), Korean, aboriginal Taiwanese and Philippine people than these populations are to the Han Chinese, Kanzawa said.
Metal books found in Jordan cave could change the view of Biblical history
The discovery of seventy ancient metal books in a cave in Jordan is said to have the possibility of unlocking some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity.
The tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, have left academics divided over their authenticity, but they say that if they are verified, they could prove as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.
The pages are not much bigger than a credit card, and on them are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Adding to the intrigue, many of the books are sealed, prompting academics to speculate they are actually the lost collection of codices mentioned in the Bible’s Book Of Revelation.
The books were discovered five years ago in a cave in a remote part of Jordan to which Christian refugees are known to have fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD.
Important documents from the same period have previously been found there, and initial metallurgical tests indicate that some of the books could date from the first century AD.
This estimate is based on the form of corrosion, which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially. If the dating were verified, the books would be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St Paul.
David Elkington, a British scholar of ancient religious history and archaeology, and one of the few to have examined the books says they could be “the major discovery of Christian history”. “It is a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early saints of the Church,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.
“It is vital that the collection can be recovered intact and secured in the best possible circumstances, both for the benefit of its owners and for a potentially fascinated international audience,” he said. The books’ whereabouts are also a mystery, as after a Jordanian Bedouin discovered them, an Israeli Bedouin, who is said to have illegally smuggled them across the border into Israel, where they remain, acquired the lot.
The Jordanian Government is now working at the highest levels to repatriate and safeguard the collection. Philip Davies, emeritus professor of biblical studies at Sheffield University, said there was powerful evidence that the books have a Christian origin in plates cast into a picture map of the holy city of Jerusalem.
“As soon as I saw that, I was dumbstruck. That struck me as so obviously a Christian image,” he said. “There is a cross in the foreground, and behind it is what has to be the tomb of Jesus, a small building with an opening, and behind that the walls of the city.
“There are walls depicted on other pages of these books too and they almost certainly refer to Jerusalem. It is a Christian crucifixion taking place outside the city walls.
“The possibility of a Hebrew-Christian origin is certainly suggested by the imagery and, if so, these codices are likely to bring dramatic new light to our understanding of a very significant but so far little understood period of history,” he stated.
The British team leading the work on the discovery fears that the present Israeli “keeper” may be looking to sell some of the books onto the black market, or worse – destroy them. But the man who holds the books denies the charge and claims they have been in his family for 100 years.
“The Book of Revelation tells of a sealed book that was opened only by the Messiah,” Dr Margaret Barker, a former president of the Society for Old Testament Study, said. “Other texts from the period tell of sealed books of wisdom and of a secret tradition passed on by Jesus to his closest disciples. That is the context for this discovery,” she stated.
5000-Year-Old Water System Discovered In Western Iran
Ancient Water System in Iran
Archaeologists in Iran made an unexpected discovery during excavations at the Farash ancient historical site at the Seimareh Dam reservoir – a 5,000-year-old water system.
The research team is working hard to recover the water pipes, along with hundreds of other artefacts, before they are submerged by the new dam.
The Persians are one of the earliest cultures to implement advanced systems of water distribution and are among the greatest aqueduct builders of the ancient world.
They are particularly well-known for their construction of qanāts, a series of well-like vertical shafts, connected by gently sloping tunnels, which were used to create a reliable supply of water for human settlements and for irrigation.
The water system comprises a small pool and a long earthenware pipeline. Each earthenware conduit measures about one metre in length and the team leader Leili Niaken said it is likely that the structure was made and baked in the region.
The newly discovered water system.
In addition to the ancient water pipes, the team of archaeologists from the Iranian Centre for Archaeological Research (ICAR) have also uncovered more than 100 sites dating back to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Copper Age, Stone Age, Parthian, Sassanid and early Islamic periods. Signs of the Mesopotamians’ influence in the region were identified by studies carried out on the ancient strata at the reservoir.
The archaeological team is now working hard to unearth the rest of the pipeline, which may lead archaeologists to its source.
The aim is to recover as much as possible before it all goes underwater when the filling of the dam is complete.
