Archaeologists discover a 1,200-yr-old luxurious mansion in southern Israel
ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM THE ISRAEL ANTIQUES AUTHORITY (IAA) HAVE UNCOVERED A LUXURY ESTATE THAT DATES FROM THE ISLAMIC PERIOD.
The team made the discovery during works to build a new neighbourhood in the city of Rahat in the Negev desert, located in Southern Israel.
The region was formerly ruled by the Al-Tayaha tribe (Al-Hezeel clan), a Negev Bedouin people that settled in the Sinai Peninsula during the early years of the Muslim conquests.
Archaeologists found a large estate with a central courtyard that sits on a vaulted complex and a three-metre-deep rock-hewn water cistern which dates to the Early Islamic period from the 8th to 9th century AD.
The estate has four wings, in which one of the wings has a hall paved with a marble and stone floor and walls decorated with frescoes using finely coloured red, yellow, blue, and black pigments.
Some of the other rooms had plaster floors and large ovens for cooking, while fragments of delicate glass serving dishes have also been uncovered.
“The luxurious estate and the impressive underground vaults are evidence of the owners’ means.
Their high status and wealth allowed them to build a luxurious mansion that served as a residence and for entertaining”, said the excavation directors – Oren Shmueli, Dr. Elena Kogan-Zehavi and Dr. Noé D. Michael.
Eli Eskosido, Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority said: “The Israel Antiquities Authority and the Authority for the Development and Settlement of the Bedouin are planning together to conserve and exhibit the finds to the general public.”
Ancient statue unearthed at Cambodia’s Angkor temple complex
A team of archaeologists has uncovered a large ancient statue that is thought to have once stood as a guard over an ancient hospital to the north of Cambodia’s Angkor Thom city complex.
Impressive Ancient Statue Unearthed in Angkor Thom Complex
The almost two-meters tall statue, which is believed to be from the late 12th to the early 13th century, was spotted during a dig in Siem Reap province last Saturday, as I’m Sokrithy, an archaeologist with the Apsara Authority, the government organization managing Angkor Park, and the dig’s scientific supervisor stated.
“We were very surprised to find this,” he told Cambodia Daily, and added that the sandstone statue is missing its feet and parts of its legs, otherwise it would have stood at least 2.1 meters (in its original form) and weighed in at 200kg (440 pounds).
Archaeologists made a grid to draw the statue which is in the form of a guard, before moving it
The Angkor Archaeological Park is Cambodia’s most popular tourist attraction and a world heritage site due to the many remains it boasts from the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, dating from the 9th to the 15th centuries.
During the peak of its power, the city hosted hundreds of temples and more than a million citizens, making it one of the planet’s most populous pre-industrial cities.
The statue was found next to one of four hospitals which were discovered in Angkor Thon a century ago. It is one of 102 that King Jayavarman VII had constructed in the Angkor empire.
“Jayavarman VII’s reign was truly remarkable in terms of social programs,” he said. “The hospital consisted of wooden buildings and a chapel erected in stones. What is left is the chapel…as wooden structures have long disappeared,” explained Tan Boun Suy, deputy director-general for the Apsara Authority as reported by Cambodia Daily.
The Great Sacred City of Angkor Thom
Angkor Thom (which means ‘Great City’) was the last capital of the mighty Khmer Empire, which was based in modern-day Cambodia. As previously reported in another Ancient Origins article, this typically intricately decorated Khmer city, which is located in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province, was fortified by massive walls, which in turn surrounded a great moat.
In order to enter this protected city, one had to cross one of Angkor Thom’s enormous causeways. As a capital city, Angkor Thom contained numerous important structures, including temples, royal residences, and administrative buildings. Today, Angkor Thom is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Angkor, which also includes the famous Temple of Angkor Wat.
The archaeology team respectfully ask the spirit protecting the site permission to move the statue they unearthed the previous day to the Preah Sihanouk Museum in Siem Reap province.
Angkor Thom was founded around the later part of the 12 th century AD, during the reign of Jayavarman VII, who is often regarded as the greatest king of the Khmer Empire. This city was established following the sacking of the previous capital, Angkor, by the Chams during the reign of Jayavarman’s predecessor.
The layout of Jayavarman’s new capital was in the shape of an almost perfect square, which was separated from the surrounding areas by a circuit of huge walls, and a moat reported to have contained crocodiles.
In order to enter Angkor Thom, a visitor would need to pass through one of the five monumental gates that are found along the city walls. The northern, southern and western walls each have a gate, whilst the eastern one has two.
Additionally, these gates are reached via causeways that cross the moat. These causeways are flanked by 54 statues on each side, demons on the right, and gods on the left.
The demons may be identified by their fearsome facial expressions and military headdresses, whilst the gods look calm and are wearing conical headdresses. At the beginning of each causeway is the statue of a nine-headed serpent, whose body is held by the gods and demons. This arrangement depicts the famous Hindu myth known as the ‘Churning of the Ocean’.
Statues at the South Gate of Angkor Thom in Cambodia, with gods holding the 9-headed serpent.
Angkor Thom Today and the Importance of Recent Find
In recent years, vast parts of the park have been excavated, creating a marvellous archaeological walking path that attracts more than two million visitors a year. However, the famed complex of the historic city still remains a mystery that hasn’t been fully explored.
The recent finding is clear proof of this. Maybe that’s why when the Cambodian archaeologists from Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies found the beautiful statue buried only 40 centimetres under the ground of the Angkor-era hospital, they couldn’t believe their eyes. As Cambodia Daily reports, archaeologists now suggest that the statue most likely served as a symbolic guardian of the hospital and hope that the excavation will unearth more objects from that era, which could shed light on the daily life and activities in those hospitals and also the lives of ordinary people of the era.
The excavation is conducted by the Apsara Authority in cooperation with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies’ Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. As part of a training program, ten students from Asian countries, the U.S. and Australia are taking part in the excavation.
Record rains in Pakistan damage Mohenjo Daro archaeological site
The devastating floods in Pakistan have caused significant damage to Mohenjo Daro, a famous 4,500-year-old archaeological site in the southeastern Sindh province which UNESCO has declared a World Heritage site.
The area in Sindh’s Larkana district received more than 1,400mm of rain in the second week of August, damaging the protective outer covering on the historic structures, Abdul Fatah Shaikh, the director of archaeology and museum for the provincial government, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
That amount of rain, Shaikh said, has not been recorded on the 250 hectares (650 acres) since the ruins were discovered 100 years ago in 1922.
“The original structure is safe by and large, including the stupa at the site. However, the protective layer, also called mud slurry, that we deployed suffered a lot of damage, causing exposure of the original walls,” Shaikh said over the telephone from Karachi city. Shaikh said the damage was caused mainly due to heavy rains and that there was no flooding, but added that urgent remedial work is required.
INTERACTIVE_MOENJADARO THREATENED BY RAINS
“The original structure is now exposed to the vagaries of nature and if immediate conservation work is not started, it can cause irreparable damage,” he warned.
Mohenjo Daro (‘Mound of the Dead’ in Sindhi language) – considered the best preserved urban settlement in South Asia – is situated on the bank of the Indus River, with Larkana being the nearest major city 30km (18 miles) away.
The ruins were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1980.
Repair work underway
Shaikh rejected media reports that claimed the site could be removed from the heritage list after the rains damaged it, saying there was no such immediate risk.
“If a site is not conserved or protected properly, they are given suggestions to improve. If the (UNESCO) committee is not satisfied, a warning is issued to the host country. Often, these warnings are repeated for multiple years before a site is moved to a ‘danger list,” Shaikh said.
He said there are currently 52 World Heritage sites across the globe on the danger list, but none of them is in Pakistan.
“But this does not mean that we become complacent and fall asleep,” Shaikh said, adding that dozens of workers have begun the repair work.
Repair work being carried out at Mohenjo Daro [Courtesy of Sindh government, Pakistan]
“Many parts of the site are now exposed to nature and we must work extremely hard and very urgently for conservation within the next six months. It cannot be ruled out that if we fail to deliver, the site could be added to the danger list,” he added. Mohenjo Daro, one of the prominent cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation, is known for its elaborate drainage and water management systems. This, Shaikh said, played a role in ensuring there was very little standing water as floods hit the region.
“The city of Larkana had four feet of standing water whereas, at Mohenjo Daro, there was less than a foot of it. It proved that the original drainage system worked even 5,000 years after it was built,” he said.
The rains now threaten the famed archaeological site dating back 4,500 years
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to land in Pakistan later on Thursday “to appeal for the massive support of the international community to the Pakistanis, in this hour of need after the devastating floods that we are witnessing”.
“Today it is Pakistan. Tomorrow it can be anywhere else,” he said before flying, referring to the global threats caused by the climate crisis.
The Pakistani foreign ministry issued a statement on Thursday, confirming the arrival of Guterres.
“The Secretary-General will travel to areas most impacted by the climate catastrophe. He will interact with displaced families and first responders in the field, and oversee UN’s humanitarian response work,” the statement said.
Shaikh said the Pakistani government could use the UN chief’s visit to pitch for a global campaign to raise funds for Mohenjo Daro as well.
“We are also going to host a centenary function to celebrate 100 years of discovery of Mohenjo Daro in Paris this November as part of our Save Mohenjo Daro campaign,” he said.
UNESCO said it will help Pakistan in repairing Mohenjo Daro damages
In a news statement shared with Al Jazeera, UNESCO confirmed the agency will be providing $350,000 to Pakistan to “help recover flood-damaged cultural heritage sites” including Mohenjo Daro. Meanwhile, authorities in Pakistan said some cities in Sindh are still in danger of flooding after breaches were made in Manchar Lake, Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake, to save major urban settlements.
Mahesh Kumar, a government engineer in Sindh, told Al Jazeera the cuts in the lake have reduced the water level to below the danger mark. However, the breaches forced the evacuation of at least 100,000 people from the adjoining areas. Overnight, 12 more people died due to the floods, bringing the total death toll to 1,355 since June, 481 of them children, the National Disaster Management Authority said. At its peak, the record floods had submerged one-third of Pakistan.
Officials now fear the spread of water-borne diseases and other ailments in the affected areas as people lack access to clean water or medicines. The UN in a statement last week said up to 73,000 pregnant women are expected to deliver next month. Officials and climate activists say Pakistan is a victim of climate change since it contributes less than one per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but is among the top 10 countries most vulnerable to extreme weather.
The rediscovery of Noah a 6,500-year-old skeleton, who survived a great flood
A 6,500-year-old skeleton was unearthed at the Ur site in Iraq. Here, the skeleton was coated in wax in the field and lifted whole along with surrounding dirt.
Scientists at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia are quite literally cleaning the skeletons out of their closets. Museum staff recently rediscovered a 6,500-year- old human skeleton that’s been boxed up in the basement for 85 years.
Tucked away in a storeroom, the wooden box had no identifying numbers or catalogue cards. But a recent effort to digitalize some of the museum’s old records brought forth new information about the mysterious box’s history and the skeleton, nicknamed “Noah,” inside.
The human remains inside the box were originally unearthed between 1929 and 1930 at the site of Ur in modern-day Iraq by Sir Leonard Woolley and his team of archaeologists from the Penn and British Museums, according to the records.
Woolley’s excavation is best known for uncovering the famous Mesopotamian “royal cemetery,” which included hundreds of graves and 16 tombsladen with cultural artefacts. But the archaeologist and his team also discovered graves that preceded Ur’s royal burial ground by about 2,000 years.
A lightweight plaster mixture is placed over the covered skeleton, the 6,500-year-old human remains discovered at the Ur site in Iraq, in order to protect it during shipping. The silt is already being cut away under the skeleton to make room for the carrying board.
In a flood plain, nearly 50 feet (15 meters) below the surface of the site of Ur, the team found 48 graves dating back to the Ubaid period, roughly 5500 B.C. to 4000 B.C.
Though remains from this period were extremely rare even in 1929, Woolley decided to recover only one skeleton from the site. He coated the bones and surrounding soil in wax, boxed them up and shipped them to London, then Philadelphia.
A set of lists outlined where the artefacts from the 1929 to 1930 dig were headed — while half of the artefacts remained in Iraq, the others were split between London and Philadelphia. One of the lists stated that the Penn Museum was to receive a tray of mud from the excavation, as well as two skeletons.
But when William Hafford, the project manager responsible for digitalizing the museum’s records, saw the list, he was puzzled. One of the two skeletons on the list was nowhere to be found.
Further research into the museum’s database revealed the unidentified skeleton had been recorded as “not accounted for” as of 1990. To get to the bottom of this mystery, Hafford began exploring the extensive records left by Woolley himself.
After locating additional information, including images of the missing skeleton, Hafford approached Janet Monge, the Penn Museum’s curator of physical anthropology. But Monge, like Hafford, had never seen the skeleton before.
That’s when Monge remembered the mysterious box in the basement.
When Monge opened the box later that day, she said it was clear the human remains inside were the same ones listed as being packed up and shipped by Woolley.
The skeleton, she said, likely belonged to a male, 50 years or older, who would have stood somewhere between 5 feet 8 inches (173 centimetres) to 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm) tall.
Penn Museum researchers have nicknamed the re-discovered skeleton “Noah,” because he is believed to have lived after what archaeological data suggests was a massive flood at the original site of Ur.
New scientific techniques that weren’t yet available in Woolley’s time could help scientists at the Penn Museum determine much more about the time period to which these ancient remains belonged, including diet, ancestral origins, trauma, stress and diseases.
Hundreds of Monumental “Kites” Spotted in the Arabian Desert
Oxford archaeologists discover monumental evidence of prehistoric hunting across Arabian desert
Archaeologists at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology have used satellite imagery to identify and map over 350 monumental hunting structures known as ‘kites’ across northern Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq – most of which had never been previously documented.
Led by Dr Michael Fradley, a team of researchers in the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project used a range of open-source satellite imagery to carefully study the region around the eastern Nafud desert, an area little studied in the past. The surprising results, published in the journal The Holocene, have the potential to change our understanding of prehistoric connections and climate change across the Middle East.
Termed kites by early aircraft pilots, these structures consist of low stone walls making up a head enclosure and a number of guiding walls, sometimes kilometres long. They are believed to have been used to guide games such as gazelles into an area where they could be captured or killed. There is evidence that these structures may date back as far as 8,000 BCE in the Neolithic period.
Kites cannot be observed easily from the ground, however, the advent of commercial satellite imagery and platforms such as Google Earth have enabled recent discoveries of new distributions.
While these structures were already well-known from eastern Jordan and adjoining areas in southern Syria, these latest results take the known distribution over 400km further east across northern Saudi Arabia, with some also identified in southern Iraq for the first time.
Dr Fradley said: ‘The structures we found displayed evidence of complex, careful design. In terms of size, the ‘heads’ of the kites can be over 100 metres wide, but the guiding walls (the ’strings’ of the kite) which we currently think gazelle and other games would follow to the kite heads can be incredibly long. In some of these new examples, the surviving portion of walls run in almost straight lines for over 4 kilometres, often over very varied topography. This shows an incredible level of ability in how these structures were designed and built.’
Evidence suggests considerable resources would have had to be coordinated to build, maintain, and rebuild the kites over generations, combined with hunting and returning butchered remains to settlements or camps for further preservation.
The researchers suggest that their exaggerated scale and form may be an expression of status, identity and territoriality. Appearances of the kites in rock art found in Jordan suggest they had an important place within the symbolic and ritual spheres of Neolithic peoples in the region.
Desert kite research is a very active field just now – Michael and colleagues explore a significant extension to their distribution pattern, which has major implications for our understanding of the relationship of the kite builders with new mobile pastoralists and the occupation of the region.
Bill Finlayson, Director of EAMENA and Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Oxford
From the design of the kite heads to the careful runs of guiding walls over long distances, these structures contrast markedly in scale with any other evidence of architecture from the early Holocene period.
The researchers suggest that the builders of these kites dwelt in temporary structures made from organic materials that have left no trace visible on current satellite imagery data.
These new sites suggest a previously unknown level of connection right across northern Arabia at the time they were built. They raise exciting questions about who built these structures, who the hunted game was intended to feed, and how the people were able to not only survive but also invest in these monumental structures.
In the context of this new connectedness, the distribution of the star-shaped kites now provides the first direct evidence of contact through, rather than around, the Nafud desert. This underlines the important of areas that are now desert under more favourable climatic conditions in enabling the movement of humans and wildlife. It is thought the kites were built during a wetter, greener climatic period known as the Holocene Humid Period (between around 9000 and 4000 BCE).
The largest number of kites were built on the Al Labbah plateau in the Nafud desert, where the absence of later Bronze Age burial monuments suggests that a shift into a drier period meant some of these areas became too marginal to support the communities once using these landscapes, with game species also potentially displaced by climate change.
Whether the patterns of kite construction over space and time represent the movement of ideas or people, or even the direction of that movement, remain questions to be answered.
The project, supported by the Arcadia Fund, is now extending its survey work across these now arid zones to further develop our understanding of these landscapes and the effect of climate change.
The study Following the herds? A new distribution of hunting kites in Southwest Asia is published in The Holocene.
Distribution of kite structures in the Levant and in northern Arabia. White: previously documented kites. Red: kites recorded by EAMENA.
5000-year-old ‘graveyard of giants’ found in a Chinese village
Archaeologists in China have discovered a 5000-year-old graveyard of abnormally tall people who used to live in the country’s Shandong province. The skeletal remains measured over six feet in height.
An archaeological excavation at Jiaojia village in Jinan City’s Zhangqiu District has uncovered 104 houses, 205 graves, and 20 sacrificial pits, according to Xinhua.
Pottery and various objects made with jade were also unearthed during the dig.
The Late Neolithic site uncovered in China dates back to a time when the Yellow River Valley was inhabited by the Longshan Culture, also known as the Black Pottery Culture, which was popular in the region from 3000 to 1900 BC.
The archaeological dig, initiated last year, was led by the University of Shandong.
Grave of giants unearthed in ChinaUNIVERSITY OF SHANDONG
An analysis of the skeletal remains suggests the ancient people living in the region were unusually tall, Xinhua reported.
The findings said the tallest individual found in the grave was a male who measured 6’3″.
According to prior studies, the Neolithic males typically measure around 5’5″ and the females around 5’1″.
The researchers attributed the unusual height to genetics and environment.
Lead archaeologist Fang Hui, while speaking to Xinhua, said the Late Neolithic civilisation engaged in agriculture, therefore the villagers in the region had access to a variety of nutritious food which could have added to their overall physical growth.
Pottery unearthed in the archaeological dig
“I suspect that this big game specialisation associated with a surplus of high-quality proteins and low population density created environmental conditions leading to the selection of exceptionally tall males,” said the study’s lead author Pavel Grasgruber in an interview with Seeker.
The tallest of the Longshan men were found in tombs, which the Shandong archaeologists said was because of their higher social status and access to better food.
31,000-year-old skeleton missing lower left leg is earliest known evidence of surgery, experts say
Australian and Indonesian archaeologists stumbled upon the skeletal remains of a young hunter-gatherer whose lower leg was amputated by a skilled surgeon 31,000 years ago.
A 31,000-year-old skeleton missing its lower left leg and found in a remote Indonesian cave is believed to be the earliest known evidence of surgery, according to a peer-reviewed study that experts say rewrites understanding of human history.
An expedition team led by Australian and Indonesian archaeologists stumbled upon the skeletal remains while excavating a limestone cave in East Kalimantan, Borneo looking for ancient rock art in 2020.
The finding turned out to be evidence of the earliest known surgical amputation, pre-dating other discoveries of complex medical procedures across Eurasia by tens of thousands of years.
By measuring the ages of a tooth and burial sediment using radioisotope dating, the scientists estimated the remains to be about 31,000 years old.
Palaeopathological analysis of the remains revealed bony growths on the lower left leg indicative of healing and suggesting the leg was surgically amputated several years before burial.
Dr Tim Maloney, a research fellow at Australia’s Griffith University who oversaw the excavation, said the discovery was an “absolute dream for an archaeologist”.
View of the archaeological excavation at Liang Tebo cave which unearthed the 31,000-year-old skeletal remains.
He said the research team, which included scientists from the Indonesian Institution for Archaeology and Conservation, was examining ancient cultural deposits when they crossed stone markers in the ground revealing a burial site.
After 11 days of excavation, they found the skeleton of a young hunter-gatherer with a healed stump where its lower left leg and foot had been severed. Maloney said the nature of the healing, including the clean stump, showed it was caused by amputation and not an accident or animal attack.
“[The hunter] survived not just as a child, but as an adult amputee in this rainforest environment,” Maloney said. “Importantly, not only does [the stump] lack infection, but it also lacks distinctive crushing.”
Archaeologists at work in Liang Tebo cave in the remote Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of East Kalimantan.
Prior to this discovery, Maloney said it had been widely accepted that amputation was a guaranteed death sentence until about 10,000 years ago, when surgical procedures advanced with the development of large settled agricultural societies.
The previous oldest evidence of a successful amputation was a 7,000-year-old skeleton of an elderly farmer from stone age France. His left arm was amputated above the elbow.
The skeletal remains showing the amputated lower left leg.
“This finding very much changes the known history of medical intervention and knowledge of humanity,” Maloney said.
“It implies that early people … had mastered complex surgical procedures allowing this person to survive after the removal of a foot and leg.”
Maloney said the stone age surgeon must have had detailed knowledge of anatomy, including veins, vessels and nerves, to avoid causing fatal blood loss and infection.
He said the successful operation suggested some form of intensive care, including regular disinfection post-operation.
Emeritus Prof Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University School of Archaeology and Anthropology, who was not involved in the study, said the discovery was “an important rewrite of our species history” that “underlines yet again that our ancestors were as smart as we are, with or without the technologies we take for granted today”.
Spriggs said it should not be surprising that stone age people could have developed an understanding of the internal workings of mammals through hunting, and had treatments for infection and injury.
“We tend to forget that modern humans like us 30,000 years ago … would have had their intellectuals, their doctors, their inventors,” he said.
He said they would have had to experiment with plant medicines and other treatments to stay alive.
“Any inhabitants of tropical rainforests today, usually now mixing hunting and gathering with forms of agriculture, have a large pharmacopoeia that would have to have been developed over millennia.”
Israeli archaeologists dig up the large tusk of an ancient elephant
A fossilized tusk from a giant prehistoric elephant emerged from an excavation site near Kibbutz Revadim in southern Israel
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed the complete tusk of a giant prehistoric elephant that once roamed around the Mediterranean. The 2.6-meter (8.5-foot) remnant, weighing approximately 150 kilograms (330 pounds), is estimated to be around half a million years old.
“This is the largest complete fossil tusk ever found at a prehistoric site in Israel or the Near East,” Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) prehistorian Avi Levy, who headed the dig, said on Wednesday.
It belonged to a Palaeoloxodon antiquus, or straight-tusked elephant, that would have stood up to 5 meters tall, significantly larger than today’s African elephants.
Levy said the tusk would be preserved and transferred to a lab for further analysis to “try to define the age, where he lived, where he walked.”
The tusk will be displayed at National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Jerusalem once the conservation process is complete
Mystery over who hunted the behemoth
What makes the find even more exciting is that it was found in an area where stone and flint tools and other animal remains have been recovered.
It is “very puzzling, very enigmatic,” said Omry Barzilai, an IAA archaeologist, explaining that the dig team did not know whether ancient people hunted the behemoth on the spot or whether they brought the felled animal’s tusk from further away.
The site in modern-day Revadim, Israel, was dated to the late lower palaeolithic period, around 500,000 years ago, based on stone tools found in the vicinity, the antiquities authority said.
But half a million years ago, when the ancient elephant died, the now-arid terrain was likely a swamp or shallow lake, an ideal habitat for ancient hominids.
The identity of the prehistoric humans who inhabited the region — a land bridge from Africa to Asia and Europe — was “a mystery,” said Levy.
“We haven’t found remains of people here, we only find their material culture the trash they discarded after use, whether animal bones or flint tools,” the historian added.
