10,000-Year-Old Human Remains Discovered in Vietnam
Skeletal remains dating back 10,000 years have been found in the northern province of Ha Nam, marking the oldest human fossil ever unearthed in Vietnam.
Human remains found in Tam Chuc Pagoda Complex in Kim Bang District of Ha Nam Province, March 2023.
Mai Thanh Chung, director of the Ha Nam Department of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, said at a meeting Thursday that the remains were found during an excavation carried out by the Vietnam Institute of Archaeology at the Tam Chuc Pagoda Complex in Kim Bang District last March.
Archaeologists discovered three graves of children and adults, with the people buried in a kneeling position.
“This is the first time human remains dating back 10,000 years have been discovered in Vietnam,” said Chung.
In addition to human remains, scientists also found in the excavation pit mollusk shells and teeth and bones of small animals, which could have been food sources for ancient people.
Archaeologists from the Vietnam Institute of Archaeology during an excavation in Tam Chuc Pagoda Complex in Kim Bang District of Ha Nam Province, March 2023.
Also during the March excavation at two caves in Kim Bang, the Institute of Archeology discovered prehistoric paleontological vestiges and material culture, including animal fossils and reddish-brown rope pottery fragments belonging to the Dong Son culture.
Dong Son was a Bronze Age culture in ancient Vietnam centered in the Red River valley of northern Vietnam from 1000 BC until the first century AD.
Within the Tam Chuc complex, the archeologists discovered sea mollusk shells along with stream snails. At the top of the mountain in the complex, they found pieces of pottery lying alongside mollusk pieces.
Many of the Kim Bang relics date back from the late Pleistocene to the late Holocene, or 10,000-12,000 years ago, according to the institute.
Researchers concluded that the district used to be a favorable area, inhabited by many ancient residents.
What has a curly beard that would make Santa Claus jealous, feathered wings and a muscular physique? No, it’s not Ozzy Osbourne on tour – you are forgiven – it’s the celestial being, the Lamassu.
A sculpture of this mythical creature dating back to the 8th Century BC was unearthed on Tuesday by archaeologists in northern Iraq, largely intact despite its huge dimensions.
Many of these towering winged alabaster deities were stationed at the entrances of ancient cities across the Neo-Assyrian Empire, now modern-day Iraq.
Boasting the head of a man, the body of a bull and the wings of an eagle, these monuments symbolised intelligence, strength and freedom. Female versions also existed and were called ‘apsasu’.
Weighing 18 tonnes, and carved from a single piece of limestone, the head was confiscated from smugglers in the 90s.
“The head of the Lamassu was cut away and was stolen and recovered during the 90s by the customs in Baghdad. I think now the head is in the Baghdad museum. The rest of the body was found here and is in excellent shape” said Pascal Butterlin, a professor of Archeology at Paris Sorbonne University.
First mentioned in the 19th century by French archaeologist Victor Place, the relief dropped from public records until the 1990s when Iraqi authorities earmarked it for “urgent intervention”.
It was originally erected at the entrance to the ancient city of Khorsabad, some 15 kilometres north of the modern city of Mosul.
It was commissioned during the reign of King Sargon II who ruled from 722 to 705 BC and erected at the city’s gates to provide protection
“We can now study the whole context of this beautiful gate which might still be in very good condition” continued Butterlin.
“I never unearthed anything this big in my life before,” Butterlin said of the piece measuring 3.8 by 3.9 metres “Normally, it’s only in Egypt or Cambodia that you find pieces this big.
“The attention to detail is unbelievable,” said the professor of Middle East archaeology at the University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne.
It was during this period that looters pillaged the head and chopped it into pieces to smuggle it abroad.
The rest of the relief was spared the destruction wreaked by the Islamic State jihadist group, which overran the area in 2014. Residents of the modern village of Khorsabad reportedly hid it before fleeing to government-held territory.
A wave of migrating farmers from the ancient Middle East may be the reason why modern Europeans don’t carry as much Neanderthal DNA as today’s East Asians do, a new study finds.
Europeans have less Neanderthal (pictured right) ancestry than East Asians do today because farming Homo sapiens migrated from the Middle East into Europe about 10,000 years ago.
All humans with ancestry from outside of Africa have a little bit of Neanderthal in them — about 2% of the genome, on average. But people with East Asian ancestry have between 8% and 24% more Neanderthal genes than people of European ancestry. That’s a bit of a paradox, because fossil evidence suggests Neanderthals lived in Europe. Why, then, should East Asians carry more of those genes today?
Now, a new study posits a solution to this conundrum: While a wave of human migration out of Africa before at least 40,000 years ago brought Homo sapiens — who were hunter-gatherers — into contact with their Homo neanderthalensis cousins and led to interbreeding, a later wave of H. sapiens migrating about 10,000 years ago diluted Neanderthal genes in Europe only. This was the movement of farmers with minimal Neanderthal ancestry from what is today the Middle East and southwestern Asia into Europe.
These early farmers mixed with local hunter-gatherers, bringing a more H. sapiens-flavored genome to the region. The Homo sapiens who settled East Asia by around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago did not undergo this dilution from newcomers.
“What we propose is a simple explanation,” study lead author Claudio Quilodrán, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Oxford, told Live Science. “It’s just migration.”
Ever since the Neanderthal genome was first sequenced 13 years ago, there have been questions about the mixture of modern human and Neanderthal genes, said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was not involved in the study.
Research suggests that having Neanderthal genes didn’t lead to any major survival advantages or disadvantages for humans, so natural selection is probably not the reason why some populations carry more of these genes than others, Hawks told Live Science.
People have suggested that maybe East Asians met and mixed with additional Neanderthal populations in parts unknown, such as India or Iran, but this is just speculation.
“This scenario says that’s not necessary,” Hawks said. “We can explain this difference based on just one expansion.”
To trace the history of human-Neanderthal relations, Quilodrán and his colleagues looked at 4,464 previously sequenced ancient to modern Homo sapiens genomes, dating from 40,000 years ago to today, examining the proportion of Neanderthal DNA in relation to latitude, longitude, time and region.
They found that early on, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA in anatomically modern humans was higher in Europe than in Asia, matching with what would be expected if early Homo sapiens were radiating out of Africa and meeting their cousins in the Near East and Europe. The reduction in Neanderthal genes in European humans came later.
Particularly stark was the difference between European hunter-gatherers and the Neolithic farmers who came to settle Europe about 10,000 years ago.
The hunter-gatherers had a higher proportion of Neanderthal genes than the Neolithic farmers, suggesting that this wave of newcomers diluted Neanderthal ancestry in Europe. East Asia didn’t see a similar influx — their farmers were homegrown, Hawks said — so East Asian genetics weren’t diluted in the same way. The researchers published their findings Wednesday (Oct. 18) in the journal Science Advances.
“What’s so fascinating about this article is that it takes into account a tremendous amount of ancient DNA evidence that’s now out there,” said Richard Potts, a paleoanthropologist and director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the research.
Encounters between Neanderthals and modern humans occurred even earlier than 40,000 years ago, Potts told Live Science. Last week (Oct. 13), a group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania reported in the journal Current Biology that well before 75,000 years ago, a group of modern humans met Neanderthals in Europe, interbred with them, and then died out, leaving their mark in 6% of the Neanderthal genome.
“It’s a very fluid system,” Potts said. “This particular paper didn’t need to take anything like that into account, but it will be really interesting once that added complexity is considered.”
A cryptic 2,700-year-old pig skeleton found in Jerusalem’s City of David
An ancient pig skeleton is seen in Jerusalem, having been discovered in a building dating back to the First Temple.
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed the complete skeleton of a piglet in a place and time where you wouldn’t expect to find pork remains: a Jerusalem home dating to the First Temple period.
The 2,700-year-old porcine remains were found crushed by large pottery vessels and collapsed walls during excavations in the so-called City of David, the original nucleus of ancient Jerusalem. The team of archaeologists behind the discovery reported their findings in a study published in the June edition of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology.
The find of swine adds to previous research showing that pork was occasionally on the menu for the ancient Israelites and that biblical taboos on this and other prohibited foods only came to be observed centuries later, in the Second Temple period. It also ties into broader questions about when the Bible was written and when Judaism as we know it was born.
This little piggy wasn’t bacon
The animal’s skull clearly identifies it as a domestic pig, as opposed to a wild swine, and its presence indicates that pigs were raised for food in the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, says Lidar Sapir-Hen, an archaeozoologist at Tel Aviv University and at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. The fact that the skeleton was found intact suggests that this specific piglet, less than seven months old, was not eaten, but died accidentally when the building was destroyed at some point in the eighth-century B.C.E, Sapir-Hen and colleagues report.
First Temple period structures near the Gihon Spring in Jerusalem’s City of David, where the pig skeleton was found along with the “butchered” remains of many other types of animals.
But there can be little doubt of what the piglet’s ultimate fate would have been having its home not collapsed for as yet unclear reasons. In addition to large storage jars and smaller cooking vessels, the room where the pig was unearthed also hosted dozens of animal bones from sheep, goats, cattle, gazelles, as well as fish and birds, the archaeologists report.
Most of these remains were burnt or showed signs of butchery, meaning the animals had long been dead and eaten when the building was destroyed, Sapir-Hen says.
This suggests that this room was where meals were prepared or eaten,” she says. “So this pig was just waiting for its turn.”
We don’t know the cause of the building’s collapse, as there is no known major destruction event in Jerusalem in the eighth century B.C.E., says Joe Uziel, the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist who led the dig. It may have been destroyed by an earthquake or a more localized event, he speculates.
In any case, the structure was rebuilt and continued to be in use until around 586 B.C.E., when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the First Temple, Uziel says. The building had at least four rooms and was located in a fairly central area near the Gihon spring, the main source of water for the city at the time. Constructed with rough fieldstones, it was probably a private home, although the fact that bullae, or seal impressions, were unearthed in another room suggests it may have also had an additional, administrative function, Uziel says.
An archaeologist retrieves the skull of a piglet from a First Temple period building in Jerusalem’s City of David at the site where the “articulated” pig skeleton was also found.
The excavation also yielded an elegantly carved bone pendant and a human figurine. Together with the great variety of animals found alongside the pig, all of this indicates the house was occupied by an upper-class family, the archaeologist says.
The importance and central location of the house suggest that pig husbandry and pork consumption may have been a rare treat, but still very much part of “mainstream” food habits, he says. In other words, it doesn’t look like this was something done secretively by, say, a poorer household that may have been desperately in need of a quick meal.
At this point, we have to wonder how to square the idea that pigs were infrequently but openly raised in Jerusalem with the biblical injunction that: “The swine, though he divides the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.” (Leviticus 11:7-8
It’s the Levantine economy, stupid
While domesticated pig bones are rarely found in Jerusalem and in most of the Levant, they are not entirely absent, Sapir-Hen notes. In excavations from the First Temple period in Jerusalem and in other sites from the Kingdom of Judah, swine bones constitute up to 2 per cent of the animal remains unearthed, she says.
Already back in the 1990s, archaeologists also observed that pig bones were much more frequent in the coastal strip that was inhabited by the Philistines. Scholars thus concluded that a dearth of pig bones identified a site as Israelite and that the biblical ban on partaking in pork was already known and observed in the First Temple period.
But more recent research by Sapir-Hen and others has shown that the picture is much more complex. For one thing, the near absence of pig bones is not unique to Israelite sites of the Iron Age, the period that roughly corresponds to the First Temple era. Swine is equally scarce in most of Canaan during the preceding era, the Late Bronze Age, a time before the writing of the Bible or the formation of ancient Israel.
This dearth then continues in the Iron Age, not only in Judah but in many of its neighbours, including sites linked to the Canaanites, Phoenicians and Arameans, Sapir-Hen notes. Even when it comes to the supposedly pork-loving Philistines, the situation is actually more nuanced.
While the diet of Philistine city-dwellers did include a larger proportion of pigs, which were seemingly imported from Greece, swine bones are almost absent from their rural settlements, in keeping with the dietary habits of the rest of the Levant. Equally puzzling is the fact that in the Kingdom of Israel, Judah’s northern neighbour, a pig is rare in the early Iron Age, but it increases to up to 8 per cent of the animal mix at urban sites in the eighth century B.C.E.
All of this indicates that the tendency to eschew pork in the Iron Age cannot be linked to a specific ethnic identity or to the biblical prohibition, Sapir-Hen concludes. Pigs were only a small part of the Levantine diet most probably because other animals, especially goats, sheep and cattle, were more suited to the local environment and economy.
Pigs can be raised in an urban environment, as they require less space, but they also need a nearby water source: it is perhaps not a coincidence that the Jerusalem piglet was found near the city’s spring. This may explain why, throughout the Levant, swine occurrences only tend to rise at times and in places where populations increase and are concentrated in larger urban settlements, whether in Philistia, in the Kingdom of Israel or, to a lesser extent, in the more built-up sections of Judah’s capital, Jerusalem.
Gods, figurines and shrimp
Figurine and bone pendant found in the building where the piglet’s remains were found
This also gels with a growing body of research on the Israelite religion in the First Temple period. While scholars believe that parts of the Bible were already compiled at the tail end of this era, it is generally agreed that the holy text we know today only reached its final form after the Babylonian exile, in the Second Temple period.
Whenever the Bible was actually written, archaeological finds have shown that, in practice, First Temple-period Judaism was very different from the religion it would later become. While the ancient Israelites believed in Yahweh, the God of the Bible, they also worshipped other deities, including Asherah, who was thought to be God’s wife. They liberally made figurines and other graven images, ostensibly banned by the Second Commandment.
Additionally, a study published just last month in the Tel Aviv journal of archaeology looked at the finding, at archaeological sites throughout Israel, of bones from scaleless and finless fish, which are also prohibited by the Bible’s dietary rules. The research showed that catfish, sharks and other non-kosher fish were commonly consumed in Jerusalem and Judah during the First Temple period, and only for the late Second Temple period is there clear evidence that Jews were eschewing such banned seafood.
In other words, biblical prohibitions that are considered signposts of the Jewish faith today were unknown, unheeded or non-existent back in the First Temple period. And it seems that, from time to time, the ancient Israelites were not averse to literally bringing home the bacon.
Smashed pottery vessels in the room where the pig was found
Meet ‘Dragon Man,’ the latest addition to the human family tree
This illustration shows what Homo longi — dragon man — may have looked like.
A cranium hidden at the bottom of a well in northeastern China for more than 80 years may belong to a new species of early human that researchers have called “dragon man.”
The exciting discovery is the latest addition to a human family tree that is rapidly growing and shifting, thanks to new fossil finds and analysis of ancient DNA preserved in teeth, bones and cave dirt.
The well-preserved skullcap, found in the Chinese city of Harbin, is between 138,000 and 309,000 years old, according to geochemical analysis, and it combines primitive features, such as a broad nose and low brow and braincase, with those that are more similar to Homo sapiens, including flat and delicate cheekbones.
The ancient hominin – which researchers said was “probably” a 50-year-old man – would have had an “extremely wide” face, deep eyes with large eye sockets, big teeth and a brain similar in size to modern humans.
Three papers detailing the find were published in the journal The Innovation on Friday.
“The Harbin skull is the most important fossil I’ve seen in 50 years. It shows how important East Asia and China is in telling the human story,” said Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at The Natural History Museum in London and coauthor of the research.
Researchers named the new hominin Homo longi, which is derived from Heilongjiang, or Black Dragon River, the province where the cranium was found. The team plans to see if it’s possible to extract ancient proteins or DNA from the cranium, which included one tooth, and will begin a more detailed study of the skull’s interior, looking at sinuses and both ear and brain shape, using CT scans.
Dragon man’s large size could be an adaptation to the harsh environment in which he likely lived, researchers said.
We are family
It’s easy to think of Homo sapiens as unique, but there was a time when we weren’t the only humans on the block. In the millennia since Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa about 300,000 years ago, we have shared the planet with Neanderthals, the enigmatic Denisovans, the “hobbit” Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis and Homo naledi, as well as several other ancient hominins. We had sex with some of them and produced babies. Some of these ancestors are well represented in the fossil record, but most of what we know about Denisovans comes from genetic information in our DNA. The story of human evolution is changing all the time in what is a particularly exciting period for paleoanthropology, Stringer said.
The announcement of dragon man’s discovery comes a day after a different group researchers published a paper in the journal Science on fossils found in Israel, which they said also could represent another new type of early human. The jaw bone and skull fragment suggested a group of people lived in the Middle East 120,000 to 420,000 years ago with anatomical features more primitive than early modern humans and Neanderthals.
While the team of researchers stopped short of calling the group a new hominin species based on the fossil fragments they studied, they said the fossils resembled pre-Neanderthal human populations in Europe and challenged the view that Neanderthals originated there.
“This is a complicated story, but what we are learning is that the interactions between different human species in the past were much more convoluted than we had previously appreciated,” Rolf Quam, a professor of anthropology at Binghamton University and a coauthor of the study on the Israeli fossils, said in a news release
Stringer, who was not involved in the Science research, said the fossils were less complete than the Harbin skull, but it was definitely plausible that different types of humans co-existed in the Levant, which was a geographical crossroads between Africa, Asia and Europe that today includes Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Israel, Jordan and other countries in the Middle East.
Two fossils found in Israel challenge the idea that Neanderthals originated in Europe.
Concealed treasure
The Harbin cranium was discovered in 1933 by an anonymous Chinese man when a bridge was built over the Songhua River in Harbin, according to one of the studies in The Innovation. At the time, that part of China was under Japanese occupation, and the man who found it took it home and stored it at the bottom of a well for safekeeping.
“Instead of passing the cranium to his Japanese boss, he buried it in an abandoned well, a traditional Chinese method of concealing treasures,” according to the study.
After the war, the man returned to farming during a tumultuous time in Chinese history and never re-excavated his treasure. The skull remained unknown to science for decades, surviving the Japanese invasion, civil war, the Cultural Revolution and, more recently, rampant commercial fossil trading in China, the researchers said.
The third generation of the man’s family only learned about his secret discovery before his death and recovered the fossil from the well in 2018. Qiang Ji, one of the authors of the research, heard about the skull and convinced the family to donate it to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei GEO University.
‘Sister lineage’
The so-called dragon man likely belonged to a lineage that may be our closest relatives, even more closely related to us than Neanderthals, the study found. His large size and where the fossil was found, in one of China’s coldest places, could mean the species had adapted to harsh environments.
Dragon man had a large brain, deep set eyes, thick brow ridges, a wide mouth and oversize teeth.
“We are human beings. It is always a fascinating question about where we were from and how we evolved,” said coauthor Xijun Ni, a research professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the vice director of the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins.
“We found our long-lost sister lineage.”
The study suggested that other puzzling Chinese fossils that paleoanthropologists have found hard to classify – such as those found in Dali in Yunnan in southwestern China and a jawbone from the Tibetan plateau, thought by some to be Denisovan – could belong to the Homo longi species.
Stringer said also it was definitely plausible that dragon man could be a representative of Denisovans, a little-known and enigmatic human population that hasn’t yet been officially classified as a hominin species according to taxonomic rules.
They are named after a Siberian cave where the only definitive Denisovan bone fragments have been found, but genetic evidence from modern human DNA suggests they once lived throughout Asia.
Denisovans is a general name, Stringer said, and they haven’t officially been recognized as a new species – in part because the five Denisovan fossils that exist are so tiny they don’t fulfill the requirements for a “designated type specimen” that would make it a name-bearing representative.
Denisovans and Homo longi both had large, similar molars, the study noted, but, given the small number of fossils available for comparison, it was impossible to say for sure, said Ni, who hoped that DNA experiments might reveal whether they are the same species.
“We’ve only just begun what will be years of studying this fascinating fossil,” Stringer said.
2,300-Year-Old Greek Bronze Mirror Discovered in Israel
Archaeologists in Israel have discovered what they believe to be the remains of an ancient Greek courtesan. The cremated remains of a young woman were found in a burial cave alongside a perfectly preserved bronze box mirror on a rocky slope close to Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, not far from Jerusalem.
The tomb is believed to date back to some time between the late 4th century and early 3rd century BCE, according to a joint study carried out by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
Guy Stiebel, from the department of archeology and the Ancient Near East at Tel Aviv University, told CNN in a phone interview that the find is “very significant.”
The high-quality mirror was found to be perfectly preserved.
“It’s almost like bringing back to life a woman who passed away 2,300 years ago,” he said of the research, which he compared to a “jigsaw puzzle or riddle.”
He and his team believe this could be the first discovery of the remains of a hetaira, as courtesans were known in Ancient Greece.
“If we are correct with our interpretation, it appears that this burial points to the very unique circumstances of what we call a hetaira, a Greek lady who accompanied one of the Hellenistic government officials, or more likely a high general,” he said.
In the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, the Hellenistic age refers to the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE and the conquest of Egypt by Rome in 30 BCE. Stiebel told CNN that he and his team believe the woman would have been among the first Greeks to arrive in the region.
Liat Oz, the director of the excavation on behalf of the IAA, described the mirror found in the tomb alongside the remains.
“This is only the second mirror of this type that has been discovered to date in Israel, and in total, only 63 mirrors of this type are known around the Hellenistic world,” she said in a news release about the discovery.
Researchers say the mirror is incredibly rare, with just 63 discovered in the Hellenistic world.
“The quality of the production of the mirror is so high that it was preserved in excellent condition, and it looked as if it was made yesterday.”
Folding box mirrors such as this were documented in tombs and temples in the Greco-Hellenistic world, the researchers noted. They were usually decorated with engravings or reliefs of idealized female figures or goddesses.
Stiebel said a woman of high status might have received such a mirror as part of a dowry, but this was unlikely to have been the case in this instance, as married women rarely left their homes in Greece.
Alternatively, he said, she might have been a courtesan, as they often received gifts from men. Likening the hetairai to Japanese geishas, Stiebel explained that the women were regarded as “muses.”
He said: “Women in society were breaking glass ceilings in very strict and male-oriented Greek society, and we do know that they served not only as sexual escorts but were similar to geishas and provided an element of culture. For that they were given gifts and part of the economy of gifts in Ancient Greece had to do with mirrors.”
The fact that the remains were cremated also hinted at the woman’s origins, Stiebel said.
UNESCO designates ancient Jericho ruins as World Heritage Site, sparking Israeli ire
“Cremation is alien to this country and the religion,” he said, explaining that cremation is not only forbidden in Judaism but would not have been practiced by the Persian empire either, which occupied the region at that time.
“The tomb was found in the middle of nowhere, not near any village, farm, or settlement, which suggests that she would have been connected with one of the military campaigns and dated to the time of Alexandra the Great or slightly later.
“We are suggesting that maybe she was with one of the generals.”
Stiebel went on to explain the significance of the four iron nails found with the mirror and remains.
“Nails were used to protect the deceased and also to protect living people from the dead. The bodies were literally nailed down to ensure they would not come back to the world of the living,” he said.
Stiebel told CNN that the team is continuing with further research in order to “zoom in” on the finer details of the mirror.
He said, “We hope to shed more light on the origin of the production of the art and maybe shed more light on the history of the owner of the mirror, the general who bought it, or where she came from.”
The research will be presented for the first time at an Israeli archaeology conference next month.
Ancient Wooden ‘Coptic Dolls’ May Have Been The Ancestors Of Today’s Barbie Dolls
For as long as anyone can remember, children loved to play with various toys, but kids living a long time ago did not have parents who could walk into a shop and buy something entertaining. Yet, there is archaeological evidence that that our ancestors did take the time to carve and build things their children could play with. Sometimes, archaeologists uncover ancient artifacts that may have been used for a number of purposes?
Ancient figurines made in the image of humans were often used during ritual ceremonies or as burial gifts, but could some of these human-like figures have been toys, too?
“These bone figurines were first recognized as a homogenous artifact group by Joseph Strzygowski in 1904, although earlier mentions exist. In his volume “Koptische Kunst”, he described 13 “puppen” from the Cairo Museum and was the irst to suggest they were toys rather than cult figurines.
Not all researchers agree. Strzygowski concluded a pre-Islamic origin and dated the dolls between the 4th and 12th centuries.
A fragment with a religious Christian Greek inscription, supporting his pre-Islamic origin thesis, was in a group of figurines that he had purchased in Cairo in 1900-1901 for the Kaiser Friederich Museum. Some of these were published later by Sir Leonard Woolley (1907) and Oskar Wulf (1909).
Although Strzygowski never actually used the term “Coptic dolls,” it was already attached to them by Woolley, and continues to be used even today. This is probably because Strzygowski, and Gayet before him, published them in volumes titled “Coptic Art.” 1
In the Early Islamic period (7th to 11th centuries CE), a unique type of figurine with human-like characteristics, made of bone, began to appear. Ariel Shatil, an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist specializing in dolls and figurines, sheds light on these intriguing artifacts.
“Some researchers speculate that these figurines served as toy dolls, while others suggest they might have been fertility figurines. What is particularly fascinating is that no two dolls were identical; each possessed distinct features, even if they shared the same concept.
These dolls appeared in the Early Islamic period, over a period of about two or three centuries, after which they mysteriously disappeared from the scene,” Shatil explains.
Shatil continues, “Moreover, distinct regional styles emerged. For instance, in the northern part of the country, the figurines had more schematic features, and they were crafted from flat bones such as animal ribs and adorned with dots and circles.
By contrast, in the southern part of the country and in the desert, the figurines were more human-like and realistic.
Most of the figurines are depicted naked, without clothes, but there is a group of figurines wearing garments. The exact purpose of the figurines—whether fertility symbols to encourage procreation or simply toys—remains a subject of debate.”
The picture shows a figurine with schematic features, reflecting Egyptian characteristics, dating to the Abbasid period, uncovered in the excavations carried out next to the Western Wall precinct in Jerusalem. Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority
Originally crafted in the region of Iran and Iraq, one wonders how these figurines found their way to this area. Following the Muslim conquest of the country, artisans were brought in to construct and decorate palaces.
Alongside the monumental art displayed in these palaces, these same artisans introduced or crafted these figurines, producing them in considerable quantities as they gained popularity within all social classes.
“Although predominantly made of bone, there are also ivory figurines, possibly belonging to wealthier families,” Ariel observes. “But, by the end of the eleventh century, these figurines disappeared from the scene, probably due to restrictions imposed in accordance with Islamic law.”
‘It’s a dream’: 4 Roman swords likely stolen as war booty 1,900 years ago discovered in Israeli cave
One of the four well-preserved Roman swords that was stashed away inside a cave in Israel.
Archaeologists in Israel have discovered four well-preserved 1,900-year-old Roman swords lodged in a crevice inside a cave in the Judaean Desert — weapons that rebel Jewish forces likely seized in battle and later hid.
Of the four “rare” weapons, three with iron blades were still protected in their wooden and leather sheaths.
The blades of three of the swords measured between 24 and 26 inches (60 and 65 centimeters) with dimensions similar to Roman “spatha” swords, while the fourth had a much shorter, 18-inch (45 cm) blade and was classified as a ring-pommel sword.
All of the swords were “standard” issue and used by Roman soldiers stationed in Judaea at the time, according to a statement released by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) on Wednesday (Sept. 6).
“Finding a single sword is rare — so four? It’s a dream,” the researchers wrote in the statement. “We rubbed our eyes to believe it.”
Researchers think Judaean rebels may have hidden the cache inside the cave in what is now En Gedi Nature Reserve in northern Israel after seizing the items from the Roman army as “booty” during the Bar Kokhba Revolt, a rebellion that was led by Jews in the Roman province of Judaea and unfolded between A.D. 132 and 135.
“Obviously, the rebels did not want to be caught by the Roman authorities carrying these weapons,” Eitan Klein, IAA deputy director and one of the directors of the Judean Desert Survey Project, said in the statement.
“We are just beginning the research on the cave and the weapon cache discovered in it, aiming to try to find out who owned the swords, and where, when and by whom they were manufactured.”
The swords were part of an exhibition on Wednesday promoting an article about the finding published in the new research book “New Studies in the Archaeology of the Judean Desert: Collected Papers.”
Archaeologists work together to remove the swords from the cave.
The discovery comes 50 years after a different team of researchers found a stalactite inside the cave.
The formation bore an ink inscription scrawled in ancient Hebrew script that was similar to text written during the First Temple period (957 B.C. to 586 B.C.), which began with the construction of the temple of King Solomon and ended with its destruction at the hands of the Babylonians.
Researchers visited the cave to photograph the stalactite, hoping to find additional inscriptions. Instead, they stumbled upon the cache of swords.
“This is a dramatic and exciting discovery, touching on a specific moment in time,” Eli Escusido, director-general of the IAA, said in the statement, adding that the finding is a “unique time capsule” in Judaean history.
