Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, LEBANON, WORLD

Mass Grave of 13th Century Warriors Uncovered by Archaeologists in Lebanon

Mass Grave of 13th Century Warriors Uncovered by Archaeologists in Lebanon

Archaeologists digging near a Middle Eastern castle have unearthed two mass graves containing the grisly remains of Christian soldiers vanquished during the medieval Crusades — and some of them could have even been personally buried by a king.

The chipped and charred bones of at least 25 young men and teenage boys were found inside the dry moat of the ruins of St. Louis Castle in Sidon, Lebanon. Radiocarbon dating suggests they were among the many Europeans who, between the 11th and the 13th centuries, were spurred by priests and rulers to take up arms in a doomed effort to reconquer the Holy Land.

Much like many who came to fight and plunder before them, the soldiers’ long and arduous journeys ended with their deaths  — all as a result of wounds they received in battle. But despite the widespread casualties, mass graves from this bloody period of history are incredibly difficult to find. 

In a study published on August 25 in PLOS One, the researchers detailed their findings.

“When we found so many weapon injuries on the bones as we excavated them, I knew we had made a special discovery,” Richard Mikulski, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in the U.K., who excavated and analyzed the remains, said in a statement.

The archaeologists analyzed DNA alongside naturally occurring radioactive isotopes in the men’s teeth to confirm that some were born in Europe, and an analysis of different versions, or isotopes, of carbon in their bones, suggests that they died sometime during the 13th century. Crusaders first captured St. Louis Castle just after the First Crusade in 1110.

The invaders held onto Sidon, a key strategic port, for more than a century, but historical records show that the castle fell after it was attacked and destroyed twice — at first part by the Mamluks in 1253 and later by the Mongols in 1260.

The researchers said it is “highly likely” that the soldiers perished during one of these battles, and by brutal means: The bones all bear stab and slice wounds from swords and axes, as well as evidence of blunt-force trauma.

The soldiers had more wounds on their backs than on their fronts, suggesting that many were attacked from behind, possibly as they fled during a rout, and the distribution of these blows implies that their attackers charged them down on horseback.

A number of the men’s remains also have blade wounds to the back of their necks — a sign that they may have been captured alive before being beheaded. 

“One individual sustained so many wounds (a minimum of 12 injuries involving a minimum of 16 skeletal elements) that it may represent an incident of overkill, where considerably more violent blows were applied than was actually required to overcome or kill them,” the researchers wrote in their study. 

Charring on some of the bones suggests that someone tried to burn the mens’ bodies in the aftermath of their brutal deaths, after which their corpses were left to rot on the battlefield. 

But the bodies were later swept into a mass grave, possibly after the royal intervention. A belt buckle found among the bones indicates that the soldiers were Frankish and hailed from a region that encompassed modern-day Belgium and France. Their origin, and the date they were killed, suggests that the soldiers could have been buried by King Louis IX of France. 

“Crusader records tell us that King Louis IX of France was on crusade in the Holy Land at the time of the attack on Sidon in 1253,” Piers Mitchell, an anthropologist at the University of Cambridge who was the project’s Crusades expert, said in the statement. “He went to the city after the battle and personally helped to bury the rotting corpses in mass graves such as these. Wouldn’t it be amazing if King Louis himself had helped to bury these bodies?”

The French king, one of the most celebrated rulers of his time who was later canonized as a saint, led two invasions into the Holy Land — the Seventh and Eight crusades — after vowing to God he would retake the territory if he was granted divine assistance in recovering from malaria.

READ ALSO: MOSAICS FROM THE ROMAN ERA WERE JUST UNCOVERED IN LEBANON

The legend was that the devout king later died of plague in 1270 while leading the Eighth Crusade, but a more recent analysis points to him dying of scurvy caused by his refusal to eat foreign food, Live Science previously reported.

The archaeologists may never know who killed and later buried the soldiers in Sidon, but their graves provide a rare insight into a brutal period that is usually only described in written records.

“So many thousands of people died on all sides during the crusades, but it is incredibly rare for archaeologists to find the soldiers killed in these famous battles,” said Mitchell. “The wounds that covered their bodies allow us to start to understand the horrific reality of medieval warfare.”

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Israel winery: 1,500-year-old Byzantine wine complex found

Israel winery: 1,500-year-old Byzantine wine complex found

A 1,500-year-old wine-making complex, said to have been the world’s largest at the time, has been discovered in Israel, archaeologists say.

Five presses were unearthed at the huge Byzantine-era winery at Yavne, south of Tel Aviv, which is estimated to have produced two million litres a year.

After a sophisticated production process, it was exported around the Mediterranean.

The wine was aged in clay jars known as Gaza Jars, many of which were found intact at the site

Those working at the site said they were surprised by its size. There are plans to make the complex a visitor attraction once preservation work is completed.

The site contains five wine presses spread over a square kilometre (0.4 sq miles), warehouses for ageing and bottling the wine, and kilns for firing the jars used for storing it.

The end product was known as Gaza and Ashkelon wine, after the ports through which it was exported to Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor.

The site is spread over a square kilometre

It had a reputation for quality throughout the Mediterranean region, but at that time wine was also a staple for many.

“This was a major source of nutrition and this was a safe drink because the water was often contaminated,” said Jon Seligman, one of the excavation’s directors.

Decorative niches in the shape of a conch indicate that the factory owners were very wealthy
Tens of thousands of fragments have been found at the site
ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Prehistoric hooks and sinkers show early humans used advanced fishing techniques

Prehistoric hooks and sinkers show early humans used advanced fishing techniques

Courthouse News Service reports that a 13,000-year-old collection of 19 bone fishhooks and six grooved pebbles thought to have been used as sinkers has been unearthed on the banks of the Jordan River in northern Israel by a team of researchers led by Antonella Pedergnana of the Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution.

A reconstruction of a hook and a small grooved pebble on a line. Note the sophisticated knot.
Prehistoric hooks and sinkers show early humans used advanced fishing techniques

According to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. It’s some of the earliest evidence of complex fishing technology. Fish remains have been found at sites inhabited by human ancestors dating back to nearly 2 million years. But studying what technology early humans used to acquire fish is difficult because the fishing gear was typically made from perishable materials like wood and plant fibres, and they’re only preserved in unusual conditions.

The waterlogged Jordan River Dureijat site was discovered in 1999 as a result of a drainage operation. But back in the Levantine Epipaleolithic periods, it was a short-term encampment that was intermittently occupied over a span of about 10,000 years, according to an earlier study published in the PaleoAnthropology journal. It was never used for habitation, but rather it was a place that people repeatedly visited fish and hunt and take advantage of other natural resources.

In addition to the fish hooks and pebbles — the largest collection of early fishing technology to be found — arrowheads and limestone axes have also been found at the site. And because the site has been covered in water, tiny rodents and fish bones are well-preserved.

In Wednesday’s study, a team of archaeologists – led by Antonella Pedergnana of the Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution in Mainz, Germany – found plant residue on the hooks and stones that indicate the use of fishing line.

They also found a wide variety of hook shapes, suggesting they were used for catching a variety of fish sizes, and grooved lines and fibre residues on some hooks indicate the use of artificial lures.

“A look at the [the Jordan River Dureijat] fishing gear reveals that all fishing techniques and knowledge already existed some 13,000 years ago,” the study’s authors wrote in a statement. 

The innovations coincide with the beginning of the transition to agriculture, and the use of lures and a wide variety of hook shapes “suggests the humans of this time were not only hunting a broad spectrum of fish but also that they had a profound knowledge of fish behaviour and ecology,” researchers note.

Based on the size of the hooks and their grooves and the remains of captured fish at the site, researchers estimate the lines used in fishing were likely strong enough to pull a 2-pound, “and possibly even heavier,” fish out of the water, according to the study.

But the hooks don’t have any eyes or holes in the shank through which to thread the line, something researchers note was likely because it weakened the narrow shank. Instead, they have grooves or knobs on the shaft, and traces of wear indicate the line wasn’t connected by a single twist but by a “complex method of binding, wrapping and tying.”

Archaeologists also found residual evidence of an adhesive being used to secure the line.

The use of artificial bait was confirmed by the presence of deep grooves, adhesives and animal hair on the end of two hooks. These lures may have included “shell flutters,” or pieces of shiny mother-of-pearl that spin in the water and attract fish.

READ ALSO: PRESERVED IN POOP: 1,000-YEAR-OLD CHICKEN EGG FOUND IN ISRAEL

Modern anglers still use shiny lures today, and the use of lightweight lures are used with specific casting techniques, such as fly fishing.

“Given the small dimensions of the hooks likely to have been equipped with artificial lures at [Jordan River Dureijat], the possibility that a similar angling method was already in use during the Natufian [era] should not be ruled out,” the study authors note.

“Except for the use of metal and plastic, modern fishing has not invented anything new since the Natufian,” they added in a statement. 

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

GSI scientists stumble upon 100-million-year-old dinosaur bones in India

GSI scientists stumble upon 100-million-year-old dinosaur bones in India

Researchers have identified fossil bone fragments of long-necked dinosaurs called sauropods, dating back to about 100-million-years from an area around West Khasi Hills District in Meghalaya.

Sauropod skeleton. Image for representational purposes only.

The yet-to-be-published findings were made during a recent field trip by researchers from the Geological Survey of India’s Palaeontology division in the North East. The GSI researchers noted that this is the first record of sauropods of probable Titanosaurian origin discovered in the region.

Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads relative to the rest of their body, and four thick, pillar-like legs. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land.

The finding makes Meghalaya the fifth state in India after Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu and the only state in the North-East to report Sauropod bones having titanosaurian affinity, they said.

Titanosaurs were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, including genera from Africa, Asia, South America, North America, Europe, Australia and Antarctica.

“Dinosaur bones from Meghalaya were reported by GSI in 2001 but they were too fragmentary and ill-preserved to understand its taxonomic identification,” said Arindam Roy, Senior Geologist, Palaeontology Division, GSI. “The present find of bones is during fieldwork in 2019-2020 and 2020-21. The last visit of the team was in February 2021. The fossils are presumably of Late Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago.”

He noted that the best-preserved fossils are limb bones, adding the type of curvature, development of lateral and proximal margins of the partially preserved bone are indicative of it being a humerus bone.

He, however, noted that the conclusions are drawn from preliminary studies and detailed work is going on.

The bone fragments were collected from poorly sorted, purplish to greenish very coarse-grained arkosic sandstone interlaid with pebbly beds. More than twenty-five disarticulated, mostly fragmentary bone specimens were recovered, which are of different sizes and occur as isolated specimens but some of them were found in close proximity to each other, the researchers said.

Taxonomic identification up to the genus level is difficult due to the poorly preserved, incomplete, fragmentary nature of the bones and most of the recovered bones are partially petrified and partially replaced, they said.

Therefore, only three of the best-preserved ones could be studied. The largest one is a partially preserved limb bone of 55 centimetres (cm) long. It is comparable with the average humerus length of titanosaurids.

Robustness of the bone, the difference in curvature in the lateral margins and the proximal border being relatively straight, are some of the morphological characters that hint at the titanosaurid affinity, according to the researchers.

Another incomplete limb bone measuring 45cm in length is also comparable with the limb bones of titanosauriform clade, they said.

“The abundance of bones recovered during the present work and especially the finding of few limb bones and vertebrae having taxonomic characters of titanosauriform clade are unique,” Roy said. “The record of the sauropod assemblage of probable titanosaurian affinity from Meghalaya extends the distribution and diversity of vertebrates in the Late Cretaceous of India.”

An incomplete chevron of caudal vertebrae and also cervical vertebra have also been reconstructed from a few recovered bone specimens. The other fragmentary specimens though partially preserved might probably be parts of the limb bones of a sauropod dinosaur.

Titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs were the most diverse and abundant large-bodied terrestrial herbivores in the Southern Hemisphere landmasses during the Cretaceous Period but they were not endemic to the Gondwanan landmasses, the researchers said.

Gondwana is the southern half of the Pangaean supercontinent that existed some 300 million years ago and is composed of the major continental blocks of South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, India, Antarctica, and Australia.

In India, the Late Cretaceous sauropod dinosaur generally belongs to the titanosaurian clade and has been reported from the Lameta Formation of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and Kallamedu Formation of Tamil Nadu, the researchers said.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Archaeologists find a 2,700-year-old toilet in a luxurious palace in Jerusalem

Archaeologists find 2,700-year-old toilet in luxurious palace in Jerusalem

Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed a private toilet dating from the seventh century B.C.E., a time when such a luxury would have been unheard of. According to Amy Spiro of the Times of Israel, the crew discovered the carved limestone fixture ahead of construction in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighbourhood.

Archaeologists find 2,700-year-old toilet in luxurious palace in Jerusalem
The rare stone toilet is 2700 years old. Most likely used by one of the dignitaries of Jerusalem.

“A private toilet cubicle was very rare in antiquity, and to date, only a few have been found, mostly in the City of David,” says Yaakov Billig, who directed the dig for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), in a statement.

“Only the rich could afford toilets. In fact, a thousand years later, the Mishnah and the Talmud discuss the various criteria that define a rich person, and Rabbi Yossi [suggests that] to be rich is [to have] a toilet near his table.’”

As Haaretz’s Ruth Schuster reports, a cubicle surrounding the toilet and a deep septic tank beneath it were both carved out of limestone bedrock. The bathroom measured about 5 by 6.5 feet.

The researchers are unsure whether the toilet was carved from bedrock or made out of a finer stone, Billig tells Haaretz.

Inside the toilet cubicle, the team found 30 to 40 bowls. Billig says it’s possible the vessels may have held aromatic oils or incense—early air fresheners for those making use of the facility.

Archaeologists have previously found a number of other toilets in Jerusalem, including one at a building known as the House of Ahiel. In 2016, experts announced the discovery of a separate commode in the ancient city of Tel Lachish, about 40 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

They suggested that ancient Israeli forces may have installed the toilet as a way of intentionally desecrating a pagan shrine. According to Haaretz,  this interpretation is a matter of considerable debate.

Prior to the invention of the modern flush toilet in 1596 and its widespread adoption in the 19th century, people relied on a variety of toilet technologies, reported Jimmy Stamp for Smithsonian magazine in 2014. Most used communal outhouses, chamber pots or humble holes in the ground.

Some Mesopotamians had simple toilets as early as the fourth millennium B.C.E., wrote Chelsea Wald for Nature in 2016. About 1,000 years later, wealthy Minoans developed a system that used water to wash waste from their toilets into a sewer system. And, in ancient Greece and Rome, public latrines connected bench seats to drainage systems.

The excavation of the royal estate was discovered in Jerusalem. In the background is the City of David and the Temple Mount.

The newly identified toilet was not connected to a larger system, so servants would probably have had to empty it periodically, per Haaretz.

Researchers found it in the ruins of an ancient palace discovered last year. The team has also unearthed stone capitals and columns, as well as evidence of an ancient garden with orchids and aquatic plants, at the large estate, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

Inside the septic tank, archaeologists found remnants of pottery and animal bones and human waste, reports Rossella Tercatin for the Jerusalem Post. They plan to analyze these discoveries to find out more about dietary habits in the ancient city. 

The estate offered a view over the Temple Mount, and, according to Billig, it may have been a residence of a king of Judah. 

The team will present its findings at the conference “Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Surroundings,” which is scheduled to take place Wednesday and Thursday both in Jerusalem and online.

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

Ancient maps of Jupiter’s path show Babylonians’ advanced maths

Ancient maps of Jupiter’s path show Babylonians’ advanced maths

Analysis of an ancient codebreaking tablet has revealed that Babylonian astronomers had calculated the movements of Jupiter using an early form of geometric calculus some 1,400 years before we thought the technique was invented by the Europeans.

This means that these ancient Mesopotamian astronomers had not only figured out how to predict Jupiter’s paths more than 1,000 years before the first telescopes existed, but they were using mathematical techniques that would form the foundations of modern calculus as we now know it.

“This shows just how highly developed this ancient culture was,” historian Matthieu Ossendrijver from Humboldt University in Germany told Maddie Stone at Gizmodo. “I don’t think anybody expected something like this would be discovered in a Babylonian text.”

The key to figuring this out was a single, 50-year-old photograph of an astronomical tablet, which Ossendrijver used to decode the meaning of a strange trapezoid that had been carved into the stone more than 2,000 years ago.

For decades, researchers had been confounded by four Babylonian tablets held by London’s British Museum that all cite this trapezoid shape in the text referring to Jupiter’s movements across the sky. While we have plenty of archaeological evidence that basic geometry was often used in Babylonian mathematics, until now, we’ve only seen signs of them using arithmetic. 

So why would they be referring to geometrical calculations based on the long and short sides of a trapezoid? Without the codebreaking tablet in the photograph above, it just didn’t add up.

These cuneiform tablets were excavated from sites in Babylon and Uruk (now Iraq) in the 19th century and transported to the British Museum. Ossendrijver has known the contents of the four tablets like the back of his hand for decades, but until encountering this photograph, he’d never seen the fifth. 

“When I found this tablet last year, I immediately thought of these other tablets that I knew about, a few of which I translated myself,” Ossendrijver told Joshua Sokol at New Scientist. “But I never understood them.”

Essentially, this tablet held the key to understanding how the Babylonians used the trapezoid shape to predict Jupiter’s position, which was integral to their beliefs about the weather, the price of goods, and the fluctuating river levels throughout the year.

“The now-decoded ‘text A’ describes a procedure for calculating Jupiter’s displacement across the ecliptic plane, the path that the Sun appears to trace through the stars, over the course of a year,” says Maddie Stone at Gizmodo.

“According to the text, the Babylonians did so by tracking Jupiter’s speed as a function of time and determining the area under a time-velocity curve.”

Pretty impressive, right?

And what’s fascinating is French and British scholars had been using the same technique during the 14th century – using trapezoids to calculate measurements of velocity and displacement – and everyone had assumed it originated with them.

“In 1350, mathematicians understood that if you compute the area under this curve, you get the distance travelled,” Ossendrijver told Gizmodo. “That’s quite an abstract insight about the connection between time and motion. What is shown by [these texts] is that this insight came about in Babylonia.”

His findings have been published in Science.

ASIA, KAZAKHSTAN, WORLD

A Valley in Kazakhstan Home to Countless Massive Stone Spheres

A Valley in Kazakhstan Home to Countless Massive Stone Spheres

Close to the town of Shetpe in Western Kazakhstan lies the Valley of Balls – or Torysh, as it is known in Kazakh. It consists of numerous ball-like rock formations strewn across a wide range of steppe land. The balls range in size from tiny marble-like rocks to huge boulders the size of a car.

The Torysh Valley in Kazakhstan is home to a unique landscape. Scattered across the surface are countless stone spheres of different sizes.

It’s as if in the distant past, it rained massive spheres from the heavens. The unique Kazakhstani spheres are found in the southwestern part of the country, amidst mountains, valleys, deserts, and tundra.

The spheres are believed to be more than 150 million years old, and they are unusual not only because of their age but by their shape and impressive size. Some of the Spheres are as large as a car, while some spheres are only a few centimetres in diameter.

How they came into existence is also exciting and is the result of science facts mixed with folklore or even legends.

Scientists say the region is home to a geological wonder and that the spheres most likely date back from the Jurassic to the early Cretaceous period, between 180 and 120 million years.

Furthermore, it is thought that the stone spheres are composed of silicate or carbon cement.

The researchers that travelled to Kazakhstan to study the spheres believe they are the result of massive concretions. However, alternative researchers hold that these massive stone spheres are the ‘ancestors’ of more recent spheres discovered in Costa Rica and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Those who believe they are not naturally made argue the massive stone spheres of Kazakhstan result from long-lost civilizations that existed on Earth before written history.

But the truth is that the valley of spheres is poorly reached.

Nonetheless, there could be various geological explanations ranging from megaspherulites – crystalline balls created in volcanic ash and then exposed by weathering – to cannonball concretions – a process where an area’s sediment tends to accumulate around a more rigid core.

In addition, some argue that the speeches are also the result of a process called spheroidal weathering, where the conditions are perfect for eroding rocks, giving them a spherical form.

However, since not all the spheres in the enigmatic valley are of the same size, researchers believe the stone ‘balls’ are most likely the result of megaspherulites.

ASIA, LEBANON, WORLD

Roman Temple Discovered in Ancient City of Tyre

Roman Temple Discovered in Ancient City of Tyre

A new Roman temple has been discovered by archaeologists in the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, located off the coast of Lebanon. The joint excavation, led by María Eugenia Aubet (Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona), Ali Badawi (General Directorate of Antiquities of Lebanon), and Francisco J. Núñez (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw), focused on the massive structure.

Roman Temple Discovered in Ancient City of Tyre
View of the excavated area from the southwest.

Two phases of construction have been identified, placing the temple in the early Roman period (about 31 B.C.E. to 193 C.E.) with a major modification in the late Roman period (about 284 C.E. to 476 C.E.). The temple is situated in the Tyre Acropolis, the highest point of the landmass, which Greek and Phoenician inscriptions describe as a sacred area. Researchers believe many cult-related rituals and worship activities would have taken place here.

Aerial view of the site, 2021.

“Its location on a podium in the most elevated area of the ancient island highlights this building’s particular status,” said Núñez in an email.

The rectangular building is east-west in orientation, with a vestibule flanked by two columns, and a podium on the other side. Temple walls were originally comprised of sandstone blocks, and the building stood on a platform made of limestone and sandstone.

The 26-foot-high columns were made of Egyptian pink granite, and the stepped entryway was decorated with engraved slabs featuring geometric motifs.

“It is one of but a few buildings of this character found in Tyre to date,” Núñez wrote. “Our knowledge of Tyre in Antiquity, despite the great prominence of the city, is unfortunately quite limited.”

Researchers believe there may have been a subterranean chamber located south of the entrance. The exact object of veneration at the massive temple remains a mystery. “At least, for now, the name of the deity worshipped in this building remains elusive to us,” wrote Núñez.

The porticoed street that descends from the temple intersects with a narrower street leading to a nearby shrine, with two rooms and a courtyard. This smaller structure is oriented north-south, with one room featuring an Egyptian relief that portrays the goddess Isis breastfeeding her son Horus as a child.

Work in the location of the Roman temple’s facade, with the foundation of a column in the foreground.

Tyre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with a long history of settlement dating back to the 3rd millennium B.C.E. It has long been a significant port and trading centre in the Mediterranean region.

During the Bronze Age and Iron Age, around 1,200 B.C.E. to 868 B.C.E., it was an independent Phoenician city and a site of major economic importance, including industry, commerce, and crafts. Originally located on an offshore island, Tyre was connected to the mainland by a causeway built by Alexander the Great.

Buildings constructed over five millennia by various cultures have made Tyre a difficult archaeological site to investigate, with layers of occupation overlapping each other.

“The superimposed architectural remains, along with natural catastrophes, the rise of the sea level, and the dynamic land development and public works in the recent decades efficiently obscured the character of ancient architecture,” Núñez said in a statement.

The area around the temple was severely damaged and reconstructed in the Early Byzantine era. The temple itself was dismantled and replaced by a large basilica, which was eventually destroyed along with other parts of the city during a tsunami in the 6th-century C.E.

Work will continue at the site in 2022, with further investigations of the Roman temple and surrounding area. Researchers plan to determine whether a second monumental building, located to the north, is another temple.