Gold mask among 3,000-year-old relics unearthed in southwest China
Earlier this year, archaeologists were awed when they discovered the partial remains of a 3,000-year-old gold mask at the Sanxingdui dig in China’s Sichuan province.
A bronze mask was discovered in one of the eight sacrificial pits discovered at the Sanxingdui ruins site
Weighing in at half a pound, the mask was considered unprecedented. But, this month, experts’ expectations were bested once again when another gold-mask was found at the same site—this one far more complete.
Last Thursday, the mask was excavated in the sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui, which have yielded numerous artefacts since they were initially found in 1929.
An archaeologist at work in one of the sacrificial pits.
According to the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua, the mask is more than one foot long and was crafted by ancient people. While many objects found at Sanxingdui are known to be thousands of years old, archaeologists have not yet said when the mask was made.
“The new discoveries demonstrate once again that imagination and creativity of the ancient Chinese far surpassed what people today had expected,” Tang Fei, chief of the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, told Xinhua.
The mask was discovered this month as part of a cache of more than 500 pieces that also includes a jade knife, a bronze head, and a zun, or an urn that would have held wine used in rituals in ancient China.
An artefact found at Sanxingdui.
There are also some bronze objects that have not yet been identified because they are “so unique that even we don’t know how to name them,” Zhao Hao, an associate professor at Peking University, told Xinhua.
The new trove brings the total number of objects found at Sanxingdui to around 2,000.
Some experts within China have regarded the sacrificial pits there as being of extreme archaeological importance—even more significant, perhaps, than the Terracotta Army, which was buried Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, sometime around 210 B.C.E. in Shaanxi.
Mass grave of 25 Christian soldiers who were ”decapitated” during a 13th century Crusade is unearthed in Lebanon
A pair of mass graves containing 25 Crusaders who were slaughtered during a 13th-century war in the Holy Land have been unearthed in Lebanon. A team of international archaeologists uncovered the gruesome scene at Sidon Castle on the eastern Mediterranean coast of south Lebanon.
Wounds on the remains suggest the soldiers died at the end of swords, maces and arrows, and charring on some bones means they were burned after being dropped into the pit. Other remains show markings on the neck, which likely means these individuals were captured on the battlefield and later decapitated.
Historical records written by crusaders show that Sidon was attacked and destroyed in 1253 by Mamluk troops, and again in 1260 by Mongols, and the soldiers found in the mass graves likely perished in one of these battles.
A pair of mass graves containing 25 Crusaders who were slaughter during a 13th-century war has been unearthed in Lebanon
The Crusades were a series of religious wars fought between 1095 and 1291, in which Christian invaders tried to claim the near East, including Lebanon where the 25 dead soldiers were found.
The mass graves were found within the town walls and were rectilinear grave pits that also contained artefacts that belonged to the Crusaders.
‘Within the grave pit (burial 110) a wide variety of artefacts were observed dispersed amongst the human and non-human bones, with no immediate patterning evident, reads the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.
‘Metal finds included copper alloy buckles and fittings, at least two different sizes of iron nails, other iron fittings, a silver coin, a silver finger-ring and a single copper alloy arrowhead.
The mass graves were found within the town walls and were rectilinear grave pits that also contained artefacts that belonged to the Crusaders
Other finds included medieval potsherds, residual Persian period potsherds, glass fragments, and a small piece of charred, twisted fibre.’
Archaeologists knew the remains belonged to Crusaders after discovering the European style belt buckles and a crusader coin within the graves.
DNA and isotope analyses of their teeth further confirmed that some of the men were born in Europe, while others were the offspring of crusader settlers who migrated to the ‘Holy Land’ and intermarried with local people.
The team ventured into the grave pits to take a closer look at the pile of bones that showed many of the soldiers were attacked from behind as they were running away from the battle. Others have sword wounds across the back of the neck, indicating they were possibly captives executed by decapitation after the battle.
Dr Richard Mikulski of Bournemouth University, who excavated and analyzed the skeletal remains and worked with the archaeologists at the Sidon excavation site, explained, ‘All the bodies were of teenage or adult males, indicating that they were combatants who fought in the battle when Sidon was attacked.
‘When we found so many weapon injuries on the bones as we excavated them, I knew we had made a special discovery.’
DNA and isotope analyses of their teeth further confirmed that some of the men were born in Europe, while others were the offspring of crusader settlers who migrated to the ‘Holy Land’ and intermarried with local people
Bournemouth University colleague Dr Martin Smith, said in a statement: ‘To distinguish so many mixed up bodies and body parts took a huge amount of work, but we were finally able to separate them out and look at the pattern of wounds they had sustained.’
‘The way the body parts were positioned suggests they had been left to decompose on the surface before being dropped into a pit sometime later. Charring on some bones suggests they used fire to burn some of the bodies.’
Dr Piers Mitchell of the University of Cambridge, who was the crusader expert on the project, explained: ‘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.
‘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?’
A 12th-century idol representing the Hindu god Ganesh has been discovered accidentally in southeastern India. A farmer in the village of Motupalli in Prakasam District stumbled across the stone statue while tilling his land. In Hinduism, Lord Ganesh is presented as a portly elephant-headed figure with four arms.
He is considered the god of wisdom, the patron of science and art and the remover of obstacles. Standing about 18 inches tall, the idol displays Ganesh sitting cross-legged, known as the ‘Padmasana’ posture, on a lotus pedestal.
Two of the idol’s hands are broken—in one remaining hand, he holds his broken tusk and in the other a sweet Indian dumpling known as a modaka.
The announcement of the idol’s discovery came during the 10-day Ganesh Chaturthi festival when Hindus celebrate Lord Ganesh’s birth.
Farmer Siripudi Venkateswaralu discovered the idol on September 9 while tilling his farm in Motupalli, a village in the Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, The Hindu reported.
A 13 inch stone idol of Ganesh, the Hindu remover of obstacles, was discovered in Andhra Pradesh on the eve of a festival celebrating the elephant-headed god’s birth
Found on the eve of a festival devoted to Ganesh, the 800-year-old idol drew crowds of locals and visitors alike. Running from September 10 to 19 this year, Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated with fasting, offerings, and prayers.
Later, modaka is distributed and public feasts and martial arts exhibitions are held.
Ganesh is typically presented with four arms, with an axe in his upper right hand, a noose in his upper left hand and sweet dumplings in the lower left. His broken tusk is often shown in his lower right though sometimes the hand is extended out to the viewer in a posture of enlightenment.
On the tenth day, idols of Ganesh are carried in a public procession and immersed in a nearby river or sea.
The statue found in Motupall is 42 inches long, 30 inches wide and 18 inches tall, and is missing Ganesh’s typical mukut, or crown, according to archaeologist E. Sivanagi Reddy.
Reddy dated the icon to the 12th century, when Andhra Pradesh was ruled by the Chola dynasty, based on its style and inscriptions in the ruins of the nearby Kodanda Ramaswamy temple.
The Chola dynasty was a Tamil empire that governed southern India until the 13th century.
In Hindu iconography, Ganesh is usually depicted with an elephant head and a stout human body with four arms.
Each appendage carries an item with ritual significance: An axe in his upper right hand, and his broken tusk, or ‘danta,’ in his lower right. (In one story, Ganesh’s tusk was broken by an axe thrown by a warrior seeking to attack his father, Shiva.)
A noose is in his upper left hand and sweets are in the lower left. The idol was taken to the temple by the Motupalli Heritage Society, though its final disposition is unknown.
In August Reddy was part of a team of archaeologists who found a Tamil inscription in the temple dedicated to Prataparudra, emperor of the Kakatiya dynasty that supplanted the Chola.
The inscription dated to the early 14t century and registers the land as a gift ‘for the merit of the king,’ The Deccan Chronicle reported. Prataparudra was the last Kakatiya ruler: He died during a 1323 invasion that saw the kingdom annexed to the Islamic Delhi Sultanate.
Ancient 520 million-year-old sea monster with 18 TENTACLES around its mouth discovered
The discovery of a fossil showing an ancient sea creature with 18 tentacles surrounding its mouth has helped to solve a modern-day mystery about the origins of a gelatinous carnivore called a comb jelly, a new study finds.
The previously unknown “sea monster,” which scientists dubbed Daihua sanqiong, lived a whopping 518 million years ago in what is now China. And the extinct animal shares a number of anatomical characteristics with the modern comb jelly, a little sea creature that uses so-called comb rows full of loads of hair-like cilia to swim through the oceans.
The discovery suggests that this newfound species may be the comb jelly’s distant relative, said study lead researcher Jakob Vinther, a paleobiologist at Bristol University in the United Kingdom.
“With fossils, we have been able to find out what the bizarre comb jellies originated from,” Vinther told Live Science. “Even though we now can show they came from a very sensible place, it doesn’t make them any less weird.”
This finding, however, has sparked a debate. While the discovery of D. sanqiong is impressive, it’s hard to say whether this ancient creature is part of the lineage that produced comb jellies, said Casey Dunn, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, who was not involved with the study.
“I am highly skeptical of the conclusions they draw,” Dunn told Live Science.
A magnified shot of the rows of cilia on Daihua sanqiong, which suggest that it might be a distant relative of the modern comb jelly.
18 incredible tentacles
Vinther came across the D. sanqiong fossil while visiting colleagues at Yunnan University in China.
The scientists there showed him a number of fossils in their collection, including the mysterious creature they later named Daihua sanqiong, which was discovered by study co-researcher Xianguang Hou, a paleobiologist at Yunnan University. The genus name honors the Dai tribe in Yunnan; “hua” means flower in Mandarin, and refers to the critter’s flower-like shape.
On each of D. sanqiong’s tentacles are fine, feather-like branches with rows of large ciliary hairs, which likely helped it catch prey. These hairs, according to Vinther, grabbed his attention “because we only find big cilia on comb jellies.” To swim, comb jellies move their cilia, which then flicker in beautiful iridescent colors.
A living comb jelly, known as Euplokamis. The creature’s rainbow iridescence is caused by the movement of the ciliary comb bands on the animal’s body.
Moreover, the D. sanqiong fossil bears an intriguing resemblance to other known ancient animals, including Xianguangia, another ancient creature with 18 tentacles, and the tulip-like sea creatures Dinomischus and Siphusauctum.
“To make a long story short, we were able to reconstruct the whole [early] lineage of comb jellies,” by doing anatomical comparisons, Vinther said.
This is a big deal, because some scientists argue that these swimming carnivores were among the first animals to evolve on Earth, based on family trees analyses and genetic modeling of modern comb jellies. But now, this international team has possibly shown that comb jellies have a long lineage that precedes them, Vinther said.
This newly described lineage suggests that some of the ancestors of comb jellies had skeletons and that their ancient tentacles evolved into the combs with the densely packed cilia seen on comb jellies today.
An artist’s illustration of Daihua sanqiong.
The discovery also sheds light on where these ancient animals likely sat on the tree of life. For instance, researchers previously thought that Xianguangia was a sea anemone, but it “is actually part of the comb jelly branch,” study co-researcher Peiyun Cong , a professor of paleobiology at Yunnan University, said in a statement.
These findings also make a strong case that comb jellies are related to corals, sea anemones and jellyfish, the researchers said. “Those [ancient] tentacles are the same tentacles that you see on corals and sea anemones,” Vinther said. “We can trace comb jellies to these flower-like animals that lived more than half a billion years ago.”
But not everyone agrees with this analysis. While Dunn commended the researchers for their detailed description of D. sanqiong and its proposed relatives, some of these creatures have such different body shapes that it’s challenging to see how they could be related, he said. It’s possible that the tulip-looking Dinomischus and Siphusayctum creatures are related to each other. But Siphusauctum has ciliary rows on the inside of its body, and the animal purported to come after it, Galeactena, has these rows on the outside of its body.
It’s hard to see how this animal would, in effect, turn inside out as it evolved, Dunn said. Given that some of these claims are tenuous, the burden of proof is higher, and the researchers don’t quite get there, Dunn said.
“These are exciting animals no matter how they’re related to each other,” Dunn said. “Even though I’m skeptical that tentacles and comb rows are homologous [evolutionarily related], I think that as we describe more diversity from these deposits, certainly we’re going to learn a lot more about animal evolution.”
DNA of a female hunter-gatherer, buried 7,000 years ago in Indonesia, reveals population history of SE Asia
A team of archaeological geneticists has reconstructed the genome of a female hunter-gatherer from the Indonesian archipelago, which sheds significant light on the population history of southeast Asia.
This study reports the first known human genome from Leang Panninge in Wallacea, an oceanic island in the middle of the continental shelves of Sahul and Sunda.
Although anatomically modern humans are posited to have crossed over to Australia from Asia as early as 65,000 years ago, the oldest dated Homo sapiens remains come from only 13,000 years ago.
The DNA was sequenced from the petrous bone, a small bone in the ear region of the skull.
One of the reasons is the tropical climate, which decomposes natural tissues quite quickly and is therefore not very conducive to the preservation of any remains. Previously, only two ancient human genomes, one from Laos and another from Malaysia, had been sequenced from southeast Asia.
Hunting gathering is a lifestyle that is associated with the Palaeolithic (3 million years ago to 10,000 years ago) in the archaeological record. This lifestyle was largely replaced by the adoption of agriculture and domestication of animals and plants, widely known as the Neolithic Revolution (10,000 to 8000 years ago). However, some hunter-gatherer groups have managed to survive to the present day and have been the subject of many anthropological inquiries.
Reconstruction of genetic history
The present study employed molecular markers with different modes of inheritance to examine the genetic history of the individual from Leang Panninge.
While nuclear DNA (nrDNA) is biparentally inherited i.e. approximately half coming from the mother and half from the father, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) shows uniparental inheritance i.e. it is inherited exclusively from the mother. Studies targeting more molecular markers than one enables a better reconstruction of the genetic history of a population.
The DNA was sequenced from the petrous bone, a small bone in the ear region of the skull. The petrous, in recent years, has been targeted extensively for ancient DNA for its remarkable preservation of genetic material.
Since there is a paucity of a wide number of ancient individuals, any ancient DNA study has to be compared with the known genetic history of present-day populations in the region, which, in this case, were southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea, Australia and other Oceanian islands.
Who was her ancestor?
Genetic analyses reveal that the individual shares significant genetic ancestry with the present-day populations of Oceania — Australia, Papua New Guinea and other island groups.
a.Sulawesi and Wallacea. The red rectangle indicates the region shown in b. b, Leang Panninge.
Selina Carlhoff, the lead author of the study, clarified in an email: “In direct comparisons, we show that these Near Oceanian groups are more closely related to each other than to Leang Panninge…which would place Leang Panninge outside of that clade.”
The populations of Oceania and Eurasia are supposed to have diverged 58,000 years ago, and the Papuan and Australian people around 37,000 years ago, which is also when the Leang Panninge individual had branched off.
While this was going on, populations from these areas had seen multiple introductions of genetic material from the Denisovans (Denisovans are an extinct species of early hominins that ranged across Asia during the Palaeolithic).
Researchers identified another genetic ancestral lineage in the ancient genome of the individual that seems more closely related to deep Asian lineages.
“Considering the Leang Panninge individual as an admixture between a Near Oceanian- and a deep East Asian-related lineage may also explain the reduced amount of Denisovan-related ancestry compared to present-day Papuan groups,” Carlhoff added.
Given the dearth of pre-Neolithic genomes from the region, it is difficult to underpin the exact source of admixtures. It could be that this individual carries some ancestry from the first Homo sapiens inhabitants of Sulawesi around 50,000 years ago, or that a Southeast Asian group related to the present-day Andamanese people had contributed some genetic material.
Life-sized camel carvings in Northern Arabia date to the Neolithic period
This close-up image shows one of the camel carvings, revealing the body, legs and base of the neck of an adult camel with a possible young equid to the left.
A parade of life-size stone camel carvings in northern Arabia dates back to the Stone Age, new research finds. The 21 camels and horse-like figures were found in 2018 in the province of Al-Jouf in the northwestern Saudi desert. Researchers first believed that the carvings were about 2,000 years old, in part because they look similar to rock reliefs found in the famous stone city of Petra in Jordan.
New dating efforts reveal that the carvings are much older: They date back 8,000 years. They were probably carved between 6000 B.C. and 5000 B.C. when the region was wetter and cooler.
At the time, the landscape was a grassland punctuated with lakes, where camels, horses and their relatives roamed wild, the researchers said. Humans herded flocks of cattle, sheep and goats — and apparently created great works of art.
The carvings are chiselled into naturally occurring rocks at the site, and they often seem to meld with the natural grain of the rock. Their creation would have required tools made of a stone called chert, which would have come from at least 9 miles (15 kilometres) away.
Artists who took on the laborious job of carving each animal would have needed some sort of scaffolding and a couple of weeks’ time to complete, according to researchers from the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the Centre National de la recherche Scientifique in France and King Saud University.
At the Camel Site in northern Arabia, viewed from the northwest, researchers identified several large carvings or reliefs of camels and horses (red stars), small reliefs (white stars) and large fragments (stars with red outline).
Panel 1 showing the belly, thigh and upper tail of a camel. Tool marks can be seen on the lower abdomen and the upper thigh, as well as a series of deep grooves. Detail photographs are shown on the lower left and lower right.
“Neolithic communities repeatedly returned to the Camel Site, meaning its symbolism and function was maintained over many generations,” said Maria Guagnin, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Science of Human History, who led the new research.
The carvings are quite eroded, meaning that dating them was difficult. The researchers used multiple lines of evidence to do so, ranging from the tool marks in the rock to the radiocarbon dating of bones found in related rock layers. (Radiocarbon dating uses the radioactive decay of certain carbon molecules to mark time, but it requires organic material for the analysis.)
The researchers also measured the density of the desert varnish on the rocks using a technique called portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry.
Desert varnish is a mineral coating that forms on desert rocks over time.
Portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry uses a handheld device to beam X-rays at a sample and non-destructively analyze the elements on its surface.
Finally, the team used luminescence dating of fragments that had fallen off the rock wall to determine when those fragments fell.
This method measures the amount of naturally occurring radiation in rocks and can reveal when rock was first exposed to sunlight or intense heat and how long it’s been acquiring radiation from the sun since that time.
The new Neolithic, or Stone Age, date, puts the carvings in the context of other rock art made by pastoral people in northern Arabia, the researchers said in a statement.
These include large stone monuments called mustatil, which are made of sandstone walls surrounding a courtyard with a stone platform at one end.
A Knights Templar’s secret tunnel has been hidden for 700 years
Crusaders from the Latin West left an unmistakable imprint on the cities of the Near East throughout the Middle Ages, building castles and fortresses that could resist waves of conquest.
Many of these castles still stand today, and in some cases, remain in use. Krak des Chevaliers, perhaps the most iconic crusader castle, was even occupied and used as a military base in the recent Syrian conflict.
However, many of these impressive structures have yet to give up all of their secrets. Even in the late 20th century, crusader structures were still being discovered in the Levant, the most notable of which was the 350 meters (985 feet) “Templar tunnel” running underneath the modern city of Acre. These discoveries continue to shed light on this fascinating period of Middle Eastern history.
Remains of the Crusader-period Pisan Harbour.
The Templars were a military religious order, originally founded to ensure the safety of the regular stream of pilgrims that made the arduous and dangerous journey from Western Europe to the Holy Land.
According to historian Dan Jones, they were so named because their original headquarters stood next to the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, and in the 12th and 13th century they played an important role in defining the political and military successes (and failures) of the crusader states in the Levant.
In 1187, however, the city of Jerusalem was lost after a decisive victory by the Ayyubid leader Salah ad-Din (otherwise known as Saladin) at Hattin.
The crusader states had lost their capital, and their shock defeat at the hands of a powerful Muslim army launched what would later be known as the Third Crusade.
According to Jones, several large armies set out from England and France to provide aid to the beleaguered crusader kingdoms, with the goal of reconquering Jerusalem.
This was a vain hope, and the armies of the Third Crusade, led (amongst others) by Richard the Lionheart, would eventually leave without reclaiming Jerusalem. However, they did manage to recover the important port city of Acre.
Following a long siege led by the king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, the Muslim inhabitants of the city surrendered, and Acre became the new capital of the crusader states.
Portrait of Guy de Lusignan.
Ever fearful of a renewed attack by Saladin and his successors, the Templars set about constructing an impressive fortress at Acre. The settlement was already well protected by high walls and the surrounding sea, but the new Christian occupants proceeded to construct seemingly impenetrable defences.
According to Jones, Acre was a strategically significant Mediterranean port and controlling it was key to controlling access to the rest of the region. However, this meant that it was constantly under threat, both from enemies outside its walls and from infighting amongst those within.
This may explain why the Templars decided to construct a secret underground tunnel, leading from the fortress to the port. This would ensure a quick, easy escape for any inhabitants in case the city was overthrown and could provide a useful, secret channel for supplies if the city was besieged.
Underground Knights Templar citadel of Acre, Israel.
However, in 1291, disaster struck. Acre was attacked and taken by the Mamluk ruler of Egypt, Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil, and he ordered that the city be razed to the ground to prevent further Christian reoccupation. This once-pivotal, strategic port fell into insignificance.
However, in 1994, over 700 years after the fall of the fortress, a startling discovery was made by a woman living in the modern city of Acre.
When she sent a local plumber to investigate the cause of her blocked drains, he stumbled into a medieval tunnel running right underneath her house.
Further excavations revealed that the tunnel had been constructed in the Crusader period, and ran all the way from the fortress to the port. This was an extremely significant discovery, as it’s one of the rare pieces of Crusader architecture in Acre to have survived the invasion of the Mamluks.
Today, it’s even possible to visit the tunnel, which has been fully restored, cleaned and drained. Although the Templar fortress may be long gone, modern tourists can still walk in the footsteps of these crusading knights, 700 years after their deaths.
1,500-Year-Old Temple Ruins Discovered in Uttar Pradesh, India
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has found remains of an ancient temple dating back to the Gupta Period, 5th Century CE in Bilsarh village of Uttar Pradesh’s Etah.
At the spot, the archaeologists discovered “two decorative pillars (at the spot) close to one another, with human figurines (found earlier).” Vasant Swarnkar, superintending archaeologist of ASI’s Agra circle said, “To understand their significance, we conducted further excavation and found the stairs,” quoted The Times of India.
Last month, the staircase was excavated has Shankhalipi inscriptions that were ” deciphered as saying ‘Sri Mahendraditya’, which was the title of Kumaragupta I of the Gupta dynasty.”
A breakthrough discovery by @ASIGoI’s Agra Circle – Stairs leading to the Gupta period temple were found through scientific cleaning at the protected site of Bilsarh, Etah.
An inscription in Shankh lipi on one of the steps, datable to 5th century CE, Gupta period, possibly reading “Sri Mahendraditya..”, identified as Kumargupta of the Gupta dynasty has been unearthed.
Shankhalipi is an ancient script that was used from the 4th to 8th centuries CE for names and signatures.
In the 5th century CE, Kumaragupta I ruled for 40 years over what is now north-central India.
The ASI made the discovery in Etah’s Bilsarh village, which has been protected since 1928, during a routine check-up. The ASI scrubs its protected sites during monsoons.
The Shankhalipi inscription was earlier found on a horse status found in Lakhimpur Kheri and is now at the State Museum in Lucknow, the TOI reported.
The remains recently found in Etah are the third structural temple found so far from the Gupta period. “Before this, only two structural temples were found — Dashavatara Temple in Deogarh and Bhitargaon Temple in Kanpur Dehat.
The Etah pillars are well-sculpted, better than the earlier examples in which only the lower sections were carved. The decorative pillars and staircase are a bit more advanced than the earlier ones,” said History Professor Manvendra Pundhir of the Aligarh Muslim University.
He said, “The Guptas were the first to build structural temples for Brahminical, Buddhist and Jain followers. Prior to that, only rock-cut temples were built,” quoted TOI.
