A New Human Ancestor Species Has Been Found… It also had a tail!
Just published by a multinational team of archaeologist, anthropologists and genetics, this shocking study details Homo apriliensis in detail. The building is based on fragments of fossil bones dating back about 50,000 years that were discovered in a cave in Siberia in April of last year.
The fossils consist of a pelvis, femur, coccyx, and a segment of the lower jaw. The fossils were originally thought to belong to our ancestors, Homo sapiens, but later DNA analysis revealed that they were indeed human, but of a different kind.
According to the Ancient assets, The new species was named Homo apriliensis, which is the same genus Homo as us.
In their DNA there are genetic traces of two other species, Denisovan and Homo sapiens, indicating that the three species had heterogeneous interbreeding at some point.
Human aprilensis has visible traces of a small tail.
An illustration depicting a human-like creature with a tail
However, according to Professor John Bennett, who teaches in the Department of Archeology at the University of Sheffield (UK) and Director of the British School in Athens (Greece), who is one of the main authors of the study, the extra part of the body remains as if it were an ancient remnant of normal evolution.
It is similar to the appendix or wisdom tooth in modern humans.
The modern human fetus also has a tail in the first four parts, after it absorbs it by the body and leaves a trace of the coccyx.
The human coccyx or ‘tailbone’
With Homo apriliensis, the tail fetus is not completely absorbed but retains a small portion at the birth of the body. It is the first type of genus to have a tail.
The traces of the tail were discovered a year before the remains were discovered, she said Science Times.
However, the published evidence that we and our Homo sapiens interbreed this time is shocking.
According to the authors, this is the most important discovery related to human origin in the past 100 years.
These are the early search results. They are looking at a number of other issues such as when and how the species became extinct, with more results expected to be released next year.
Massive Megalithic Stone Ruins Discovered in Russia
An incredible discovery that was recently made in Russia threatens to shatter conventional theories about the history of the planet. In southern Siberia, researchers have found an absolutely massive wall of granite stones.
Some of these gigantic granite stones are estimated to weigh more than 3,000 tons, and as you will see below, many of them were cut “with flat surfaces, right angles, and sharp corners”. Nothing of this magnitude has ever been discovered before.
The largest stone found at the megalithic ruins at Baalbek, Lebanon is less than 1,500 tons. So how in the world did someone cut 3,000-ton granite stones with extreme precision, transport them up the side of a mountain and stack them 40 meters high?
Massive Megalithic Ruins Discovered in Russia Containing the Largest Blocks of Stone Ever Found.
According to the commonly accepted version of history, it would be impossible for ancient humans with very limited technology to accomplish such a thing. Could it be possible that there is much more to the history of this planet than we are being taught?
For years, historians and archaeologists have absolutely marvelled at the incredibly huge stones found at Baalbek. But some of these stones in Russia are reportedly more than twice the size. Needless to say, a lot of people are getting very excited about this discovery.
The following comes from a recent article in the magazine, Mysterious Universe:
“Alternate history buffs are about to be whipped into a frenzy! OK, maybe not, but they will find this interesting.”
“An ancient “super-megalithic” site has been found in Gornaya Shoria (Mount Shoria) in southern Siberia.
“This spectacular archaeological site consists of massive blocks of stone, which appear to be granite, with flat surfaces, right angles, and sharp corners.”
“These huge blocks appear to be stacked up and fitted together, almost in the manner of cyclopean masonry, and well…they’re enormous!”
“Russia is no stranger to ancient megalithic sites, like Arkaim (Russia’s Stonehenge), and the Manpupuner formation, just to name two.”
“But the site at Shoria is unique in that, if it’s man-made, the blocks used are undoubtedly the largest ever worked by human hands.”
Prior to this expedition, there were no known photographs of these megalithic stones. Archaeologist John Jensen is mystified by these ancient ruins, and the following is an excerpt from a post on his personal blog.
“There are no measurements given, but from the scale depicted by the human figures, these megaliths are much larger (as much as 2 to 3 times larger) than the largest known megaliths in the world.
(Example: The Pregnant Woman Stone of Baalbek, the largest single known stone at the archaeological site in Lebanon, weighs in at approximately 1,260 ton). Some of these megaliths could easily weigh upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 tons.”
Of course, much more research needs to be done on this site. Nobody knows who cut these stones or how old they are. Jensen believes that they come from a time well back into the mists of pre-history.
“These megaliths reach well back into the mists of pre-history, so far in fact, that conjecture about their ‘builders’, methods, purpose and meaning is pure speculation, and as such, I would hesitate to offer any observation at all, other than to say our pre-historical past is richer than we ever dreamed.”
These stones are likely to remain an unsolved mystery for a very long time. But what is abundantly clear is that according to the commonly accepted version of history they should not be there. And of course, this is far from the only site around the world that contains massive megalithic ruins.
Evidence continues to mount that very sophisticated technology was used in the ancient world. These megalithic ruins are undeniable reminders of highly advanced ancient civilizations. So who were they and what happened to them? Could it be possible that they were wiped out by a massive global cataclysm such as a global flood?
9,500-year-old ‘lost city found Underwater Off India
The remains were discovered in the Gulf of Cambay, off the western coast of India, by marine archaeologists. They discovered massive geometrical structures using sonar scanning technology, which sends a beam of sound waves down to the ocean’s depths.
The vast region, which measured five miles long and two miles wide, was thought to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years but has been the subject of contention.
Their accidental discovery was revealed during Graham Hancock’s ‘Underworld – Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age’ documentary. The pseudo archaeologist claimed: “The end of the great Ice Age shaped the world we live in today.
“A mass of water poured into the water as the ice caps melted and sea levels rose 400 feet.
“Floods swallowed up the best coastal lands on Earth and all traces of the people who lived on them vanished beneath the sea.
Relics were uncovered following a sonar scan
The discovery was made in the Gulf of Cambay
“Could this mass flooding have been the inspiration for hundreds of flood myths from all around the world?”
Mr Hancock, whose work has never been published in an academic journal, went on to detail why he believed the find in India could be linked to the Ice Age.
He said: “In India, new evidence from the bottom of the sea is showing substance to the myth.
“This is the Gulf of Cambay in northwest India – in late 2001 scientists conducting pollution studies made an astonishing accidental discovery.
“25 miles from shore, at a depth of 120 feet, they picked up traces of an ancient city covering a large area of the seabed.
“The discovery threatened to overturn everything that archaeologists believed about the origins of civilisation.”
Mr Hancock went on to detail what he believed they had pulled from the ocean.
He continued: “They found a city the size of Manhattan with massive walls and plazas.
“And man-made objects from the submerged cities have yielded carbon dates up to 9,500 years old – that’s 5,000 years older than any city discovered by archaeologists anywhere.
“It means we are dealing with a civilisation lost at the end of the Ice Age, perhaps even one of those that the flood myths speak of which flourished before history began.”
Some of the relics dated back more than 9,000 years
Lost city ‘could rewrite history’
Debris recovered from the site – including construction material, pottery, sections of walls, beads, sculpture and human bones were carbon-dated – but not without controversy.
One major complaint is that artefacts at the site were recovered by dredging, instead of being recovered during a controlled archaeological excavation. This leads some experts to claim that these artefacts cannot be definitively tied to a site, especially as the gulf is connected to many rivers.
Due to this, several prominent archaeologists rejected a piece of wood that was recovered and dated to 7500BC as having any significance in dating the site in particular. Chairman of the Paleoclimate Group and founder of Carbon-14 testing facilities in India, Dr D.P. Agrawal, explained in an article in Frontline Magazine that the piece was dated twice, at separate laboratories.
Some archaeologists take issue with the artefacts used.
The National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) returned a date of 7190 BC and the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany (BSIP) returned a date of 7545-7490BC. Dr Agrawal contested that the discovery of an ancient piece of wood implies the discovery of an ancient civilisation.
He argued that the wood piece is a common find, given that 20,000 years ago the Arabian Sea was 100 metres lower than its current level, and that the gradual sea-level rise submerged entire forests. Instead, most agree that the divers simply found a large cache of archaeological remains spread across the area.
Massive Ancient Wall Discovered in Iran Belongs to Unknown Ancient Civilization
Archaeologists also uncovered the remnants of a stone wall in Iran that is roughly the same length as the famous Hadrian’s Wall, which was constructed by the Romans across England.
This satellite image was taken on July 31, 2019, by the WorldView-2 satellite. The red arrows show a surviving section of the Gawri Wall.
The wall, which extends about 71 miles (115 kilometres), was found in Sar Pol-e Zahab County in western Iran.
“With an estimated volume of approximately one million cubic meters [35,314,667 cubic feet] of stone, it would have required significant resources in terms of workforce, materials and time,” wrote Sajjad Alibaigi, an assistant professor of Iranian Archaeology at Razi University in Kermanshah, Iran, in an article published online in the journal Antiquity.
The structure runs north-south from the Bamu Mountains in the north to an area near Shaw Marg village in the south, Alibaigi wrote.
Pottery found along the wall suggests that it was built sometime between the fourth century B.C. and sixth century A.D., Alibaigi wrote. “Remnants of structures, now destroyed, are visible in places along the wall.
Location of the ancient wall in Salmaneh Mount, south-east of Bamu mount.
These may have been associated turrets [small towers] or buildings,” wrote Alibaigi, noting that the wall itself is made from “natural local materials, such as cobbles and boulders, with gypsum mortar surviving in places.”
Though the wall’s existence was unknown to archaeologists, those living near it have long known about the wall, calling it the “Gawri Wall,” Alibaigi wrote.
The Gawri Wall in the western mountains of Sar Pol-e Zahab; arrows indicate the wall’s line.
A spokesperson for Antiquity said that since Alibaigi’s paper was published, the journal has learned that another group of archaeologists carried out earlier research on the wall; that research was never published in a journal.
Mysterious wall
Archaeologists are not certain who built the structure, and for what purpose. Because of the poor preservation of the barrier, the scientists aren’t even sure of its exact width and height. He said their best estimates put it at 13 feet (4 meters) wide and about 10 feet (3 m) high.
“It is unclear whether it was defensive or symbolic,” wrote Alibaigi, noting that it might mark the border for an ancient empire, perhaps the Parthians (who flourished between 247 B.C. and A.D. 224) or the Sassanians (A.D. 224-651).
Both empires in western Iran built large castles, cities and irrigation systems, so it’s likely that both had the resources to build the Gawri Wall, wrote Alibaigi.
The newly discovered Gawri Wall is not the only ancient long wall in Iran. Archaeologists have previously found similar structures in the north and northeastern parts of Iran. Those may have had a defensive purpose.
Alibaigi hopes to carry out more research on the Gawri Wall in the future, he wrote. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The Balochistan Sphinx, or the Lion of Balochistan, is a rare shape in modern-day Pakistan. The oddly-shaped building, which is located in Lesbela, Pakistan, resembles the famous ancient Egyptian Sphinx in Giza in some details.
As a response, modern historians and writers believe that long-lost cultures flourished before ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians, hence this odd Pakistani formation has, therefore, been the subject of debate and discussion.
The odd geological formation in Pakistan was only revealed to the world when, in 2004, the Makran Coastal Highway opened up, and people started transiting near the geological formation. The highway linked Karachi with the port town of Gwadar on the Makran coast.
Despite a complete archaeological survey, the odd Pakistani “Sphinx” is often passed off by experts as a natural formation. Different images from different angles of the geological formation may suggest a certain resemblance to the more famous Egyptian Sphinx; a monument thought to have been carved out of a single, massive limestone block, sometime around 4,500 years ago, during the reign of Khafre, the man who is also credited with building the second-largest pyramid at the Giza plateau.
Photographs of the Balochistan Sphinx—located in the Hingol National Park—cause more confusion than clarity, and some people may find it hard to believe that such a geological formation was indeed carved and shaped by natural forces. For some, the location where the oddly-shaped formation stands may seem as if it were carved sometime in the distant past.
Some features of the site reminiscent of architectural features.
A glance at the “Sphinx” appears to show a well-defined jawline, as well as clearly noticeable facial features such as eyes, mouth, and nose. These also seem to be perfectly spaced, as if carved in perfect proportion to one another.
So, wouldn’t this suffice to say that the Balochistan Sphinx was carved by man and not my nature? Not really. We could be seeing something that resembles the Sphinx of Egypt because of Pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon that causes us to see things that aren’t there.
Also, it is impossible to clearly state that something is or is not a monument, or carved by man, by simply looking at what appears to be a rock formation in the middle of nowhere.
Without a proper archaeological survey, we can’t possibly know whether the oddly shaped geological formation was carved by weather erosion or by ancient civilizations.
Sphinx of Balochistan
Throughout the years, different opinions defined the odd formation as one of a natural origin, and one of artificial origin. The opinions are divided.
One author, Bibhu Dev Misra, who runs this blog, argues the Balochistan Sphinx is part of a massive architectural complex, and that the Sphinx is clearly surrounded by the remnants of ancient temples carved into the bedrock.
Describing the Sphinx Bibhu Dev Misra explains that: A cursory glance at the impressive sculpture shows the Sphinx to have a well-defined jawline, and clearly discernible facial features such as eyes, nose, and mouth, which are placed in seemingly perfect proportion to each other.
But if it really is a manmade monument, who carved it and when was it carved?
The shape of the Sphinx of Balochistan is very close to the design and proportions of the Egyptian Sphinx.
Oddly enough, just as the ancient Egyptian Sphinx appears to have a headdress—called a Nemes—the Pakistani counterpart seems to have one as well. Of course, this may be just part of pareidolia kicking in, drawing dots between a well-known monument—the ancient Egyptian Sphinx—and a geological formation that resembles the Egyptian monument.
In addition to certain elements around the upper part of the geological formation bearing a resemblance to the Egyptian Sphinx, Bibhu Dev Misra argues that more symmetrical features near the alleged Sphinx are evidence of human activity, and contradict the notion that the site was carved by weather erosion.
The author argues that we can see a clear symmetrical formation of steps and pillars around the Sphinx, which offer further evidence to the idea that the Balochistan Sphinx was carved by man and not by nature.
“The steps appear to be evenly spaced, and of uniform height. The entire site gives the impression of a grand, rock-cut, architectural complex,” the researcher writes.
As for its age, it impossible to know. The age of 12,000 years has been thrown around by various blogs and authors. However, since we can’t know whether this is really Sphinx or not, it is impossible to suggest an age for the alleged Sphinx.
Without extensive archaeological fieldwork and archaeological excavations, we can’t possibly know whether the site of the Balochistan Sphinx was carved by a long-lost, forgotten civilization—as some authors think—or if it is just another site on Earth where weather erosion and geology carved a curious formation.
Archaeologists Uncover 3,000-Year-Old Gold Mask In China Belonging To A Mysterious Ancient Society
A 3,000-year-old ceremonial gold mask has become an unexpected social media sensation in China after its recent discovery in Sichuan province. The artefact was one of 500 Bronze-Age relics found at the Sanxingdui archaeological site.
The mask was one of hundreds of ancient objects uncovered at the site.
Experts say the discovery could provide new insights into the ancient Shu state, which ruled the area before 316 BC. But the mysterious half-faced mask has also spawned popular meme and tribute videos on social media.
As soon as the latest batch of discoveries was announced on Saturday, users of the microblogging platform Weibo started making pictures superimposing the mask on the faces of pop culture figures.
The hashtag “Sanxingdui gold mask photo editing competition” has been viewed nearly 4 million times, and has spawned numerous posts as netizens praised the “stunning” and “beautiful” mask.
Officials at the museum for Sanxingdui – one of the most important archaeological sites in China – soon joined in on the fun.
“Good morning, we’ve just woken up, apparently everyone’s been busy doing some Photoshopping?” the museum said in a recent Weibo post while sharing its own take on the meme.
The museum also released a promotional animated music video starring the mask and other artefacts, while a rap song created by a TV host praising the “intelligence” of the ancient civilisation has gone viral.
It is not the first time a Chinese artefact has attracted the attention of social media users – in August, another relic was found to resemble the pig characters in the popular video game Angry Birds.
In addition to the gold mask, archaeologists at Sanxingdui have found bronze pieces, gold foils as well as artefacts made from ivory, jade and silk.
Archaeologists unearthed bronze and ivory artifacts at the site as well.
The items were uncovered in six “sacrificial pits”, said the National Cultural Heritage Administration, which the Shu civilisation used to offer sacrifices in prayers for prosperity and peace.
The Sanxingdui ruins were discovered by accident by a farmer in 1929. To date, more than 50,000 relics have been unearthed at the site, which is around 60km (37 miles) from the city of Chengdu.
Archaeologists were shocked to discover the remains of two bodies, apparently sharing a romantic embrace before their deaths, in the ruins of an ancient, burned-out village.
The Hasanlu Lovers.
The University of Pennsylvania first discovered this skeletal couple during an archaeological excavation of an ancient city in northwest Iran in the 1970s. The two skeletons were discovered in the remains of the ancient city of Teppe Hasanlu, which stood in the area that is now Iran 2,800 years ago.
These remains were found in a mudbrick bin, designed for storing grain, embracing one another in what appears to be a kiss and were dubbed “The Hasanlu Lovers.”
From archaeological evidence, researchers discovered that the city of Teppe Hasanlu was destroyed around 800 BCE by an invading army that sacked the city and burned it to the ground.
In addition to the Hasanlu Lovers, human remains from hundreds of others from the time, men, women, and children were found strewn across the city streets of Hasanlu. The people of this city, it appears, were completely wiped out by the invading raiders.
Other bodies found at Teppe Hasanlu.
The Hasanlu Lovers were likely hiding from these invaders in the grain bin when they died of asphyxiation from the smoke emanating from the fires raging around the city.
The Urartu Kingdom of the Armenian highlands is believed to have been responsible for this slaughter.
While the media and public were quick to decide that the two people locked in this embrace were a man and woman in a romantic relationship, archaeologists responsible for the find note that the relationship and gender between the two remain unclear.
One of the “lovers,” the one laying on his back, is definitively a young male (18-22), due to his pelvic shape and dental structures. The sex of the second “lover” is much more under question.
It is unclear what the sex of the “touching” person truly was. While researchers were easily able to identify the age of the person these remains belonged to, 30 to 35, the gender remains a mystery as the skeleton has both male and female features.
The site of Teppe Hasanlu today.
Given the forensic evidence we have, it is more likely that the second body was that of a man as well.
When this evidence was first revealed in the 1980s, reporters flocked to report that the Hasanlu Lovers were gay. However, the relationship between these two ancient people, whether one was male or female, is entirely unknown.
While these two men could have been lovers, many hypothesize that the older person was, in fact, the father of the boy. If the skeleton is in fact female, then it could easily also be his mother.
Furthermore, “gay” and “straight” as discreet identities and orientations are a product of modern society, not labels that can be applied to people in the distant past.
While ancient people engaged in sex with members of the opposite gender and their own, these sexual preferences did not bring with them the same social identities that we associate with them today.
So while these intertwined skeletons from thousands of years ago maybe a stirring image, we should not assume to understand the complexities of their lives and social systems from a single snapshot.
World’s oldest wooden statue is TWICE as old as Stonehenge
Gold prospectors first discovered the so-called Shigir Idol at the bottom of a peat bog in Russia’s Ural mountain range in 1890. The unique object—a nine-foot-tall totem pole composed of ten wooden fragments carved with expressive faces, eyes and limbs and decorated with geometric patterns—represents the oldest known surviving work of wooden ritual art in the world.
Hunter-gatherers in what is now Russia likely viewed the wooden sculpture as an artwork imbued with ritual significance.
More than a century after its discovery, archaeologists continue to uncover surprises about this astonishing artefact. As Thomas Terberger, a scholar of prehistory at Göttingen University in Germany, and his colleagues wrote in the journal Quaternary International in January, new research suggests the sculpture is 900 years older than previously thought.
Based on extensive analysis, Terberger’s team now estimates that the object was likely crafted about 12,500 years ago, at the end of the Last Ice Age. Its ancient creators carved the work from a single larch tree with 159 growth rings, the authors write in the study.
“The idol was carved during an era of great climate change, when early forests were spreading across a warmer late-glacial to postglacial Eurasia,” Terberger tells Franz Lidz of the New York Times.
“The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered.”
According to Sarah Cascone of Artnet News, the new findings indicate that the rare artwork predates Stonehenge, which was created around 5,000 years ago, by more than 7,000 years. It’s also twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids, which date roughly 4,500 years ago.
As the Times reports, researchers have been puzzling over the age of the Shigir sculpture for decades. The debate has major implications for the study of prehistory, which tends to emphasize a Western-centric view of human development.
The wood used to carve the Shigir Idol is around 12,250 years old.
Shigir Idol – the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world.
In 1997, Russian scientists carbon-dated the totem pole to about 9,500 years ago. Many in the scientific community rejected these findings as implausible: Reluctant to believe that hunter-gatherer communities in the Urals and Siberia had created art or formed cultures of their own, says Terberger to the Times, researchers instead presented a narrative of human evolution that centered European history, with ancient farming societies in the Fertile Crescent eventually sowing the seeds of Western civilization.
Prevailing views over the past century adds Terberger, regarded hunter-gatherers as “inferior to early agrarian communities emerging at that time in the Levant. At the same time, the archaeological evidence from the Urals and Siberia was underestimated and neglected.”
In 2018, scientists including Terberger used accelerator mass spectrometry technology to argue that the wooden object was about 11,600 years old. Now, the team’s latest publication has pushed that origin date back even further.
As Artnet News reports, the complex symbols carved into the object’s wooden surface indicate that its creators made it as a work of “mobiliary art,” or portable art that carried ritual significance.
Co-author Svetlana Savchenko, the curator in charge of the artifact at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, tells the Times that the eight faces may contain encrypted references to a creation myth or the boundary between the earth and sky.
“Woodworking was probably widespread during the Late Glacial to early Holocene,” the authors wrote in the 2018 article. “We see the Shigir sculpture as a document of a complex symbolic behaviour and of the spiritual world of the Late Glacial to Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Urals.”
The fact that this rare evidence of hunter-gatherer artwork endured until modern times is a marvel in and of itself, notes Science Alert. The acidic, antimicrobial environment of the Russian peat bog preserved the wooden structure for millennia.
João Zilhão, a scholar at the University of Barcelona who was not involved in the study, tells the Times that the artefact’s remarkable survival reminds scientists of an important truth: that a lack of evidence of ancient art doesn’t mean it never existed.
Rather, many ancient people created art objects out of perishable materials that could not withstand the test of time and were therefore left out of the archaeological record.
“It’s similar to the ‘Neanderthals did not make art’ fable, which was entirely based on the absence of evidence,” Zilhão says. “Likewise, the overwhelming scientific consensus used to hold that modern humans were superior in key ways, including their ability to innovate, communicate and adapt to different environments. Nonsense, all of it.”
Head of the Shigir Idol, the world’s oldest known wood sculpture.
