Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Till death do us part! 3500-year-old tombs with hand-holding couples found

Till death do us part! 3500-year-old tombs with hand-holding couples found

Russian scientists are trying to uncover the secrets of 3,500-year-old Bronze Age graves, where couples are buried together in a seemingly loving embrace – under suspicions of macabre explanation.

These pictures show ancient burials in the village of Staryi Tartas in Siberia where some 600 tombs were examined by experts.

Dozens contain the bones of couples, some with male and female skeletons, facing each other and their hands appear to be held together forever.

Russian scientists have uncovered the bones of dozens of couples buried facing each other in Staryi Tartas village in Siberia

The Siberian Times said: ‘Archeologists are struggling for explanation and hope that DNA testing can provide answers for these remarkable burials.’ One writer, Vasiliy Labetskiy, described the scenes in the graves poignantly as skeletons in ‘post-mortal hugs with bony hands clasped together.

One theory is that these Andronovo burials show the start of the nuclear family, but another version that after the man died, his wife was killed and buried with him.

Still, another suggests that some of the couples were deliberately buried as if in a sexual act, possibly with a young woman sacrificed to play this role in the grave. Other graves at the site in the Novosibirsk region in western Siberia show adults buried with children.

Professor Vyacheslav Molodin, director of research of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: ‘We can fantasise a lot about all this.

‘We can allege that husband died and the wife was killed to be interred with him as we see in some Scythian burials, or maybe the grave stood open for some time and they buried the other person or persons later, or maybe it was really simultaneous death.

‘When we speak about a child and an adult, it looks more natural and understandable.

Some graves at the site in Novosibirsk region in western Siberia show adults buried with children

‘When we speak about two adults – it is not so obvious. So we can raise quite a variety of hypotheses, but how it was in fact, we do not know yet.’

Work is underway to establish the ‘kinship’ of these ancient couple burials using DNA research.

‘For example, we found the burial of a man and a child. What is the degree of their kinship? Are they father and son or…? The same question arises when we found a woman and a child. It should seem obvious – she is the mother. But it may not be so. She could be an aunt or not a relative at all. To speak about this scientifically we need the tools of paleogenetics.

One writer described the scenes in the graves poignantly as skeletons in ‘post-mortal hugs with bony hands clasped together’
Work is underway to establish the ‘kinship’ of these ancient couple burials using DNA research

‘We have a joint laboratory with the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science,  and we actively work in this direction. We do such analysis but it is quite expensive still and there are few specialists. We are also solving other questions with help of paleogenetics.’

With such couple burials, Professor Lev Klein, of St Petersburg State University, has proposed they are linked to reincarnation beliefs possibly influenced by Deeksha rituals in the ancient Indian sub-continent at the time when the oldest scriptures of Hinduism were composed.

‘The man during his lifetime donated his body as a sacrifice to all the gods,’ he wrote. ‘The ‘Deeksha was considered as a “second birth” and to complete this ritual the sacrificing one made a ritual sexual act of conceiving.’ In other words, in death, a man should perform a sexual act to impregnate a woman.

‘Perhaps in the pre-Vedic period relatives of the deceased often sought to reproduce the “Deeksha” posthumously, and sacrificed a woman or a girl (or a few), and simulated sexual intercourse in the grave,’ he said.

Archeologists are struggling for explanations and believe DNA tests will provide the answers to these remarkable burials, it was reported

Professor Molodin doesn’t rule out this version, yet makes clear it is only a hypothesis that needs more study.

‘It is again a suggestion. As a suggestion, it could be. This idea of Klein can be extended to Siberia too because a significant part of the researchers think that Andronovo people were Iranians.

‘So this hypothesis can be extended to them. But, I will repeat, it is only a hypothesis.’

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Ancient Chinese tomb dating back 2,500 years uncovered to shed light on the obscure kingdom

Ancient Chinese tomb dating back 2,500 years uncovered to shed light on obscure kingdom

Archaeologists in Luoyang, central China, unveiled a 2,500-year-old tomb they’ve been excavating since 2009.

The tomb contained copper bells and ceremonial pots. It is the largest site of around 200 tombs in the area. There was also a horse burial pit that contained whole horse skeletons and chariots.

Experts believe that the burial site belongs to a nobleman or royal of a little-known kingdom, called Lukun, that only existed between 638 BC to 525 BC, reported People’s Daily Online.

Ancient Chinese tomb dating back 2,500 years uncovered to shed light on obscure kingdom
Archaeologists found a horse burial pit in Luoyang, China which contained several whole skeletons and chariots
The area had ground water damage, which needed to be pumped out (above), but it was still well preserved despite the damage

The local government has been excavating in the Yinchuan area, just south of Luoyang city, since 2009 after a spate of grave robberies. An initial survey of the area revealed around 200 rectangular gravesites, eight horse and carriage burial pits, 30 storage pits and 10 kilns.

The largest site had a tomb that around approximately three feet below ground. It measured 21 feet long, 17 feet wide and 28 feet deep.

Due to groundwater in the area, the exterior of the tomb already has visible water damage. There were also signs of damage as a result of grave robbery. 

However, the interior coffin was protected by plaster and coffin board. It was in the space between the plaster and the coffin board that the copper wares were discovered.

The relics from the tomb have yet to be catalogued but they showed influences from the neighbouring regions at the time

The full count of the relic has yet to be completed but owing to its size, experts believe that the site was for a noble family, which didn’t have great political power.

At a nearby site, excavation of a horse burial site has been carried out since 2013. In a pit that measured 25 feet long, 20 feet wide and nine feet deep, a total of 13 horses and six chariots were found.

The horses had been neatly arranged and were left on their side. They even had decorative items on top. In a corner of the pit, there were also large quantities of cow and sheep heads and hooves.

Experts believe that the shape of the items belonged to a kingdom called Luhun, which existed between 638 BC to 525 BC. It had been detailed in historic texts but little was known about the kingdom since it only lasted for a short time.

The horses carried intricate adornments on them (pictured), giving archaeologists clues to the period that the tombs were built
Cow and sheep’s heads and hoofs were also found in the burial site, which was said to be a Luhun Kingdom tradition at the time
Experts hope the site will help them uncover and track the movements of the ethnic minority groups in the area during that time

Experts now believe that the burial showed evidence of the Luhun people’s migration.

The Rong people, an ethnic minority group who made up the population of the kingdom, had a tradition of burying the cattle parts in the horse burial pits, which was not seen in other burial sites of the same period. 

However, the designs of the objects that were buried also showed the stylistic influence from the surrounding regions during the Spring-Autumn period (722 BC to 481 BC).

This showed that the country had absorbed influences from its surroundings and combined them with its own traditions.

It is now hoped that the site will help historians and archaeologists uncover the movements of the ethnic minority groups in the area.  

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

2,000-year-old remains of nomadic ‘royal’ unearthed by Russian farmer includes ‘laughing man,’ haul of jewels and weapons

2,000-year-old remains of nomadic ‘royal’ unearthed by Russian farmer includes ‘laughing man,’ haul of jewels and weapons

Russian farmer unearths the remains of a 2,000-year-old nomadic ‘royal’ buried alongside a ‘laughing’ man. A farmer found the haul when digging on his land in the south of Russia near the Caspian Sea.

Stunning gold and silver jewellery, weaponry, valuables and artistic household items were found next to the chieftain’s skeleton in a grave close to the Caspian Sea in southern Russia. Local farmer Rustam Mudayev’s spade made an unusual noise and it emerged he had struck an ancient bronze pot near his village of Nikolskoye in the Astrakhan region.

A chieftain was buried with his head raised as if on a pillow (pictured). It is believed the individual was a high-ranking ‘royal’ of a nomadic society more videos He took it to the Astrakhan History museum for analysis and an experts opinion on the find.

A skeleton uncovered by researchers in Russia.

‘As soon as the snow melted we organised an expedition to the village,’ said museum’s scientific researcher Georgy Stukalov.’After inspecting the burial site we understood that it to be a royal mound, one of the sites where ancient nomads buried their nobility.’

WERE THE SARMARTIANS? 

The Sarmatians were a group of people who lived for almost a millennium from the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. Their range stretched, at its largest in the 1st century AD, from the Caspian Sea across Eurasia and towards modern-day Poland.

The territory was known as Sarmatia and included today’s Central Ukraine, South-Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia, Russian Volga and South-Ural regions, also to a smaller extent north-eastern Balkans and around Moldova. They had conflicts with the Roman Empire as they expanded east at their peak, allying themselves with Germanic tribes.

Towards the end of their reign, they faced competition from Germanic Goths and the Huns. The Sarmatians were eventually decisively assimilated by the burgeoning populations in Eastern Europe.

The burial is believed to belong to a leader of a Sarmatian nomadic tribe that dominated this part of Russia until the 5th century AD, and other VIPs of the ancient world, including a ‘laughing’ young man with an artificially deformed egg-shaped skull and excellent teeth that have survived two millennia.

‘We have been digging now for 12 days,’ said Mr Stukalov.’We have found multiple gold jewellery decorated with turquoise and inserts of lapis lazuli and glass.’The most ‘significant’ find is seen as a male skeleton buried inside a wooden coffin. 

This chieftain’s head was raised as if it rested on a pillow and he wore a cape decorated with gold plaques. Archaeologists found his collection of knives, items of gold, a small mirror and different pots, evidently signalling his elite status. They collected a gold and turquoise belt buckle and the chief’s dagger along with a tiny gold horse’s head which was buried between his legs, and other intricate jewellery.

Treasures uncovered by a farmer in southern Russia

Another grave was of an elderly man – his skeleton broke by an excavator – but buried with him was the head of his horse, its skull still dressed in an intricate harness richly decorated with silver and bronze when a farmer digging a pit on his land unearthed 2,000-year-old treasure inside the ancient burial mound of the tomb of a nomadic ‘royal’, along with a ‘laughing’ man (pictured) with an artificially deformed egg-shaped skull. Shaping and elongating the skull in this way was popular on various continents among ancient groupings like the Sarmatians, Alans, Huns and others.

An artificially deformed skull found by researchers in southern Russia.

The burial is believed to belong to a leader of a Sarmatian nomadic tribe that dominated this part of Russia until the 5th-century pieces of jewellery were found in the burial pit alongside the dead humans and animals and experts believe they were gifts for the dead.

The chief’s dagger was buried with him and places alongside his body, between his hand and leg (pictured)They collected a gold and turquoise belt buckle and the chief’s dagger along with a tiny gold horse’s head which was buried between his legs and other intricate jewellery.

Nearby was a woman with a bronze mirror who had been buried with a sacrificial offering of a whole lamb, along with various stone items, the meaning of which is unclear. Another grave was of an elderly man – his skeleton broke by an excavator – but buried with him was the head of his horse, its skull still dressed in an intricate harness richly decorated with silver and bronze.

Also in the burial mound was the skeleton of a young man with an artificially deformed egg-shaped skull. Local farmer Rustam Mudayev’s spade made an unusual noise and it emerged he had struck an ancient bronze pot near his village of Nikolskoye in the Astrakhan region.

A horse’s head buried on top of the old man’s body still carries an intricate silver and bronze harness which was also uncovered after the farmer took his find to the Astrakhan History museum for analysis and an experts opinion on the find. ‘As soon as the snow melted we organised an expedition to the village,’ said museum’s scientific researcher Georgy Stukalov.

‘After inspecting the burial site we understood that it to be a royal mound, one of the sites where ancient nomads buried their nobility,’ the archaeologist said we have been digging now for 12 days,’ said Mr Stukalov. ‘We have found multiple gold jewellery decorated with turquoise and inserts of lapis lazuli and glass’

A chieftain was buried with his head raised as if on a pillow and wearing a cape adorned with gold plagues the most ‘significant’ finds is seen as a male skeleton buried inside a wooden coffin. This chieftain’s head was raised as if it rested on a pillow and he wore a cape decorated with gold plagues.

The shape is likely to have been ‘moulded’ either by multiple bandaging or ‘ringing’ of the head in infancy. Such bandages and or rings were worn for the first years of a child’s life to contort the skull into the desired shape. Shaping and elongating the skull in this way was popular on various continents among ancient groupings like the Sarmatians, Alans, Huns and others.

Such deformed heads were seen as a sign of a person’s special status and noble roots, and their privileged place in their societies, it is believed. The burials date to around 2,000 years ago, a period when the Sarmatian nomadic tribes held sway in what is now southern Russia.

‘These finds will help us understand what was happening here at the dawn of civilisation,’ said Astrakhan region governor Sergey Morozov. Excavation is continuing at the site. Nearby was a woman with a bronze mirror who had been buried with a sacrificial offering of a whole lamb, along with various stone items, the meaning of which is unclear.

The gold jewellery and the buckle (pictured) are thought to be signs of the person’s nobility and would only have been afforded to the most wealthy people.

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

5,000-Year-old stepwell Discovered

5,000-Year-old stepwell Discovered

A 5,000-year-old stepwell has been found in one of the largest Harappan cities, Dholavira, in Kutch. It is part of a reservoir that is three times bigger than the Great Bath at Mohenjo Daro.

Located in the eastern reservoir of Dholavira by experts from the Archaeological Survey of India working with IIT-Gandhinagar, the site represents the largest, grandest, and the best furnished ancient reservoir discovered so far in the country.

It’s rectangular and approximately 241 ft. long, 96 ft. wide, and 31 ft. deep. Another site, the ornate Rani ki Vav in Patan, called the queen of step-wells, is already on Unesco list.

“We will conduct spot analysis in December as various surveys have indicated other reservoirs and step-wells may be buried in Dholavira,” V.N. Prabhakar told TOI.

“We also suspect a huge lake and an ancient shoreline are buried in the archaeological site that’s one of the five largest Harappan sites and the most prominent archaeological site in India belonging to the Indus Valley civilization,” he added.

Experts will investigate the advanced hydraulic engineering used by Harappans for building the stepwell through a 3D laser scanner, remote sensing technology and ground-penetrating radar system.

ASIA, PAKISTAN, WORLD

Mehrgarh and the dawn of Civilisation (8000 BCE -2500 BCE)

Mehrgarh and the dawn of Civilisation (8000 BCE -2500 BCE)

The excavations carried out at Mehrgarh have proved that the site represents a highly developed civilization that existed there until around 8,000 years ago, according to a French archaeologist.

The renowned archaeology scientist and Director of the Musee Guimet, Paris, Jean Francois Jarrige were delivering a lecture, organized by the French consulate general, on Mehrgarh at the Alliance Francaise.

Mr Jarrige, whose well-researched lecture was punctuated with slides, has carried out extensive archaeological explorations and investigations under the French Archaeological Mission in the Karachi area.

The mission has been doing exploratory work in Balochistan for nearly three-and-a-half decades. He said that Mehrgarh and its associated sites provided irrevocable evidence of considerable cultural development in early antiquity as far back as 8,000 years.

Ruins of houses at Mehrgarh

Most of the ruins at Mehrgarh are buried under alluvium deposits, though some structures could be seen eroding on the surface. Currently, the excavated remains at the site comprise a complex of large compartmental mud-brick structures.

The function of these subdivided units, built of hand-formed plano-convex mud bricks, is still not clear but it is thought that many were used probably for storage, rather than residential, purposes. A couple of mounds also contain formal cemeteries, parts of which have been excavated.

Although Mehrgarh was abandoned by the time of the emergence of the literate urbanized phase of the Indus civilization around Moenjodaro, Harappa, etc., its development illustrates the development of the civilization’s subsistence patterns, as well as its craft and trade.

Mr Jarrige said that many beautiful ceramics had been found at the site in Balochistan and were believed to be of the era as early as the eighth millennium BC. The French archaeologist said that studies suggested that the findings at Mehrgarh linked this area to the Indus civilization.

There are indications that bones were used in making tools for farming, textile, and there is also evidence of the use of cotton even in that period. Mr Jarrige pointed out that the skeletons found at the site indicated that the height of people of that era was larger than that of the later period.

He said that the architecture at that time was well developed. Rice was the staple food for those people and there were also indications of trade activities.

The French expert spoke of the difficulties he and his team faced during the exploration work in the area and regretted that some time back, owing to a feud between the two tribes, the Mehrgarh site had been vandalized and the exploratory work had come to a standstill. The work has not yet been resumed fully.

He also expressed his concern over the situation where a large number of antiquities belonging to Mehrgarh and other archaeological sites in Zhob and Loralai were available in the market. He called for efforts towards curbing such business, arguing that these antiquities belonged to the entire humanity, and not just a few individuals.

He, however, made it clear that the objects discovered by his team had fully been accounted for and handed over to the concerned officials. He said he would soon be publishing a book on the discoveries at this site, and hoped that this site would also come well-known like certain other sites in the country.

Earlier, Consul General of France Jean-Yves Berthault said that numerous French archaeologists had been carrying out exploration activities in different parts of the country, particularly Balochistan, for over three decades now and making significant discoveries viz-a-viz the history and heritage of mankind.

ASIA, SAUDI ARABIA, WORLD

Arabian cult may have built 1000 monuments older than Stonehenge

Arabian cult may have built 1000 monuments older than Stonehenge

The Arabian Peninsula is home to more than 1,000 ancient monuments that are more than 2,500 years older than the U.K.’s Stonehenge. Called “mustatils,” which is the Arabian term for “rectangles,” these rectangular stone structures were likely used by Arabian cattle herders to perform rituals.

Researchers from the University of Western Australia arrived at this conclusion after excavating the site in northwestern Saudi Arabia. They uncovered cattle horns and skulls in one mustatil, suggesting that ancient Arabians might have used cattle fragments as ritual offerings.

Based on the age of the skulls, the researchers posited that mustatils were built between 5300 and 5000 B.C. This would make the monuments the earliest large-scale, ritual site anywhere in the world, predating Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids by more than two millennia.

“This could completely rewrite our understanding of cults in this area at this time,” said team member Melissa Kennedy. She explained that religious groups located further south became focused on homes, with families displaying small shrines. But the opposite was happening in ancient Saudi Arabia with mustatils, she went on.

The researchers detailed their findings in the journal Antiquity.

Ancient Arabians likely used stone monuments to pray to weather gods

Made of blocks of sandstone piled on top of each other, mustatils were originally called “gates” because they resembled traditional European field gates when viewed from above. They were discovered in the 1970s but received little attention from archaeologists until recently.

Lead researcher Hugh Thomas and his team embarked on the largest investigation into mustatils to date to learn more about these structures.

After flying over northwestern Saudi Arabia and surveying the ground, the researchers found more than 1,000 mustatils spread across 20 million hectares, which were twice as many as previously thought to exist in the area.

There are 1000 ancient monuments across one region of Saudi Arabia

The open-air rectangular structures ranged from 65 feet to nearly 2,000 feet in length but their walls stood only around four feet high. According to Thomas, they were not designed to keep anything in but to demarcate an area that needed to be isolated.

In a typical mustatil, long walls surrounded a central courtyard that was bounded at one end by a distinctive rubble platform, or “head,” and an entryway at the opposite end. In some mustatils, the entrance was blocked by stones, suggesting that the mustatil might have been decommissioned after use.

Many structures also featured a chamber in the centre of the rubble platform. In one mustatil, the chamber contained cattle fragments that might have been used as ritual offerings to weather gods.

As the study showed, mustatils were built during the Holocene Humid Phase – a period between 8000 and 4000 B.C. during which Arabia and parts of Africa were wetter and what are now deserts were grasslands. But despite this humid environment, droughts were still common in these areas. As such, ancient Arabians might have herded and offered cattle to the gods to protect the land from changes in the weather, according to Kennedy.

Gary Rollefson, a professor of anthropology at Whitman College who was not part of the study, opined that the rituals in mustatils were also important for bringing communities together. Indeed, mustatils were typically clustered in groups of two to 10, suggesting that ancient Arabians held gatherings that were broken up into small social groups.

“The mustatils themselves are probably associated with an annual or generational coming-together of people who would normally be out with their herds and cattle,” he said. “But there’s no indication that these guys spent a lot of time around the mustatil.”

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Meet Shuvuuia deserti, a nocturnal dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago

Meet Shuvuuia deserti, a nocturnal dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago

Under the cover of darkness in desert habitats about 70 million years ago, in what is today Mongolia and northern China, a gangly looking dinosaur employed excellent night vision and superb hearing to thrive as a menacing pint-sized nocturnal predator.

Scientists said on Thursday an examination of a ring of bones surrounding the pupil and a bony tube inside the skull that houses the hearing organ showed that this dinosaur, called Shuvuuia deserti, boasted visual and auditory capabilities akin to a barn owl, indicating it could it hunt in total darkness.

Their study, published in the journal Science, showed that predatory dinosaurs overall generally possessed better-than-average hearing — helpful for hunters — but had vision optimized for daytime. In contrast, Shuvuuia loved the nightlife.

The fossilized skeleton of the small bird-like dinosaur Shuvuuia deserti is seen in this undated handout image.

Shuvuuia was a pheasant-sized, two-legged Cretaceous Period dinosaur weighing about as much as a small house cat. Lacking the strong jaws and sharp teeth of many carnivorous dinosaurs, it had a remarkably bird-like and lightly built skull and many tiny teeth like grains of rice.

Its mid-length neck and small head, coupled with very long legs, made it resemble an awkward chicken. Unlike birds, it had short but powerful arms ending in a single large claw, good for digging.

“Shuvuuia might have run across the desert floor under cover of night, using its incredible hearing and night vision to track small prey such as nocturnal mammals, lizards and insects.

With its long legs it could have rapidly run down such prey, and used its digging forelimbs to pry prey loose from any cover such as a burrow,” said palaeontologist Jonah Choiniere of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the study’s first author.

“It’s such a strange animal that palaeontologists have long wondered what it was actually doing,” added palaeontologist Roger Benson of the University of Oxford in England, who helped lead the study.

Professor Jonah Choiniere of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, is seen holding a 3D printed model of the lagena, an inner-ear structure, of the small bird-like dinosaur Shuvuuia deserti, in this undated handout photograph.

The researchers looked at a structure called the lagena, a curving and finger-like sac that sits in a cavity in the bones surrounding the brain and is connected to the part of the ear that lets reptiles and birds keep balance and move their heads while walking.

Acute hearing helps nocturnal predators locate prey. The longer the lagena, the better hearing an animal has.

The barn owl, a proficient nocturnal predator even in pitch-black conditions, has the proportionally longest lagena of any living bird. Shuvuuia is unique among predatory dinosaurs with a hyper-elongated lagena, almost identical in relative size to a barn owl’s.

The researchers also looked at a series of tiny bones called the scleral ring that encircles the pupil of the eye. It exists in birds and lizards and was present in the ancestors of today’s mammals. Shuvuuia had a very wide scleral ring, indicating an extra-large pupil size that made its eye a specialized light-capture device.

The study found that nocturnality was uncommon among dinosaurs, aside from a group called alvarezsaurs to which Shuvuuia belonged. Alvarezsaurs had a nocturnal vision very early in their lineage, but super-hearing took more time to evolve.

“Like many palaeontologists, I once considered that nighttime in the age of dinosaurs was when the mammals came out of hiding to avoid predation and competition.

The importance of these findings is that it forces us to imagine dinosaurs like Shuvuuia evolving to take advantage of these nocturnal communities,” Choiniere said.

Benson added, “This really shows that dinosaurs had a wide range of skills and adaptations that are only just coming to light now. We find evidence that there was a thriving ‘nightlife’ during the time of dinosaurs.”

ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

Indonesia’s Early Rock Art Damaged by Climate Change

Indonesia’s Early Rock Art Damaged by Climate Change

Cosmos Magazine reports that climate change is rapidly weathering rock art at the Maros-Pangkep site in Sulawesi, Indonesia, which dates to at least 44,000 years ago.

Local archaeologists and site keepers for the ancient artworks of Maros-Pangkep in Sulawesi, including intergenerational custodians, told the scientists that the rock art “is disappearing now faster than any other time in living memory,” says lead author Jillian Huntley from Griffith University, Australia.

The paintings are dated up to at least 44,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene era. Rivalling European cave art, the illustrations of hunting scenes and mystical beings are thought to be the oldest evidence of figurative art and artistic creativity on the planet.

Advanced decay of recently discovered rock art at Leang Tedongnge. This Warty Pig is part of a panel dated to more than 45,500 years in age. Credit: Basran Burhan.
Staff from the BPCB conservation agency undertaking rock art monitoring in Maros-Pangkep.

Upon investigating the chemistry of the limestone rock face, Huntley and colleagues were surprised to find pervasive evidence of salt crystallisation (haloclasty). “When I saw how high some of the chemical indicators for salts like gypsum were, I was astonished,” she says.

The salts chemically weaken the rock and mechanically separate the surface of the panels from the limestone wall and ceiling, causing the rock art to flake off the walls.

The team conducted further analysis of the types of salts to understand what was causing them to form and reviewed paleoclimate records. Results suggest natural geological weathering processes in the tropical region are being exacerbated.

“These processes are accelerated by increasing temperatures, more extreme weather,” Huntley explains: “more consecutive dry days, prolonged droughts, water from storms and flood and increasing humidity from standing water in floods and food production such as rice field and aquaculture ponds.”

Next to extensive quarry mining of limestone, the weathering poses the greatest threat to the preservation of the irreplaceable cave art, the authors say.

“The amount we have learned from studying this rock art just in the last few years is staggering,” says Huntley. It “houses the earliest yet known animal depiction and the first complex narrative scene yet found. These are important markers of people’s cognitive and social capacities.”

Another example of the wide-ranging impacts of climate change, the discovery underscores the importance of research and conservation efforts in Maros-Pangkep and across Australasia, where more sites are being discovered every year, she adds.

“We are in a race against time to document and learn from this rock art before it is irrevocably damaged.”