Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

300 Million Year Old Machinery Found in Russia

300 Million-Year-Old Machinery Found In Russia, Experts Say Aluminum Gear Not The Result Of Natural Forces, May Be Extraterrestrial

The Voice of Russia and other Russian sources are reporting that a 300 million-year-old piece of aluminum machinery has been found in Vladivostok. Experts say a gear rail appears to be manufactured and not the result of natural forces. 

According to Yulia Zamanskaya, when a resident of Vladivostok was lighting the fire during a cold winter evening, he found a rail-shaped metal detail which was pressed in one of the pieces of coal that the man used to heat his home. Mesmerized by his discovery, the responsible citizen decided to seek help from the scientists of the Primorye region. After the metal object was studied by the leading experts the man was shocked to learn about the assumed age of his discovery.

The metal detail was supposedly 300 million years old and yet the scientists suggest that it was not created by nature but was rather manufactured by someone. The question of who might have made an aluminum gear in the dawn of time remains unanswered.

The find was very much like a toothed metal rail, created artificially. It was like parts are often used in microscopes, various technical and electronic devices say writer Natalia Ostrowski at KP UA Daily. 

Nowadays, finding a strange artifact in coal is a relatively frequent occurrence. The first discovery of this sort was made in 1851 when the workers in one of the Massachusetts mines extracted a zinc silver-incrusted vase from a block of unmined coal which dated all the way back to the Cambrian era which was approximately 500 million years ago.

Sixty one years later, American scientists from Oklahoma discovered an iron pot which was pressed into a piece of coal aged 312 million years old. Then, in 1974, an aluminum assembly part of unknown origin was found in a sandstone quarry in Romania.

Reminiscent of a hammer or a support leg of a spacecraft “Apollo”, the piece dated back to the Jurassic era and could not have been manufactured by a human. All of these discoveries not only puzzled the experts but also undermined the most fundamental doctrines of modern science.

The metal detail which was recently found by Vladivostok resident is yet another discovery which perplexed the scientists. The coal in which the metal object was pressed was delivered to Primorye from Chernogorodskiy mines of Khakasia region. Knowing that the coal deposits of this region date 300 million years back, Russian experts inferred that the metal detail found in these deposits must be an age-mate of the coal.

Another question that interests Russian scientists is whether the aluminum alloy is of Earthly origin. It is known from the study of meteorites that there exists extra-terrestrial aluminum-26 which subsequently breaks down to magnesium-26. The presence of 2 percent of magnesium in the alloy might well point to the alien origin of the aluminum detail. It could also be evidence of some past, unknown civilization on Earth. Nonetheless, further testing is needed to confirm this hypothesis.

It is the first such finding in coal made in Russia, according to anomaly researcher and biologist Valery Brier, who took microscopic samples of the aluminum for testing.  Valery Brier performed X-ray diffraction analysis of the metal. It showed very pure aluminum with microimpurities of magnesium of only 2 – 4 percent.

The find is very much like a toothed metal rail, created artificially. It was like parts that are often used in microscopes, as well as various technical and electronic devices.

While exploring core samples (rock samples) that were raised from a 9-meter depth during the drilling of the seabed to support the bridge on a Russian island near Cape Nazimova,  strange metal alloys were discovered that were “preserved” in the prehistoric sandstone (age – 240 million years old).  

The  pieces of special alloys had an unusual composition and were clearly not used in the drilling machinery. The alloys, said Brier, were artificial and constructed by intelligent beings.  

Reconstruction of the item found near Cape Nazimova

Not so long ago in Russia a mechanical device was found in volcanic rock which was dated 400 million years before the current era (B.C.E)

It was found on the remote Kamchatka Peninsula, 150 miles from the village of Tigil, by archaeologists at the University of St. Petersburg among found strange fossils. The reliability of the finds has been certified. According to archaeologist Yuri Golubev the find amazed experts as it was some sort of a machine.

The most ancient vase on Earth was discovered in 1851 in Massachusetts when blasting in the quarry. It is a silver-zinc vase inlaid with fine silver in the form of the vine. The age of this vase, according to the rock in which it was found, is 534 million years old

Another strange artefact that was found in coal is the iron pot shown below. It was found in 1912 in Oklahoma in a piece of coal with an estimated age of 312 million years. 

In Romania in 1974, in a sandstone quarry of not less than 1 million years old was found aluminum parts, reminiscent of a hammer or a support leg landing spacecraft “Viking” and “Apollo”.

ASIA, MYANMAR, WORLD

Smallest Dinosaur ever Found Preserved in 99- million-year-old Piece of Amber

Smallest Dinosaur ever Found Preserved in 99- million-year-old Piece of Amber

The head of a flying dinosaur that is hardly bigger than a bee hummingbird has been discovered in 99-million-year-old amber. The piece of polished amber, just 31mm by 20mm by 8.5mm, was found in Kachin Province of northern Myanmar, an area becoming increasingly well-known for its remarkable amber-encased fossils.

The piece of amber measures only 1.25 inches (31.5 millimeters) in length. The skull is a mere 0.6 inches (11 millimeters).

The amber contains the skull of Oculudentavis khaungraae, a newly described dinosaur and one of the smallest ever discovered. Its tiny stature is forcing paleontologists to rethink the lower limits of body size in birds, and the nearly 100-million-year-old fossil is challenging the current understanding of when and how dinosaur giants shrank into the birds of today.

A Mysterious Transformation

Tiny Oculudentavis may have occupied a unique ecological niche in the ancient world.

The evolutionary transition of dinosaurs to modern birds is one of the most astounding transformations in the history of life: large, bipedal and mostly carnivorous dinosaurs morphed into small, flying birds. Famous discoveries like Archaeopteryx and more recently the fossils from the Jehol Biota in China have given researchers some hints about the process. But finds from this evolutionary phase — which researchers think began about 200 million years ago — are rare.

Paleontologists are far from having a complete picture of the evolution of birds, and even farther from a full inventory of Earth’s ecosystems in the age of dinosaurs. Our research on the tiny Oculudentavis, published in the journal Nature, adds valuable information to the puzzle of when, how, and to what extent dinosaurs shrank.

Clues in Bone

Smallest Dinosaur ever Found Preserved in 99- million-year-old Piece of Amber
This high-resolution scan allowed us to see the intricacies of a bone structure unlike any before seen in birds or dinosaurs.

This high-resolution scan allowed us to see the intricacies of a bone structure unlike any before seen in birds or dinosaurs.

Our team needed to see the minute details of the skull, and we needed to do it without cracking or ruining the specimen – a difficult task with a skull encased in 99-million-year old amber from Myanmar. To do that, we scanned the skull with high-resolution X-rays and created a digital model with very fine anatomical detail. What emerged was a picture of overall bird-like anatomy. But in some interesting ways, Oculudentavis is unlike any bird or dinosaur that has ever been found.

The obvious curiosity of the fossil is its size: Oculudentavis rivaled the smallest bird living today, the bee hummingbird, and likely was no more than 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) from beak to tail. We considered whether the skull possibly belonged to a very young animal, but the extent and pattern of bone growth and the proportional size of the eye pointed to a mature bird.

With a total skull length of just about 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters), Oculudentavis pushes against what is considered the lower limit of size in birds: the head still had to hold functional eyes, a brain, and jaws. The small size is especially surprising if one considers that Oculudentavis lived during the same time as giant plant-eating dinosaurs like Argentinosaurus.

Small and Specialized

The small size of Oculudentavis is striking, but to a trained eye, there are other extremely unusual features, too.

First of all, the skull seems to be built for strength. The bones show an unusual pattern of fusion and the skull lacks an antorbital fenestra, a small hole often found in front of the eye.

The eyes of Oculudentavis also surprised us. The shape of the bones found within the eye, the scleral ossicles, suggests that it probably had conical eyes with small pupils. This type of eye structure is especially well adapted for moving around in bright light. While daytime activity might be expected for an ancient bird from the age of dinosaurs, the shape of the ossicles is entirely distinct from any other dinosaur and resembles those of modern-day lizards.

Adding to the list of unexpected features, the upper jaw carries at least 23 small teeth. These teeth extend all the way back beneath the eye and are not set in deep pockets, an unusual arrangement for most ancient birds. The large number of teeth and their sharp cutting edges suggest that Oculudentavis was a predator that may have fed on small bugs.

The sum of these traits — a strong skull, good eyesight, and a hunter’s set of teeth — suggests to us that Oculudentavis led a life previously unknown among ancient birds: it was a hummingbird-sized daytime predator.

One of the Earliest and Tiniest Birds?

Placing Oculudentavis in the tree of life is, given its strange anatomy, challenging. Our phylogenetic analysis — the investigation of its relationships to other dinosaurs — identifies Oculudentavis as one of the most ancient birds. Only Archaeopteryx branched off earlier.

Scientists consider the nectar-feeding hummingbirds — which appeared 30 million years ago — the smallest dinosaurs on record. But if our placement of Oculudentavis holds true, the miniaturization of dinosaurs may have peaked far earlier than paleontologists previously thought. In fact, the largest and the smallest dinosaurs may have walked and flown the same earth nearly 100 million years ago.

Our work demonstrates how little scientists know about the little things in the history of life. Scientists’ snapshot of fossil ecosystems in the dinosaur age is incomplete and leaves so many questions unanswered. But paleontologists are eager to take on these questions.

What other tiny species were out there? What was their ecological function? Was Oculudentavis the only visually guided bug hunter? To better understand the evolution of the diversity of life we need more emphasis and recognition of the small.

Amber holds strong potential to fill that gap. Maybe one day a scientist will hold up another piece, and let sunshine reveal a complete Oculudentavis, or even a previously unknown species. More finds in amber will help illuminate the world of the tiny vertebrates in the age of dinosaurs.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

The 6,000-year-old Crown found in Dead Sea Cave

The 6,000-year-old Crown found in Dead Sea Cave

The oldest crown in the world, which is considered to be more than 6000 years old, has been shown for the first time in America. The ancient relic, which dates back to the Copper Age between 4000–3300 B.C., is shaped like a thick ring and features vultures and doors protruding from the top.

It is assumed that the crown engaged in funeral ceremonies of important people at the time. The crown was found in a remote cave in the Judaean Desert near the Dead Sea in 1961 among hundreds of other objects from the period.

Known as the ‘Nahal Mishar Hoard’, more than 400 objects were discovered by Pessah Bar-Adon and his fellow Israeli archaeologists in the cave which became known as the ‘Cave of the Treasure’. 

The 6,000-year-old Crown found in Dead Sea Cave
The world’s oldest crown: This headpiece dating back to the Copper Age between 4000-3300 B.C. was found in a remote cave in the Judaean Desert in Israel in 1961.

The pieces included two clay statues of Gods – The Lady and Ram of Gilat – and a full array of Copper Age figurines made from copper, stone, elephant ivory and clay.

There was also a scepter decorated with horned animals, clay goblets and bowls. It has been suggested that the hoard was the sacred treasure belonging to a shrine at Ein Gedi, some twelve kilometers away.

The purpose of the hoard remains a mystery, it may have been to keep them protected in an emergency, although it is believed the objects may have been used in public ceremonies.

Around 150 artefacts from the collection can be seen at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World as part of the ‘Masters of Fire:

Huge hoard: Archaeologists discovered more than 400 items hidden within the cave
Other discoveries: Among the other items discovered in the cave was a libation vessel in the shape of a woman carrying a churn, pictured left, and a fenestrated stand with three bowls and sculpted motifs, pictured right

Daniel M. Master, Professor of Archaeology at Wheaton College and a member of the curatorial team, said: ‘The fascinating thing about this period is that a burst of innovation defined the technologies of the ancient world for thousands of years.

‘People experimented with new ways to use not just copper, but also leather, ceramics, and textiles – sometimes successfully, sometimes not.’

Jennifer Y. Chi, ISAW Exhibitions Director and Chief Curator, added: ‘To the modern eye, it’s stunning to see how these groups of people, already mastering so many new social systems and technologies, still had the ability to create objects of enduring artistic interest.’

The exhibit also features objects from the Peqi’in Cave, another important discovery site.

The most significant finds included are eight ossuaries, or burial containers, for human skeletal remains. Some were designed to look like human faces or figures and all are decorated with red stripes or zigzag patterns.

These ossuaries held the bones of more than one person – the vast majority were men. Those who had their bones stored would have held positions of importance within society.

For use in funerals: An ossuary with painted and sculpted facial features, pictured left, and a painted anthropomorphic ossuary with sculpted nose, stamped eyes, and gaping mouth, pictured right
Unusual: A libation vessel in the shape of a Ram carrying cornets
ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Never before seen strange 5,000-year-old clay figurine with a tattooed face and bone mask

Never before seen strange 5,000-year-old clay figurine with a tattooed face and bone mask

In Russia, a macabre was found it is a 5000-year-old mass grave containing the bodies of five decapitated individuals.  Archaeologists suspect the ancient Odinov culture in Siberia were head cultists.

Professor Vyacheslav Molodin said that the graveyard of Ust-Tartas 2 in the city of Novosibirsk comprises three decapitated adults and two teenagers. It is assumed that their heads were cut after death – and then kept for worship.

‘Odinov people definitely had a head or skull cult,’ said the archaeologist.

‘It is a characteristic feature of this culture that they had graves with cut off heads. They were perhaps put into a sanctuary, or buried separately in a different way.’

In another grave on the same site, an astonishing figurine has been found on the shoulder of an ancient woman who was laid to rest with her head on a man’s abdomen.

The skeletons of the ancient presumed lovers were cocooned together under a birch bark blanket for five millennia, but in this case, their heads were not severed.

The man lay on his back, she on her front, facing him in a timeless embrace. Perched on the female’s shoulder was a palm-sized clay figurine with a tattooed face.

Bronze Age statuette with a tattooed face was found on the shoulder of the buried ancient woman. It features a deep recess down its centre
Dr Molodin called the Bronze Age figurine discovery the ‘most astonishing find’ of the summer archaeological season this year
‘Interestingly, our anthropologists and genetics found that the Odino people were Mongoloids, yet the face of the figurine had clear Caucasian features. We don’t see the gender of the figurine, which is unusual, and we can’t say if it was dressed’, said Vyacheslav Molodin. Pictures: Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography

It has a mask made of bone – horse vertebrae – decorated with what appears to be an image of a bear’s muzzle, say scientists. Inside the grave, it had been placed on its front and had its head broken off.

It was then turned upside down so that it ‘looked up’ towards its owner in a bizarre ritual – something ‘yet unseen’ by Novosibirsk archaeologists. 

One side of the middle of the statuette also has a long narrow hole, which had a bronze plate and also some organic substance inside it.  Chemical tests are needed to establish more about what was placed inside that opening. 

Dr Molodin said the discovery was unique.

‘We’ve never come across anything like this, despite our extensive knowledge of the Odinov culture’s burial rites,’ he said to the Siberian Times. 

‘The woman must have been an unusual person to have such a figurine “escorting” her to the afterlife.’

Dr Molodin, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), called the Bronze Age figurine discovery the ‘most astonishing find’ of the summer archaeological season.

While the Odinov cattle-breeding people were Mongoloids, the face of the figurine ‘has obviously Caucasian features’ with ‘big eyes and a snub nose’, he said.

This was a tiered grave that had two more people buried beneath the loving couple that were facing each other.

It’s possible the palm-sized figurine was hoped to escort the ‘unusual’ woman to the afterlife. It had its head broken off so it ‘looked up’ at its owner in a bizarre ritual
ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

In a Desert in China, a Trove of 4,000-Year-Old Mummies

In a Desert in China, a Trove of 4,000-Year-Old Mummies

Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary graveyard in the midst of the terrifying desert north of Tibet. Its people died almost 4,000 years ago, and their remains were well preserved by dry air.

The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead of a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

The long-vanished people have no name because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life, and even the language they spoke.

Their graveyard, known as Small River Cemetery No. 5, lies near a dried-up riverbed in the Tarim Basin, a region encircled by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklimakan Desert, a wilderness so inhospitable that later travelers along the Silk Road would edge along its northern or southern borders.

The mummy of an infant was one of about 200 corpses with European features that were excavated from the cemetery.

In modern times the region has been occupied by Turkish-speaking Uighurs, joined in the last 50 years by Han settlers from China. Ethnic tensions have recently arisen between the two groups, with riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. A large number of ancient mummies, really desiccated corpses, have emerged from the sands, only to become pawns between the Uighurs and the Han.

The 200 or so mummies have a distinctively Western appearance, and the Uighurs, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, have cited them to claim that the autonomous region was always theirs. Some of the mummies, including a well-preserved woman known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by Li Jin, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University, who said in 2007 that their DNA contained markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.

The mummies in the Small River Cemetery are, so far, the oldest discovered in the Tarim Basin. Carbon tests done at Beijing University show that the oldest part dates to 3,980 years ago. A team of Chinese geneticists has analyzed the mummies’ DNA.

Despite the political tensions over the mummies’ origin, the Chinese said in a report published last month in the journal BMC Biology that the people were of mixed ancestry, having both European and some Siberian genetic markers, and probably came from outside China. The team was led by Hui Zhou of Jilin University in Changchun, with Dr. Jin as a co-author.

All the men who were analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe. Since both the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr. Zhou and his team conclude the European and Siberian populations probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.

A 3,800-year-old mummy, the Beauty of Xiaohe, found at the Small River Cemetery.

The Small River Cemetery was rediscovered in 1934 by the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman and then forgotten for 66 years until relocated through GPS navigation by a Chinese expedition. Archaeologists began excavating it from 2003 to 2005. Their reports have been translated and summarized by Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in the prehistory of the Tarim Basin.

As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials, Dr. Mair recounted, they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.

At the foot of each pole, there were indeed boats, laid upside down and covered with cowhide. The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes they had been buried in. They had felt caps with feathers tucked in the brim, uncannily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen capes with tassels and leather boots. A Bronze Age salesclerk from Victoria’s Secret seems to have supplied the clothes beneath – barely adequate woolen loin cloths for the men, and skirts made of string strands for the women.

Within each boat, coffin were grave goods, including beautifully woven grass baskets, skillfully carved masks, and bundles of ephedra, an herb that may have been used in rituals or as a medicine.

In the women’s coffins, the Chinese archaeologists encountered one or more life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. Looking again at the shaping of the 13-foot poles that rise from the prow of each woman’s boat, the archaeologists concluded that the poles were in fact gigantic phallic symbols.

Many of the women buried there wore string undergarments like the one in this drawing.

The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with bladelike tops. These were not the oars they had seemed, at first sight, the Chinese archaeologists concluded, but rather symbolic vulvas that matched the opposite sex symbols above the women’s boats. “The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with blatant sexual symbolism,” Dr. Mair wrote. In his view, the “obsession with procreation” reflected the importance of the community attached to fertility. Nowadays those who suffer from infertility can have access to the right medications to help them with their issues, as well as medications like for erectile dysfunction, whereas back then there were more natural ways to help procreation happen.

Arthur Wolf, an anthropologist at Stanford University and an expert on fertility in East Asia, said that the poles perhaps mark social status, a common theme of tombs and grave goods. “It seems that what most people want to take with them is their status if it is anything to brag about,” he said.

Dr. Mair said the Chinese archaeologists’ interpretation of the poles as phallic symbols were “a believable analysis.” The buried people’s evident veneration of procreation could mean they were interested in both the pleasure of sex and its utility, given that it is difficult to separate the two. But they seem to have had a particular respect for fertility, Dr. Mair said, because several women were buried in double-layered coffins with special grave goods.

Living in harsh surroundings, “infant mortality must have been high, so the need for procreation, particularly in light of their isolated situation, would have been great,” Dr. Mair said. Another possible risk to fertility could have arisen if the population had become in-bred. “Those women who were able to produce and rear children to adulthood would have been particularly revered,” Dr. Mair said.

Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe, Dr. Mair noted. Boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and phallic symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe. There are no known settlements near the cemetery, so the people probably lived elsewhere and reached the cemetery by boat. No woodworking tools have been found at the site, supporting the idea that the poles were carved off-site.

Wang Da-Gang

The Tarim Basin was already quite dry when the Small River people entered it 4,000 years ago. They probably lived at the edge of survival until the lakes and rivers on which they depended finally dried up around A.D. 400. Burials with felt hats and woven baskets were common in the region until some 2,000 years ago.

The language spoken by the people of the Small River Cemetery is unknown, but Dr. Mair believes it could have been Tokharian, an ancient member of the Indo-European family of languages. Manuscripts written in Tokharian have been discovered in the Tarim Basin, where the language was spoken from about A.D. 500 to 900. Despite its presence in the east, Tokharian seems more closely related to the “centum” languages of Europe than to the “satem” languages of India and Iran. The division is based on the words for a hundred in Latin (centum) and in Sanskrit (satam).

The Small River Cemetery people lived more than 2,000 years before the earliest evidence for Tokharian, but there is “a clear continuity of culture,” Dr. Mair said, in the form of people being buried with felt hats, a tradition that continued until the first few centuries A.D.

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Scythian Grave Unearthed in Southern Siberia

Scythian Grave Unearthed in Southern Siberia

A 2,500-year-old grave has been discovered in Siberia by archaeologists, with the remains of four people of ancient Tagar culture — two guerrillas including two warriors, a male and female  — and a stash of their metal weaponry.

Scythian Grave Unearthed in Southern Siberia
A man, two women and an infant were buried in this grave about 2,500 years ago in what is now Siberia.

The early Iron Age burial contained the skeletal remains of a Tagarian man, woman, infant, and older woman, as well as a slew of weapons and artifacts, including bronze daggers, knives, axes, bronze mirrors, and a miniature comb made from an animal horn, according to the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

The Tagar culture, a part of the Scythian civilization (nomadic warriors who lived in what is now southern Siberia), often buried its dead with miniature versions of real-life objects, likely to symbolize possessions they thought were needed in the afterlife. In this case, however, the deceased was laid to rest with full-size objects, the archaeologists said. 

It’s not yet clear how these individuals died, but perhaps an illness caused their deaths, the archaeologists said.

A team from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography found the burial in the southern part of Khakassia, a region in Siberia, ahead of construction work on a railroad.

The finding is remarkable, given that grave robbers have looted most known Tagarian graves, Yuri Vitalievich Teterin, head of the excavation, said in a statement. (Of note, this culture is different than the fictional “Targaryen” dynasty from the TV drama “Game of Thrones.”)

The remains of the man and woman, who likely died in their 30s or 40s, were laid down on their backs, with large ceramic vessels next to each of them. The man also had two sets of weapons (two bronze daggers and two axes), and the woman had one set, according to the statement.

The woman’s weapons, including a long-handled instrument, perhaps a hatchet or battle ax, were an unusual find; the Tagarians often buried their women with weapons, but those were usually long-range weapons, such as arrowheads, noted Oleg Andreevich Mitko, a leader of the excavation and head of archaeology at Novosibirsk State University in Russia. 

Some of metal grave goods found in the group burial.

The infant’s remains were in bad shape, the archaeologists found.

An aerial view of the burial mount at the foot of Mount Aar-tag.

“The remains of a newborn baby, no more than a month old, were also found in the burial, but fragments of its skeleton were scattered throughout the grave, possibly as a result of the activity of rodents,” Olga Batanina, an anthropologist at the Paleodata laboratory of natural scientific methods in archeology, said in the statement. 

At the man and woman’s feet, lay the remains of an older woman of about 60 years of age; her body was positioned on her right side, with her knees bent. Next to her, archaeologists found a small ceramic vessel and a comb with broken teeth. 

It’s unclear how these people were related to one another, but a forthcoming DNA analysis may reveal whether they had family ties. 

The Tagar culture lasted for about 500 years, from about the eighth to the third centuries B.C.; its people were spread across the Minusinsk Basin, a landscape that is a mix of the steppe, forest-steppe, and foothills, according to the statement. 

The archaeologists have a busy schedule ahead of them. Survey work in 2019 revealed more than 10 archaeological sites, nine of which were directly in the railroad’s development zone. This excavation is just one of those sites. 

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

3,200-year-old Egyptian built fortress found in Israel

3,200-year-old Egyptian built fortress found in Israel

A HUGE fortress dating back to the 12th-century BC has been unearthed in Israel and experts are linking it to a structure described in the Bible.

The Canaanite citadel is said to be similar to a building in the Book of Judges, a section of the Bible that describes intense warfare between groups of Canaanites, Israelites, and Philistines.

The design of the fortress and pottery found there indicate that it belonged to Canaanites who would have lived under Egyptian rule at the time.

The fortress was uncovered in Israel

Canaanites are often referred to as the ‘lost people’ of the Bible because a lot of what we know about them just comes from ancient texts describing interactions with civilization.

The 3,200-year-old fortress was found in southern Israel. It measures 60 feet by 60 feet and would have been two stories high. There is evidence to suggest it had watchtowers on each corner and a courtyard featuring stone slabs and columns.

About 3,200 years ago, the fortress was erected to defend against the Philistines.

The Israeli archaeologists working on the dig think the Canaanites built the structure with help from their Egyptian overlords.

Fortresses like this would have been necessary to try and stay protected from the invading Philistines.

The site contained hundreds of pottery vessels inside the rooms of the courtyard. This included one piece of pottery suspected to be used for religious reasons.

Earthenware discovered in a 3,200-year-old citadel unearthed near Guvrin Stream and Kibbutz Gal-On

IAA archaeologists Saar Ganor and Itamar Weissbein said: “The fortress we found provides a glimpse into the geopolitical reality described in the Book of Judges, in which the Canaanites, Israelites, and Philistines are fighting each other.

“In this period, the land of Canaan was ruled by the Egyptians and its inhabitants were under their custody.”

Pottery found at the site was similar to the Egyptian style at the time and even the fortress was similar to an Egyptian ‘governor’s houses’. The Egyptians are thought to have left the Canaan area in the middle of the 12th-century BC.

This means the fortress inhabitants would have been left to defend themselves as the area descended into territorial battles. The archaeological site will soon be opened to the public for free tours.

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Archaeologists Find 13,000-Year-Old Engraved Mammoth Tusk in Siberia

Archaeologists Find 13,000-Year-Old Engraved Mammoth Tusk in Siberia

The oldest known depictions of the animal ever identified in Asia are Etchings of fighting camels discovered on 13,000-year-old mammoth tusks in Siberia.

The tusk found in lower Tom in western Siberia was analyzed by a team from the Khakassian Research Unit for Language, Literature, and History in Russia. The 5ft long tusk also included an etching of an anthropomorphic image that could show a human wearing a camel disguise, according to study author Yury Esin.

This may have been a way to show how hunters dressed as a camel in order to get closer to the beasts and kill or capture them, the team explained.  Among the etchings were depictions of camels locked in a fight that may represent the start of a mating season and a vital stage in the cycle of the human community. 

Etchings of fighting camels found on 13,000-year-old mammoth tusks in Siberia are the earliest known drawings of the animal ever found in Asia, researchers claim

The camels shown on the tusk are consistent with images of camels painted in caves from around the same time – the oldest known painting was from the Kapova cave in the Ural mountains dating to about 19,000 years. The difference to those is that this shows camels ‘fighting’ neck to neck and one pair have arrows and wounds suggesting they were hunted by humans.

‘The comparative analysis of the stylistic features of the camel figures shows that they correspond to the age of the tusk itself, making them, at present, the oldest camel images in Asia,’ the authors wrote.

‘The discovery of the engravings in this region is consistent with the theory of mobile population groups moving to western Siberia in the Late Upper Paleolithic.’

Etchings could be designed to show just how important camel fights and hunting were to the culture of the community that created the artworks. This hunting may have been seasonal and the fights likely happened at the start of the mating season, according to Esin.

Among the etchings were depictions of camels locked in fights that may represent the start of a mating season and a vital stage in the cycle of the human community

He speculated that the fights may have marked a vital point in the annual cycle for the human community living around the camels. Not many camel bones have been found in the Tom river – the ones that have been uncovered date to between 30,000 and 55,000 years ago, Esin said.

There are some that date to the time of the tusk, about 13,000 years ago, but they were found much further down – hundreds of miles away from the river. According to Esin, this means the community was likely nomadic. The ‘human disguised as a camel’ was likely an example of a way for hunters to ‘sneak up’ on the beasts and make it easier to kill them.

This tusk was first discovered in 1988 during a construction project but had remained unstudied until Esin and colleagues started their investigation. He said very little is known about the ancient humans living in this area of Siberia but there is evidence they hunted mammoths – and now that they hunted camels.  

It wasn’t an easy task for Esin and colleagues as by the time they started studying the tusk it had already started to break and crack due to ‘inappropriate storage’.

The actual engravings themselves are also different from others discovered. The engravings on the tusk from the Tom River have special features, which make them difficult to document,’ said Esin.

‘They have very thin and shallow lines, making them barely visible and tedious to trace and the engravings are on the surface of a round, long, curved and heavy object,’ he explained.

Engravings on the 13,000-year-old mammoth tusk from the Tom River, western Siberia; numbers from (1) to (5) and letters from (a) to (i) mark main images and their details.

This means that the tusk has to be rotated to recognize what has been drawn – but its poor condition made this difficult as it was already crumbling in parts. 

They took a series of images, including close-up macro photographs of the engravings to identify ways they may have been created. The engravings were created with a very sharp cutting tool, which, depending on the amount of pressure applied, could produce a line about 0.1–0.15 mm thin, or even less,’ said Esin.

On the surface of the tusk, they found four images of two-humped camels depicted in the same style and using similar techniques and tools. All camels are depicted with only two legs. The lower ends of the foot contours, in most cases, are not connected,’ they said.

‘The engravings were created with a very sharp cutting tool, which, depending on the amount of pressure applied, could produce a line about 0.1–0.15 mm thin, or even less,’ said Esin

‘The camels have patches of thick fur sticking out from the upper parts of their forelegs, bellies, under their necks, at the base of the humps (between the front hump and the neck, the back hump and the croup) and on their foreheads.’

‘All in all, the figures of the animals are quite realistic and demonstrate a good knowledge of the subject. They said they could also detect signs of arrows and wounds on the camel bodies including parallel lines close to the front of each other that could show bleeding. 

‘Similar images of camels facing each other are quite common in the art of different cultures of the Bronze Age, Early Iron Age and Medieval period in southern Siberia and Central Asia,’ said Esin.

‘The camels have patches of thick fur sticking out from the upper parts of their forelegs, bellies, under their necks, at the base of the humps (between the front hump and the neck, the back hump, and the croup) and on their foreheads’

This suggests that this composition conveys a memorable and important natural characteristic of camel behaviour – including two male rivers fighting. The resemblance of some stylistic features and content seen in the images on the Tom River tusk and in Upper Paleolithic European art is highly significant,’ he said.

‘This suggests that the reason for the similarities is not only epochal features of human culture but also that some traditions were inherited through space and time.’

He said the Tom River tusk itself demonstrates that engraving different materials was an important part of cultural tradition in the Upper Paleolithic.  In this case, stylistic techniques could be consolidated and passed down through generations, as a particular part of labour skills,’ Esin explained.