Miniature Bible the Size of a Coin Found in UK Library Storage

A tiny Bible that can only be read with a magnifying glass is among thousands of mysterious treasures rediscovered at a Leeds library during the lockdown. The 1911 miniature replica of the 16th century ‘chained Bible’ is about the size of a £2 coin but contains both the Old and New testaments printed on 876 gossamer-thin India paper pages. 

Librarians said the origins of the bible, which measures 1.9in (50mm) by 1.3in (35mm), are a mystery. 

Rhian Isaac, special collections senior librarian at Leeds City Library, said the book was billed as the smallest Bible in the world when it was printed, although this was almost certainly not true.

Asked where it came from, she said: ‘We don’t know. It’s a bit of a mystery, really. A lot of items in our collection were either bought over time or might have been donated.

‘We’ve done quite a lot of work during the lockdown on cataloguing our rare books and special collections.

‘Before that, hardly any of these books had ever been seen by anyone or ever been found, really.’

Ms Isaac said the Bible’s origins were a mystery because it only resurfaced when library staff decided to do a comprehensive survey during the Covid lockdowns.

More than 3,000 new items have been catalogued, including some dating back to the 15th century.

Among them was a copy of Nouveau Cours de Mathematique, by Bernard Forest de Bélidor (1725) and Oliver Twiss — a rip-off version of Oliver Twist which was printed by the creators of the Penny Dreadfuls. 

The great Victorian novelist was so angered by the plagiarised works that he went to court to have them banned. But the judge in the case ruled that ‘no person who had ever seen the original could imagine the other to be anything else than a counterfeit’. 

Also among the discoveries was a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, dating to 1497. Oddly, however, the Leeds City Library copy has the outline of a key pressed into it, suggesting one was hidden inside the book.

Librarians are now hoping the tiny Bible and other items found will be cherished by all visitors and not just academics and researchers. 

‘It’s a massive thing for us,’ Ms Isaac said. ‘Now people can come in and find them and look at them.’

She said anyone can come in and ask to see the tiny Bible.  

‘We ask people to get in touch and we can bring them out for people to see. You don’t have to be an academic or a researcher. 

‘If you’re just interested, we can get them out for you and you can come and read them in our beautiful Grade II-listed building, which is a wonderful place to come and do some studying,’ Ms Isaac added.

‘We would rather these books were used and read. That’s what they were made for and that’s what we encourage people to come in and do, instead of locking them away.

‘They belong to everyone in Leeds. We’re just the guardians of them, really.’

Ms Isaac said a visitor may even come in with a clue to where the Bible came from.

A new study tells Stonehenge was ‘built on land inhabited by deer, elk and wild boar’

Red deer, elk and wild boar would have roamed opened woodland and meadow-like clearings in the area of Stonehenge 4,000 years before the iconic standing stones were constructed, according to new research.

Scientists from the University of Southampton have examined Blick Mead, a Mesolithic archaeological site about a mile away, and found that the area had not been covered in dense, closed-canopy forests as previously thought.

Instead, they believe that it would have been populated by grazing animals and hunter-gatherers.

Lead researcher, Samuel Hudson, of Geography and Environmental Science at Southampton, explained: “There has been the intensive study of the Bronze Age and Neolithic history of the Stonehenge landscape, but less is known about earlier periods.

“The integration of evidence recovered from previous excavations at Blick Mead, coupled with our own fieldwork, allowed us to understand more about the flora and fauna of the landscape prior to construction of the later world-famous monument complex.

“Past theories suggest the area was thickly wooded and cleared in later periods for farming and monument building.

“However, our research points to pre-Neolithic, hunting-gatherer inhabitants, living in open woodland which supported aurochs and other grazing herbivores.”

The research team analysed pollen, fungal spores and traces of DNA preserved in ancient sediment (sedaDNA), combined with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating to produce an environmental history of the Wiltshire site.

Using this evidence, they built a picture of the habitat in the area from the later Mesolithic (5500 BC) to the Neolithic period (from 4,000 BC).

A university spokesman said: “The study indicates that later Mesolithic populations at Blick Mead took advantage of more open conditions to repeatedly exploit groups of large ungulates (hoofed mammals) until a transition to farmers and monument-builders took place.

“In a sense, the land was pre-adapted for the later large-scale monument building, as it did not require clearance of woodland, due to the presence of these pre-existing open habitats.

“The researchers suggest there was continuity between the inhabitants of the two eras, who utilised the land in different ways but understood it to be a favourable location.”

The findings of the team from Southampton, working with colleagues at the universities of Buckingham, Tromso and Salzburg, are published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Ancient skeletons reveal the history of worm parasites in Britain

Britons have suffered from worms since the Bronze Age, new research shows, with parasite infections peaking during the Roman and Late Medieval periods.

Things began to get better during the Industrial period, in part thanks to improvements in hygiene in parts of the UK, before the Victorian ‘Sanitary Revolution’ ushered in a nationwide reduction in infections.

Oxford researchers analysed ancient skeletons in an effort to establish the size and scale of parasitic worm infections in the UK over the course of history.

They hope that understanding how parasitic worm infections changed in the past, it could help public health measures in regions of the world still experiencing problems today. 

Infections with parasitic worms are a big problem in some tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. 

But in the past, they were much more widespread and were common throughout Europe.

The research team looked for worm eggs in the soil from the region where the infected intestines of 464 human skeletons would have been, at 17 sites dating from the Bronze Age to the Industrial Revolution.

They found that worm infections peaked in Britain during the Roman and Late Medieval periods when infection rates were similar to those seen in the most affected regions today.

Things changed in the Industrial period. Worm infection rates differed a lot between different sites – some sites had little evidence of infection, while in others there was a lot of infection.

The researchers think that local changes in sanitation and hygiene may have reduced infection in some areas before nationwide changes during the Victorian ‘Sanitary Revolution’.

The co-first authors, Hannah Ryan and Patrik Flammer said: ‘Defining the patterns of infection with intestinal worms can help us to understand the health, diet and habits of past populations. 

‘More than that, defining the factors that led to changes in infection levels (without modern drugs) can provide support for approaches to control these infections in modern populations.’

Humans are infected with roundworms and whipworms through contamination by faecal matter and catch some tapeworms by eating raw or undercooked meat or fish. 

The team will next use their array of parasite-based approaches to investigate other infections in the past. This includes more large-scale analyses of human burials, as well as continuing their ancient DNA work.

Their ambition is to employ a multidisciplinary approach, working closely with archaeologists, historians, parasitologists, biologists and other interested groups to use parasites to help understand the past.

The study has been published in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Study Investigates Anglo-Saxon Diets

Very few people in England ate large amounts of meat before the Vikings settled, and there is no evidence that elites ate more meat than other people, a major new bioarchaeological study suggests. Its sister study also argues that peasants occasionally hosted lavish meat feasts for their rulers. The findings overturn major assumptions about early medieval English history.

• ‘You are what you eat’ isotopic analysis of over 2,000 skeletons is by far the largest of its kind.
• Early medieval diets were far more similar across social groups than previously thought.
• Peasants didn’t give kings food as exploitative tax, they hosted feasts suggesting they were granted more respect than previously assumed.
• Surviving food lists are supplies for special feasts not blueprints for everyday elite diets.
• Some feasts served up an estimated 1kg of meat and 4,000 Calories in total, per person.

Picture medieval England and royal feasts involving copious amounts of meat immediately spring to mind. Historians have long assumed that royals and nobles ate far more meat than the rest of the population and that free peasants were forced to hand over food to sustain their rulers throughout the year in an exploitative system known as feorm or food-rent.

But a pair of Cambridge co-authored studies published today in the journal Anglo-Saxon England present a very different picture, one which could transform our understanding of early medieval kingship and society.

While completing a PhD at the University of Cambridge, bioarchaeologist Sam Leggett gave a presentation which intrigued historian Tom Lambert (Sidney Sussex College). Now at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Leggett had analysed chemical signatures of diets preserved in the bones of 2,023 people buried in England from the 5th – to 11th centuries. She then cross-referenced these isotopic findings with evidence for social status such as grave goods, body position and grave orientation. Leggett’s research revealed no correlation between social status and high protein diets.

That surprised Tom Lambert because so many medieval texts and historical studies suggest that Anglo-Saxon elites did eat large quantities of meat. The pair started to work together to find out what was really going on.

They began by deciphering a food list compiled during the reign of King Ine of Wessex (c. 688-726) to estimate how much food it records and what its calorie content might have been. They estimated that the supplies amounted to 1.24 million kcal, over half of which came from animal protein. The list included 300 bread rolls so the researchers worked on the basis that one bun was served to each diner to calculate overall portions. Each guest would have received 4,140 kcal from 500g of mutton; 500g of beef; another 500g of salmon, eel and poultry; plus cheese, honey and ale.

The researchers studied ten other comparable food lists from southern England and discovered a remarkably similar pattern: a modest amount of bread, a huge amount of meat, a decent but not excessive quantity of ale, and no mention of vegetables (although some probably were served).

Lambert says: “The scale and proportions of these food lists strongly suggest that they were provisions for occasional grand feasts, and not general food supplies sustaining royal households on a daily basis. These were not blueprints for everyday elite diets as historians have assumed.”

“I’ve been to plenty of barbecues where friends have cooked ludicrous amounts of meat so we shouldn’t be too surprised. The guests probably ate the best bits and then leftovers might have been stewed up for later.”

Leggett says: “I’ve found no evidence of people eating anything like this much animal protein on a regular basis. If they were, we would find isotopic evidence of excess protein and signs of diseases like gout from the bones. But we’re just not finding that.”

“The isotopic evidence suggests that diets in this period were much more similar across social groups than we’ve been led to believe. We should imagine a wide range of people livening up bread with small quantities of meat and cheese, or eating pottages of leeks and whole grains with a little meat thrown in.”

The researchers believe that even royals would have eaten a cereal-based diet and that these occasional feasts would have been a treat for them too.

Peasants feeding kings

These feasts would have been lavish outdoor events at which whole oxen were roasted in huge pits, examples of which have been excavated in East Anglia.

Lambert says: “Historians generally assume that medieval feasts were exclusively for elites. But these food lists show that even if you allow for huge appetites, 300 or more people must have attended. That means that a lot of ordinary farmers must have been there, and this has big political implications.”

Kings in this period – including Rædwald, the early seventh-century East Anglian king perhaps buried at Sutton Hoo – are thought to have received renders of food, known in Old English as feorm or food-rent, from the free peasants of their kingdoms. It is often assumed that these were the primary source of food for royal households and that kings’ own lands played a minor supporting role at best. As kingdoms expanded, it has also been assumed that food-rent was redirected by royal grants to sustain a broader elite, making them even more influential over time.

But Lambert studied the use of the word feorm in different contexts, including aristocratic wills, and concludes that the term referred to a single feast and not this primitive form of tax. This is significant because food-rent required no personal involvement from a king or lord, and no show of respect to the peasants who were duty-bound to provide it. When kings and lords attended communal feasts in person, however, the dynamics would have been very different.

Lambert says: “We’re looking at kings travelling to massive barbecues hosted by free peasants, people who owned their own farms and sometimes slaves to work on them. You could compare it to a modern presidential campaign dinner in the US. This was a crucial form of political engagement.”

This rethinking could have far-reaching implications for medieval studies and English political history more generally. Food renders have informed theories about the beginnings of English kingship and land-based patronage politics, and are central to ongoing debates about what led to the subjection of England’s once-free peasantry.

Leggett and Lambert are now eagerly awaiting the publication of isotopic data from the Winchester Mortuary Chests which are thought to contain the remains of Egbert, Canute and other Anglo-Saxon royals. These results should provide unprecedented insights into the period’s most elite eating habits.

Archaeologists were left baffled by a grim Roman discovery made in Wales: ‘Quite peculiar’

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a possible Roman mercenary buried with his sword and the skeleton of another Roman-period man whose decapitated head lay at his feet in Wales, in the United Kingdom. 

Investigations into these two distinct burials are ongoing, as is an examination of the other burials at the site, which has been used by humans since the Stone Age. One spot, for instance, has hundreds of burials from two different time periods; people who lived during the early medieval period (A.D. 410 to 1169) chose to bury their dead within a mound that had been used as a burial ground during the Bronze Age (2500 B.C. to 800 B.C.), the team found.

“[The early medieval people] went back to the prehistoric site to make this burial mound, even though it was a Christian period, and you would expect them to be buried around a chapel or a church,” excavation project director Mark Collard, an archaeologist and director of Rubicon Heritage, an Ireland-based archaeological firm, told Live Science. 

Archaeologists first discovered the site in the 1960s, upon finding the remains of Iron Age roundhouses (800 B.C. to A.D. 43) and the Whitton Lodge Roman Villa built on a farmstead dating to the Roman period (A.D 43 to 410).

However, it wasn’t until recently that, during an archaeological survey ahead of a road construction project, archaeologists realized the site preserved far more history.

From 2017 through most of 2018, Rubicon Heritage excavated the site and since then has been working on a monograph or a detailed, peer-reviewed description of the site. In March, Rubicon Heritage released an eBook and an online interactive map of the site, known as 5 Mile Lane.

The earliest evidence at 5 Mile Lane is hunter-gather flint tools dating to the Mesolithic, or the Middle Stone Age (8000 B.C. to 4000 B.C.), Collard said. “It shows that Mesolithic people are going through the area” and hunting animals such as aurochs (Bos primigenius), an extinct cattle species, he said. 

People living there during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (4000 B.C. to 2500 B.C.), built some type of communally-used ritual structure, according to several large pits or postholes that archaeologists found. “It basically looks like a large post alignment running across the countryside,” Collard said.

The team also unearthed the remains of a person in a crouched position buried nearby, suggesting that the burial was tied to this ritual landscape, he said.

Archaeologists found the remains of several roundhouses and mound burials dating to the Bronze Age. But it wasn’t until the Iron Age that the landscape became more settled with small, timber-built and thatched round houses and cultivated farmland, Collard said. These farms were close together — less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) apart — and had domesticated animals and grain processing.

“It shows how dense the settlement was,” Collard said. These people were also producing iron tools, such as knives, he noted. Eventually, people switched from round houses to rectangular stone Roman buildings.

“We don’t know if it was the same owners or the same family, but we like to think that the continuity was there. And they just took on with new fashions and assimilated into the Roman Empire,” he said.

Collard and his colleagues plan to test whether there actually was continuity by examining preserved DNA found in the human burials, especially the roughly 450 burials found in the mound used by both the Bronze Age and early medieval peoples. 

It’s likely that this gently sloped area at 5 Mile Lane was well-used because “it’s very rich farming land around there,” Collard said. “It’s good for growing crops but also for keeping animals” pastured and had “access to the sea, which is a couple of miles away,” he said. It was also “close to the highway” — a nearby Roman road that was heavily trafficked.

The mercenary and the decapitated man

The possible mercenary had a “quite peculiar” burial, Collard said. “It’s in the middle of a field near the Roman villa looking out over the valley and over the sea … It’s a great place to be buried.” The deceased was buried prone, or face down, with a long iron sword, a silver crossbow brooch and hobnail boots inside a coffin closed with iron nails. The sword and brooch are indicative of Roman military regalia dating to the late fourth to early fifth centuries A.D., the researchers found.

It’s not certain how the man — who stood up to 5 feet, 9 inches (1.75 meters) tall and was in his early 20s — died, but he may have suffered from a middle-ear infection that spread to his skull, the team found.

During the late Roman period, when this man was alive, Roman control broke down in what is now the United Kingdom, leading the empire to take on mercenaries to fight off invaders, Collard said. So, it’s possible that this man, whose brooch looks like those found in continental Europe, was a Roman mercenary or possibly even an invader who took over the Roman villa, Collard said. Genetic analysis of the man’s remains will hopefully shed light on his roots, Collard added.

The decapitated man was also in his 20s when he died during the Roman period. His skull had been removed and placed at the feet, and the remains of wood and iron nails indicate that he was buried in a coffin or a board that had a shroud over it, the team found.

About 2% to 3% of burials at Roman sites include decapitated people, likely from executions, according to a 2021 study in the journal Britannia. This practice may have been used to separate the soul from the body or to prevent the body from rising again, Collard said.

‘Rare’ 14th Century gold coin found in a secret drawer in Derbyshire

A 14th-century French gold coin was discovered inside one of three hidden drawers in a bureau inherited by a woman who lives in Derbyshire, England.

The mother of three, Amy Clapp, 37, told reporters she had no idea the 650-year-old coin — or the secret drawers — existed after being left a 20th-century bureau by her distant cousin.

Don Collins of Hansons Auctioneers said the 22-carat coin was “very unusual” and he had “never seen one exactly like it” in more than 50 years, according to the BBC.

Experts believe the Raymond IV Prince of Orange Franc A Pied, dating back to 1365, could fetch double the guide price of £1,200 to £1,800 when it is auctioned this spring.

The princes of Orange lived in France in the 14th century. The principality originated as a fiefdom in the Holy Roman Empire in the kingdom of Burgundy.

Clapp said to the Daily Mail, “I can’t even remember meeting my great cousin, but I received a letter from a solicitor before Christmas informing me that I’d been left various items of furniture. Apparently, the will was written when I was 13 years old.”

Read also: The ‘Field of Dreams Movie Site is Getting a Huge Upgrade

The bureau’s owner didn’t even find the coin herself. She’d sent the bureau to Derbyshire’s Hansons Auctioneers to sell after examining it, believing that it was empty. But three secret drawers existed in the bureau, and they were found by the furniture auctioneers.

Edward Rycroft, the furniture valuer at Hanson’s, was the one who made the discovery. The gold coin was hidden in a secret drawer. It turned out to be rare, and highly valuable. Rycroft told the Derbyshire Times: “I know bureaus like this often have tiny, secret drawers — sometimes called coin drawers — so I always check them just in case. But in 10 years of valuing furniture, I have never found anything in them  … until now.”

Clapp said she “would never have found that in a million years” and hoped to donate some of the proceeds of the coin sale to a charity.

The wooden bureau itself is estimated at being worth less than $100.

Rycroft said, “I’m delighted for the family. The coin’s worth a small fortune. I knew straight away it was gold and really special. It’s the most amazing thing I have ever found by chance.”

As for Clapp, a family support worker, she said: “I’m delighted. I was working in London when Edward phoned me. As a family, we’ve had some bad luck in the last two years, so for something like this to happen to us is amazing.”

Rycroft suggested everyone be sure to search their furniture carefully. “If you’ve got an old bureau at home do check for secret drawers — you never know, you may be sitting on a windfall too.”

6000-Year-Old Salt Production House Rewrites Europe’s History

Archaeologists in the UK have found an ancient stone age-era salt-production house in North Yorkshire, estimated to be older even than Stonehenge, UK media outlets reported on Wednesday.

Dating from the Neolithic period around 3800 B.C.E. the 6,000-year-old find is the latest discovery from the Street House Farm site in Loftus.

Finds unearthed on a shoreline near Loftus include three hearths, fragments of broken Neolithic pottery, a ditch, some still containing salt deposits, shaped stone artefacts, and a storage pit. All of the finds are cited as important evidence of salt processing.

According to Steve Sherlock, the archaeologist who led the dig, the finds are “spectacular and of national significance”.

The discovery is particularly important in that it can substantially rewrite the historical understanding of Neolithic England because the facility is not only the oldest facility found on the island but also one of the oldest facilities found in Western Europe.

This new finding, he explained, according to The Independent, indicates that properly settled civilizations developed on the island earlier than expected, with stone-age Britons transitioning into an agricultural society from a hunter-gather lifestyle. In fact, it pushes salt-making back by nearly 2,400 years.

Salt was an extremely valuable commodity, and the extraction process is very complex and implies a certain level of sophistication.

In fact, according to UK sea-salt production expert David Lea-Wilson, “Any ancient coastal culture that was able to master that technology would have been able to expand their economy substantially,” according to The Independent.

Salt was essential to the expansion of the Stone Age. This is because it gave the people of the Neolithic Age the ability to preserve meat.

According to the Independent, James Swift, a traditional meat preservation expert, said that effective management of cattle is almost impossible without salt.

In other words, the fact that salt can be used at all means that the entire early agricultural sector will undergo revolutionary changes. Male calves can be preserved after slaughter throughout the year, and cows have more grass, which in turn means more milk production.

And not only was this salt production house effective but according to Sherlock, salt-making experts said “you’d expect to find that in the Iron Age,” according to the New Scientist news site.

Through some archaeological detective work, Sherlock not only figured out how the salt-making facilities work but also first figured out how the process reached Britain. The pottery used to extract salt from seawater is a special type of bowl that can be traced back to France.

According to The Guardian, there is a theory that migrants from the north of France brought ceramics, and thus even technology, to Britain around 4000 BC.

Stonehenge served as an ancient solar calendar: New analysis

It had long been thought that the famous site of Stonehenge served as an ancient calendar, given its alignment with the solstices. Now, research has identified how it may have worked.

New finds about the stone circle’s history, along with analysis of other ancient calendar systems, prompted professor Timothy Darvill to take a fresh look at Stonehenge. His analysis, published in the journal Antiquity, concluded that the site was designed as a solar calendar.

“The clear solstitial alignment of Stonehenge has prompted people to suggest that the site included some kind of calendar since the antiquarian William Stukeley,” said Darvill, from Bournemouth University, “Now, discoveries brought the issue into sharper focus and indicate the site was a calendar based on a tropical solar year of 365.25 days.”

Crucially, recent research had shown that Stonehenge’s sarsens were added during the same phase of construction around 2500 BC.

They were sourced from the same area and subsequently remained in the same formation. This indicates they worked as a single unit.

As such, Darvill analyzed these stones, examining their numerology and comparing them to other known calendars from this period.

He identified a solar calendar in their layout, suggesting they served as a physical representation of the year that helped the ancient inhabitants of Wiltshire keep track of the days, weeks, and months.

“The proposed calendar works in a very straightforward way. Each of the 30 stones in the sarsen circle represents a day within a month, itself divided into three weeks each of 10 days,” said Darvill, noting that distinctive stones in the circle mark the start of each week.

Additionally, an intercalary month of five days and a leap day every four years were needed to match the solar year. “The intercalary month, probably dedicated to the deities of the site, is represented by the five trilithons in the center of the site,” said Darvill. “The four Station Stones outside the Sarsen Circle provide markers to notch up until a leap day.”

As such, the winter and summer solstices would be framed by the same pairs of stones every year. One of the trilithons also frames the winter solstice, indicating it may have been the new year.

This solstitial alignment also helps calibrate the calendar—any errors in counting the days would be easily detectable as the sun would be in the wrong place on the solstices.

Such a calendar, with 10-day weeks and extra months, may seem unusual today. However, calendars like this were adopted by many cultures during this period.

“Such a solar calendar was developed in the eastern Mediterranean in the centuries after 3000 BC and was adopted in Egypt as the Civil Calendar around 2700 and was widely used at the start of the Old Kingdom about 2600 BC,” said Darvill.

This raises the possibility that the calendar tracked by Stonehenge may stem from the influence of one of these other cultures. Nearby finds hint at such cultural connections—the nearby Amesbury archer, buried nearby around the same period, was born in the Alps and moved to Britain as a teenager.

Professor Darvill hopes future research might shed light on these possibilities. Ancient DNA and archaeological artifacts could reveal connections between these cultures. Nevertheless, the identification of a solar calendar at Stonehenge should transform how we see it.

“Finding a solar calendar represented in the architecture of Stonehenge opens up a whole new way of seeing the monument as a place for the living,” he said, “a place where the timing of ceremonies and festivals was connected to the very fabric of the universe and celestial movements in the heavens.”