Category Archives: EUROPE

Medieval warhorses no bigger than modern-day ponies, study finds

Medieval warhorses no bigger than modern-day ponies, study finds

Medieval warhorses are often depicted as massive and powerful beasts, but in reality, many were no more than pony-sized by modern standards, a new study shows.

Horses during the period were often below 14.2 hands high, but the size was clearly not everything, as historical records indicate huge sums were spent on developing and maintaining networks for the breeding, training and keeping of horses used in combat.

A team of archaeologists and historians searching for the truth about the Great Horse have found they were not always bred for size, but for success in a wide range of different functions – including tournaments and long-distance raiding campaigns.

New Thoughts on England’s Medieval Warhorses
The bones are a metacarpal, the end of the humerus and a tooth row from a mandible

Researchers analysed the largest dataset of English horse bones dating between AD 300 and 1650, found at 171 separate archaeological sites.

The study, published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, shows that breeding and training of warhorses was influenced by a combination of biological and cultural factors, as well as behavioural characteristics of the horses themselves such as temperament.

Depictions of medieval warhorses in films and popular media frequently portray massive mounts on the scale of Shire horses, some 17 to 18 hands high.

However, the evidence suggests that horses of 16 and even 15 hands were very rare indeed, even at the height of the royal stud network during the 13th and 14th centuries and that animals of this size would have been seen as very large by medieval people.

Researcher Helene Benkert, from the University of Exeter, said: “Neither size nor limb bone robusticity alone, are enough to confidently identify warhorses in the archaeological record.

Historic records don’t give the specific criteria which defined a warhorse; it is much more likely that throughout the medieval period, at different times, different conformations of horses were desirable in response to changing battlefield tactics and cultural preferences.”

The tallest Norman horse recorded was found at Trowbridge Castle, Wiltshire, estimated to be about 15hh, similar to the size of small modern light riding horses. The high medieval period (1200-1350 AD) sees the first emergence of horses of around 16hh, although it is not until the post-medieval period (1500-1650 AD) that the average height of horses becomes significantly larger, finally approaching the sizes of modern warmblood and draft horses.

Professor Alan Outram, from the University of Exeter, said: “High medieval destriers may have been relatively large for the time period, but were clearly still much smaller than we might expect for equivalent functions today.

Selection and breeding practices in the Royal studs may have focused as much on temperament and the correct physical characteristics for warfare as they did on raw size.”

Professor Oliver Creighton, the Principal Investigator for the project, commented: “The warhorse is central to our understanding of medieval English society and culture as both a symbol of status closely associated with the development of aristocratic identity and as a weapon of war famed for its mobility and shock value, changing the face of battle.“

The research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. was carried out by Carly Ameen, Helene Benkert, Malene Lauritsen, Karina Rapp, Tess Townend, Laura May Jones, Camille Mai Lan Vo Van Qui, Robert Webley, Naomi Sykes, Oliver H. Creighton and Alan Outram from the University of Exeter, Tamsyn Fraser from the University of Sheffield, Rebecca Gordon, Matilda Holmes and Will Johnson from the University of Leicester, Mark Maltby from Bournemouth University, Gary Paul Baker and Robert Liddiard from the University of East Anglia.

Hungry badger accidentally unearths hundreds of ancient Roman coins in Spain

Hungry badger accidentally unearths hundreds of ancient Roman coins in Spain

A badger has led archaeologists to a hoard of more than 200 Roman coins that had been hidden in a cave in Spain for centuries.

The animal had burrowed into a crack in the rock inside the La Cuesta cave in the Asturias region of northwest Spain and dug out coins that were later discovered by a local man, Roberto García, according to a paper on the find published in December.

García called in archaeologists, including dig director Alfonso Fanjul, who believes the badger was searching for food or digging itself a nest.

“When we arrived we found the hole that led to the badger’s nest, and the ground around it full of coins,” Fanjul told CNN on Monday, adding that more than 90 coins had been dug up by the badger.

The team then performed an archaeological excavation that recovered a total of 209 coins dating from 200 AD to 400 AD.

The cave is in the Asturias region of northwestern Spain.

This corresponds with the Late Roman period when barbarians such as the Suebi arrived in the Iberian peninsula.

Fanjul believes the coins were hidden by refugees sheltering in the area, saying: “We think it’s a reflection of the social and political instability which came along with the fall of Rome and the arrival of groups of barbarians to northern Spain.”

The coins were probably hidden by people fleeing barbarians, archaeologists say

The coins are currently being cleaned and will be put on display at the Archaeological Museum of Asturias, said Fanjul, who plans to carry out further excavations at the site this year.

“We’ve taken out the first deposit, but we think there is a lot more to take out,” he said, adding that it’s already the largest Roman hoard recovered from inside a cave in Spain.

“It’s a unique moment that you dream about from a young age,” Fanjul said. “It’s an exceptional moment that you never think you will have as an archaeologist.”

Fanjul believes further excavations will improve our understanding of the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of the medieval kingdoms of northern Spain.

“We think it’s an ideal site to learn more about the people that we’re living through this transition,” he said.

Giant 30-foot ‘sea dragon’ fossil from 180 million years ago discovered in the UK

Giant 30-foot ‘sea dragon’ fossil from 180 million years ago discovered in UK

The remains of a monstrous, 33-foot-long (10 meters) “sea dragon” that swam in the seas when dinosaurs were alive some 180 million years ago have been unearthed on a nature reserve in England.

Giant 30-foot ‘sea dragon’ fossil from 180 million years ago discovered in UK
This ichthyosaur would have been some 33 feet (10 meters) long when it lived about 180 million years ago.

The behemoth is the biggest and most complete fossil of its kind ever discovered in the U.K.

“It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history,” excavation leader Dean Lomax, a palaeontologist and visiting scientist at the University of Manchester, said in a statement. 

Though many such ichthyosaurs have been found in the U.K., none have been as large as the current discovery.

Ichthyosaurs are an extinct order, or large group, of marine reptiles that evolved in the Triassic period about 250 million years ago and disappeared from the fossil record 90 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous period. They had long snouts and looked similar to modern-day dolphins.

The newly discovered fossil belonged to a large species of ichthyosaur called Temnodontosaurus trigonodon — the first time this species has appeared in the U.K. Joe Davis, a conservation team leader for the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, found the ichthyosaur on the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in the East Midlands in January 2021, according to the statement.

Davis was walking across a drained lagoon with Paul Trevor, who also works on the reserve for the trust when he saw what appeared to be clay pipes sticking out of the mud and remarked to Trevor that they looked like vertebrae.

Davis was familiar with sea creature bones, having previously found whale and dolphin skeletons while working on the Hebrides, a series of islands off northwest Scotland.

“We followed what indisputably looked like a spine and Paul [Trevor] discovered something further along that could have been a jawbone,” Davis said. “We couldn’t quite believe it.”

Archaeologists excavated the fossil between August and September in 2021.

The discovery will be featured on a British television series called “Digging for Britain,” which airs in the U.K. on Tuesday (Jan. 11) on BBC Two.

Archaeologists are still studying and conserving the ichthyosaur fossil and scientific papers about the discovery will be published in the future, according to the statement, though no timeframe was given.

Europe’s first farmers came from Turkey confirmed by DNA

Europe’s first farmers came from Turkey confirmed by DNA

It was an innovation that changed the course of human history forever, leading to the rise of the first civilisations and transforming the way of life of our ancestors.

Now researchers believe they have pinpointed where the first farmers who spread into Europe 8,000 years ago came from – Anatolia in Turkey. Using ancient DNA from human remains found in the region, a study has been able to trace the lineage of early European farmers back to the Anatolian plateau in Turkey.

They said farmers from Anatolia appear to have moved into Europe around 8,000 years ago, replacing the hunter-gatherer cultures that lived there.

Europe's first farmers came from Turkey confirmed by DNA
Ancient DNA from human remains (pictured) found in Anatolia, Turkey, has revealed that the farmers who lived there 8,000 years ago were among the first to spread into Europe. The farming revolution brought about changes in human culture that led to some of the first civilisations in history emerging

Farming is first thought to have emerged in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean in what is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. However, the new findings suggest Anatolia acted as a hub from which the farming revolution then spread.

Anders Götherstörm, head of archaeogenetic research at the archaeological research laboratory at Stockholm University, said: ‘Our results stress the importance Anatolia has had on Europe’s prehistory.

‘But to fully understand how the agricultural development proceeded we need to dive deeper down into material from the Levant.’

The researchers extracted DNA from human remains found at the site of an ancient settlement in Kumtepe in Troas, northwestern Anatolia, in Turkey.

The remains are thought to belong to Neolithic farmers who were among the first inhabitants of the settlement, which eventually gave rise to the city of Troy.

The team behind the study compared the DNA with genetic material from other ancient farmers in Europe along with DNA from modern Europeans.

Ayca Omrak, who was the first author of the research at Stockholm University, said: ‘I have never worked with more complicated material.

‘I could use the DNA from the Kumptepe material to trace the European farmers back to Anatolia.

‘It is also fun to have worked with this material from the Kumtepe site, as this is the precursor to Troy.’

A separate study recently found that a rise in farming and metalwork in Ireland led to a ‘genetic shift’ in the region, fuelled by an influx of people from the Black Sea and the Middle East.

This led to the traits that make Celtic people so distinct to emerge around 4,000 years ago. In particular, the researchers said that the adoption of agriculture led to ‘waves of immigration’ in Ireland which ultimately shifted their genetics.

The study was led by Queens University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin. Researchers analysed the DNA of an early Neolithic farmer, a woman who is believed to have lived in the Belfast area 5,200 years ago.

Farming is first thought to have emerged in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean in what is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. However, the new findings suggest Anatolia acted as a hub from which the revolution spread. The researchers extracted DNA from remains found at Kumtepe in Troas, Turkey
Neolithic farmers spread to replace hunter-gatherer populations in Europe. Wall paintings of hunters (pictured) found in Catal Hoyuk in Anatolia, Turkey is thought to have been made in 6,000BC, just as farming was beginning to spread into Europe. The new study suggests the area was a hub for the farming revolution

They also analysed the DNA of three men found in Rathlin Island in County Down, who lived 4,000 years ago during the Bronze Age.

While the early farmer woman more closely resembled people from Southern Europe, with black hair and brown eyes, the later men had blue eyes.

One even had an inherited iron disorder, haemochromatosis, commonly found in Irish people. Elsewhere, the woman’s genome was a ‘genetic cocktail’ of early hunter-gatherer DNA mixed with that of Near East farmers.

It is thought these farmers migrated to the region thousands of years ago, bringing farming to the region in around 3,750 BC. However, the genetic traits found in the Bronze Age males were found to be much closer to modern Irish people.

Mysteries Of Ancient ‘Computer’ Found In Greek Shipwreck Solved By Scientists

Mysteries Of Ancient ‘Computer’ Found In Greek Shipwreck Solved By Scientists

Archaeologists claim to have solved the mysteries behind an ancient Greek “computer” that shouldn’t even exist. Known for its hidden relics archaeological treasures, Greece has offered great insights into a world long lost.

In fact, some of the earliest advances in understanding space and the position of Earth around the sun were made in ancient Greece. 

The very first astronomical calculator was also built in ancient Greece. This “computer” has continued to stun scientists and archaeologists alike.

Mysteries Of Ancient 'Computer' Found In Greek Shipwreck Solved By Scientists

Known as the Antikythera Mechanism, the 2,000-year-old Greek hand-powered orrey is a mechanical model of the solar system. It’s also considered the world’s oldest analogue computer.

World’s oldest “analogue computer”

Using the Antikythera, Greek scientists used to track eclipses and astronomical positions. In addition, they used to trace the cycle of the Olympic Games (yes, the same ones we all have now).

The Antikythera Mechanism was first found in ruins of a shipwreck in 1901 off the coast of Greek island Antikythera (hence its name). A year later, it was identified as carrying gear by archaeologist Valerios Stais.

At first sight, the Antikythera Mechanism appeared as a hunk of corroded metal that “no one knew quite what to do with.”

In conversation with BBC, Professor Tony Freeth of the University College London said that “it was not recognised at all as being anything interesting when it was discovered, it was just a corroded lump about the size of a large dictionary.”

Using its bronze gear and calculative prowess, ancient Greeks used the Antikythera Mechanism to assess the cycle of the cosmos.

It is now kept in a museum in Athens – split into 82 fragments. But nobody really knew what it was for until Professor Freeth put it under the magical lens of x-ray.

Besides thousands of text characters in Greece, scientists discovered certain cogs that made the computer function. It could predict eclipses, follow the motion of the moon among a series of things.

Researchers Date Horned Helmets Discovered in Denmark

Researchers Date Horned Helmets Discovered in Denmark

Researchers Date Horned Helmets Discovered in Denmark
The two Viksø helmets were found in pieces a bog in eastern Denmark in 1942. Archaeologists think they were deliberately deposited there as religious offerings

Two spectacular bronze helmets decorated with bull-like, curved horns may have inspired the idea that more than 1,500 years later, Vikings wore bulls’ horns on their helmets, although there is no evidence they ever did.

Rather, the two helmets were likely emblems of the growing power of leaders in Bronze Age Scandinavia. In 1942, a worker cutting peat for fuel discovered the helmets — which sport “eyes” and “beaks” — in a bog near the town of Viksø (also spelled Veksø) in eastern Denmark, a few miles northwest of Copenhagen.

The helmets’ design suggested to some archaeologists that the artefacts originated in the Nordic Bronze Age (roughly from 1750 B.C. to 500 B.C.), but until now no firm date had been determined. The researchers of the new study used radiocarbon methods to date a plug of birch tar on one of the horns.

“For many years in popular culture, people associated the Viksø helmets with the Vikings,” said Helle Vandkilde, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “But actually, it’s nonsense. The horned theme is from the Bronze Age and is traceable back to the ancient Near East.”

The new research by Vandkilde and her colleagues confirms that the helmets were deposited in the bog in about 900 B.C. — almost 3,000 years ago and many centuries before the Vikings or Norse dominated the region.

That dates the helmets to the late Nordic Bronze Age, a time when archaeologists think the regular trade of metals and other items had become common throughout Europe and foreign ideas were influencing Indigenous cultures, the researchers wrote in the journal Praehistorische Zeitschrift.

The elaborately-horned Viksø helmets have been associated with medieval Vikings. But a new study fixes their date to about 900 B.C. – over a thousand years before any Vikings.

Horned helmets

In 1942, a man cutting peat for fuel found broken pieces of the helmets, according to the Danish Ministry of Culture.

When the muddy helmet fragments were first discovered, the man who found them thought they were bits of buried waste, so he set them aside. Later, a foreman noticed the fragments and stored them in a shed for later examination. Later examinations by archaeologists from the National Museum of Denmark showed that the “buried waste” fragments were actually parts of two bronze helmets decorated with curved horns. When excavating the peat pit, researchers also found the remains of a wooden slab that one of the helmets seemed to have stood on, which suggested they had been deliberately deposited in the bog.

But metal can’t be reliably dated, and further research suggested the wooden slab might have been placed in the bog earlier than the helmets. It wasn’t until 2019 that one of Vandkilde’s colleagues spotted the birch tar on one of the horns when she was preparing to take new photographs of the helmets at the National Museum of Denmark.

“She noticed that there was primary organic material in the horns and spoke to a colleague at the National Museum responsible for the collection, and they agreed to send a sample for absolute dating,” Vandkilde said.

Previously, any information about the helmets was based on their typology — the style they were made in and any symbols they were decorated with. But the new date is based on the radioactive decay of the isotope carbon 14, which can determine when the organic matter originated. This method let archaeologists pinpoint when the helmets were created and theorize their purpose, she said.

“Typology is quite often a good first step, chronologically speaking, but it is very important when we can have absolute dates, as we can with carbon 14,” Vandkilde said. “We now know with this new date that the helmets were deposited in the bog, perhaps by someone standing on a wooden platform, around 900 B.C.”

Sun symbolism

As well as the having eyes and beak of a bird of prey and curving bull’s horns, archaeologists think the helmets were decorated with plumes of feathers and manes of horsehair.

As well as their prominent horns, the Viksø helmets are adorned with symbols meant to look like the eyes and beak of a bird of prey; plumage that has since eroded was likely stuck into the ends of the horns with birch tar, and each helmet also may have had a mane of horsehair.

Both the bulls’ horns and the bird of prey were probably symbols of the sun, as similar iconography from the time has been found in other parts of Europe, such as on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia and in southwest Iberia. “It’s certainly not coincidental — there must have been some sort of connection there,” Vandkilde said.

It’s possible that the symbology of sun worship may have reached Scandinavia along a sea route, from the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast, that was used by the seafaring Phoenicians for trade after about 1000 B.C., “independent of the otherwise flourishing transalpine trading route,” the researchers wrote.

There is no sign that the Viksø helmets were ever used for war, which was usually carried out in Bronze Age Scandinavia with only rudimentary helmets or no helmets at all. “They were never used for battle,” Vandkilde said.

Instead, leaders probably wore the helmets as symbols of authority at a time when the region was becoming more politicized and centralized, she said. 

“There are many signs of this, and our new dating of the Viksø helmets actually suits this very well — this picture of centralization and the importance of political leadership,” she said. “And those leaders must have used religious beliefs and innovative traits, like the horns, to further their power.” 

Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy

Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy

The 200-year-old secrets of the child mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo in northern Sicily are to be revealed by a British-led team of scientists using X-ray technology.

Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy
Catacombs of Palermo

Dr Kirsty Squires, of Staffordshire University, will head a first attempt to tell the stories of some of the 163 children whose remains lie within the corridors and crypts of the famous underground tomb.

The Catacombs contain 1,284 mummified and skeletonised bodies, the largest collection of mummies in Europe. While many of the children contained there are now skeletal, others have been described as appearing as if they are sleeping.

Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy

The two-year investigation will focus on the children who died between 1787 and 1880 and, initially, on 41 bodies residing within a bespoke “child chapel”.

None of the children’s identity, cause of death and medical history is known, and descriptive tags attached to them have long eroded away.

It is hoped that a better picture of the children’s lives and passing will be revealed by cross-referencing the anatomical findings with archival records, including two books containing names and years of death.

“We are going in January to carry out our fieldwork,” Squires said. “We will take a portable X-ray unit and take hundreds of images of the children from different angles.

“We are hoping to better understand their development, health and identity, comparing the biological fundings with the more cultural kind of things: the way the individuals have been mummified and the clothes they are wearing as well.”

The catacombs, once solely for the deceased friars of the Capuchin order, have become a popular, if macabre, tourist attraction, with every niche and crevice bearing bodies on open display. The preserved dead were often dressed in their finery and would be visited by their relatives.

The friars first established themselves at the church of Santa Maria della Pace in 1534. They created a mass grave for their dead which opened like a tank under an altar but, when that became full, the deceased was held in a vault, or charnel house, while a new crypt was dug.

When it came to relocating the bodies from the overfull vault, 45 of the deceased friars exhumed were found to have been naturally mummified, with their faces recognisable, a development that was taken to be an act of God.

Rather than bury the remains, the bodies were displayed as relics, propped in niches along the walls of the first corridor of the new cemetery. In 1787, a letter was published stating that everyone, including children, in the region had the right to be accommodated in the catacombs after death.

Almost all the research until today has been on the adult mummies, excepting a headline-grabbing examination of Rosalia Lombardo, who died of pneumonia a week shy of her second birthday on 6 December 1920.

Her startlingly complete preservation was investigated a decade ago by Dr Dario Piombino-Mascali, who is working with Squires on the latest project at the catacombs.

He said: “Many of the mummies are a result of natural dehydration. Other mummies were chemically treated. Those chemically treated are normally better preserved.

“Some of them are superbly preserved. Some really look like sleeping children. They are darkened by the time but some of them have got even fake eyes so they seem to be looking at you. They look like tiny little dolls.

“Of course, you want to do something to preserve them and to make sure their stories are told and give a sense that they are children. It is very upsetting when you deal with children in anthropology.”

Radiographic images – 14 per mummy, from head-to-toe – will be taken and examined by Dr Robert Loynes, a retired orthopaedic surgeon who has previously investigated ancient Egyptian mummies. Piombino-Mascali said it was vital that the work on the fragile corpses was “non-invasive”.

Images will be drawn by an artist from Los Angeles, Eduardo Hernandez, who will produce illustrations for use in educational leaflets for handing out at the catacombs and elsewhere. The project has received over £70,000 in funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. The last bodies interned in the catacombs died in the early 20th century.

7,000-year-old fortress wall uncovered in southern Turkey

7,000-year-old fortress wall uncovered in southern Turkey

A fortress wall dating 7,000 years back to the Chalcolithic Age has been unearthed at the Yumuktepe Mound in southern Turkey’s Mersin province. The Yumuktepe Mound is highly significant as a continuous settlement for 9,000 years since the Neolithic Age.

Two and a half months of excavations at the mound are coming to an end on Friday. This year’s excavations focused on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, were carried out by a 30-person team led by Isabella Caneva – a professor of archaeology at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy.

Caneva said that the 7-meter fortress wall discovered this season can now be shown to the public.

7,000-year-old fortress wall uncovered in southern Turkey
A fortress wall dating 7,000 years back to the Chalcolithic Age has been unearthed at the Yumuktepe Mound in southern Turkey’s Mersin province.

While every year’s excavations have provided historical insights, this year’s dig produced especially “striking” Neolithic and Chalcolithic findings, Caneva said.

Caneva said the layer in Yumuktepe Mound is special in that it contains very special architecture.

The fortress wall was made with a variety of materials, including a 1.5-meter-thick support wall made of limestone at the bottom, 2 meters of well-cut stones and 3 meters of mudbrick.

Previous excavations had discovered the existence of the castle, dating back to 5,000 B.C., but the team did not uncover the wall until this season’s deeper dig in the area.

“We didn’t know that there was such technology in that period in technical terms. Now we see it and it’s a special structure.

There was certainly a special product being made there because a normal village would not require such a thick and solid wall,” Caneva said, explaining that the village is the oldest site in the world known to produce molten copper.

“This is a very important product. Later on, there was a war for metal. It was an important technology and a valuable substance. Tools, flashy objects and weapons were all made with copper,” she said.

The team also discovered that homes in the Neolithic period were built in a certain way, continuously constructed on top of one another, for 2,000 years.

Caneva expressed hopes that the site will be developed into an open-air museum for visitors in the future.