Archaeologist discovers a 6,000-year-old island settlement off the Croatian coast
Croatia, June 24 – Archaeologist Mate Parica was examining satellite images of Croatia’s coastline when he spotted something unusual. “I thought: maybe it is natural, maybe not,” said Parica, a professor at the University of Zadar.
The image showed a large, shallow area on the seabed jutting out from the eastern shore of the island of Korcula.
Parica and a colleague decided to dive at the site and discovered what they believe is a Neolithic settlement from around 4,500 years BC, built on a small piece of land that was connected to the main island by a narrow strip.
Aerial view of Neolithic settlement in Lumbarda, Croatia, June 23, 2021.
The pair found the remains of stone walls which had surrounded the settlement, as well as tools and other objects used by the inhabitants.
“We found some ceramic objects and flint knives,” he said.
Archaeologist diver works on a Neolithic settlement in Lumbarda, Croatia.
Marta Kalebota who runs the archaeological collection in the Korcula town museum said the settlement’s location was highly unusual.
“We are not aware at the moment of a similar finding elsewhere that a Neolithic settlement was built on an islet connected with a narrow strip of land,” she said.
Parica also said the island settlement discovery was atypical and that Neolithic finds were mostly made in caves.
“The fortunate thing is that this area, unlike most parts of the Mediterranean, is safe from big waves as many islands protect the coast.
That certainly helped preserve the site from natural destruction,” he said.
The treasure inside beer lost in a shipwreck 120 years ago
Long-forgotten strains of yeast are searched for in wrecks, abandoned breweries and other places in the hope that they can be put to good use if they are resurrected. gently relieving himself through a hatch in the sunken hold, he could see the wreckage treasure waiting for him. He had been there for over 100 years. But now a part was about to be released from its resting place.
Many of the bottles found on board the Wallachia remained unopened despite spending more than 100 years underwater
The explorer in question, Steve Hickman, a dive technician and amateur diver, was carrying a small bag in the net with him.
The treasure he was looking for was beer. Rows of glass beer bottles, partly buried in the silt, were kept in the hold of this ship. With visibility reduced to zero, Hickman was effectively blinded. But he knew this shoulder wellve and had visited it several times before. He continued, searching for more bottles in the dark. Once he gathered and bagged a few, he escaped and his team carefully brought the bottles to the surface.
The wreck was Wallachia, a cargo ship that sank in 1895 off the coast of Scotland following a collision with another ship in thick fog. Wallachia had just left Glasgow and was packed with
Since he began diving in Wallachia in the 1980s, Hickman has collected tens of bottles containing whiskey, gin and beer. But his recent visit, teamwork with several fellow divers, led to something unusual.
The bottles they recovered were turned over to scientists at a research company called Brewlab, who, along with colleagues at the University of Sunderland, was able to extract live yeast from the liquid in three of the bottles. . They then used this yeast in an attempt to recreate the original beer.
In 2018, a similar project in Tasmania used yeast from 220-year-old beer bottles found on a wreck forget close to a drink from the 1700s. But the study of Wallachia yeast revealed a surprise. These beers contained an unusual type of yeast and the team behind the work is now evaluating whether this strain perishes. long overdue could have applications in modern brewing or could even improve the beers of today.
When opened, the beer inside the bottles found on the Wallachia had a far from appetising odour, but the yeast they contain could be invaluable
In any case, there is a
“Yeast species apart from Saccharomyces cerevisiae are often more tolerant of things like using frozen dough and sometimes even have increased lifting capacity, ”Heil explains.
Thomas says he wants to sample and study yeast sealed containers found on even more shipwrecks, or other times well preserved and watered capsules. And by studying the genetics of ancient yeast strains, it might also be possible to identify previously unknown but desirable genes, which might influence genetically modified yeast in the future.
But the Wallachia Wreck is a sobering reminder of how lucky we are to have access to a handful of historic yeasts that keep us alive. can partner with confidence at a specific time and place.
In the 30 or so years since Hickman dived there, he has witnessed the wreckage deteriorating over time. The structures and walkways above and around the engine room collapsed. The cracks in the ship’s ageing walls widened. The ship is disappearing.
“I suspect that maybe in the next 20-30 years it will be completely gone,” he says.
Wallachia will disappear. probably taking her remaining beer bottles with her as she slowly shatters on the seabed. Precious link with 19th-century brewers will finally disappear forever, taking with it the precious yeasts it carries in
Dirty secrets: sediment DNA reveals a 300,000-year timeline of ancient and modern humans living in Siberia
In Siberia, researchers lay out a grid in Denisova Cave to systematically sample soil layers for DNA.
Science Magazine reports that analysis of more than 700 soil samples from Siberia’s Denisova Cave has detected traces of modern human DNA, which suggests that modern humans may have occupied the cave alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.
The group was named “Denisovans” in its honour. Now, an extensive analysis of DNA in the cave’s soils reveals it also hosted modern humans—who arrived early enough that they may have once lived there alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.
The new study “gives [researchers] unprecedented insight into the past,” says Mikkel Winther Pedersen, a molecular paleoecologist at the University of Copenhagen who was not involved with the work. “It literally shows what [before] they have only been able to hypothesize.”
Humans—including Neanderthals and Denisovans—are known to have occupied Denisova Cave for at least 300,000 years.
Selection of stone tools and personal ornaments made from bone, tooth and ivory recovered from the same sediment layers as modern human ancient DNA.
The cave also contains sophisticated stone tools and jewellery at higher, later levels. But no modern human fossils have been found there.
Those artefacts, extensive studies of DNA from these bones, and even one early study of DNA from soils have cemented the cave’s importance for piecing together human evolution.
But eight fossils are not much to go on, so Elena Zavala, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and colleagues teamed up with Russian researchers to see what kind of DNA was present in the soils of the three-chamber cave (see the video, below).
Researchers have been studying DNA isolated from soils for more than 40 years, including sequencing DNA from permafrost, but only in the past 4 years has anyone found DNA from extinct humans in ancient soils.
Working with another team of experts who had previously dated the layers of the cave, the researchers dug out 728 soil samples. After 2 years of analysis, in which they isolated and sequenced the samples, the researchers found human DNA in 175 of them. That makes the study “the largest and most systematic of its kind,” says Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved in the work.
The data reveal a complex history of human and animal habitation, with different groups moving in and out of the cave over time, Zavala and her colleagues report today in Nature. Their work confirms that Denisovans were the cave’s first human inhabitants, about 300,000 years ago.
They disappeared 130,000 years ago, only to be followed by a different group of Denisovans, who likely made many of the stone tools, some 30,000 years later. Neanderthals appeared on the scene about 170,000 years ago, with different groups using the cave at various points in time, some overlapping with the Denisovans.
The last to arrive were modern humans, who showed up about 45,000 years ago. The soil layer that corresponds with that period contained DNA from all three human groups, the researchers report.
“The time periods [of each layer] are quite large, so we can’t concretely say if they overlapped or not,” Zavala says. But, Douka adds, “I cannot think of another site where three human species lived through time.”
Given the jewellery and sophisticated artefacts in later layers, some researchers had suspected moderns had been there. But no one knew they had arrived as early as 45,000 years ago—and overlapped with both of our archaic cousins.
“It suggests a more complicated interplay between archaic and modern humans,” says Ron Pinhasi, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna who was not involved with the work.
The soil samples also yielded DNA from many species of animals. About 170,000 years ago, the climate went from warmer to colder, and Neanderthals moved in, so did different species of hyenas and bears.
It’s the combination of genomic data from both the fossils and the soil samples that really makes the new work stand out, Pinhasi says. “It’s a super promising direction [for future work].” Douka agrees, and says the new study should help ancient soil DNA become “a mainstream archaeological tool.”
She is already amazed at the progress that it, combined with other studies, has made possible. “Let’s not forget that as recently as in 2010 we had absolutely no evidence that Denisovans existed, and that these various hominins ever met, let alone that they interbred repeatedly and co-existed for millennia,” she wrote in an email.
A metal detectorist discovered two ancient and extremely rare gold coins thought to have been lost during the Black Death. Near Reepham, Norfolk, a leopard-shaped 23-carat gold coin was discovered alongside an Edward III golden coin.
The leopard was withdrawn within months of its being minted in 1344 and according to finds liaison officer Helen Geake, hardly any of the coins have survived.
The coins would be worth the equivalent of £12,000 in terms of today’s currency and would have been owned by someone at the top of society’, she told the BBC.
The coins were discovered by a metal detectorist in Reepham, Norfolk in October 2019
‘For some reason, they didn’t catch on, but when one or two pennies were the equivalent of a day’s wages at today’s minimum wage rate, perhaps very few people used them,’ she said.
Called a florin, leopard and a helm, the coinage was an attempt by King Edward III to produce a gold coin suitable to be used in Europe as well as in England.
But, the gold used to strike the coins was overvalued, which resulted in them being unacceptable to the public. Within months, they were melted down to produce the more popular gold noble, worth six shillings and eightpence.
The coin was discovered alongside a rare Edward III noble, thought to date between 1351 and 1352, while the bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, was ravaging Europe.
Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is carried by fleas and transmitted between animals.
The bubonic plague – the most common form – is caused by the bite of an infected flea and can spread through contact with infectious bodily fluids or contaminated materials. Patients may show signs of fever and nausea and at an advanced stage may develop open sores filled with pus.
It devastated Europe in the Middle Ages, most notably in the Black Death of the 1340s which killed a third or more of the continent’s population.
After the Black Death plague became a common phenomenon in Europe, with outbreaks recurring regularly until the 18th century. When the Great Plague of 1665 hit, a fifth of people in London died, with victims shut in their homes and red crosses painted on the door.
Bubonic plague has almost completely vanished from the rich world, with 90 per cent of all cases now found in Africa. It is now treatable with antibiotics, as long as they are administered quickly.
Still, there have been a few non-fatal cases in the U.S., with an average of seven reported a year, according to disease control bosses. From 2010 to 2015 there were 3,248 cases reported worldwide, including 584 deaths, says the World Health Organisation.
Some plague vaccines have been developed, but none are available to the general public. The WHO does not recommend vaccination except for high-risk groups such as health care workers.
Without antibiotics, the bubonic strain can spread to the lungs – where it becomes the more virulent pneumonic form. Pneumonic plague, which can kill within 24 hours, can then be passed on through coughing, sneezing or spitting.
The coins were thought to be lost after the Norman Conquest, as the only coins in circulation were silver pennies.
Dr Geake said no one really knows why Edward III decided to reintroduce the first gold coins in England since the Anglo-Saxon era. The find shows that the leopard, worth three shillings at the time, was in circulation for longer than historians have previously believed.
The coin was discovered alongside a rare Edward III noble, thought to date between 1351/52
But, after looking at the circumstances at the time, they realised that it coincided with the Black Death reaching England in 1348 – a ‘cataclysmic’ event which saw coinage issues drop in priority.
‘Usually the authorities would be keen to remove a withdrawn coin as soon as possible,’ Dr Geake said.
The coins were discovered by a metal detectorist in October 2019.
Is there an ‘underworld’ under the earth, according to a new archaeological find?
Excavations at the Yazlkaya Rock Temple in Turkey, which began over 200 years ago, have uncovered an ancient calendar and a map of the cosmos, both of which provide fascinating evidence.
The paintings in the strange stone carvings, which were probably made about 3,200 years ago, include details of an “underworld” sitting beneath the earth.
Watch an explanation from Luwian Studies University that researched the subject:
In the temple, discovered by a French archaeologist and historian Charles Texier as early as 1834, limestone carvings depicting more than 90 different figures, including animals, monsters and gods, have been found.
It took almost 200 years to decipher the paintings, but researchers have determined that the representations are of a cosmos that includes the Earth, the sky and the “underworld” that show the vitality of the creation myth.
On one wall there are drawings of the goddess of the sun and the goddess of the storm, where one can see that gods were placed in the painting higher than the other figures.
In contrast, on the eastern and western walls of the temple one can see the lesser people, the phases of the moon and the seasons, signifying “cycles and rebirth,” according to the researchers.
Relief with the twelve gods of the underworld at Yazılıkaya Rock Temple
According to estimates, scholars estimate that in those days there were about 17 deities, each with a line marking between the gods. Also, in one of the rooms of the temple was a painting dedicated to the “underworld,” with testimonies of the god of the sword.
“We believe the temple fully represents a symbolic image of the universe, including its static levels – earth, sky and underworld, as well as the cyclical processes of renewal – day and night or summer and winter,” one researcher explained in an interview in an article published in the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology.
Italy said Monday it had recovered from a Belgian collector hundreds of illegally gathered archaeological finds dating as far back as the sixth century BC, worth 11 million euros.
A police officer handles one of the nearly 800 archeological pieces ‘of exceptional rarity and inestimable value’ recovered from a Belgian collector.
The nearly 800 pieces “of exceptional rarity and inestimable value”, including stelae, amphorae and other works, came from clandestine excavations in Apulia in Italy’s southeastern tip, according to the Carabinieri police in charge of cultural heritage.
The investigation began in 2017 after a state archaeology lab in Apulia noticed in European art catalogues that decorative elements from a Daunian funerary stele belonging to a “wealthy Belgian collector” resembled those found within a fragment in a southern Italian museum.
That flat stone slab from Daunia—a historical region of Apulia—in the collection of the Belgian collector was missing a piece in its centre.
An official within the restoration lab noticed that the piece in the museum’s collection completed the design of a shield and a warrior on horseback that was missing on the stele.
“During the course of the search, a veritable ‘archaeological treasure’ was recovered, consisting of hundreds of Apulian figurative ceramic finds and other Daunian stelae, all illegally exported from Italy, which were then seized in Belgium,” read a statement from police.
Italy was able to repatriate the works after all the legal appeals of the collector were dismissed, police said.
Besides stelae, the collection includes vases painted with red figures, amphorae, black glazed ceramics, and numerous terracotta figurines. The pieces date back to between the sixth and third centuries BC.
Footprints of Last Dinosaurs To Walk on UK Soil 110 Million Years Ago Found in Kent
In the realm of palaeontology, there’s some exciting news! At least six different dinosaur species’ footprints have been unearthed – the very last dinosaurs to walk on UK land 110 million years ago!
Footprints Of Last Dinosaurs To Walk On UK Soil 110 Million Years Ago Found in Kent
These footprints have been discovered in Folkestone, a port town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England, reports PTI.
“This is the first time dinosaur footprints have been found in strata known as the ‘Folkestone Formation” and it’s quite an extraordinary discovery because these dinosaurs would have been the last to roam in this country before becoming extinct,’ said David Martill, Professor of Palaeobiology, at the University of Portsmouth.
“They were walking around close to where the White Cliffs of Dover are now – next time you’re on a ferry and you see those magnificent cliffs just imagine that,” he said.
Footprint fossils are formed by sediment filling the impression when a dinosaur’s foot pushes into ground
The study titled ‘The youngest dinosaur footprints from England and their palaeoenvironmental implications’ has been published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association” this week.
In fact, some of these unique footprints are also on display at the Folkestone Museum.
According to the study, these newly discovered dinosaur footprints can be referred to as theropod, ornithopod and possibly ankylosaur dinosaurs.
These dinosaur footprints were discovered by researchers in the cliffs and on the foreshore in Folkestone.
The town suffers through stormy conditions that affect the cliff and coastal waters. This is why it’s constantly revealing new fossils.
According to Philip Hadland, Collections and Engagement Curator, at the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery and the lead author on the paper, “Back in 2011, I came across unusual impressions in the rock formation at Folkestone. They seemed to be repeating and all I could think was they might be footprints”.
He further added, “this was at odds with what most geologists say about the rocks here, but I went looking for more footprints and as the tides revealed more by erosion, I found even better ones.
More work was needed to convince the scientific community of their validity, so I teamed up with experts at the University of Portsmouth to verify what I’d found.”
Plague Victims Identified in Individual Graves in England
In the mid-14th century, Europe was devastated by a major pandemic – the Black Death – which killed between 40 and 60 per cent of the population. Later waves of plague then continued to strike regularly over several centuries.
Plague kills so rapidly it leaves no visible traces on the skeleton, so archaeologists have previously been unable to identify individuals who died of plague unless they were buried in mass graves.
Whilst it has long been suspected that most plague victims received individual burial, this has been impossible to confirm until now.
By studying DNA from the teeth of individuals who died at this time, researchers from the After the Plague project, based at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, have identified the presence of Yersinia Pestis, the pathogen that causes plague.
These include people who received normal individual burials at a parish cemetery and friary in Cambridge and in the nearby village of Clopton.
Reconstruction of plague victim from All Saints, Cambridge
Lead author Craig Cessford of the University of Cambridge said, “These individual burials show that even during plague outbreaks individual people were being buried with considerable care and attention.
This is shown particularly at the friary where at least three such individuals were buried within the chapter house. Cambridge Archaeological Unit conducted excavations on this site on behalf of the University in 2017.”
“The individual at the parish of All Saints by the Castle in Cambridge was also carefully buried; this contrasts with the apocalyptic language used to describe the abandonment of this church in 1365 when it was reported that the church was partly ruinous and ‘the bones of dead bodies are exposed to beasts’.”
The study also shows that some plague victims in Cambridge did, indeed, receive mass burials.
Yersinia Pestis was identified in several parishioners from St Benet’s, who were buried together in a large trench in the churchyard excavated by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit on behalf of Corpus Christi College.
This part of the churchyard was soon afterwards transferred to Corpus Christi College, which was founded by the St Bene’t’s parish guild to commemorate the dead including the victims of the Black Death. For centuries, the members of the College would walk over the mass burial every day on the way to the parish church.
Cessford concluded, “Our work demonstrates that it is now possible to identify individuals who died from plague and received individual burials.
This greatly improves our understanding of the plague and shows that even in incredibly traumatic times during past pandemics people tried very hard to bury the deceased with as much care as possible.”
