Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Forensic Scientists Exhume 20th-Century Mass Grave in Spain

Forensic Scientists Exhume 20th-Century Mass Grave in Spain

CNN reports that forensic archaeologists and anthropologists from Cranfield University and the Complutense University of Madrid, and social anthropologists from Mapas de Memoria, are exhuming the remains of 26 people executed by local right-wing partisans during the rule of dictator General Francisco Franco at the end of the Spanish Civil War, between 1939 and 1940, and buried in a mass grave in a civil cemetery in central Spain.

Photographs of the victims are on display at the cemetery in Almagro.

Researchers from Cranfield are working with colleagues from the University Complutense of Madrid (UCM) and Mapas de Memoria (Maps of Memory) at the site in the Ciudad Real province.

Similar efforts around the country have recovered more than 7,000 victims of the Spanish Civil War since 2000, the press release said.
Experts are looking for 26 people in total, with carpenters, teachers and farmers among their number, excavation leader Nicholas Márquez-Grant, senior lecturer in forensic anthropology at Cranfield Forensic Institute, told CNN Tuesday.

The excavation will continue until the end of June.

Researchers know whose remains are in the cemetery because they are registered as being buried there, but their deaths are listed as natural, rather than executions, he added.

They have already recovered several bodies with gunshot wounds to the head, bits of clothing and other personal effects, such as buttons, a pencil, and a fountain pen added Márquez-Grant, who said the victims were executed by local right-wing partisans rather than Francoist soldiers.

Family members of the victims have been contacted and it is hoped that DNA analysis can match them and allow for a proper burial of the remains, although matching DNA is not a certainty, said Márquez-Grant.

Some family members have visited the cemetery, where photographs of the victims have been hung up by the researchers.

“It’s quite powerful,” added Márquez-Grant, who said two elderly sisters had visited the site. Their father was executed at the cemetery when they were small children.

Maria Benito Sanchez, director of the scientific team for the project from the School of Legal Medicine at UCM, added in the press release: “As forensic anthropology professionals we have the responsibility of putting our science to the service of the relatives who have been searching for their loved ones for a long time now.”

Forensic Scientists Exhume 20th-Century Mass Grave in Spain
The project involves cooperation between experts from various disciplines.

The team will carry out excavations at the site until the beginning of June, then anthropological and DNA analysis will be carried out until the end of the year to identify the remains.

Jorge Moreno, director of Maps of Memory, said 21 families of victims have been identified relevant to the excavation so far.

The Almagro cemetery site is the largest mass grave opened so far in the province, but there are other larger ones known to hold the remains of hundreds of people.

Franco emerged the winner from Spain’s 1936-39 civil war and ruled the country until his death in 1975. Thousands of executions were carried out by his nationalist regime during the civil war and in the following years.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has pledged to support efforts to exhume and identify victims of the civil war. Márquez-Grant said government officials have visited the site in Almagro.

“We’ve now been asked to open more mass graves in the region,” said Márquez-Grant, who hailed the success of a model which involves close cooperation between social anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, forensic archaeologists and geneticists.

Some people in Spain complain that the process has taken far too long and bemoan the fact that many relatives of civil war victims have died before they could recover their remains, but Márquez-Grant says that identifying the victims wouldn’t have been possible in the 1970s or 1980s. “It has come at the right time because we’ve got the science to do this,” he said.

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

Remains of ‘lost medieval village’ found next to the Scottish motorway

Remains of ‘lost medieval village’ found next to the Scottish motorway

The Scotsman reports that traces of four buildings dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries were uncovered during roadwork in southern Scotland at Netherton Cross near Bothwell, North Lanarkshire, next to the hard shoulder of the M74.

Possible Ancient Dagger Found in 17th-Century House in Scotland
An artist’s reconstruction of how the settlement at Netherton Cross would have looked. It disappeared in the 18th Century as the Duke of Hamilton embarked on turning part of his estate into a vast parkland.

Pottery – including sherds of cooking pots and bowls, a clay tobacco pipe, gaming pieces and evidence of metalworking were found on the site in a series of “remarkable” discoveries.

Under one building, an intriguing collection of artefacts was found in the foundations. Among the items were a spindle whorl for weaving, a whetstone for sharpening tools, two 17th Century coins – and an iron dagger.

Archaeologists at the site of the “remarkable” discovery of a lost village right next to the hard shoulder of the M74

It is thought the dagger, which could date from the Iron Age, may have been left as part of a ritual to protect the building and its inhabitants from ‘magical’ harm.

Dr Natasha Ferguson, of GUARD Archaeology, one of the co-authors of the report, said: “The special or talismanic qualities of this dagger as a protective object may have enhanced the ritual act to protect the household from worldly and magical harm.

“The deposition of these objects under the foundation level of one of the houses may have been intended to affirm this space as a place of safety for them and generations to come.”

Map showing the excavation site at Netherton Cross.

The practice of leaving special objects in medieval and post-medieval buildings is well documented and it was believed such a ritual would safeguard the building and its inhabitants.

The report found a “deliberate selection” of objects had been placed at the property.

It is believed the spindle whorl, gaming piece and the whetstone may have represented a personal connection to an individual, activity, or place that would make them special to the occupants.

The report added: “The dagger’s potential antiquity as a prehistoric object perhaps lent it a quality of otherness. Reuse of prehistoric objects as depositions in medieval settings has been recorded in excavations of medieval churches in England, and flint arrowheads were traditionally identified as ‘elf-bolts’ and long recognised for their malevolent magical properties.”

Dr Gemma Cruickshanks, of National Museums Scotland, said it appeared the dagger was covered in a sheath at the time it was buried.

She added: “It was probably intact and still useable at that time. The form of this dagger is indistinguishable from Iron Age examples, indicating this simple dagger form had a very long history.”

Evidence of iron smelting, bloom refining and probable blacksmithing was also recovered, along with a selection of nails.

The settlement was close to the 10th Century Netherton Cross, which now stands in Hamilton Old Parish Church. Netherton Cross is around 1km away from Bothwell Bridge, the scene of the 1679 battle which ended the Covenanter rebellion in Scotland.

“It is very possible the community was affected by the conflict, either suffering damage to property or as a witness to the route of the Covenanter forces,” the report said.

Netherton vanished in the 18th Century given improvements to the estate by the Duke of Hamilton, with a well-ordered and symmetrical parkland built in its place.

The motorway then subsumed most of the village with the four stone structures the last traces of the settlement.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Oldest Ever Fly With Stomach Full Of Food Found After 47 Million Years

Oldest Ever Fly With Stomach Full Of Food Found After 47 Million Years

When scientists investigated a 47-million-year-old fossilized fly found at the Messel Pit fossil site in Germany, they noticed it looked a bit chonky. So they took a closer look at its “bulging abdomen” and discovered it was stuffed with pollen from different plants.

Oldest Ever Fly With Stomach Full Of Food Found After 47 Million Years
This ancient fossilized fly had a belly full of pollen.

“The rich pollen content we discovered in the fly’s stomach suggests that flies were already feeding and transporting pollen 47 million years ago and shows it played an important role in the pollen dispersal of several plant taxa,” said paleobotanist Fridgeir Grimsson in a University of Vienna statement Thursday.

Grimsson is a co-author of a paper on the fly published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday. The researcher suggested that flies of the time period may have outshined bees as pollinators.

This series of images highlights the fossilized fly’s crop where the pollen was found. The fly on the far right shows this same part of the body in a modern-day fly.

The team was able to extract and study the fossil pollen grains and traced them mostly to water willow and virgin ivy plants. Electron microscope images helped to identify the origin of the pollen.

The plant types suggest the fly was feeding around an area of shallow water.

The Messel Pit in Germany is listed on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites as “the richest site in the world for understanding the living environment of the Eocene, between 57 million and 36 million years ago.”

The area was once home to an oil shale mine, but now it’s the subject of scientific study for the many well-preserved fossils of mammals and other animals.

Flies may be considered a modern-day nuisance, but this fossilized fly and its big appetite show they can also be useful emissaries from the deep past.

EUROPE, ROMANIA, WORLD

European Woman’s 35,000-Year-Old Genome Sequenced

European Woman’s 35,000-Year-Old Genome Sequenced

According to a statement released by Uppsala University, a team of researchers led by Mattias Jakobsson has sequenced the genome of a woman whose 35,000-year-old skull was discovered in southern Romania’s Peștera Muierri cave system in the 1950s.

For the first time, researchers have successfully sequenced the entire genome from the skull of Peştera Muierii 1, a woman who lived in today’s Romania 35,000 years ago.

Her high genetic diversity shows that the out of Africa migration was not the great bottleneck in human development but rather this occurred during and after the most recent Ice Age.

“She is a bit more like modern-day Europeans than the individuals in Europe 5,000 years earlier, but the difference is much less than we had thought.

We can see that she is not a direct ancestor of modern Europeans, but she is a predecessor of the hunter-gathers that lived in Europe until the end of the last Ice Age,” says Mattias Jakobsson, professor at the Department of Organismal Biology at Uppsala University and the head of the study.

Very few complete genomes older than 30,000 years have been sequenced. Now that the research team can read the entire genome from Peştera Muierii 1, they can see similarities with modern humans in Europe while also seeing that she is not a direct ancestor.

In previous studies, other researchers observed that the shape of her cranium has similarities with both modern humans and Neanderthals.

For this reason, they assumed that she had a greater fraction of Neanderthal ancestry than other contemporaries, making her stand out from the norm.

But the genetic analysis in the current study shows that she has the same low level of Neanderthal DNA as most other individuals living in her time. Compared with the remains of some individuals who lived 5,000 years earlier, such as Peştera Oase 1, she had only half as much Neanderthal ancestry.

The spread of modern humans out of Africa about 80,000 years ago is an important period in human history and is often described as a genetic bottleneck. Populations moved out of Africa and into Asia and Europe.

The effects of these migrations can be seen even today. Genetic diversity is lower in populations outside of Africa than in African. That Peştera Muierii 1 has high genetic diversity implies that the greatest loss of genetic diversity occurred during the last Ice Age (which ended about 10,000 years ago) instead of during the out of Africa migration.

“This is exciting since it teaches us more about the early population history of Europe. Peştera Muierii 1 has much more genetic diversity than expected for Europe at this time.

This shows that genetic variation outside of Africa was considerable until the last Ice Age and that the Ice Age caused the decrease in diversity in humans outside of Africa.”

The researchers were also able to follow the genetic variation in Europe over the last 35,000 years and see a clear decrease in variations during the last Ice Age.

The reduced genetic diversity has previously been linked to pathogenic variants in genomes being more common among populations outside of Africa, but this is in dispute.

“Access to advanced medical genomics has allowed us to study these ancient remains and even be able to look for genetic diseases. To our surprise, we did not find any differences during the last 35,000 years, even though some individuals alive during the Ice Age had low genetic diversity.

Now we have accessed everything possible from these remains. Peştera Muierii 1 is important from a cultural history perspective and will certainly remain interesting for researchers within other areas, but from a genetic perspective, all the data is now available.”

Fact Peştera Muierii

Peştera Muierii 1 is the name given to one of the three individuals whose remains were found in a cave of the same name. Peştera Muierii (roughly translates to women’s cave) is the name of a cave system in Baia de Fier in southern Romania. It is best known for the remains of cave bears and for the 1950s discovery of skulls and other skeletal parts from three females that lived about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

Viking Burials Surveyed on Danish Island

Viking Burials Surveyed on Danish Island

According to a statement released by Flinders University, a team of researchers from Flinders University and Wessex Archaeology surveyed Kalvestene, a Viking burial site on the Danish island of Hjarnø, and compared their findings with a map made in the seventeenth century by the antiquarian Ole Worm.

As part of the first survey since the National Museum of Denmark discovered and restored 10 tombs on a small island off the eastern coast almost a century ago.

The burial site is made up of monuments which, according to legend, commemorate a king named Hiarni who was crowned after writing a beautiful poem on the death of the old king and who was defeated in battle on the island.

The research, published today in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology (UICA), shows the design of the famous Kalvestene grave field is unusual when compared to other Danish sites of the same period which typically incorporate circle, oval or triangle stone settings in addition to the ship shaped settings. Instead, there are strong parallels with Southern Swedish sites, raising questions about links between the two regions.

Ole Worm’s 1650 drawings showed more than 20 ship settings at the location, and while data collected by the researchers suggests that there were probably never as many ship settings as that, it is possible that they have identified two new ship settings.

“Our survey identified two new raised areas that could in fact be ship settings that align with Worm’s drawings from 1650. One appears to be a typical ship setting and the second remains ambiguous but it’s impossible to know without excavation and further survey,” says lead author Dr Erin Sebo at Flinders University.

The paper, The Kalvestene: a re-evaluation of the ship settings on the Danish Island of Hjarnø, was co-authored by archaeologists from Flinders University in Australia including Dr Erin Sebo, Chelsea Wiseman, Dr John McCarthy, Dr Katarina Jerbić and Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin with geophysicist Paul Baggaley from Wessex Archaeology.

“It seems surprising that such a small grave field would be famous and yet the existence of the site was well known in medieval Scandinavia. The island was famous probably because ships would have to sail past to reach a trading centre at Horsens and artefacts from a hoard excavated by Dr Mads Ravn and his team from the Vejle Museum in 2017 suggest the island was visited by foreign traders.”

Viking Burials Surveyed on Danish Island

The ship settings are today interpreted as a religious symbol of the Vikings connection to Norse mythology and the god Njord. His symbol, a ship or Skidbladnir controlled wind and weather so the Vikings paid tribute to him for good sailing conditions.

The researchers analysed medieval records, aerial photogrammetric and LiDAR data collected by the Moesgaard Museum to reveal why Hjarnø is unique in terms of its construction after being adapted to the specific conditions of the small island community.

“An archaeological survey was undertaken in 2018 to record the features of the ship settings and their position in the coastal landscape at Hjarnø,” says Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin who is the Maritime Archaeology Program Coordinator at Flinders University’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

“Each stone was measured and drawn alongside data we acquired through low altitude photography to provide the landscape, in conjunction with sonar surveying in waters near the Viking site, to check for culturally significant material but no indications of this were located during the survey.”

“While this study is unable to offer a conclusive understanding of the origins of the Kalvestene, it demonstrates the value of combining source criticism and analysis with archaeological data to contribute towards greater understanding about the site.”

EUROPE, NETHERLANDS, WORLD

6,000-year-old baby found cradled in mother’s arm

6,000-year-old baby found cradled in mother’s arm

A 6,000-year-old baby with its teeth still intact and resting in the arms of a woman, believed to be its mother, has been found in a grave in the Netherlands.

The grave dates back to the Stone Age and is thought to be around 6,000 years old

Archaeologists said it was the oldest baby grave ever found in the Netherlands. The grave, uncovered at a site in Nieuwegein in the province of Utrecht, dates back to the Stone Age.

The discovery only came to light after four exhumed skeletons were examined by archaeological consultancy RAAP in Leiden.

Scientists noticed that the right arm of the 30-year-old woman’s skeleton was bent at a strange angle. It was crooked instead of straight – the usual posture of other skeletons at the site.

Closer inspection showed bone fragments of an infant by her arm and revealed that the woman was buried cradling a baby.

“The posture of the woman’s body did not conform to what we had found so far, that is, bodies whose limbs are placed parallel to the body. We then made the moving discovery that she was in fact cradling a little baby,” project leader Helle Molthof told Dutch broadcaster NOS.

6,000-year-old baby found cradled in mother’s arm
Left: The baby was found tucked under its mother’s arm in a grave in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands

The bone fragments sent for analysis included a tiny jaw holding several baby teeth. From this, scientists concluded that the infant had died when it was just a couple of months old.

“It really makes an impression when you find little baby teeth buried in clay for 6,000 years and see how similar they are to all those milk teeth that are kept in matchboxes by parents everywhere,” Molthof said.

DNA tests will reveal whether the woman was the infant’s mother as well as the sex of the baby.

Archaeologists hope that the grave will inform them about the burial ceremonies of the hunter-gatherer communities who lived along the banks of the River Vecht.

“We know how they lived, what sort of food they ate, what their houses were like but we don’t know very much yet about how they buried their dead and what happened to the children,” Molthof said.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Turkish archaeologists find 2,400-year-old monument at Haydarpaşa

Turkish archaeologists find 2,400-year-old monument at Haydarpaşa

Hurriyet Daily News reports that a semicircular structure dated to the third century B.C. has been uncovered at the site of the Haydarpașa train station in Istanbul, which is located on the Asian side of the Bosporus. 

Apse Dated to Third Century B.C. Uncovered in Istanbul

The structure, discovered at the station’s waiting platforms, covers a large area and is apsidal in form, a feature common in ancient churches.

These remains give significant hints about Khalkedon, the ancient ‘Land of the Blind’ from some 2,500 years ago.

While the site’s architecture does not lend any clues to its function, archaeologists believe it was considered sacred.

However, they also estimate that the building is the oldest architectural structure unearthed in these excavations.

Speaking to Demirören News Agency, Mehmet Ali Polat, Chief archaeologist of the Haydarpaşa excavation, gave information about the field works and finds.

Remains were found in an area of 350,000 square meters, including the area surrounding the station, said Polat, adding that small finds, pots, coins dating from around 6 B.C. to the modern-day were found, all from various eras.

“This is the northwestern port of the ancient city of Khalkedon, a large structure that could be a warehouse. On the other side of the road, we see a group of buildings that could be a small summer palace,” Polat said.

The Haydarpaşa Train Station was shut down for restorations, in which ancient artefacts were unearthed, and since then, Haydarpaşa has been an excavation site.

The digs, started in 2018 by Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Ministry and Istanbul Archeological Museums, have been done with the utmost care for the last three years.

Digs revealing historical structures shed light on the deep roots of Anatolia and Istanbul, a cradle of civilizations.