Category Archives: EUROPE

Mysteries of the 2,500-year-old butter found at the bottom of a loch

Mysteries of the 2,500-year-old butter found at the bottom of a loch

In Perth and Kinross, butter dated back 2,500 years was discovered at the bottom of a loch. Within a wooden butter bowl, manufactured by an Iron Age culture, traces of milk content were found preserved.

Archaeologists at the bottom of Loch Tay uncovered the wooden dish, where at least 17 crannogs, or Iron Age wooden houses, once stood.

Built from alder with a lifespan of around 20 years, the structures simply collapsed into the loch once they had served their purpose, taking the objects inside with them.

The replica crannog on Loch Tay, where the butter was found

The crannogs were considered high-status sites which offered good security as well as easy access to trading routes along the Tay and into the North Sea.

Rich Hiden, the archaeologist at the Scottish Crannog Centre, said conditions at the bottom of the loch had offered the perfect environment to preserve the butter and the dish.

He said: “Because of the fantastic anaerobic conditions, where there is very light, oxygen or bacteria to break down anything organic, you get this type of sealed environment.

“When they started excavating, they pulled out this square wooden dish, well around three-quarters of a square wooden dish, which had these really nice chisel marks on the sides as well as this grey stuff.”

Analysis on the matter found it was dairy material, with experts believing it likely originated from a cow. Holes in the bottom of the wooden dish suggest it was used for the buttering process.

The butter then may have been turned into cheese by adding rennet, which naturally forms in a number of plants, including nettles.

Mr Hiden added: “This dish is so valuable in many ways.

“To be honest, we would expect people of this time to be eating dairy.

The 2,500-year-old butter dish and the remains of the butter.

“In the early Iron Age, they had mastered the technology of smelting iron ore into to’s so mastering the technology of dairy we would expect.

“So while it may not surprise us that they are eating dairy, what is so important about this butter dish is that it helps us to identify what life was like in the crannogs and the skills and the tools that they had.

“To me, that is archaeology at its finest. It is using the object itself to unravel the story.

“The best thing about this butter dish is that it is so personal and offers us such a complete snapshot of what was happening here.

“It is not just a piece of wood. You look at it and you start to extrapolate so much.

“If you start to pull one thread, you look at the tool marks and you see they were using very fine chisels to make this kind of object.

“They were probably making their own so that gives another aspect as to how life was here.”

It is believed that 20 people and animals lived in a crannog at any one time. Many trees were used to fashion the homes, with hazel woven into panels to make walls and partitions.

Medieval Settlement Uncovered in Bulgaria

Medieval Settlement Uncovered in Bulgaria

Archaeology in Bulgaria reports that an unidentified medieval settlement has been discovered in northwestern Bulgaria by a team of researchers, led by Elena Vasileva of Bulgaria’s National Archaeological Institute with Museum, who were investigating the path of a road construction project.

Near the Danube city of Vidin in Northwest Bulgaria, a previously unknown settlement from the Second Bulgarian Empire in the High Middle Ages and a layer from an early Bronze Age settlement from the 3rd millennium BC were uncovered.

The ruins previously unknown medieval settlement from the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396/1422) and structures from an Early Bronze Age settlement have been found near the town of Tarnyane, 12 kilometres away from Vidin, on the banks of the Voynishka River, which forms two waterfalls before flowing into the Danube.

The discoveries have been during rescue excavations for the construction of the Vidin – Ruzhintsi – Montana road (E79 road) in Northwest Bulgaria, bTV reports citing lead archaeologist Assist. Prof. Elena Vasileva from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology in Sofia.

Vasileva, who points that construction project often provides invaluable opportunities to study otherwise neglected or unknown archaeological monuments, has been in charge of archaeological site No. 7 out of a total of eight archaeological sites slated for rescue excavations along the route of the road in question. The digs were carried out from September until November 2020.

The previously unknown medieval settlement near Vidin and Tarnyane existed in the 11th – 14th century on an area of a total of 54 decares (nearly 14 acres) on both banks of the Voynishka River.

The previously unknown medieval settlement has been discovered during the construction of a local road.
The previously unknown medieval settlement was inhabited at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, between the 11th and the 14th century.
The previously unknown medieval settlement was inhabited at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, between the 11th and the 14th century.
The restoration of a Bronze Age vessel found at the site by restorer Ekaterina Ilieva from the Vidin Regional Museum of History.

The archaeological team has excavated there a total of 47 structures from the 11th – 14th century AD.

These include 23 pits with an average depth of 2.5 meters; a moat which is 1 meter deep and 5 meters wide; eight kilns, six dwellings, including three dugouts, and one human grave.

According to the lead archaeologist, the newly discovered site is one of the few open-type settlements, i.e. with no fortifications, from the period of the Second Bulgarian Empire to have ever been researched in today’s Bulgaria.

“It contains all elements of a settlement, namely, dwellings, pits, production kilns, and a necropolis,” Vasileva says.

“Of structures, the most interesting ones are some of the pits that we’ve explored, which have a large diameter and depth, and contain animals remains – of houses and less so of smaller animals – sheep, goats, and poultry.

This practice is typical of such structures from earlier periods, i.e. the time of the First Bulgarian Empire (632/680 – 1018) but not of the later periods,” she explains.

During the medieval settlement’s excavations, the archaeological team has found a total of 350 artefacts, including coins, arrow tips, tools such as knives, chisels, awls, scrapers, loom weights, parts of copper vessels, pottery vessels such as pots and jugs, adornments such as rings, metal and glass bracelets, parts from earrings, buckles, crosses, and medallions.

Towards the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century, today’s Northwest Bulgaria and part of Eastern Serbia were part of the Vidin Tsardom, a rump state of the Second Bulgarian Empire, which was the last part of Bulgaria to be conquered by the invading Ottoman Turks.

A map of the Second Bulgarian Empire during its height in the first half of the 13th century.
A map of the Second Bulgarian Empire during its height in the first half of the 13th century. The city of Vidin is noted on the map.
A map showing the decline and breakup of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the second half of the 14th century, with some of the rump states, including the Vidin Tsardom.

In addition to the medieval settlement from the Second Bulgarian Empire in the High Middle Ages, the archaeological site near Tarnyane on the Voynishka River also yielded a layer from the Early Bronze Age, from the so-called Magura – Cotofeni Culture, from the 3rd millennium BC. From it, the researchers have excavated one dwelling and one grave.

“The drilling surveying shows that in the 3rd millennium BC the convenient tall bank of the Voynishka River had a settlement, and later, in the 2nd millennium BC, to the south of it there was a necropolis,” Vasileva is quoted as saying.

Both the Early Bronze Age layer and the medieval settlement from the High Middle Ages will be excavated further in 2021.

The rescue excavations in 2020 have included archaeologists and archaeology students from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology in Sofia, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Veliko Tarnovo University “St. Cyril and St. Methodius”, and experts from the National Institute of Morphology, Pathology, and Anthropology, and the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia.

Women’s mass grave sheds light on female victims of the Spanish Civil War

Women’s mass grave sheds light on female victims of the Spanish Civil War

According to a Reuters report, a mass grave holding the remains of ten women from the village of Uncastillo has been uncovered in northeastern Spain. The women were taken from their homes and executed by a fascist firing squad on August 31, 1936, during the first year of the Spanish Civil War.

The mass grave of ten women executed by a fascist firing squad in the early days of the Spanish Civil War has been unearthed by archaeologists in northeastern Spain, bringing attention to the often ignored plight of women in the conflict.

Well, some of their spines are traced by preserved white buttons, the only traces of the clothes they wear the day they were executed on Aug. 31, 1936, after being abducted from their homes the night before in the village of Uncastillo.

The remains of a body with a bullet hole on it is seen during the exhumation of a mass grave with ten women from the town of Uncastillo that were shot in 1936 by the forces of former dictator Francisco Franco, in the cemetery of Farasdues, Spain, December 9, 2020.

Their bodies were dumped in a narrow pit in the local cemetery in neighbouring Farasdues, in the region of Aragon.

Mari Carmen Rios’ grandmother Inocencia Aznares was among them.

A tent covers the exhumation of two mass graves, including one with ten women from the town of Uncastillo that were shot in 1936 by the forces of former dictator Francisco Franco, in the cemetery of Farasdues, Spain, December 9, 2020.

“Why did they kill her?” Because they couldn’t find my uncle? Because she could read and write? Because she voted for the republic? … I don’t know … Nothing they did makes sense,” Rios said.

More than 500,000 people were killed during the 1936-1939 war. Historical foundations estimate over 100,000 bodies remain missing, many in unmarked mass graves.

The leftist coalition government approved a bill in September to finance exhumations from mass graves as part of efforts to “restore democratic memory”.

Academic research on the conflict, though extensive, has been overwhelmingly focused on the experience of men, said Cristina Sanchez, who investigates civil-war violence against women at Zaragoza University.

“Where are all the women? … Now we are finding that they were present as victims of violence and as perpetrators.”

Some were persecuted for their political leanings or activism but many more were killed as substitute victims for their male relatives, she said. Methods of execution were equally savage for both sexes.

“We have deaths by drowning, deaths by hanging, and the majority were killed by firing squad.”

Excavations in Farasdues began in November but the massacre had remained lodged in the area’s collective memory for decades, said archaeologist Javier Ruiz.

The remains of bodies are seen during the exhumation of a mass grave with ten women from the town of Uncastillo that were shot in 1936 by the forces of former dictator Francisco Franco, in the cemetery of Farasdues, Spain, December 9, 2020.

“Carrying off 10 women in one go didn’t happen in many places, at least not in Aragon … In Uncastillo these 10 women have never been forgotten.”

Next to their grave, archaeologists uncovered another site with the bodies of at least seven men, who are yet to be identified.

For Rios, the excavation triggered powerful feelings of outrage, which later gave way to a sense of closure: “When you say ‘We’ve found her, she’s there, we’re going to bury her with grandpa,’ honestly it makes me very happy.”

7.2 million-year-old Pre-human fossil suggests mankind arose in Europe, not Africa

7.2 million-year-old Pre-human fossil suggests mankind arose in Europe, not Africa

The human lineage separated from that of apes about 7 million years ago in Africa, according to the widely agreed narrative of human evolution. Hominins (early humans) are thought to have lived in Africa until they first spread to Asia and then to Europe around 2 million years ago.

A mix of hominid (genus Homo) depictions; (from right to left) H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus; H. antecessor – male, female, H. heidelbergensis; H. neanderthalensis – girl, male, H. sapiens.

Today, the narrative is being updated by a team of scientists from the University of Tubingen in Germany and the University of Toronto in Canada. They claim that the oldest human ancestor originated in Europe, not Africa, about 7.2 million years ago, about 200,000 years older than previously believed, in two parallel research published in the journal PLOS One.

The researchers base their bold hypothesis largely on the analysis of two fossils: a mandible (lower jaw) found in Greece in 1944 and an upper premolar tooth found in Bulgaria in 2009.

7.2 million-year-old Pre-human fossil suggests mankind arose in Europe, not Africa

The fossils belonged to an ape-like creature known as Graecopithecus freybergi (“El Graeco,” for short), which roamed the Mediterranean region between 7.18 and 7.25 million years ago.

Though the fossilized jawbone from Greece has been around a while, most scientists had dismissed it as a source of good information due to its poor condition. “It’s not the best specimen in the world,” David Begun of the University of Toronto, who co-authored the new research, told HISTORY.

“It has a lot of damage to the surface of the jawbone itself and a lot of damage to the teeth, so they’re really hard to see, they’re difficult to measure, and it’s hard to say what they look like.” But when Begun’s colleague, Madelaine Böhme, had the idea of using computer tomography, or CT-scanning, to look inside the mandible, things got more interesting.

A 7.24 million-year-old upper premolar of Graecopithecus from Azmaka, Bulgaria.
Root morphology in P4 of cf. Graecopithecus sp. and O. macedoniensis.

“We saw that the roots of the teeth embedded in the mandible were perfectly preserved…and they gave us a lot of new information that we never had about this specimen,” Begun said. “The canine root is quite short and slender and indicates that the canine was small. That’s really important, because in apes—and male apes in particular—the canine is quite large.” This holds true for most male primates, Begun explained, but not all. “This root shows that the canine was already reduced, which is a characteristic that you only see in humans and our fossil relatives.”

In addition, analysis of the two fossils showed that some of the roots of the bicuspid teeth of Graecopithecus—what we call the premolars—had simplified, or fused to form fewer roots. “That is again something that you only see in humans and our fossil relatives. It is extremely rare to find it in living apes, and you don’t see it in any fossil apes from the same time period,” Begun noted.

In the second, complementary study based on sediment in Greece and Bulgaria from that time, Begun and his colleagues found that the climate during the period El Graeco lived there would have been similar to the dry savannahs known to have encouraged the shift to bipedalism that marked early hominin evolution. In fact, it would have been highly similar to the climate of eastern Africa.

Head sketch is by Assen Ignatov of the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History.

If Graecopithecus is in fact a hominin, it would slightly predate the earliest known human ancestor found in Africa, Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Discovered at a site in Chad, Sahelanthropus is believed to be between 6 and 7 million years old.

Begun emphasized that the new hypothesis doesn’t affect the later story of modern humans and their emergence from Africa. “That story is completely intact,” he told HISTORY. “This is about what happened millions and millions of years before that when the human lineage in its entirety arose.”

Some other experts in human evolution are skeptical of Graecopithecus’ newly anointed status as the earliest known hominin. In particular, they question the claim that the jawbone and tooth shape alone establish its pre-human status.

“We just don’t have enough evidence to come to that conclusion,” Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who was not involved with the new study, told HISTORY. “It’s perfectly possible that one or more fossil apes have roots like that.”

As he pointed out, it’s not uncommon for primates to evolve the same morphological traits or features independently from each other. “If you asked me, how much would I be prepared to bet that this is a hominin,” Wood continued, “you’d have to persuade me to put more than a quarter on [it].”

Begun acknowledges the possibility that El Graeco’s tooth shape and size may have occurred independently from early humans and admitted he would like to have more and better-preserved fossil evidence supporting the new hypothesis. Still, he stands behind his and his colleague’s conclusions about Graecopithecus, based on the fossil evidence they do have—and he believes there is likely more out there.

“I think there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll find new sites in the next few years. We might get lucky, and find some more, better-preserved teeth, and especially limb bones, that could help to answer this question more definitively.”

Late Roman Burial Analyzed in London

Archaeologists try to identify silk and gold-clad woman buried in London’s Spitalfields 1,600 years ago

The Independent reports that researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology have analyzed the 1,600-year-old burial of a woman discovered in a lead coffin placed inside a stone sarcophagus in northern London. Known as the “Spitalfields Lady,” her head had been placed on a pillow stuffed with bay leaves.

Archaeologists have succeeded in piecing together after 21 years of investigation, the remarkable tale of an ultra-high-status Roman aristocrat buried more than 16 centuries ago in London. The extraordinary facts, released today, implies that she might well have been a member of the senatorial elite that presided over Roman Britain’s final years.

‘It is possible that she was the wife of one of the last Roman kings of Britain,’ said Dr Roger Tomlin, a leading scholar of Roman Britain and author of Britannia Romana, a major study of its people and social history.

Her cemetery, on the northern outskirts of the city at Spitalfields, is arguably the largest late Roman grave ever found in Britain. Scientific analysis has shown that she was buried wearing an exquisite garment made of 97 per cent pure gold thread and Chinese-originating silk.

What’s more, her funerary apparel featured at least one band of woollen textile, which appears to have been dyed purple.  Purple was the colour normally associated with imperial or aristocratic status – and experts believe that the dye used to adorn her garment was probably the most expensive in the whole of the ancient world, most likely coming from an eastern Mediterranean species of sea snail, used to produce the dye for imperial and senatorial togas.

Additionally, isotopic research on her teeth shows that she was brought up in Rome itself. Buried in a pure lead coffin inside a large stone sarcophagus, she made her journey to the next world equipped with the very finest of grave goods.

They included at least two continental-made glass perfume vessels: a 41cm tall, 2.5 to 5.5cm diameter biconical container made of very thin 1mm thick colourless glass – and a roughly 25cm tall, 3cm diameter beautifully patterned cylindrical colourless glass vessel, the like of which has never been found before anywhere in the territories covered by the Roman Empire.

Conservators inspecting the skeleton of the Spitalfields Roman woman inside the lead coffin

Both vessels probably held perfumed oils – and the latter one was equipped with a unique 24cm long dipstick made of the semiprecious stone, jet (quarried in what is now the Whitby area of Yorkshire).

The investigation also revealed that, in her grave, her head rested on a pillow filled with bay leaves, almost certainly imported from the Mediterranean area. Scientific tests also showed that pine and pistachio tree resin had been used to freshen the air in her coffin.

“Her presence in the Spitalfields cemetery shows that, even towards the end of Roman Britain, London was fully integrated into high status economic and political networks,” said Michael Marshall, a specialist in Roman archaeology at Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), the organisation which investigated the Spitalfields discovery.

“Her grave goods demonstrate the ways in which a highly mobile social elite was capable of displaying their power and sophistication,” he said.

The 215-page full-colour report on the decades-long investigation into the cemetery, and the skeletons and grave goods found in it, is being published today by MOLA. However, one of the big remaining enigmas is the identity of the ultra-high status Spitalfields lady herself. There is no inscription on the sarcophagus or associated with the grave – and it’s likely that her gravestone was looted many centuries later to help construct medieval London or even to build the medieval metropolis’ city walls.

But the archaeological evidence may be sufficient to allow historians to explore a number of options as to who she was. The ultra-high status nature of her funerary clothing, the probable purple dye, her stone sarcophagus, her grave goods and the fact that she was brought up in Rome, all suggest that her family was probably of senatorial or equestrian rank.

Her grave is by far the highest status ever found in Roman Londinium. In late Roman London, there would have been only a very limited number of individuals of that sort of background.

It is therefore conceivable that she was either the wife of a governor of Flavia Caesariensis (the British province covering what is now the English Midlands, East Anglia, and southern England, north of the Thames) or, possibly, that she was the wife of one of the overall bosses of late Roman Britain (a so-called vicarious Britanniarum – Britain’s imperial “viceroy”).

The style of her grave goods and other evidence reveals that she almost certainly died in the four or five decades after around AD360. Of the dozen relevant vicarii, who ruled Britain in that period, the names of only four of them have survived. What’s more, hardly any names of the wives of mid-to-late fourth-century Roman rulers in Britain are known.

One, a lady called Namia Pudentilla, illustrates the sort of women Britain’s Roman governors and vicarii married. Namia”s husband, Flavius Sanctus, married a noblewoman from a senatorial family. He was a governor in Britain in the mid-fourth century. Archaeologists and historians are now able to piece together the life story of the Spitalfields lady.

She was probably born (and certainly brought up in) Rome in the mid-fourth century. When she was four or five years old, she suffered a brief (but potentially serious) illness which temporarily stopped her tooth enamel growing (a fact that has been spotted by the archaeological investigators).

It’s likely that her potentially very high-ranking fiance married her when she was in her mid-to-late teens and he would probably have been up to twice her age. She then appears to have accompanied him to London (probably because he had been appointed to a high government position there – potentially as a governor or as Britain’s vicarius).

However, probably within two or three years of arriving in the Romano-British capital, she died – most likely in childbirth (or from some then common disease like tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera or scarlet fever).

It’s possible that her death took place in the final quarter of the fourth century or conceivably even in the first decade of the fifth. That was a pivotal period in the history of Britain, as it represents the run-up to the end of Roman rule in Britain in AD410. The Roman government collapsed in Britain several generations before similar collapses occurred in continental western Europe and that chronological difference, in turn, helped to shape subsequent British and English history in ways that were very different to those that operated on the continent.

Among the governors and other political players who could conceivably have been the Spitalfields lady’s husband are:

Alypius of Antioch, vicarius of Britain from around 361 to 363. He was involved in a temporary re-paganisation of the Empire

Civilis, vicarius of Britain in around 369, who temporarily cleared Britain of barbarian invaders

Chrysanthus a vicarius of Britain, who had been a Roman governor in Italy before being posted to London

Victorinus, the vicarius of Britain who may well have been the very last conventionally appointed Roman ruler of Britain.

Another possible candidate for being the Spitalfields lady’s husband could conceivably be one of the four individuals in Britain who declared themselves Emperor during the chaotic years between AD383 and 407.

An Ancient Mask With An “Alien Face” Dug Up In Bulgaria

An Ancient Mask With An “Alien Face” Dug Up In Bulgaria

This year’s archaeological season at the oldest salt mining center in Europe, which dates back to the 5 – 4th  millennium BC and became the first prehistoric town on the continent, is now over.

The site is located near the present town of Provadia (northeastern Bulgaria) and has been studied for years. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, archaeologists’ work began later this summer, but the season was extremely successful.

The latest find by Prof. Vasil Nikolov and his team is a mass grave. Days ago, while exploring the bottom of an evaporation pool, archaeologists came across 6 skulls, including children’s.

It is not known whether the people buried there were killed in some of the attacks against the fortress city, or whether it was an internal conflict over salt, which was used as currency at the time.

Among the most interesting finds at Provadia-Saltworks this summer is a unique late Chalcolithic artifact. The ancient ceramic object has a triangular shape and shows an anthropomorphic image of a human face. It looks a lot like a mask.

The mouthless prehistoric clay mask or figurine from the 5th millennium BC found in the Salt Pit prehistoric settlement near Provadiya in Northeast Bulgaria has been compared to “an alien in a spacesuit” in media reports.

In its upper part, one can see something similar to stylized ears. In addition, the object has two holes, which most likely served for hanging.

The eyes of the mask are elliptical, eyebrows are painted and a nose can be seen.

View of the Provadiya Settlement Mound

But the strangest thing is that the human-like image has no mouth, and many say it looks like an alien in a spacesuit. It is assumed that the object was a symbol of high status in the social hierarchy.

The focus of the archaeological works this summer was the fortification systems of the Saltworks, as well as its settlement part, including two houses, one of which was a two-storey building, and its occupants used 400 square meters of space.

Pottery fragments and stone tools found at the Provadiya Settlement Mound

The origin of the Saltworks is linked to the largest and only deposit of rock salt in this part of the Balkan Peninsula. Thanks to salt, the inhabitants of the ancient town accumulated innumerable riches.

Prof. Vasil Nikolov connects the salt deposit near today’s Provadia with another unique find in the area – the Varna Chalcolithic Necropolis, where the oldest processed gold in the world was discovered, dating back to the same era as the Saltworks.

Child’s bones buried 40,000 years ago solve the puzzle of Neanderthal long-standing mystery

Child’s bones buried 40,000 years ago solve the puzzle of Neanderthal long-standing mystery

If it was a boy or a girl, we don’t know. But this ancient child, a Neanderthal, only made it to about two years of age. This brief life, lived about 41,000 years ago, was unearthed at La Ferrassie, a prominent archaeological site in southwestern France.

The remains of several Neanderthals have been found there, including the most recent discovery, the child, known only as La Ferrassie 8.

When the ancient remains were first found – most at various stages of the early 20th century – archaeologists had assumed the skeletons represented intentional burials, with Neanderthals laying their departed kin to rest under the earth.

Examining material from the 1970s excavations.

Nonetheless, in contemporary archaeology, doubts now swirl around the question of whether Neanderthals did indeed bury their dead like that, or whether this particular aspect of funerary rites is a uniquely Homo sapien custom.

In part, the asking of these questions links back to the archaeological techniques and record-keeping used in the past, as the antiquated methods used by archaeologists and anthropologists from the early 20th century (and even earlier) mean we can’t always be entirely confident in their findings.

With such a mystery on their mind, a team led by researchers from Le Centre national de la recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Muséum national d’histoire Naturelle in France has now conducted a thorough re-evaluation of La Ferrassie 8’s ancient remains, which have now been kept in the museum for almost 50 years after being discovered between 1970 and 1973.

“The discovery and context of this skeleton have generally been regarded as poorly documented, but in fact, this deficiency stems from a lack of the necessary processing of the information and materials from La Ferrassie related to the penultimate excavation phase (1968–1973),” the researchers write in their new paper.

“Indeed, a huge amount of data remained unassessed prior to our current study.”

In the new work, the researchers reviewed the notebooks and field diaries used by the original excavation team, as well as analyzing La Ferrassie 8’s bones. They also performed new excavations and analyses at the La Ferrassie cave shelter site where the child’s remains were found.

The results of their multi-disciplinary approach suggest that – despite the substandard nature of previous research into La Ferrassie 8’s purported burial – the old conclusions were correct: the child was buried.

Child's bones buried 40,000 years ago solve the puzzle of Neanderthal long-standing mystery
This reconstruction shows the Neanderthal child’s burial at La Ferrassie

“The combined anthropological, spatial, geochronological, taphonomic, and biomolecular data analyzed here suggest that a burial is the most parsimonious explanation for LF8,” the authors explain.

“Our results show that LF8 is intrusive within an older (and archaeologically sterile) sedimentary layer. We propose that Neandertals intentionally dug a pit in sterile sediments in which the LF8 child was laid.”

In reaching this conclusion, the team confirmed that the well-preserved bones were laid to rest in an unscattered manner, remaining in their anatomical position, with the head raised higher than the rest of the body, even though the lay of the land was inclined at a different angle (suggesting a contrived elevation by Neanderthal hands).

Further, there were no animal marks on them, which the team consider another probable sign of a prompt, intended burial. Especially when compared to the weathered state of various animal remains found in the vicinity.

“The absence of carnivore marks, the low degree of spatial disturbance, fragmentation, and weathering suggest that they were rapidly covered by sediment,” the researchers explain.

“We cannot find any natural (i.e. non-anthropic) process that could explain the presence of the child and associated elements within a sterile layer with an inclination that does not follow the geological inclination of the stratum. In this case, we propose that the body of the LF8 child was laid in a pit dug into the sterile sediment.”

It’s not the first study in recent times to claim new evidence of Neanderthals burying their dead, and it likely won’t be the last.

The French team says it’s time today’s new-and-improved analytical standards were brought to bear on the varying skeletal remains of La Ferrassie 1 through to 7, giving us an updated assessment of how they too were interred.

Then, maybe, with all said and done, these very old souls might finally get some rest.

Hoard of Gold Tudor Coins Unearthed in England

Hoard of Gold Tudor Coins Unearthed in England

When they found a rare treasure, a buried cache of gold coins dating back to the 1400s, representing English monarchs from Edward IV to Henry VIII, a family in England were weeding their garden.

The hoard — a stash of 63 gold coins and one silver coin — contains money minted over a period of nearly 100 years, from the late 15th to the 16th centuries.

Four of the coins feature Henry VIII and, curiously, one of the initials of three of his wives: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour

Hoard of Gold Tudor Coins Unearthed in England
A newfound stash of 63 gold and one silver coin dates from the time of Edward IV to Henry VIII.

Upon finding the cache, the family, in the New Forest district of Hampshire, a county in southeastern England, notified the British Museum, which runs the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS).

This program partners with local people who find historical artefacts in the United Kingdom, so the findings can be documented and studied, the British Museum said in a statement Thursday (Dec. 10). 

The coins were likely buried in about 1540, while King Henry VIII was still alive, but it’s unknown whether this burial spot was like a piggy bank, where someone regularly deposited coins, or whether the hoard was buried all at once, according to the British Museum.

Whoever saved the coins, however, was a person of means: The collection was worth about £24 at the time, the equivalent of $18,600 (£14,000) today, Barrie Cook, a curator of medieval and early modern coins at the British Museum, told The Guardian. That’s much more than the average annual wage during Tudor times. 

In all likelihood, a wealthy merchant or clergy member buried the hoard, John Naylor, a coin expert from the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, told The Guardian.

“You have this period in the late 1530s and 1540s where you have the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and we do know that some churches did try to hide their wealth, hoping they would be able to keep it in the long-term,” he said.

The newfound coins are “an important hoard,” Naylor added. “You don’t get these big gold hoards very often from this period.”

Among the hoard were coins featuring the initials of Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour.

As for the coins themselves, it’s a mystery why the initials of Henry’s wives were present. In 1526, Henry and Thomas Wolsey, an English archbishop, statesman and cardinal of the Catholic Church, redid the monetary system, changing coins’ weights and beginning new denominations, such as the five-shilling gold coin, The Guardian reported. 

“Not only does he change denominations, but he also has this very strange decision of putting his wife’s initials on the coin,” Cook said.

Such a move had no precedent. And given Henry VIII’s many marriages (six in all), the initials changed frequently. But after his third marriage to Jane Seymour, the mother of Edward VI who died shortly after childbirth, Henry discontinued the practice, meaning that his following wives (Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr) did not see their initials on English money.

The hoard is just one of over 47,000 artefacts documented by PAS in 2020. Another newfound, notable hoard includes the 50 South African Krugerrand minted during apartheid in the 1970s.

This stash, also found buried in a garden, was unearthed in the town of Milton Keynes, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) northwest of London. Each of the 50 coins weighs 1 oz (28 grams) and is made of solid gold, the museum reported. 

“How they ended up in Milton Keynes and why they were buried are, for the moment, a mystery,” museum officials wrote in the statement. An official in Milton Keynes is trying to find the coins’ original owner or heirs.