A $26M Cimabue masterpiece was found in an elderly woman’s kitchen
A missing masterpiece of the 13th century was sold for nearly 24.2 million Euros (26.8 million dollars), just months after it was found hanging in a French kitchen. “Christ Mocked,” by the Florentine painter Cimabue, sold for more than four times the pre-sale estimate at an auction in Senlis, north of Paris, on Sunday.
“The Mocking of Christ,” believed to be by the late 13th-century Florentine artist Cenni di Pepo, also known as Cimabue.
An elderly French woman from the town of Compiegne had kept the rare artwork — which she thought was a Greek religious icon — in her kitchen.
The unsuspecting owner did not know where the 10-inch by 8-inch painting had come from, according to Jerome Montcouquil of art specialists Cabinet Turquin, which was asked to carry out tests on the painting following its discovery in the summer.
“It didn’t take long for us to see that it was an artwork by Italian painter Cimabue,” he told CNN prior to the sale. “He’s a father of painting so we know his work very well.”
Cimabue is the pseudonym of artist Cenni di Pepo, born in Florence around the year 1240. He is known to have been the discoverer and master of Giotto, widely regarded as one of the greatest artists of the pre-Renaissance era.
“There are only 11 of his paintings in the world — they are rare,” Montcouquil said.
Montcouquil said the work is part of a diptych made in 1280 when the artist painted eight scenes centered on the passion and crucifixion of Christ.
The style of painting, its gold background, and traces of its old frame helped experts identify the artwork as part of the triptych, according to a press release published by auctioneers Acteon ahead of the sale.
‘Lost’ Caravaggio valued at $170M bought just before the auction The pictorial layer remains in “excellent condition” despite accumulating dust, continued the release.
The National Gallery in London is home to another scene from the work, “The Virgin and Child with Two Angels,” which the gallery acquired in 2000. It had been lost for centuries, before a British aristocrat found it in his ancestral home in Suffolk, according to AFP.
The “Apollo and Venus” painting by 16th-century Dutch master Otto van Veen (1556-1629) was discovered in the closet of an art gallery in Iowa and is likely worth over $4 million.
The “Apollo and Venus” painting by 16th-century Dutch master Otto van Veen (1556-1629) was discovered in the closet of an art gallery in Iowa and is likely worth over $4 million.
“They are all made with the same technique on the same wood panel so you can follow the grain of the wood through the different scenes,” said Montcouquil.
“We also used infrared light to be sure the painting was done by the same hand. You can even see the corrections he made.”
The painting had been hanging above a hot plate used for cooking food, according to AFP. Montcouquil said it was the first-ever Cimabue painting to be auctioned.
Prehistoric teeth fossils dating back 9.7 million years ‘could rewrite human history’
In Southwestern Germany, a team of researchers discovered teeth that were millions of years old and presumably belonged to an ancient Euro-Asian primate last September. Yet after the discovery was made public, controversy opened up about the interpretation of our earliest existence.
News of the sensational discovery was only made public recently since the team who dug up the ancient teeth in the town of Eppelsheim wanted to be sure the find was as significant as they had initially believed.
“It’s completely new to science, and it is a big surprise because nobody had expected such a tremendous, extremely rare discovery,” Herbert Lutz, head of the excavation team at the Natural History Museum in Mainz, told Deutsche Welle.
Lutz had been digging at the site in Eppelsheim for 17 years where the Rhine River used to flow, excavating riverbed sediments approximately 10 million years old. the area is “well known in science” and famous for its primate fossils.
At the end of 2016, as his team decided to finally wrap up the excavation, “just in the last second, these two teeth came to light. We really weren’t expecting such a tremendous discovery,” Lutz said.
The excavation site in Eppelsheim.
Both teeth are completely preserved, too. The teeth look “excellent” and are “shining like amber,” though no longer white, Lutz said.
The 9.7 million-year-old canine tooth and upper molar – found only 60 centimeters apart and thus believed to belong together – resemble those of great apes who lived in Africa 2.9 to 4.4 million years ago. According to Lutz and his colleagues, the teeth closely resemble some extinct African relatives of humans.
Molar (left) and canine (right) fossils found in Germany raise questions about human history. Credit: Naturhistorisches Museum Mainz
Since the official unveiling of the teeth, global media outlets have been questioning whether the find is capable of rewriting human history since it seems to go against theories of human beings originating from Africa.
The teeth are unlike anything found in Europe and Asia, Lutz cautiously claims.
“It’s a complete mystery where this individual came from, and why nobody’s ever found a tooth like this somewhere before,” he said in an interview with Research Gate.
But some experts say that the teeth hardly “force us to reexamine the theory that humans originated from Africa,” arguing that the fossils “more likely belonged to a very distant branch on the primate family tree,” reported National Geographic.
Other experts state that whether the teeth really belong to the hominoid classification (apes, chimpanzees, etc.) is questionable.
Expert on the teeth of humans’ extinct relatives and paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, Bence Viola, says the molar found contradicts any case for a human connection.
“I think this is much ado about nothing,” he told National Geographic. “The molar, which they say clearly comes from the same individual, is absolutely not a hominin, and I would say also not a hominoid.”
The majority of the experts National Geographic spoke to said the molar found likely belongs to a species of an extinct, primitive branch of primates that lived in Asia and Europe between seven and 17 million years ago.
Prehistoric people developed a technique for making a play dough-like material from mammoth ivory
It is stated in The Siberian Times that Evgeny Artemyev of the Russian Academy of Sciences has studied 12,000-year-old archaeological objects that have been found some 20 years ago at the Afontova Gora-2 archaeological site, which is situated on the banks of the Yenisei River in south-central Siberia.
The items include objects made from the spongey parts of woolly mammoth bones.
The finds were made in early 2000 but were re-examined recently by Dr Evgeny Artemyev who said that the figurines can be either Ice Age toys made by people who populated this area of the modern-day Siberia, or a form of primaeval art.
‘When you look at them at different angles, they resemble different types of animals.
‘It is possible that this is the new form of Palaeolithic art, that the international scientific community is not aware of yet’, the archaeologist said.
These animal-like figurines were made from spongy parts of woolly mammoth bones, and could have been either toys, or some form of premieval art.
The two prehistoric figurines appear similar to a bear and a mammoth, says Dr Artemyev, who has worked at the site since the 1990s.
Looked at from another angle, one of the figurines maybe a sleeping human.
The ivory bars, some of them phallic-shaped, discovered at the same site were created with a technique which made them almost ‘fluid-like’.
‘The mammoth tusk was softened to the extent that it resembled modern-day playdough. We don’t know yet how ancient people achieved that’, Dr Artemyev said.
‘On the items, we can see traces of stone implements and the flows of the substance before it stiffened. This means that the tusk was softened significantly, the consistency was viscous.
‘Most likely it was not for the entire tusk, but its upper part which was processed’, explained Artemyev.
Dr Evgeny Artemyev and Afontova Gora-2 archeological site in Krasnoyarsk.
The archaeologist said that he didn’t come across similar finds on other Palaeolithic sites.
‘Perhaps we don’t get to see reports about such finds because scientific teams rarely publish about items that can’t be properly explained. These elongated ivory bars could be blanks prepared to make making implements, or tools, or future toys – or anything else, we can only guess’, Dr Artemyev said.
While scientists can’t yet fathom why these shapes were made, the ‘playdough’ crafting technique helps them realise that these ancient people had much greater skills than they have imagined.
‘We tend to think of them as more primitive than they were. Yet they had technologies we cannot properly understand and describe, such as this softening of the tusks’, the archaeologist said.
Temple Dated to Fifth Century B.C. Found in Turkey
According to a Hurriyet Daily News report, a team of researchers led by Elif Koparal of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University identified the sites of hundreds of Neolithic settlements and a 2,500-year-old temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite during a survey of the Urla-Çeşme peninsula, which is located on Turkey’s western coastline.
A team of Turkish scientists and archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 2,500-year-old Aphrodite Temple in the Urla-Çeşme peninsula in Turkey’s west.
During the middle of the Neolithic Era, 35 villages, of which 16 belong to the Late Neolithic period, have been discovered during the studies of an area of around 1600 square kilometers, bearing traces of the Ionian civilization.
In the region, about 460 settlements and landscape elements have been uncovered, including sacred areas, tumuli, roads, terraces, villages, and farms used in ancient times. During the study, information was also gathered about the economic and social ties of the people living in the area, whose history dates back to 6,000 B.C.
Speaking to the state-run Anadolu Agency, Koparal said that the surveys in the area started in 2006. Stating that it is known that the peninsula is a Neolithic period settlement, Koparal said that thanks to this study, an important social and economic network emerged in the whole region.
Explaining that in the findings they obtained, they noticed that people settled at a certain distance from each other at that time, Koparal said, “During our surveys, we found the Temple of Aphrodite belonging to the fifth century B.C.”
Noting that the temple is an exciting find and that its ruins are very impressive, Koparal said: “It is a rural temple. Aphrodite was a very common cult at that time.
The finds that we have indicate that there is the Temple of Aphrodite in this region. It is not common to find a temple during a surface survey. The area was not within reach by car. It can be reached with a one-and-a-half-hour walk from the alley.”
“We found a statue piece of a woman on the floor, and then a terracotta female head figure. From the findings, we understood that there must have been a cult area in the region. As we scanned the epigraphic publications, we understood that it was most likely the Temple of Aphrodite.
There is also an inscription around the temple. It sets the border with the statement, ‘This is the sacred area,’” Koparal said, adding that they also revealed the temple plan by scanning through the soil.
Stating that they came across the first find about the temple in 2016, Koparal said that they announced this to the world with an article.
Stating that the figurine got damaged due to erosion and rain, Koparal said, “But what it tells us is very important.”
Pointing out that the surveys are quite arduous, Koparal said that it was very exciting to get findings and information from the past.
Koparal said they also obtained important information about tumuli where the graves of notable people of the society were located, and caves, which were almost entirely used as sacred areas.
He also emphasized that the biggest threats to historical sites were from treasure hunters and urbanization.
Efforts are being made with the local people to preserve the historical artifacts, Koparal said, adding that they also have guards to protect the artifacts against the treasure hunters in the region.
Roman road pre-dating Hadrian’s Wall discovered in Northumberland
An ancient Roman road (formerly) linking north to south has been discovered off the coast of Northumberland. The discovery, which was almost two thousand years old, was made at one of the Settelingstone sites during construction on the water network.
They are thought to be from the road’s foundations and built by Agricola or his successors about AD80, although no evidence of its exact date was found. Archaeologists said given its location it was an “important part” of the early northern Roman frontier.
The ancient remains were discovered by Northumbrian Water when it began improvement works at the site of The Stanegate road, which linked Corbridge and Carlisle. It is a £55,000 investment scheme at Stanegate Roman Road, near Settlingstones, Hexham.
Brian Hardy, Northumbrian Water project manager, said: “We are delighted to have uncovered this important piece of hidden heritage and play our part in helping to protect it.
“We have successfully delivered our investment work, through the use of alternative methods and techniques, to not only enhance and futureproof our customers’ water supplies but also protect this suspected integral part of surviving Roman archaeology.”
The utility company called in its own experts and notified relevant authorities to record and help preserve this important heritage finding.
The relic remnants of the road itself, monitored by Archaeological Research Services Ltd, pre-dates Hadrian’s Wall and had forts along its length – within one day’s march of each other.
This is why the well-known fort at Vindolanda is sited south of Hadrian’s Wall on the course of the Stanegate.”
Philippa Hunter, senior projects officer at Archaeological Research Services Ltd, said: “While monitoring the excavation pit, our archaeologist identified a deposit of compacted cobbles thought to be the remains of the Roman road’s foundations – it is believed to have been built by Agricola or his successors around 80 AD.
The remains are part of The Stanegate – a Roman road which ran east-west south of Hadrian’s Wall
“Here, the road was constructed using rounded cobbles set in a layer measuring around 15cm deep, with around 25cm of gravel surfacing laid on top.
“Unfortunately no dating evidence or finds have been recovered to confirm the precise date of the archaeological remains.
“However, given the location of the cobbles along the projected route of the Roman road and its depth below the modern road surface, we are confident the remains identified form an important part of the early northern Roman frontier.”
The remains are part of The Stanegate – a Roman road which ran east-west south of Hadrian’s Wall
Roman settlements, garrisons, and roads were established throughout the Northumberland region after Gnaeus Julius Agricola was appointed Roman governor of Britain in 78 AD.
Hadrian’s Wall was completed by about 130 AD, to define and defend the northern boundary of Roman Britain with Stanegate and Dere Street the major road links.
Treasures dating back some 9,500 years is uncovered in Alpine glaciers as climate change causes ice to melt
The group climbed the steep mountainside, clambering across an Alpine glacier, before finding what they were seeking: A crystal vein filled with the precious rocks needed to sculpt their tools. That is what archaeologists have deduced after the discovery of traces of an ancient hunt for crystals by hunters and gatherers in the Mesolithic era, some 9,500 years ago.
It is one of many valuable archaeological sites to emerge in recent decades from rapidly melting glacier ice, sparking a brand-new field of research: glacier archaeology. Amid surging temperatures, glaciologists predict that 95 per cent of some 4,000 glaciers dotted throughout the Alps could disappear by the end of this century.
While archaeologists lament the devastating toll of climate change, many acknowledge it has created “an opportunity” to dramatically expand understanding of mountain life millennia ago.
“We are making very fascinating finds that open up a window into a part of archaeology that we don’t normally get,” said Marcel Cornelissen, who headed an excavation trip last month to the remote crystal site near the Brunifirm glacier in the eastern Swiss canton of Uri, at an altitude of 2,800 metres (9,100 feet).
‘Truly exceptional’
Up until the early 1990s, it was widely believed that people in prehistoric times steered clear of towering and intimidating mountains. But a number of startling finds have since emerged from melting ice indicating that mountain ranges like the Alps have been bustling with human activity for thousands of years.
Early humans are now believed to have hiked up into the mountains to travel to nearby valleys, hunt or put animals out to pastures, and to search for raw materials. Christian Auf der Maur, an archaeologist with Uri canton who participated in the crystal site expedition, said the find there was “truly exceptional.”
Laced shoe found with the remains of a prehistoric man dating to around 2,800 BCE.
“We know now that people were hiking up to the mountains to up to 3,000 metres altitude, looking for crystals and other primary materials.”
The first major ancient Alpine find to emerge from the melting ice was the discovery in 1991 of “Oetzi,” a 5,300-year-old warrior whose body had been preserved inside an Alpine glacier in the Italian Tyrol region. Theories that he may have been a rare example of a prehistoric human venturing into the Alps have been belied by findings since of numerous ancient traces of people crossing high altitude mountain passes.
One of the most famous discovers in the Alpine was ‘Otiz’ (pictured) in 1991, which was the preserved body of a 5,300-year-old warrior found in the Italian Tyrol region
Rare organic materials
The Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail in the Bernese Alps 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has for instance been a boon to scientists since 2003, with the find of a birch bark quiver – a case for arrows – dating as far back as 3,000 BCE. Later, leather trousers and shoes, likely from the same ill-fated person, were also discovered, along with hundreds of other objects dating as far back as about 4,500 BCE.
“It is exciting because we find stuff that we don’t normally find in excavations,” archaeologist Regula Gubler told AFP. She pointed to organic materials like leather, wood, birch bark, and textiles, which are usually lost to erosion but here have been preserved intact in the ice.
This blackened braided basket from the Neolithic Age is from the Bernese Alps.
Just last month, she led a team to excavate a fresh finding in Schnidejoch: a knotted string of bast – or plant – fibres believed to be over 6,000 years old. It resembles the fragile remains of a blackened bast-fibre, braided basket from the same period, brought back last year.
While climate change has made possible such extraordinary finds, it is also a threat: if not found quickly, organic materials freed from the ice rapidly disintegrate and disappear.
‘Very short window’
“It is a very short window in time. In 20 years, these finds will be gone and these ice patches will be gone,” Gubler said. “It is a bit stressful.”
Cornelissen agreed, saying the understanding of glacier sites’ archaeological potential had likely come “too late”.
“The retreat of the glaciers and melting of the ice fields has already progressed so far,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll find another Oetzi.”
The problem is that archaeologists cannot hang out at each melting ice sheet waiting for treasure to emerge. Instead, they rely on hikers and others to alert them to finds. That can sometimes happen in a roundabout way.
When two Italian hikers in 1999 stumbled across a wood carving on the Arolla glacier in southern Wallis canton, some 3,100 metres above sea level, they picked it up, polished it off, and hung it on their living room wall. It was only through a string of lucky circumstances that it 19 years later came to the attention of Pierre Yves Nicod, an archaeologist with the Wallis historical museum in Sion, where he was preparing an exhibition about glacier archaeology.
In 1999, Italian hikers found a wood carving on the Arolla glacier in southern Wallis canton and instead of alerting experts, they hung it on their living room wall
He tracked down the 52-centimetre-long human-shaped statuette, with a flat, frowning face, and had it dated. It turned out to be over 2,000 years old – “a Celtic artefact from the Iron Age,” Nicod told AFP, lifting up the statuette with gloved hands. Its function remains a mystery, he said.
Another unknown, Nicod said, is “how many such objects have been picked up throughout the Alps in the past 30 years and are currently hanging on living room walls.
“We need to urgently sensibilise populations likely to come across such artifacts.” “It is an archaeological emergency.”
The archaeologist J.A. Clason finds extensive accounts of Viking voyages in earlier Icelandic sagas. They describe a mysterious “sunstone”, which Scandinavian seafarers used to locate the Sun in the sky and navigate on cloudy days.
So, What is Iceland spar?
Iceland spar is a crystal of calcite (calcium carbonate). Calcite is a fairly common mineral and comes in a spectacular range of colors caused by the impurities it contains.
Iceland spar is rather unique among the calcites. It contains no impurities, so it’s nearly colorless and transparent to both visible and ultraviolet light.
For centuries, the only source of this pure calcite was located near Reydarfjördur fjord in eastern Iceland, hence most of the world called it Iceland spar (spar means a crystal with smooth surfaces). The Icelanders just called it silfurberg, meaning silver rock.
A crystal of Iceland spar has two very interesting properties. First, it is a natural polarizing filter. Second, because of its natural polarization, Iceland spar is birefringent, meaning light rays entering the crystal become polarized, split, and take two paths to exit the crystal – creating a double image of an object seen through the crystal.
There is good evidence that the Vikings used the polarizing effect of Iceland spar to navigate the North Atlantic. The constant fog and mist in the North Atlantic often make navigation by stars or sun impossible.
The Vikings called Iceland spar a ‘sunstone’ because the polarizing effect can be used to find the direction of the sun even in dense fog and overcast conditions. It can even find the direction of the sun when the sun is actually below the horizon, as happens when you’re sailing above the Arctic circle.
The polarizing effect of Iceland spar can accurately locate the sun even through heavy clouds or mist. If you’re a Viking. I’ve tried it and had no success at all.
The second interesting feature of Iceland spar is birefringence, meaning it refracts light into two separate images, which is more noticeable.
The double image may just seem mildly interesting to you and me. But it turned the scientific world (at least the optical part of it) upside down back in the 1600s.
A piece of Iceland spar on my worktable, doubly refracting the gridlines.
How did that help the Vikings?
Researchers studied a piece of Iceland spar discovered aboard an Elizabethan ship that sunk in 1592.
They found that moving the stone in and out of a person’s field of vision causes them to see a distinctive double dot pattern that lines up with the direction of the hidden Sun.
Screenshot from the TV show Viking
The polarization of sunlight in the Arctic can be detected, and the direction of the sun identified within a few degrees in both cloudy and twilight conditions using the sunstone and the naked eye.
The process involves moving the stone across the visual field to reveal a yellow entoptic pattern on the fovea of the eye, probably Haidinger’s brush.
When light passes through calcite crystals, it is split into two rays. The asymmetry in the crystal’s structure causes the paths of these two beams to be bent by different amounts, resulting in a double image.
Archaeologists find the source of Stonehenge sarsen stones
A team of researchers from the UK and South Africa has discovered that most of the hulking sandstone boulders — called sarsens — that make up the famous Stonehenge monument appear to share a common origin 25 km (15.5 miles) away in West Woods on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, Wiltshire.
The origins of the stones used to build Stonehenge around 2500 BCE and their transportation methods and routes have been the subject of debate among archaeologists and geologists for over 400 years.
Two main types of stones are present at the monument: the sarsen stones that form the primary architecture of Stonehenge and the bluestones near the centre of the monument.
Feasts at nearby Durrington Walls drew attendees from all over Britain.
The smaller bluestones have been traced to Wales, but the origins of the sarsens have remained unknown, until now.
“Archaeologists and geologists have been debating where the sarsen stones used to build Stonehenge came from for more than four centuries,” said Professor David Nash, a scientist in the School of Environment and Technology at the University of Brighton and the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“These significant new data will help explain more of how the monument was constructed and, perhaps, offer insights into the routes by which the 20- to 30-ton stones were transported.”
Stonehenge in context: (A) distribution of silcrete boulders across southern Britain, including sarsens and conglomeratic variants known as puddingstone; (B) sampling sites and topography in the Stonehenge-Avebury area, along with proposed transportation routes for the sarsen stones; (C) plan of Stonehenge showing the area of the monument enclosed by earthworks plus numbered peripheral sarsen stones; (D) detail of the main Stonehenge monument showing the remaining bluestones and numbered sarsen stones.
To learn where the huge boulders came from, Professor Nash and colleagues used portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (PXRF) to initially characterize their chemical composition, then analyzed the data statistically to determine their degree of chemical variability.
Next, they performed inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and ICP-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) of samples from a core previously drilled through one sarsen stone — Stone 58 — and a range of sarsen boulders from across southern Britain.
After comparing these signatures, they were able to point to West Woods as the sarsens’ earliest home.
The reason the monument’s builders selected this site remains a mystery, although the scientists suggest the size and quality of West Woods’ stones, and the ease with which the builders could access them may have factored into the decision.
“We still don’t know where two of the 52 remaining sarsens at the monument came from,” Professor Nash said.
“These are upright Stone 26 at the northernmost point of the outer sarsen circle and lintel Stone 160 from the inner trilithon horseshoe.”
“It is possible that these stones were once more local to Stonehenge, but at this stage, we do not know.”
“We also don’t know the exact areas of West Woods where the sarsens were extracted.”
“Further geochemical testing of sarsens and archaeological investigations to discover extraction pits are needed to answer these questions.”
