‘Very Angry Badger’ Seizes Part Of 500-Year-Old Scottish Castle
A 16th-century Scottish castle noted for its impressive defences has proved to be no match for a “very angry badger“.
Craignethan Castle in South Lanarkshire, south-east of Glasgow, was breached by the nocturnal mammal, forcing staff to close the stronghold’s cellar tunnel to the public.
“We’re trying to entice it out with cat food [and] send it home,” Historic Scotland tweeted.
It is believed the badger has since retreated from the tunnel.
“Our works team have used a Go Pro this morning to view the tunnel and it seems our visitor has vacated.”
“We’ll keep the tunnel closed in the interim while we do a little housekeeping following its visit.”
According to Historic Environment Scotland, Craignethan Castle is the last great private stronghold built in Scotland.
Craignethan Castle, which was under siege by a “very angry badger.”
Badgers are a protected species in the United Kingdom and cannot be willfully killed, injured or taken.
Their burrows, also known as setts, are also protected.
Badgers are described by the Scottish Wildlife Trust as one of Scotland’s “most charismatic mammals”.
Badger takes cat nap
Craignethan Castle was not the first time a badger has found itself under the wrong roof.
In October, Scotland’s Animal Welfare Charity was called to a home in Linlithgow, west of Edinburgh, after a badger snuck in through a cat flap.
Animal Rescue officer Connie O’Neil said the badger ate all the cat food before going for a sleep on the cat bed.
“I got a surprise when I arrived at the property and saw a badger having a nap,” Ms O’Neil said.
“He didn’t seem too happy when I tried to move him but I was able to slide the cat bed round and it was then that the badger noticed the back door was open so made a run for it.”
Scottish SPCA chief superintendent Mike Flynn said it was highly unusual for a wild badger to enter a house and urged people not to go near them as they could be aggressive when injured or cornered.
‘Lady Of Bietikow’ May Have Died Of A Tooth Infection 5,000 Years Ago
In Germany, a middle-aged woman who died more than 5,000 years ago has been found. The Neolithic woman was found during excavations in the northeastern city of Uckermark for the construction of a new collection of wind turbines.
Experts are still seeking to ascertain aspects of her life, including her cause of death, nicknamed the ‘Lady of Bietikow‘ after the town she was found near.
As they were extremely worn, possibly a symptom of a fatal tooth infection, her teeth may provide clues, experts speculate. According to local media, the skeleton had been buried in a village in a squatting place, one of the oldest known forms of burial.
Dubbed the ‘Lady of Bietikow’ after the town she was found near, experts are now trying to determine details of her life, including her cause of death
Investigations have shown that she was between 30 and 45 years old and died more than 5,000 years ago.
All that is left of Lady Bietikow are bones and some fragments of clothing, but researchers have still managed to piece together some details about her life.
During the time she was alive, during the Neolithic period, humans were just starting to eat grains, as they could be stored more easily than meat and could also be used as a means of payment, according to anthropologist Bettina Jungklaus.
However, this led to a deterioration in people’s general health. This can be seen in the state of the Lady of Bietikow’s teeth, which are severely eroded and missing completely in some places, Jungklaus said.
Investigations have shown that she was between 30 and 45 years old and died more than 5,000 years ago. All that is left of Lady Bietikow are bones and some fragments of clothing
‘Normally there is enamel on the surface of the teeth. But here it is heavily worn, chewed off,’ she said.
‘This allows us to draw conclusions about her diet: it was probably very rich in fibre, very hard. There are certain grains that cause the teeth to wear out easily.’
It remains unclear whether the condition of Lady Bietikow’s teeth indicates an illness or even the cause of her death, and further analysis will aim to determine this.
Researchers are now hoping to find out more about her life, including whether she came from the Uckermark region or had immigrated there from elsewhere.
Both the Lady Bietikow and the famed skeleton ‘Oetzi the Iceman’ lived during the same period of time.
Oetzi is a stunningly preserved corpse that was found in 1991 by two hikers in the Oetztal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy.
Ötzi, also called the Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3400 and 3100 BCE. The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, hence the nickname “Ötzi”, near Similaun mountain and Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy.
His body was extremely well preserved, with organs, skin and other organic material still intact – researchers were even able to see what he had eaten hours before he died.
‘You can compare Oetzi and the Lady of Bietikow in terms of age,’ said Philipp Roskoschinski, one of the two archaeologists who made the discovery in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin.
‘The discovery of Oetzi was much more spectacular due to the conditions of preservation,’ Roskoschinski said.
Decapitated Skeletons, with Heads Between Their Legs, Unearthed in Roman Cemetery
Archaeologists discovered that a third of the skeletons were decapitated at a fourth-century Roman grave site in England, an unusually high percentage, even for the Roman Empire.
“Low proportions of decapitated burials are a common component of Roman cemeteries,” said Andy Peachey, an archaeologist at the site, to the East Anglian Daily Times. “It is rare to find such a high proportion of decapitated burials in Britain… Perhaps only half a dozen other sites in Britain demonstrate this.”
Out of the 52 skeletons archaeologists have identified in Suffolk county’s Great Whelnetham village, 17 are decapitated with their head placed between their legs. These beheadings occurred after the people had already died—meaning that none of them was executed in this fashion.
A decapitated Roman burial with the head placed between the feet, and a second human skull possibly from an adjacent grave.
Cleaning and recording Roman burials by the Archeological Solutions team. Out of the 52 skeletons archaeologists have identified in Suffolk county’s Great Whelnetham village, 17 are decapitated with their head placed between their legs.
“This appears to be a careful funeral rite that may be associated with a particular group within the local population, possibly associated with a belief system (cult) or a practice that came with a group moved into the area,” Peachey said.
The 17 beheaded skeletons are male and female, with one belonging to a child around nine or ten years old.
Most of the 52 skeletons in the graveyard are middle-aged or older. They show signs of poor dental hygiene but were well-nourished. Some of them had tuberculosis.
The reason archaeologists examined the site in the first place is that there is a planned housing development there. In Europe, archaeological discoveries are often made in preparation for public works projects.
That’s how researchers found a pair of medieval thigh-high boots in the mud of the River Thames, an ancient Roman library in Germany and a motley collection of artefacts in the city of Rome.
Archaeologists are still studying the skeletons in Great Whelnetham and will publish a report on their findings when they have finished. Until then, it’s difficult to speculate on why these 17 skeletons were singled out for beheading rites; previous examples of Roman beheadings don’t necessarily shed light on the reason these skeletons were decapitated.
In the city of York, England, there’s a second- and third-century Roman grave site where most of the 80-some skeletons were decapitated. Researchers found that these decapitated people migrated to York from as far away as modern-day Syria or Palestine.
But unlike the Great Whelnetham skeletons, the decapitated skeletons of York were all men whose remains suggest they were gladiators or soldiers. For some of them, decapitation probably was the way they died.
The skeletons at Great Whelnetham seem to have met a gentler fate.
7,000 years old Copper Age Kilns Unearthed in Bulgaria
Bulgarian archaeology records that two kilns were dated between 4800 and 4600 B.C. A team of researchers from the Ruse Regional Museum of History were discovered on the Bazovets Settlement Mound near the Danube River in northeastern Bulgaria.
The two prehistoric pottery-making kilns found at the Bazovets Settlement Mound are from an archaeological layer from 4,800 – 4,600 BC.
In the excavation season, 2019 one of the two almost 7,000-year-old prehistoric ovens or furnaces was first partially excavated.
In recent excavations on the Bazovets Settlement Mound, it was fully exposed and a second kiln from the same Chalcolithic facility has been found, the Ruse Regional Museum of History has announced.
The 2020 archaeological excavations at the Copper Age settlement in question took place in September and were led by archaeologist Dimitar Chernakov from the Ruse Regional Museum of History, and his deputy, archaeologist Irena Ruseva from the Svilengrad Museum of History, with archaeologists from the Dobrich Regional Museum of History and the Veliko Tarnovo University “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” also participating.
A total of 57 archaeological artefacts from the said Early Chalcolithic period (4,800 – 4,600 BC) have been found during the latest excavations at the Bazovets Settlement Mound.
An aerial view of the Bazovets Settlement Mound, a 7,000-year-old prehistoric settlement in Northeast Bulgaria close to the Danube River.
An aerial view of the nearly 7,000-year-old Early Copper Age structures exposed during the 2020 excavations of the Bazovets Settlement Mound.
These include artefacts made of flint, animal bones, horns, and ceramics – including fragments from anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines. As a result of the research of the Early Copper Age archaeological layer on the site, the archaeologists discovered that the easternmost periphery of the prehistoric settlement was used for manufacturing.
The second of the prehistoric kilns, which was found during the 2020 excavations, had two chambers, a lower chamber for the burning to generate heat, and an upper chamber for the baking of the pottery items.
The Early Chalcolithic kiln was 1.2 meters long, and 1 meter wide, and it was made of wood wattle plastered with a thick layer of clay from the inside and outside.
The opening of the kiln was on its southeastern side, and it was closed with three flat stones which have been discovered right next to it.
The kiln had a groove that would allow for the regulating of the heating temperature, a type of furnaces for the baking of clay that would also be used in later archaeological eras, the Ruse Museum of History notes.
Above the two kilns, the archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a rectangular building with a north-south orientation.
Right next to its entrance, there was a small room seemingly used for food storage where the researchers have unearthed traces from food residues such as animal bones and lots of shells from freshwater mollusks.
In addition to the nearly 7,000-year-old Early Chalcolithic pottery-making kilns, during their 2020 excavations at the Bazovets Settlement Mound, the archaeologists have also found and started to unearth a prehistoric building which was even older than the kilns themselves.
The 2020 excavations of the 7,000-year-old Bazovets Settlement Mound near Bulgaria’s Danube city of Ruse took place in September 2020, building upon the partial exposure of one of the Copper Age kilns in the 2019 season.
The prehistoric building in question was built of wood and clay and was destroyed by a large fire.
In its southern part, the archaeologists have found several intact pottery vessels and bases as well as a horn tool which were placed on a podium. They are going to continue researching the prehistoric building further during their next excavations of the Bazovets Settlement Mound.
In the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, the territory of today’s Bulgaria and much of the rest of the Balkans, for instance, today’s Romania and Serbia, saw the rise of Europe’s first civilization, the prehistoric civilization of the Lower Danube Valley and Western coast of the Black Sea.
This prehistoric civilization from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, which had the world’s oldest gold, Europe’s oldest town, and seemingly some of the earliest forms of pre-alphabetic writing, is referred to some scholars as “Old Europe”. It predates the famous civilizations of Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia by thousands of years.
A selfie set in stone: hidden portrait by cheeky mason found in Spain 900 years on
The Guardian reports that art historian Jennifer Alexander of the University of Warwick found a male figure at the top of a pillar in Santiago de Compostela, a twelfth-century cathedral located in northwest Spain while conducting a stone-by-stone survey of the structure.
Millions of devotees who made the long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northwest of Spain, over the years have been unaware of the figure. He has looked down on them from the top of one of the many pillars that soar upwards, each decorated with carved foliage, among which he is concealed.
The figure was discovered today by a British art scholar who says that he was never supposed to be seen since he is a self-portrait of a stonemason who in the 12th century served in the cathedral.
The 12th-century Santiago de Compostela cathedral in Galicia attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year.
“You find this in medieval buildings,” Dr Jennifer Alexander told the Observer. “They’re usually in dark corners where only another stonemason would find them.
This one is in a bit of the building where you’d have to be a stonemason to be up there to see it. It’s tucked away in among a whole set of capitals [the top of a column] that are otherwise plain.
Only the masons creating the building could see the figure.
“It’s just such a charming connection between us and the person that carved it. It’s almost as if it was designed just for us to see it by those people working on the building. Of course, this stonemason probably had no idea that he’d have to wait so long to be spotted.”
Despite the supreme talent of such craftsmen, they were completely anonymous, their names lost to history. This is the closest the mason got to signing his work.
Alexander, a reader in art history at the University of Warwick, is a specialist in the architectural history of the great churches and cathedrals of the medieval period. She discovered the figure in conducting an intricate survey of Santiago de Compostela cathedral, a Unesco world heritage site.
Its significance lies in its association with the Camino, the pilgrimage across hundreds of miles to reach the shrine of the apostle St James, which is within the cathedral. Such is its draw that. in 2019 alone, the official number of pilgrims reaching the city was some 350,000.
The current building was begun in the late 11th-century and is a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture, with later additions.
Alexander was conducting a stone-by-stone analysis to work out its construction sequence, in a project funded by the Galician regional government. It was when she was studying the capitals, about 13 metres above the pavement, that “this little figure popped out”, she recalled.
Dr Jennifer Alexander conducted a stone-by-stone analysis in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
“A lovely image of a chap hanging on to the middle of the capital as if his life depended on it. It’s in a row of identical off-the-peg capitals where they’ve been knocking them out in granite – ‘we need another 15 of that design’ – and suddenly there’s one that’s different. So we think it’s the man himself.
“He emerges out of the capital and is clinging to it. It’s almost as if it’s swallowing him up.”
The carved figure, which is about 30cm high, is depicted down to his waist. Alexander said: “He’s got a nice little smile. He’s pleased with himself. He’s splendidly carved, with a strongly characterised face.”
Medieval stonemasons learned their craft through apprenticeships that trained them in the back-breaking trade of cutting stone or using templates to create complex mouldings around doorways and other openings. The most promising masons would learn geometry so that they could design plans and manage construction sites.
Alexander said: “These masters had to have many skills since they were also responsible for engineering, the supply of materials, hiring the workforce and dealing with the patron, who might be a senior member of the clergy or the nobility.”
She added that such craftsmen have remained anonymous throughout the centuries even into more recent times: “When they were building Liverpool cathedral in the 20th century, they published lists of the craftsmen that worked on the building and they never mentioned stonemasons. So these are the unsung geniuses.”
A big landmark in human evolution is the moment a baby weans from milk to eating solid foods, and now a recent study shows that ancient Neanderthal babies might have taken a similar path.
The new discovery gives groundbreaking insights into how these ancient humans lived, based on chemical analysis of Neanderthal baby teeth. And historically holding theories on how the species died out might even turn around, too.
The lives of young Neanderthals are still poorly understood by anthropologists, partly because the fossil record for these young hominids is so sparse. As a result, researchers have often flip-flopped on what they think early life looked like for these babies, and what set Homo sapiens apart.
The report, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains how Neanderthals’ milk teeth were studied by researchers. By comparing their results to humans who lived during the same period, the researchers have uncovered some striking similarities between our species.
Baby teeth are by their very nature temporary, but they’re actually an incredibly important indicator of an animal’s energy requirements, maternal lifestyle, and overall species longevity — ancient hominins included.
Alessia Nava is co-first author of the paper and a post-doctoral anthropology researcher at the University of Kent. She explains that the similarities discovered between ancient humans and Neanderthals are not just an indicator of cultural practices, but evidence of similar physiological needs.
“In modern humans, in fact, the first introduction of solid food occurs at around 6 months of age when the child needs a more energetic food supply, and it is shared by very different cultures and societies,” Nava said in a statement. “[With our study], we know that also Neanderthals started to wean their children when modern humans do”.
Essentially, both our species weaned their babies and introduced foods at about the same time in their development, the results suggest.
Like looking at rings on a tree stump, scientists read the history of Neanderthal babies in the growth rings of their teeth.
DENTAL DISCOVERIES
The researchers looked at three ancient Neanderthal milk teeth, found in a region of Italy. The teeth belonged to Neanderthal infants living between 45,000 and 70,000 years ago. They also analyzed the baby teeth of a single human child, who lived during the Upper Paleolithic era, which began about 40,000 years ago.
To read the histories hidden in these baby teeth, the scientists studied the tissues making up each tooth and performed chemical analysis. This allowed them to read the tree ring-like growth record left behind in the enamel of these teeth. This biological record also captures the moment the infant switched to eating solid food.
The researchers found that both the Neanderthal babies and the Upper Paleolithic human baby transitioned to eating solid foods at around the same age — between their fifth and sixth months of life.
ANCIENT FAMILY LIFE
The discovery tells researchers a lot more than just the feeding habits of these ancient babies, the study’s lead author and professor of physical anthropology at the University of Bologna, Stefano Benazzi, said in a statement.
This is a 3D reconstruction of the three Neanderthal milk teeth analyzed in the study. Shown are (from left) the tooth found in the Fumane Cave; the one found in the Broion Cave, and the tooth found in the De Nadale Cave.
These teeth hold important clues to the physiology and maternal experience of Neanderthals, too.
“This work’s results imply similar energy demands during early infancy and a close pace of growth between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals,” Benazzi said. “Taken together, these factors possibly suggest that Neanderthal newborns were of similar weight to modern human neonates, pointing to a likely similar gestational history and early-life ontogeny, and potentially shorter inter-birth interval”.
The researchers also gleaned more information about the Neanderthal family’s lifestyle — including that Neanderthal mothers may have tended to stay at home with their infants.
The findings also tell us more about how our ancient relatives died. This study overturns the consensus that weaning age — and its relationship with maternal fertility — somehow contributed to the Neanderthals’ eventual demise as a species. The idea here was that because Neanderthals weaned their children on a different timeline to humans, that could have affected their fertility rate.
But because Neanderthal babies appear to have similar energy requirements and weaning habits to ancient as well as modern humans, other factors — shorter overall lifespans, juvenile mortality, and cultural behaviour — may have been more likely culprits in precipitating Neanderthals’ extinction.
More research will be needed before we can truly piece together the complex history of these ancient hominins’ time on Earth. But the study adds to the mounting evidence that we are not so special a species as we like to think.
Total Croatia News reports that a table jug for serving wine and a utensil for straining it was found in the Adriatic Sea, near Croatia’s Paklinski Islands and the entrance to the harbour city of Hvar. The pottery was exposed through the loss of seagrasses.
As Morski writes on the 31st of October, 2020, on Saturday, an action was carried out to save an entire late antiquity-period amphora from the seabed close to the Paklinski Islands near Hvar.
In addition to the amphora, two other complete late antiquity wine vessels were found during the dive, marking yet another incredible Hvar archaeological discovery.
The amphora was found by Dr Ivan Cvitkovic and Dr Ante Zuljevic from the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries during field research on foreign species along the seabed as part of the BENTHIC NIS project, which is otherwise funded by the Croatian Science Foundation.
The wine amphorae are dated to the period between the 3rd and 5th centuries, and the inside is coated with resin because the pottery is porous and liquid would leak through the walls of the vessel.
The action was organised by Tea Katunaric Kirjakov, an underwater archaeologist and lecturer at the Academy of Arts, University of Split, with the assistance of Kantharos d.o.o from Hvar, specialising in archaeological research, surveillance, photographic and photogrammetric documentation.
”The team from the Institute has been monitoring [the area] for many years and they noticed that there are antiquity vessels down there. With the erosion of Posidonia, the discovery of an ancient amphora came to light.
Upon examining the terrain, we found two more ancient wine vessels which were completely preserved. One is a table jug and the other is for straining wine. We also found a number of fragments of amphorae around.
Our goal was to check whether there is a complete amphora or shipwreck remains, however in this survey of the terrain, we haven’t yet been able to specify such a thing.
It will be necessary to undertake another action and look at the deeper parts of the seabed to see whether the amphorae have rolled there,” Tea Katunaric Kirjakov told Morski.
Pre-Roman Prince’s Tomb Packed With Treasures Found in Italy
In a recently uncovered Iron Age cemetery in central Italy, archaeologists have found the remnants of an entire iron-wheeled war chariot, a recent study finds. The lavish tomb is also brimming with other riches, including a stash of weapons, a bronze helmet and vessels made of bronze and clay.
An archaeologist cleans the bronze helmet found in the Iron Age burial.
The body of the chariot’s owner, however, is long gone.
The person, possibly a man, based on the war-related grave goods — was likely buried under a large mound of dirt that rose above the ground like a giant gumdrop, at the time of burial.
The rich assemblage of grave goods indicates that the person buried here held a high status.
If his body was placed near the surface, “it would have had little chance of surviving the centuries of subsequent ploughing that have removed all traces of any above-ground mound,” study researcher Federica Boschi, a senior assistant professor of methods of archaeological research at the University of Bologna in Italy, wrote in the study.
But even though the body is missing, the treasures in this 2,600-year-old grave reveal much about this mystery man, Boschi said.
The “extraordinary collection of cultural material” is “unequivocal testimony to the aristocratic status of the tomb’s owner,” Boschi told Live Science in an email.
The burial goods are so swanky, she began referring to the site as the “princely tomb,” Boschi said.
The maps (top left) show where the burial was discovered. An aerial survey (top right) shows the crop marks that clued archaeologists into the discovery. Finally, the bottom map shows the crop circles in red.
Digging deep
Archaeologists found the burial while surveying the land prior to the construction of a new sports complex in the Nevola River Valley. An aerial survey over the town of Corinaldo revealed evidence of the grave.
Researchers excavate the Iron Age site at Corinaldo, Italy.
This bird’s-eye view showed the remains of large, circular ditches. This seemed peculiar, so Boschi and her colleagues began doing the groundwork.
At first, they used electrical resistance, which puts electrical currents into the ground and monitors for anomalies in how current flows through the soil. The team also used magnetic surveys to detect if any metal artefacts were lurking underground.
These surveys hinted that something was buried under the ditches. Soon after the archaeologists began digging, they found the tomb and its treasures, Boschi said.
She noted that the grave is surrounded by a 98-foot-wide (30 meters) circular moat, which may have had that gumdrop-like mound over it at the time of the burial. The tomb itself is smaller, measuring 10.5 by 9 feet (3.2 by 2.8 m).
The tomb dates to the seventh century B.C., so it likely belonged to the Piceni culture, a group of Iron Age people who lived along the Adriatic coast of Italy.
Evidence, including the artefacts from this burial, indicate that the Piceni were warlike, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. In 268 B.C., Rome annexed their land.
A bronze bucket (known as a situla), a bundle of iron skewers and pieces of the chariot wheels.
It’s a “rare event” to find such an opulent grave from the Iron Age, Boschi said. Its grave goods, size and the fact that it was once likely covered with an earthen mound “speak to us about a Piceni leader, a person which gathered political, military and economic power,” she said.
Going forward, archaeologists plan to study the hundreds of objects within the burial.
