Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Greek Farmer Stumbles Onto 3,400-Year-Old Tomb Hidden Below His Olive Grove

Greek Farmer Stumbles Onto 3,400-Year-Old Tomb Hidden Below His Olive Grove

Unbeknownst to a Greek farmer, a 3,400-year-old tomb containing two coffins and dozens of artefacts dating back to the Late Minoan era had been lying beneath his olive grove in southeast Crete.

The hole in the ground led to a Minoan Bronze Age tomb.

Both were buried in large vases – intricately embossed clay coffins that were common in Minoan culture in the Bronze Age – and they were surrounded by colourful funeral vases that indicated their owners’ good rank. The burial site was eventually sealed with stone masonry and forgotten leaving the dead unidentified for nearly 3,400 years.

George Dvorsky revealed to Gizmodo earlier this summer that a local farmer accidentally brought an abrupt end to the pair’s millennia-long rest. The farmer tried to park his vehicle on his property under a shaded olive grove when the ground gave way, forcing him to find a new parking spot.

When he started driving off, the unidentified local noticed a four-foot-wide hole that had formed in the patch of land he had just vacated. Perched on the edge of the gaping space the man realized that “a wonderful thing” had been unintentionally unearthed.

The ancient chamber tomb was entirely intact and undamaged by looters.

Archaeologists from the local heritage ministry Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities, have launched excavations under the olive grove of the farmer at Rousses, a small village just northeast of Kentri, Ierapetra, in southeastern Crete, according to a statement.

The skeletal remains were found inside two larnakes (singular: “larnax”) – a type of small closed coffin used in the Minoan and Greek Bronze Age.

They identified the Minoan tomb, nearly perfectly preserved despite its advanced age, in a pit measuring roughly four feet across and eight feet deep. Space’s interior was divided into three carved niches accessible by a vertical trench.

In the northernmost niche, archaeologists found a coffin and an array of vessels scattered across the ground. The southernmost niche yielded a second sealed coffin, as well as 14 ritual Greek jars called amphorae and a bowl.

Two Minoan men were buried in the Crete tomb roughly 3,400 years ago (Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities)

Forbes’ Kristina Kilgrove writes that the high quality of the pottery left in the tomb indicates the individuals buried were relatively affluent. She notes, however, that other burial sites dating to the same Late Minoan period feature more elaborate beehive-style tombs.

“These [men] could be wealthy,” Kilgrove states, “but not the wealthiest.”

The ornate pottery vessels found inside the tomb were all in good condition.

Unlike many ancient tombs, the Kentri grave was never discovered by thieves, Argyris Pantazis, deputy mayor of Local Communities, Agrarian and Tourism of Ierapetra, tells local news outlet Cretapost.

In fact, the site likely would have remained sealed in perpetuity if not for the chance intervention of a broken irrigation pipe, which watered down the soil surrounding the farmer’s olive grove and led to his unexpected parking debacle.

“We are particularly pleased with this great archaeological discovery as it is expected to further enhance our culture and history,” Pantazis added in his interview with Cretapost. “Indeed, this is also a response to all those who doubt that there were Minoans in Ierapetra.”

According to Archaeology News Network, most Minoan settlements found on Crete are located in the lowlands and plains rather than the mountainous regions of Ierapetra.

Still, a 2012 excavation in Anatoli, Ierapetra, revealed a Minoan mansion dating to between 1600 and 1400 B.C., roughly the same time period as the Kentri tomb.

This latest find offers further proof of the ancient civilization’s presence—as Mark Cartwright notes for Ancient History Encyclopedia, the Minoans are most renowned for their labyrinthine palace complexes, which likely inspired the classic Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. According to legend, Queen Pasiphae of Crete gave birth to the Minotaur, a fierce half-man, half-bull hybrid, after falling for a bull sent to Earth by the Greek god Zeus.

Minoan fresco is commonly known as the ‘Prince of the Lilies.’

The Minotaur, doomed to an eternity spent wandering the halls of an underground labyrinth and killing anyone it encountered, was eventually defeated by the demigod Theseus, who relied on an enchanted ball of thread provided by the king’s daughter, Ariadne, to escape the maze.

Much of the Minoans’ history remains unclear, but Forbes’ Kilgrove reports that natural disasters, including the eruption of the Thera volcano, an earthquake and a tsunami, contributed to the group’s downfall, enabling enemies such as the Mycenaeans to easily invade. Analysis of the excavated Kentri tomb may offer further insights on the Minoan-Mycenaean rivalry, as well as the Cretan civilization’s eventual demise.

ASIA, EUROPE, WORLD

Dogs are humans’ oldest companions, DNA shows

Dogs are humans’ oldest companions, DNA shows

“Dog is a man’s best friend” is the common saying. For thousands of years, dogs have been our companions for hunting, friendship, war, and many more. Dogs have managed to keep up with us humans and have now become ‘a mans best friend’. This could largely be down to a dog and their diet, which is why dog owners are quite particular when it comes to purchasing food for their companions. It’s become a regular activity for pet owners to get online and view recommended foods, such as pet food exposed, and others before choosing the right food for them! In modern times this has been largely reduced down to friendship and some may say our modern dogs lead a spoilt life of luxury, whether that is getting them decorative collars or procuring an orthopedic bed for dogs to help keep their joints healthy. There has been evidence that dogs have been kept as pets as far back as Ancient Egypt, with the finding of jeweled dog collars. But how far back exactly can the roots of our companionship with dogs be traced?

Science Magazine reports that evolutionary biologist Greger Larson of the University of Oxford, paleogenomicist Pontus Skoglund of the Francis Crick Institute, and their colleagues analyzed the genomes of more than 2,000 dogs who lived in Europe, Siberia, and the Near East as early as 11,000 years ago.

Libyan rock art that may date back 7000 years depicts a hunter and his dog.

“This is a very interesting research,” notes the archaeogeneticist Wolfgang Haak at the Max Planck Institute for Human History Sciences. “We’re finally starting to see how the dog story and the human story match up.”

One of the main enigmas of domestication were dogs. Scientists still have not figured out when or where they appeared, much less how or why they emerged, after decades of studies.

A 2016 study concluded that dogs may have been domesticated twice, once in Asia and once in Europe or the Near East, but critics said there wasn’t enough evidence to be sure.

A few years later, researchers reported signs of dogs in the Americas as early as 10,000 years ago, yet those canines appear to have vanished without a genetic trace. Other studies have found evidence of ancient dogs in Siberia and elsewhere, but scientists don’t know how they got there or how they’re related.

To fill in some of the blanks, two big names in dog and human genetics teamed up: Greger Larson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, and Pontus Skoglund, a paleogenomicist at the Francis Crick Institute. Larsen, Skoglund, and colleagues sifted through more than 2000 sets of ancient dog remain dating back nearly 11,000 years from Europe, Siberia, and the Near East. In the process, they added 27 ancient dog genomes to the five already on record. They then compared those with the genomes of 17 humans living in the same places and times as the dogs.

The dog DNA alone revealed some surprises. As early as 11,000 years ago, there were already five distinct dog lineages; these gave rise to canines in the Near East, northern Europe, Siberia, New Guinea, and the Americas, the team reports today in Science. Because dogs had already diversified so much by that time, “domestication had to occur long before then,” Skoglund says. That fits with archaeological evidence: The oldest definitive dog remains come from Germany about 15,000 to 16,000 years ago.

Remarkably, pieces of these ancient lineages are still present in today’s pooches. Chihuahuas can trace some of their ancestries to early American dogs, for example, whereas Huskies sport genetic signatures of ancient Siberian dogs, the team found. “If you see a bunch of different dogs in a dog park,” Skoglund says, “they may all have different ancestries that trace all the way back 11,000 years” (see figure below).

Today’s dogs can trace their ancestry to canines that lived up to 11,000 years ago.

When the researchers compared their dog DNA with modern and ancient wolf DNA, they got another surprise. Most domesticated animals pick up genetic material from their wild relatives-even after domestication-because the two species often live in close proximity and can still mate (think pigs and wild boars). But dogs show no such “gene flow” from wolves. Instead, the wolves gained new DNA from the dogs-a one-way street.

Larson chalks this up to the intimate relationship between dogs and humans. If your pig or chicken becomes a bit wilder thanks to an infusion of feral DNA, it doesn’t matter, because you’re going to eat them anyway, he explains. But dogs that go native make bad guards, hunting companions, and friends. “If you’re a dog and you have a bit of wolf in you, that’s terrible,” Larson says. People will “get rid of the dog.”

The wolf-dog analysis also suggests dogs evolved only once, from a now-extinct wolf population. Still, Larson, who led the 2016 study on multiple domestication events, says more data are needed to seal the deal.

Then the scientists brought humans into the mix. They selected human DNA samples from the same places and eras for which they had ancient canine DNA and traced the genetic history of each. “It’s like you have an ancient text in two different languages, and you’re looking to see how both languages have changed over time,” Skoglund says.

In many places, the team found a strong overlap between human and dog genomes. For example, farmers and their pups in Sweden about 5,000 years ago both trace their ancestry to the Near East. This suggests early farmers took their dogs with them as agriculture spread throughout the continent. “Writ large, as humans moved, they moved with their dogs,” Larson says.

But sometimes the stories didn’t match up. Farmers in Germany about 7000 years ago also came from the Near East and also lived with dogs. But those animals seem more similar to hunter-gatherer pups, which came from Siberia and Europe.

That suggests many early migrants adopted local dogs that were better adapted to their new environment, Haak says. The benefits were many, adds Peter Savolainen, a geneticist at the Royal Institute of Technology and an expert on dog origins. “They were cute. You could use them. You could even eat them.”

Savolainen calls the study “very thorough,” and adds it’s “fantastic” that the researchers were able to bring together so many data. But he has long argued that dogs arose in Southeast Asia and says the work is incomplete without samples from that corner of the globe. “Without those, you could be missing an important part of the picture.”

For now, Larson says his team is analyzing “a ton” of wolf and dog genomes. He and his colleagues have also begun to look at ancient skull shape and genetic markers that could give clues to what early dogs looked like. Whatever he finds, he’s counting on being surprised. “We have to expect the unexpected,” he says, “because that’s all ancient DNA ever gives us.”

ARMENIA, EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

A Mysterious 3,000-Year-Old Castle Has Been Found Under a Lake in Turkey

A Mysterious 3,000-Year-Old Castle Has Been Found Under a Lake in Turkey

A story describing the ruins of an ancient castle buried underneath the picturesque waters of Lake Van, Turkey, has been proclaimed entirely real.

The preserved ruins of a castle dating back more than 3,000 years to the Iron Age under the civilisation of Urartu have been found by archaeologists from Van Yüzüncü Yıl University.

Tahsin Ceylan, head of the dive team, told the Turkish Daily Saba that “There was a report that there was something under the water but most archaeologists and museum officials told us that we’re not going to find it.” Instead, Ceylan and his team ended up uncovering a massive fortress spanning a kilometre over the lakebed.

A Mysterious 3,000-Year-Old Castle Has Been Found Under a Lake in Turkey
The 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortification have been discovered at the bottom of Turkey’s largest lake. Divers exploring Lake Van discovered the incredibly well-preserved wall of a castle, thought to have been built by the Urartu civilization

“Since the water of Lake Van is alkaline, the castle has not been damaged and has kept its characteristics underwater,” Ceyland added to the Hurriyet Daily News, referencing Van’s distinction as the largest sodium lake in the world.

“We have detected the castle’s exact location and photographed it and have made progress in our research. We now believe we have discovered a new area for archaeologists and historians to study.”

As shown in the video below, the fortress appears remarkably well preserved, with mortared rocks giving way to perfectly cut, smooth stone walls.

Visible sections span some 9 to 14 feet, with much of the rest buried under sediment.

A boon to archaeology and tourism

Lake Van has been subjected to dramatic rises and falls in water levels throughout much of its history.

During the Ice Age, the lake was more than 200 feet above its present level, while some 9,500 years ago it was nearly 1,000 feet lower.

Because the lake has no outlet, it is rich in sediment, with some layers estimated to be more than 1,300 feet.

This makes it extremely interesting to climate scientists, who estimate these sediments may contain the preserved climate history of the last 800,000 years.

According to Ceyland, the discovery of the submerged castle is not only a boon to the archaeological community, but also for tourists interested in learning more about the region’s rich history.

“Many civilizations and people had settled around Lake Van,” he said. “They named the lake the ‘upper sea’ and believed it had many mysterious things. With this belief in mind, we are working to reveal the lake’s ‘secrets.”

EUROPE, WORLD

34,000 years old: Explorer claims evidence of pyramid found in Bosnia

34,000 years old: Explorer claims evidence of pyramid found in Bosnia

Although the number of visitors and scientific evidence of their presence is yet to be discovered in the polemical pyramids of Bosnia, and the majority of the excavations are undertaken by volunteers led by Emir Osmanagic, also known as the Bosnian Indiana Jones

The Bosnian pyramids, believed to be the ‘Bosnian Indiana Jones’ by the archaeologist Semir Osmanagic, attract tens of thousands of visitors to Visoko city, where they located on.

As talks on the Bosnian Pyramids continue on the global agenda, explorers and archaeologists from around the globe visit Visoko to see the pyramids explored in 2005. Close to 500,000 visitors from far-reaching countries like Australia, New Zealand, India and China visit the pyramids each year, greatly surpassing the 41,000 inhabitants of Visoko.

Believing that the biggest pyramid, called “The Sun Pyramid,” emits energy, many people visit the pyramid and pass time in the tube under the pyramid for healing and meditation.

Meanwhile, the explorer of the pyramids, Semir Osmanagic, who is known as “The Bosnian Indiana Jones” with his cowboy hat, different style and his dog “Sunny” always next to him, attracts a great deal of attention as the tour guide.

Sam Osmanagich claims that 34,000 years ago, early Europeans built “the greatest pyramidal complex” on earth, in Bosnia. (Morten Hvaal)

While the pyramids still keep the mystery behind them, volunteers who believe in the pyramids that come to Visoko for excavations are trying to unveil them.

With the cooperation of the Bosnian Sun Pyramid Association and Osmanagic, funds provided for the excavation work in the area and the pyramids are trying to be promoted via advertisements prepared for volunteers and tourists.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Osmanagic said more than 2,000 volunteers from 62 countries came to Visoko in the last 7 years and helped the excavation work by unveiling the pyramids and opening tubes. Osmanagic also marked that thanks to the association, saying nearly 50,000 tourists visit the pyramids every year.

Stressing that neither the state nor the municipality has helped the excavation work since the exploration of the pyramids, Osmanagic said, “Tourists are really interested in the pyramids. They want to visit here again and again.”

Implying that there is concentrated energy at the Sun Pyramid, Osmanagic marked that tourists prefer the area for meditation and relaxing spiritually.

The Bosnian Indiana Jones cited that they cleared an 800-meter (2,625-foot) route in the tubes under the Sun Pyramid with the aim of bounding them to the other tubes claiming that all the other pyramids are bound to each other.

Bosnian Indiana Jones with his cowboy hat, is the golden boy of the tourists.

As a result of the excavations conducted in 2005, it is seen that the pyramids were constructed by humans. Geometric blocks in rectangular, triangular and various forms were excavated under the pyramids.

Visočica hill in Bosnia
Visočica hill conglomerate layers

Osmanagic and his excavation explored the artificial concrete between the layers of the pyramids and detected that the organic fossilized plants within the layers correspond to 20,000 years ago with carbon measurement.

Research conducted by 120 experts on archaeology, geology, pedology, geophysics and energy show that the Bosnian Pyramids are artifactual rather than natural.

Reiterating that the European Archaeology Association (EEA) warns experts interested in the pyramids about not to visit the area, Osmanagic said, “The ones who are worried about the expected changes in history are trying to reject the existence of these pyramids.”

Marking that the Sun Pyramid in Bosnia is 220 meters high, while the biggest pyramid in Egypt is 147 meters, Osmanagic claimed that the content of history books must be changed. According to the Bosnian Indiana Jones, the scientists rejecting the Bosnian Pyramids have never visited the area and have only looked at the analysis and test results on the pyramids.

Coming to Visoko from New Zealand to see the pyramids, Mollie Duey said, “I received several invitations from my friends all around the world and so I decided to visit the Bosnian Pyramids. Here what I see is nothing but pyramids. There is also scientific proof about them. It will not be wise to reject these structures.”

Adding that she is planning to visit the area one more time in three years, Duey is curious about the ongoing excavations and is waiting for what will be excavated under the pyramids.

A Visoko citizen, Azra Ferhatovic also said the pyramids boost tourism in the area and added that it will be wise to make touristic investments in the city so that tourists planning to go back to Sarajevo just after visiting the pyramids may stay longer in Visoko.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Early Christian Church Unearthed in Turkey

Early Christian Church Unearthed in Turkey

A building featuring 20 columned corridors arranged around a courtyard has been discovered next to a theatre in southwestern Turkey’s ancient city of Laodicea, according to a Hurriyet Daily News report. Celal Şimşek of Pamukkale University said the structure was used as a home, as a place of business, and as a Christian church.

In Laodicea, the largest ancient city in Anatolia after Ephesus, excavations have been ongoing for a year. So far, a church, theatre and two streets called Syria and Stadium with their columns have been revived.

Besides, many important structures such as the 1,750-year-old travertine blocks with frescoes, which were destroyed in the earthquake that occurred in 494 A.D., a three-meter-long statue of the 1,906-year-old Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Nerva Trajan and the sacred agora have also been discovered. Three graffiti engraved on a marble block, estimated to be 1,500 years old, have also been found.

In Laodicea, which was a metropolitan city in ancient times and was home to one of the seven churches mentioned in the Bible, a church was unearthed inside a house, located adjacent to the northern theatre.

Speaking to the state-run Anadolu Agency, Şimşek said that works have been continuing to revive the Hellenistic era’s 2,200-year-old theatre, which was found in the recent years in the west, and the peristylium (a courtyard surrounded by open columned corridors) with the church inside.

Şimşek stated that the house, which is estimated to be about 2,000 years old and built on an area of 2,000 square meters, is located in a very interesting place.

“Here, we know that the house was used as of the first century A.D. and that the main planning system of the Roman Empire period continued intact until the seventh century A.D. We obtained interesting results in our works in the house.

We saw in the house the fault lines of the earthquakes that destroyed Laodicea over the years. We are working here by protecting these fault lines.”

Şimşek explained that with the spread of Christianity, the first believers had secretly transformed some parts of this large house into a place of worship.

Noting that there are two separate architectural halls for men and women in the house, He said, “The hall in the west was organized for men and the one in the east for women and a place of worship was made here in east hall.”

“In the middle of the house, there is a hall with 18 columns. In this house, we found baths, shelters and other sections that were used as business places. The direction of the secret church in the house was facing north,” Şimşek added.

Noting that they unearthed very rich marble coverings on the walls of the eastern hall, which was converted into a church, Şimşek stated that they were able to see how believers of Christianity worshipped here.

Emphasizing that the house is very special and unique, he said, “It is the only example in the regard that this place was used as both a home and a business place and is adjacent to the theatre.”

Stating that during the excavations, they also unearthed the sacred items used by the first Christians, Şimşek said, “We think that the Laodicea Church was built after Christianity was made free, and the high-ranking clergy there probably lived in this house, but we have not yet made a clear determination regarding this.”

“This house with the church is very important in terms of reaching data on how Christianity spread in Laodicea since the middle of the first century A.D.,” he added.

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

Iron Age Site Found in Scotland

Iron Age Site Found in Scotland

The Scotsman reports that researchers have discovered traces of 23 structures dated to as early as 800 B.C. on heavily ploughed land in eastern Scotland, near the coast of the North Sea, ahead of a construction project.

The study is now continuing to decide whether the site has a flourishing domestic settlement or more industrial operation.

Proof has been identified of at least 23 structures on the land, which is due to be developed by Claymore Homes, with some pottery and flint tools also found.

Iron Age Site Found in Scotland
Archaeologists at work on the site of an Iron Age settlement near Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire.

The settlement may be estimated to be from 800 BC to 400 AD with large amounts of charcoal and other organic material now undergoing testing at the archaeology department at Aberdeen University in the search for an accurate timeline.

Ali Cameron, of Cameron Archaeology, first started working on the site in 2017 with the full extent of the settlement only now coming to light.

She said a find of such a scale was ‘very exciting’ with ‘a lot of hope’ pinned on the analysis of the samples.

She said: “ There are at least 23 structures there which date to the Late Prehistoric period. Some of the ditches were full of charcoal. We have more than 300 samples so we are going to get a really good picture of the dating.”

She added that the organic remains would help build up an understanding of what the site was being used for.

The archaeologist said: “If you get a lot of grain, you might be looking at a domestic site, for example. It might help determine what was happening in a particular building.

“We are pinning a lot on those samples.

“It could be that this was more of an industrial site. There are so many buildings over a huge area. We have got a lot more work to do.”

Ms Cameron said the land had been ‘so heavily ploughed’ that only a handful of artefacts had been found. She said there was little-known activity in the Cruden Bay area around the same time the settlement is thought to date from.

“The site is higher up and you get this fantastic view over the bay. It’s a great location and you can imagine why people wanted to settle there,” Ms Cameron added.

The site is due to be developed by Claymore Homes.

Ms Cameron said the company had been ‘fully supportive’ of all the archaeological works with the firm paying for the excavation, the analysis of finds, processing of samples and the publication of a report in an archaeological journal.

Mike Shepherd, of the Port Errol Heritage Group, told the Press and Journal: “You sometimes get told in Cruden Bay that it never gets boring here and the history of the place shows that this has been true for a very long time.

“The discovery of a prehistoric settlement here is astonishing. Just consider it: an ancient village which has been forgotten for centuries and is now finally, gradually coming to light.

“There will be a great curiosity to find out more about these ancient people who long ago made our place their place.”

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

World War II Execution Site Investigated in Poland

World War II Execution Site Investigated in Poland

Dawid Kobiałka of the Polish Academy of Sciences, with the assistance of an 88-year-old eyewitness, has found personal belongings, bullets, and charred human bone, including fragments of skulls, teeth, femurs, and a vertebra, just under the surface of the ground in an area of northern Poland dubbed “Death Valley,” according to a report by The First News.

On the outskirts of the town of Chojnice in northern Poland, where at least two mass killings took place at the hands of German death squads in 1939 and early 1945, at a site named ‘Death Valley’ the harrowing discovery was made. Dr Dawid Kobialka, from the Polish Academy of Sciences Institute of Archeology and Ethnology, who made the horrible discovery told TFN: “The bones and bullets are linked with the massacre of the second half of January 1945.

The crime was committed by the Gestapo and members of the German police, according to historical records. The bullets and shells came from the pistols of the Walther PPK and P08 Parabellum, indicating that the victims were executed at close range.” He added: “We found fragments of, among others, skulls, teeth, femurs, a thoracic vertebra. The bones lie just under the ground for one centimetre or two. To see the remains, it was enough to put a shovel in the ground once.

Dawid Kobialka from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences said the bones were discovered one centimetre below the surface. 

“There were more burnt human bones than sand.

“Most of the bones are actually ashes because of the temperature of the cremations. That is why the gasoline was used.” Eye-witness Jan Grunt said gasoline barrels were at Death Valley when the Germans left the site.

He said: “The shootings from pistols were heard almost all night. […]. The bodies were dowsed by gasoline and later burned. Three gasoline barrels that still lie in Death Valley confirm it. The fire was discernible for three days and nights at the Death Valley”. Another eye-witness Kazimierz Janikowski who is now 88 but was 13 at the time of the massacre and helped the researchers locate the site said: “We were going there [to Death Valley] because we were curious about what was happening.

“I was searching there and found [burned human] bones.

“I still see those 200-litre gasoline barrels. There was stench over town when the bodies were burned.”

Kobialka added that “marks of gasoline are preserved on fragments of wood discovered during the research.” The researchers also discovered humbling personal belongings the victims had on them when they were killed. One photo shows a battered wristwatch, another a spoon and plate. Yet another photo shows the fragment of a woman’s broach, confirming testimonies that both men and women were slaughtered.

Named Death Valley by locals, the area covers around 1.5km. Towards the end of the war, Gestapo officers shot dead around 600 prisoners in the ‘valley’ before setting their corpses on fire.

Researchers also discovered the personal remains of victims including a battered wristwatch.
Researchers also discovered the personal remains of victims including a battered wristwatch.

Kobialka said: “There were several columns of people and they went in different directions. One of them was herded to Chojnice and murdered in Death Valley.

“The townspeople saw a glow of light at night on the outskirts of the city in the Valley of Death, and a terrible smell of burning went over the city.

“The most probable version of events is that they were Gestapo prisoners from the prison in Bydgoszcz.

“There, among others, were detained members of the Polish resistance who were captured at the turn of 1944-1945.”

He added: “In materials, we found in one document, there is an annotation that in Death Valley, then it was called Ostrówek, about 600 people were murdered and burned.”

The Chojnice killing fields lie just 50 miles north of the town of Bydgoszcz where the Germans carried out brutal repression following Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939.

By the end of the war, it is estimated that around 36,350 civilians had been ‘liquidated’ by German forces in Bydgoszcz and the surrounding areas.

Kobialka said: “When the Red Army was coming from the south in January 1945, the Germans organised the evacuation of the prison.

“A few columns of prisoners were made, with some of them going to the west.

“One of them went to Chojnice under the supervision of Gestapo guards.

“The guards, according to one of the witnesses, organised the massacre.”

Earlier this year, the Institute uncovered remains from the 1939 massacre where in the early stages of WWII, German SS shot dead more than 500 locals as part of their ‘action against the intelligentsia’ who the Third Reich considered ‘dangerous’. In charge of operations was Heinrich Mocek, a sadistic Nazi officer who between October 1939 and January 1940 ordered extensive exterminations across the whole region as part of the Nazis’ Polish Intelligentsia Action, which saw around 30,000-40,000 Poles living in the Pomerania region murdered.

He was later convicted for a string of atrocities and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1965 by a West German court. But by the time the Red Army arrived he had fled Poland, leaving the question of who ordered and carried out the 1945 massacre unanswered.

Kobialka said: “The massacre in 1939 is relatively well-known. We know some of the victims, we know some of the murderers, we know some of the witnesses.

“But the massacre in January 1945 is a mystery. We found burned human bones close to the meadow.

“So, Death Valley embodies different locations near Chojnice that were the theatre of mass executions during the Second World War.

“We are still looking for historical records that will shed light on the subject.”

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Archaeologists Discover 3,500-Year-Old “Griffin Warrior” Tomb Full of Treasures

Archaeologists Discover 3,500-Year-Old “Griffin Warrior” Tomb Full of Treasures

Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, archaeologists in UC’s classics department, found the two beehive-shaped tombs in Pylos, Greece, last year while investigating the area around the grave of an individual they have called the “Griffin Warrior,” a Greek man whose final resting place they discovered nearby in 2015.

Like the Griffin Warrior’s tomb, the princely tombs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea also contained a wealth of cultural artefacts and delicate jewellery that could help historians fill in gaps in our knowledge of early Greek civilization.

The warrior was buried with a bronze sword, ivory combs, gold rings, and seal stones, gemstones carved with images depicting Minoan influences. Although the archaeologists don’t yet know where in Greece the griffin warrior was from, it’s clear from the wealth of objects found in his grave that he held a high station in society, and the particulars of the object are leading archaeologists to revise some accepted theories about Mycenaean Greece.

University of Cincinnati faculty and staff in the Griffin Warrior tomb (click to enlarge)
University of Cincinnati faculty and staff in the Griffin Warrior tomb
Archaeologists Discover 3,500-Year-Old “Griffin Warrior” Tomb Full of Treasures
A detailed ivory comb found at the Pylos dig site

The warrior was buried with a bronze sword, ivory combs, gold rings, and seal stones, gemstones carved with images depicting Minoan influences. Although the archaeologists don’t yet know where in Greece the griffin warrior was from, it’s clear from the wealth of objects found in his grave that he held a high station in society, and the particulars of the object are leading archaeologists to revise some accepted theories about Mycenaean Greece.

The discovery was made near the southwest coast of Greece, close to the Palace of Nestor, which is part of the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project. The palace, named for King Nestor of Pylos in Homer’s The Illiad, is one of the best-preserved Bronze Age palaces on the Greek mainland, despite having been nearly destroyed by fire in 1200 BCE. Dr. Sharon Stocker and Dr. Jack W. Davis from the University of Cincinnati have been excavating at Pylos for the past 25 years.

The Palace of Nestor is an incredible source of archaeological information, though it has been more than 75 years since the last discovery of this magnitude: in 1939, Carl Blegen unearthed a number of tablets inscribed with Linear B script, writing that, borrowing heavily from the Minoan Linear A script, became the earliest known form of written Greek.

A gold ring found in the tomb at Pylos featuring Minoan Toreador imagery

Like the Linear B tablets, many of the objects found in the Griffin Warrior’s tomb display Minoan imagery, such as bulls and bull-leaping, a seemingly impossible athletic feat where a person jumps over a charging bull. These images of bull-leapers, also known as Toreadors, are common in Minoan culture and can be seen in many places, such as the stucco frescoes at the Palace of Knossos, The archaeologists have determined that the Griffin Warrior predates the Palace of Nestor, which might point to Mycenaean Greece flourishing earlier than previously thought in Pylos. Mycenaean Greece (1600–1100 BCE), the first advanced culture on the mainland, was a civilization in transition.

After mainland Greece invaded and occupied Minoan Crete around 1420 BCE, Greeks began to adapt, rather than destroy, the more sophisticated Minoan culture. Dr Davis believes that the presence of Minoan imagery on the Griffin Warrior’s artefacts “suggests that contact between Crete and Greece were very close… and that here in Pylos they… were in the process of incorporating Minoan ideas into their own ideology.”

The open shaft grave of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos

The archaeologists hope to do DNA testing on the Griffin Warrior’s teeth to try to determine his birthplace, which might help explain the meaning and purpose of the Minoan rings and stones in his tomb — e.g., whether these artefacts were personally important to him, aspects of Minoan culture that had been adopted by the Mycenaean people, or had been looted from Crete.

The Griffin Warrior’s discovery and further investigation into his birthplace might lead archaeologists to further reevaluate the history and timeline of Mycenaean Greek culture and its relation to Minoan Crete. This finding has revealed a wealth of new information, but work continues at the Pylos dig site to see how much more can be illuminated about Mycenaean Greece.