Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Rare, Neolithic ‘Goddess’ Figurine Discovered in Turkey

Rare, Neolithic ‘Goddess’ Figurine Discovered in Turkey

The finding happened in the southern part of Anatolian Plateau in central Turkey, one of the main proto-city centres of the first settlers and one of the world’s most renowned archaeological sites.

For a thousand years between 7100 and 6000 BC, i.e. the Neolithic period, Çatalhöyük has been continuously inhabited.

In 2016 the figure was found. In Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, the conclusions of his expert analyses are presented.

The best-known artifacts from this location are clay female figures which, due to their giant stance and bare breasts have been regarded as mother goddesses.

Today, they are usually interpreted as depicting the elderly and objects related to ancestor worship.

The 8,000-year-old figurine is notable for its craftsmanship, with fine details likely made with thin tools, like flint or obsidian, by a practised artisan.

Now scientists have announced the discovery of a bone figurine that is anthropomorphic, i.e. has human features.

This is undoubtedly an important find with a very simplified, but clear depiction of human features in the form of eyes.

Anthropomorphic figurine discovered by a Polish researcher
Anthropomorphic figurine discovered by a Polish researcher

The figurine was made of bone, the proximal finger of a donkey`, told the PAP the discoverer of the object, Professor Kamilla Pawłowska, archaeozoologist and palaeontologist from the Department of Palaeoenvironmental Research of the Institute of Geology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

The figurine is about 6 cm high. It has clearly visible incisions shaped to resemble eyes. A similar way of presenting human features is known from artefacts discovered in other sites in the Middle East from the same period, says Professor Kamilla Pawłowska.

She adds that the majority of similar objects are known from a bit later period, the Chalcolithic (4300 – 3300 BC). They are also made of bones, mainly donkey and horse.

Until now, during the research in Çatalhöyük scientists discovered the phalanges of donkeys and horses. They are often well preserved.

In individual cases, there were traces of processing on them, but never in a form reminiscent of human anatomical features, emphasizes Professor Kamilla Pawłowska.

The researcher says that there were not many donkeys in this prehistoric city, especially at the end of its functioning. Sheep and goats were more common since their meat, marrow and fat was an important element of the inhabitants` diet.

The figurine was discovered during the work of an international team under the supervision of Dr Marek Z. Barański from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.

Professor Kamilla Pawłowska found it while analysing the flotation sample, i.e. wet screening. This procedure allows archaeologists to find bone remains and other small artefacts.

It is known that the figurine was in one of the clay containers in a room where the food was stored. The container was made ca. 6500-6300 BC. (PAP)

AFRICA, EUROPE, WORLD

Modern Africans and Europeans may have more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought

Modern Africans and Europeans may have more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought

Modern Africans and Europeans may have more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought
Ancient Europeans, represented by a roughly 30,000-year-old French Homo sapiens skull shown at left, interbred with Neandertals, represented by a 70,000- to 50,000-year-old French skull on the right, before spreading Neandertal genes into Africa, a new study finds.

It has been revealed for the first time that African populations share Neanderthal ancestry, in findings that add a new twist to the tale of ancient humans and our closest known relatives.

It was previously believed that Neanderthal genes were transmitted by only non-African populations due to interbreeding that took place after a major human migration out of Africa and across the globe about 60,000 years ago.

The most recent findings indicate that Neanderthal lineages are more closely intertwined than once thought and point to far earlier interbreeding events, about 200,000 years ago.

“Our results show this history was much more interesting and there were many waves of dispersal out of Africa, some of which led to admixture between modern humans and Neanderthals that we see in the genomes of all living individuals today,” said Joshua Akey, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University and senior author of the research.

The study suggests living Europeans and Asians carry about 1% Neanderthal DNA, compared with on average 0.3% for those of African ancestry.

A Neanderthal skull. Previously it was believe that only non-African populations carried Neanderthal genes.

Akey and colleagues believe that this Neanderthal DNA arrived in Africa with ancient Europeans whose ancestors – over many generations – had left Africa, met and mated with Neanderthals and then returned to Africa and mixed with local populations.

“An important aspect of our study is that it highlights humans, and hominins, were moving in and out of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years and occasionally admixing,” said Akey. “These back-to-Africa migrations, largely from ancestors of contemporary Europeans, carried Neanderthal sequences with them, and through admixture, contributed to the Neanderthal ancestry we detect in African individuals today.”

The increasingly fine-grained details of our ancestors’ migration patterns and intimate encounters with other types of humans are coming into focus thanks to the advent of sophisticated computational genetics techniques.

These statistical methods allow scientists to line up the Neanderthal genome side by side with that of ancient modern humans and DNA from different living populations and figure out whether the different lineages have been steadily diverging or whether there are blips where large chunks of DNA were exchanged at certain time points.

The latest comparison highlights previously unnoticed ancient human genes in the Neanderthal genome apparently acquired from interbreeding events dating to about 200,000 years ago.

This suggests an early group of humans travelled from Africa to Europe or Asia, where they encountered Neanderthal populations and left a faint imprint on their genome that could still be detected more than 100,000 years later.

The paper also highlights the relative lack of genetics research in African populations, despite modern humans having first emerged on the continent and despite African populations today being more diverse genetically than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined.

“To more fully understand human genomic variation and human evolutionary history, it is imperative to comprehensively sample individuals from all regions of the world, and Africa remains one of the most understudied regions,” said Akey.

It is not known whether all African populations, some of whose roots stretch into the deep past, share this Neanderthal heritage. KhoeSan (bushmen) and Mbuti (central African pygmy) populations, for instance, appear to have split off from other groups more than 100,000 years ago.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

How a-boat this! Huge 700-year-old shipwreck found at bottom of river Vistula

How a-boat this! Huge 700-year-old shipwreck found at bottom of river Vistula

The underwater archaeologists in Vistula River north of Warsaw, Poland, discovered a centuries-old shipwreck described as “huge and rare.”

This historical boat was the discovery by a group of submarine explorers searching in the Vistula River north of Warsaw in Poland for a whopping 37 meters long (121 foot) and 6 meters wide (20 foot) and the article in Science in Poland reveals that the boat used to carry up to “100 tons of goods.”

Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Scientific Heritage with support from the Warsaw Institute of Archaeology, and the “massive” newly discovered boat is thought to have been a transport vessel operating between the 14th and 18th centuries.

Dr. Artur Brzóska is an underwater archaeologist and head of the research project from the Association of Archaeologists Jutra, and he believes it probably “transported grain to Gdańsk.”

Poor visibility and strong water currents were among the negative environmental challenges that stopped the divers from recovering any artifacts from the sunken ship.

But Brzóska pointed out that wrecks such as these are “very rare” and until this discovery, only two wrecks were previously known in this part of the river: a 16th century and 19th-century ship.

This new boat is a so-called “berlinka,” which was an elongated, shallow, barge-type craft designed for canal transportation, and while an article like this makes it all sound so simple, finding the rare wreck took what amounted to a major scientific operation.

Sonar image of the centuries-old boat discovered in the Vistula River in Poland.

Before the researchers discovered the “huge” boat they mounted hi-tech sonar equipment around a motorboat and selected a series of test sites with a view to diving at any interesting findings on the scans.

The system was tested on the Vistula River near Warsaw`s Old Town and the project required sailing around 400 kilometers (250 miles) along parallel survey lines scanning a 13-kilometer-long (8 miles) stretch of the river, covering nearly 500 hectares in all.

The scientists first found the decomposing remains of a World War II bridge sunk near Łomianki Dolne, and the geometry of its steel structure informed Brzóska’s team that it had been built by “German sappers.”

They also found parts of another ship driven into the bottom of the river and a fragment from the vessel pulled to the surface led Brzóska to the conclusion that it too might have been a cargo boat, similar to the huge one they discovered.

Researchers about to dive at the site of the shipwreck on the Vistula River in Poland.

While the wrecks being discovered today are from the last 600 years, beneath them, deep in the silts of the riverbed, are the rotting remains of much more ancient vessels, as the Vistula basin was occupied in the 1st millennium BC by Iron Age Lusatian and Przeworsk cultures.

1st-century Roman authors called the region “Magna Germania” and in the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy described the Vistula River as the border between Germania and Sarmatia.

According to an article on Suwalszczyzna, the Vistula River used to be connected to the Dnieper River, and thence to the  Black Sea via the Augustów Canal, one of the most ancient trade routes, the Amber Road, which connected Northern Europe with Asia, Greece,  Egypt, and elsewhere.

Encyclopedia Britannica says that for hundreds of years the river was one of the main trade routes of ancient Poland and the Vistula estuary was settled by Slavs in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Moving through the canals of time, the magnificent if not ostentatious castles and fortresses that line the riverbanks all stand testimony to the wealth accumulated through the trade of salt, timber, and stone between the 10th and 13th centuries.

Shot of the Vistula River in Poland where the shipwreck was found.

In the 16th century most of the grain exported from Poland left from the city of Gdańsk, and is located at the end of the Vistula, with its Baltic seaport trade connections, it became the wealthiest, most highly developed and connected of the Polish cities. It was this thriving Polish city that Dr. Artur Brzóska believes the newly discovered massive barge transported grain too, but the team is awaiting further results before drawing this conclusion.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Anglo-Saxon Abbey where Lusty King Edgar was Crowned, Found!

Anglo-Saxon Abbey where Lusty King Edgar was Crowned, Found!

The ruins of two stone buildings found during restoration work at Bath Abbey by Wessex Archeology specialist, it was discovered during renovation work at Bath Abbey, to the 8th – 10th century.

Bath Abbey Somerset, England.
The site at Bath Abbey

It is probably part of the Anglo-Saxon monastery where King Edgar was crowned as the first King of England in 973 AD.

In the excavation project Bath Abbey’s Footprint, the two foundations were uncovered underneath the street level, as part of Bath Abbey’s Footprint project.

The Wessex Archeology team revealed the apsidal (semi-circular) structures below an area where the cloisters of the 12th-century cathedral would have once stood and overlying earlier Romano-British deposits.

An internal plaster renders on the southern-most apse contained fragments of charcoal from which two samples were sent for radiocarbon dating at Queen’s University, Belfast.

The dates came back as AD 780-970 and AD 670-770, much to the delight of Wessex Archaeology Senior Project Officer Cai Mason, who said: “When you find something unusual, you have to think ‘what is the most mundane explanation for what we’ve found?’, and most of the time that will be the explanation, but sometimes that doesn’t work, which makes you wonder ‘have we found something genuinely unusual?’

“In a post-Roman context, the most likely place to find this type of structure is at the east end of an ecclesiastical building, such as a church or chapel, and given the fact that the excavated structures are surrounded by late Saxon burials, this is the most likely explanation for their use.

Excavations of the possible Anglo-Saxon abbey at Bath Abbey. 

“This, together with the late Saxon stonework and burials found at the Abbey, provides increasingly strong evidence that we have indeed found part of Bath’s lost Anglo-Saxon monastery.”

Wessex Archaeology Project Manager Bruce Eaton added: “Given that the potential date of these structures spans some 200 years there are several possible contexts for their construction.

“One possibility would be the reign of King Offa of Mercia, who acquired the monastery in AD 781 and is credited by William of Malmesbury for building the famous Church of St Peter, probably utilizing the ready supply of worked stone from the near-by collapsing Roman baths complex.

“Extensive building work within this period is further attested to by Offa’s successor Ecgfrith having the infrastructure in place to hold court at the monastery in AD 796.

“This phase of energetic building activity does fit neatly with our earliest possible date for the plasterwork, but it is certainly not our only candidate.”

The Reverend Canon Guy Bridgewater at Bath Abbey, said: “This is a really exciting find. While we’ve always known there once was an Anglo-Saxon monastery on this site, no trace of the building remains above ground today, so it’s amazing that we now have an actual record of it and can get a real sense of it as it was.

“The excavations being carried out as part of our Footprint project are essential to make major improvements to the current Abbey church, and how we use it.

“A massive benefit has been working with Wessex Archaeology who are making important discoveries about Abbey’s 1,000-year heritage all the time.”

The Anglo-Saxon structures are among a series of exciting discoveries made by Wessex Archaeology during their excavations at Bath Abbey. In August 2018, the team uncovered a vibrantly coloured 14th century tiled floor in what would have been the nave of the medieval cathedral.

They have excavated a Mesolithic land surface below the Victorian plant room, Roman buildings which would have once stood in the heart of the town of Aquae Sulis, an Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing rare charcoal burials and the medieval cloister walk.

More recent finds have included the coffin-plate of controversial Georgian demographer Rev. Thomas Malthus and recovered painted fragments of the lost Jacobean plaster ceiling of the current Abbey church.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Archaeologists discover a crude ancient weapon that could kill a man with a single blow

Archaeologists discover a crude ancient weapon that could kill a man with a single blow

When many months ago, in England, an old wooden club was yanked from its watery grave in the River Thames in England, archaeologists didn’t quite know what to make of it.

The blunt tool, which is supposed to happen between 3530 and 3340 BC, does not look so good, it doesn’t really look all that impressive, but those studying it still wanted to get an idea of how it might have been used.

After making a full-sized replica for testing, it’s been determined that the unassuming tool could actually dispatch a human in short order and perhaps even with a single strike.

In a new research paper published in the journal Antiquity, scientists investigating the weapon and its origins took the extraordinary step of carving a replica for testing.

The original, which has begun to fall apart over its several thousands of years of life, is being preserved, but its stand-in demonstrated just how devastating it might have been.

The “Thames Beater,” as the weapon has been nicknamed, is modest in appearance. It consists of a thick wooden “blade” tapers down to a narrow handle with a hefty pommel on the very end. But its simple construction believes how much trauma it could cause.

Using the replica, the researchers asked a 30-year-old male volunteer to wield it in order to test its effectiveness in combat. The man was asked to bash a test dummy built of a realistic military ballistic material, complete with a faux human skull.

The “fight” proved to the archaeologists that the club would have been capable of shattering a human skull with a single hit and that the weapon could have been used in multiple different ways.

A ranged attack, with a full swing from the end of the handle, would have been useful when the target was greater than arms’ length away, while a two-handed bash using the beefy pommel may have been used when an enemy was much closer.

After testing its effectiveness, the scientists further compared the injuries the test dummy sustained with actual human skulls found in graveyards from the same time period.

They reported finding at least one with a skull fracture that looked nearly identical.

They further concluded that it’s likely the individual died as a result of a run-in with the Thames Beater or another similar blunt weapon.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Fossil hunter finds 185M-year-old ‘golden snitch’ with ancient sea creature inside

Fossil hunter finds 185M-year-old ‘golden snitch’ with ancient sea creature inside

Fossils shaped like Quidditchball are only a few of the many discoveries made by amateur archeologist Aaron Smith.

On the cliffs of Whitby, Yorkshire, the medical student found various fossil items from the Jurassic period. Perhaps the most spectacular is a 185 million-year-old fossil encased by what looks like a ‘golden canon’ ball.

It is technically a rock that is coated in iron pyrite, also known as ‘fools gold’, and if you shine this material, just like Smith did, then it turns shiny and gold.

The phenomenal piece of history is thought to be 185 million-years-old and was found on Sandsend Beach. Mr. Smith, 23, is a seasoned fossil collector and continues to go and explore the seaside in hope of finding similar treasures.

He said: “In order to find fossils, pretty much anywhere in the world, you just need to put in a lot of dedication!

Smith cut the sphere open to reveal the prehistoric insides
The fossils inside are of cleviceras

“The majority of the time there is nothing really to be found but every now and again, if you’re lucky enough, and something has appeared due to a storm, for example, then you might find a rock with a fossil inside it.

“When you find a fossil, then the long intricate process begins of carefully removing the stone to expose the fossil, this can take hundreds of hours in many cases.

“It’s very exciting discovering the fossils. It makes it all worthwhile after spending months of searching.”

Aaron Smith enjoys fossil hunting in his free time

When the medical student opened up one of his freshly shined pieces of iron pyrite he found spiral-shaped cleviceras fossils. Cleviceras is an extinct type of cephalopod creature. The best-known cephalopods today are probably squids and octopuses.

The golden-snitch-like spheres with a limestone core are actually common along the Yorkshire coastline and can be found amongst the stones and shales.

Mr. Smith has previously posted a video of the golden-snitch fossil online and captioned it: “Here’s a video of us opening one of our huge Cannon Ball fossils.

“The limestone nodule is coated in Iron Pyrite, meaning we can polish it to become Golden, seen in our previous videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=465xFGK1QN8

“It still impresses me that these 185 Million-Year-Old fossils are along our beautiful Yorkshire Coastline waiting to be found.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Archaeologists re-excavate hidden Roman bath after 130 years

Archaeologists re-excavate hidden Roman bath after 130 years

The bath was first discovered and excavated 130 years ago, but was then quickly back-filled and poorly recorded.

Period 1 plunge bath, Roman Baths

Measuring 4 metres x 5 metres, it is one of eight baths known at the Roman Baths site and is beneath York Street next to the main suite of baths.

Stephen Clews, Manager of the Roman Baths, said: “The excavation of this bath is part of the most significant archaeological investigations to have taken place at the Roman Baths for more than 30 years.

It is helping us to build a picture of what was happening on the south side of the site, where it has been very difficult to gain access in the past.”

Period 1 plunge bath, Roman Baths

The excavation of the bath is part of a wider programme of investigation taking place as part of the National Lottery-funded Archway Project, which is creating a new Clore Learning Centre for the Roman Baths and a World Heritage Centre for the city.

The position of the bath means that it cannot be seen by visitors on a normal visit to the Roman Baths.

The excavation is being carried out for the Roman Baths by Cotswold Archaeology.

The Archway Project is run by Bath & North East Somerset Council, which owns and operates the Roman Baths, with the support of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Clore Duffield Foundation, The Roman Baths Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation and hundreds of other supporters and donors.

Aquae Sulis was a small town in the Roman province of Britannia that is now modern-day Bath.

The Romans had probably arrived in the area shortly after their arrival in Britain in AD 43 and there is evidence that their military road, the Fosse Way, crossed the river Avon at Bath.

Not far from the crossing point of their road, they would have been attracted by the large natural hot spring which had been a shrine of the Celtic Brythons, dedicated to their goddess Sulis.

This spring is a natural mineral spring found in the valley of the Avon River in Southwest England, it is the only spring in Britain officially designated as hot. The name is Latin for “the waters of Sulis.”

The Romans identified the goddess with their goddess Minerva and encouraged her worship that helped the native populations adapt to Roman culture.

The spring was built up into a major Roman Baths complex associated with an adjoining temple. About 130 messages to Sulis scratched onto lead curse tablets (defixiones) have so far been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Earliest Mosaic in the World Found in Turkey

World’s Oldest Mosaic Unearthed in Turkey

The earliest known mosaic in the world, Anacleto D’Agostino from Pisa University records, is a primitive tiled floor laid in a geometric design that is discovered in a pre-classic Hittite city in central Turkey. Moreover, he adds, the settlement where the mosaic was found maybe the lost Hittite city of Zippalanda.

Discovered during the excavation of prehistoric Usakli Hoyuk, the multichromatic patterned surface is in the courtyard of a public building – which archaeologists interpret to be a temple to the Storm God, D’Agostino writes in Antiquity, published by the Cambridge University Press. Made of stones of varying size and shape, the Late Bronze Age floor is also the earliest-known rendition in the rock of geometric patterns.

Since 2008, the Anatolian Archaeological Project in Central Anatolia has been revealing the ancient town’s long history. They have found fragments of cuneiform tablets indicating that it was once a major Hittite center. 

Dr. Anacleto D’Agostini of Pisa University, who took part in the mission, wrote that the site may be the “lost Hittite city of Zippalanda,” according to Haaretz.

The stone Bronze Age mosaic floor is in the foreground.

During work on the site, a large building on a terrace, which dated to the Late Bronze Age, was found. This had the characteristics of a building that was constructed during the Hittite period. It was believed to be a temple that was possibly dedicated to the Storm God, a very important deity for the Hittites and other populations. 

Near this possible temple, a courtyard was located, and it was here that archaeologists made the remarkable discovery of a mosaic.  The experts found a paved floor that measured about 20 ft by 9 ft (7m by 3m), which was poorly preserved.

The floor was paved with some 3000 pieces of stone, that appeared to have been roughly shaped and cut. Haaretz quotes D’Agostini as saying that “the mosaic was framed with perpendicularly positioned stones in white, black-blue and white again”. 

Closeup of the Bronze Age mosaic at Usa̧klı Höyük.

Unlike later mosaics, it was not made out of smooth and small stones.  All the stones that were found were cut in irregular shapes and the floor would not have had a smooth finish.

According to Haaretz “one wonders how comfortable it was to walk on and one envisions a lot of twisted ankles.” However, the mosaic was possibly deliberately made to be uneven so that slippery mud would not form on its surface.

The stones have been clearly set to produce geometric patterns using divergent colors reports Antiquity.

The mosaic is divided into three distinct areas, and each one contains a number of triangles. It is discerned to have been created at the same time as the Hittite temple because it is closely aligned with its eastern wall.

D’Agostino is quoted by Haaretz as saying that the “building and mosaic are characterized by ‘high-status architecture’” and this lends credence to the theory that indeed the unearthed structure was the Temple of the Storm God.

The discovery of this Bronze Age mosaic at a Hittite site is astonishing. Flagstone and cobblestone, often painted, have been found at sites associated with this Bronze Age culture.  They have been found in temples and even private rooms. However, no decorative mosaics have been found ever, until this one at Uşaklı Höyük.

“The technique of making mosaic floors using different colored pebbles is well known during the Iron Age,” according to the report in Antiquity. 

There are many examples of checkerboard mosaic floors from the Iron Age. But until the discovery at Uşaklı Höyük, the earliest known mosaic had been found in southern Anatolia at the 9 th century BC Phrygian Gordion citadel.

Aerial shot of the excavation area shown, including the Storm God Temple and the Bronze Age mosaic are (highlighted in yellow).

However, the discovery of a Bronze Age mosaic floor at Uşaklı Höyük is considerably older than anything yet found. Moreover, the design of the mosaic was much more complex than anything found from the time. Antiquity reports that the find “provides the first evidence of a polychromatic mosaic floor with clear patterning.”

It is possible that the mosaic may represent an older tradition from Anatolia. Antiquity reports that the pavement “could represent a Late Bronze Age Anatolian forerunner for later polychromatic mosaic floors.”

The discovery may indicate that the art of mosaic making developed much earlier than widely believed and this could provide new clues into its stylistic development. The find may result in the experts re-writing the history of images made out of polychromatic stones, an art-from that reached its zenith in the Classical Period in the Mediterranean.