Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

After 1,300 years, water to again flow from monumental fountain in the City of Gladiators in Turkey

After 1,300 years, water to again flow from monumental fountain in the City of Gladiators in Turkey

After 1,300 years, water to again flow from monumental fountain in the City of Gladiators in Turkey

The approximately 2,000-year-old monumental fountain in the ancient city of Kibyra in Golhisar, Burdur in southwestern Turkey will start flowing with fresh water again thanks to the restoration project of the ancient city.

After four months of dedicated restoration work by a Turkish excavation team, the fountain in the ancient city of Kibyra will come back to life.

The restoration of the fountain with two pools, including over 150 original architectural fragments found among the ruins on the third terrace of the city and 24 imitation blocks produced from the original type of stone, was completed with contributions from the Burdur Governorship with an expert team of 17 people, including archaeologists, restorers, and architects.

Visitors to Kibyra, known on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List as the “city of Gladiators,” can reach the fountain by walking along a stone-step path that has already been restored.

Sukru Ozudogru, an archaeologist at Mehmet Akif Ersoy University and head of the ancient city’s dig team, told Anadolu Agency that Turkey boasts two large ancient monumental fountains that have been restored, and both of them are in Burdur.

The colossal fountain which was built in 23 BC, with a diameter of 15 meters (50 feet) and towers 8 meters high (over 26.2 feet), was used in Kibyra for some 600-700 years, he said.

Explaining that fresh drinkable water will again flow from the fountain through the work they have done, Ozudogru said Kibyra will be the second ancient city in Turkey after Sagalassos to have a fountain with water flowing through it.

“We want to bring water from the ancient spring this May and restore the fountain to its original function,” he emphasized.

“Just like in ancient times, water will flow into the pool from the mouths of the lion and panther statues in the lion’s hide where the mythological hero Hercules laid down, and the panther’s hide where the god of wine Dionysus lay down,” he added.

The ancient city of Kibyra, in the Gölhisar district of Burdur, once was one of the most important cities in Lydian and Roman civilization. Located at an altitude of 1100-1300 meters with juniper and cedar forests covering it, the 2300-year-old city can be seen from all parts because it’s on hilltops that offer a view over its surroundings.

Strabo, an Amasian traveler, recorded that the inhabitants of Kibyra were originally Lydians who moved to the Kabalis region. Soon they changed their settlement areas and established a city with a circumference of 100 stadiums.

The archaeological monuments and resources of this city were excavated in 2006, revealing a militaristic character with over 30 thousand infantry and more than 2,000 cavalry units. This is the place with the largest gladiator reliefs from ancient times in Turkey.

The strategic location of the city made it a regional center for justice, and its fame as a horse breeding town in ancient times has led to it being called simply “The City of Fast-Running Horses”. The city was at its most prosperous during the Roman period, and all of the architectural remains that can be seen today date from that time.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Medieval gold ‘lynx’ earrings from Ani Ruins

Medieval gold ‘lynx’ earrings from Ani Ruins

A pair of lynx-shaped gold earrings have been unearthed near the ruins of Ani, the once great metropolis known as the “city of a thousand and one churches”, on Turkey’s eastern border, across the Akhuryan River from Armenia.

The Medieval earrings, which weigh 22 grams and have engraved star, droplet, and crescent motifs, are now preserved in the Kars Archaeology and Ethnography Museum.

The priceless artifacts, which astounded archaeologists with their exquisite engravings, are scheduled to be displayed briefly at the Kars Archaeology and Ethnography Museum in 2023 after having been carefully stored in a warehouse up until then.

Yavuz Çetin, director of Kars Archaeology and Ethnography Museum, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Kars has hosted many civilizations throughout history as it is located on the border of countries and is on the historical Silk Road’s route.

A pair of lynx-shaped gold earrings was discovered near the Ani Ruins, in Kars, Türkiye.

Stating that it is possible to see the cultural assets of many civilizations in Kars, Çetin said that there are many historical immovable pieces of cultural heritage such as the Köşevenk and Mağazberk archaeological sites in and around the Ani Ruins.

Çetin noted that people have benefited from animals throughout history and attributed physical or characteristic meanings to them.

“The lynx from the feline family is one of these animals. People were influenced by the ferocity and power of this animal and used it in artistic elements,” he said.

“The existence of the lynx is also known in our Kars region. A couple of lynx-shaped earrings in our museum were found in the village of Subatan, about 16 kilometers (9.9 miles) north of Ani, and brought to us in 1994.”

Çetin said that they would exhibit the earrings next year.

A pair of lynx-shaped gold earrings was discovered near the Ani Ruins, in Kars, Türkiye.

“Our earrings are kept in the warehouse. We plan to temporarily display them to our public in 2023. I invite everyone to see this magnificent work. Our earrings are lynx-shaped, highly decorated earrings … The motifs on them show the artistic elegance of the earrings.”

Ani, which was founded more than 1,600 years ago, was located on several trade routes and grew to become a walled city with over 100,000 residents by the 11th century.

Ani was in steep decline by the 1300s, and it was completely abandoned by the 1700s.

AUSTRIA, EUROPE, WORLD

‘Complete lack of sunlight’ killed a Renaissance-era toddler, CT scan reveals

‘Complete lack of sunlight’ killed a Renaissance-era toddler, CT scan reveals

'Complete lack of sunlight' killed a Renaissance-era toddler, CT scan reveals
The child mummy, a member of the Austrian aristocracy, was found wrapped in a silk-hooded coat.

A “virtual autopsy” of the mummified remains of a toddler buried inside a family crypt in Austria reveals that the child died from a lack of sunlight, a new study finds.

Believed to be Reichard Wilhelm, the first-born son of a Count of Starhemberg, a prominent member of the Austrian aristocracy, the young boy lived during the Renaissance (between the 14th and 17th centuries) and died when he was just 10 to 18 months old.

Yet despite his privileged upbringing, a team of scientists from Germany concluded that he experienced “extreme nutritional deficiency and a tragically early death from pneumonia,” according to a statement.

Scientists made the discovery while performing a CT scan and radiocarbon dating of the mummy, which was found wrapped in a hooded silk coat, his left hand draped across his abdomen.

The scans showed malformations on his ribs, classic signs of malnutrition, which “points to rickets,” according to the study, published on Oct. 26 in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. 

Known as a rachitic rosary, those malformations occur when knobs of rib bone begin to resemble rosary beads due to a vitamin D deficiency.

The boy’s remaining soft tissues showed that he was also overweight when he died, eliminating the possibility that he was underfed.

Detail of the mummy, his left hand placed on his abdomen.

“The combination of obesity along with a severe vitamin deficiency can only be explained by a generally ‘good’ nutritional status along with an almost complete lack of sunlight exposure,” Andreas Nerlich, the study’s lead author and a pathologist from the Academic Clinic Munich-Bogenhausen in Germany, said in the statement. “We have to reconsider the living conditions of high aristocratic infants of previous populations.”

Researchers found the child buried inside a wooden coffin that proved to be too small for him, based on a deformation of his skull.

The crypt was reserved exclusively for descendants of the Counts of Starhemberg, specifically their first-born sons who would have been titleholders, as well as the men’s wives.

Radiocarbon dating of a skin sample suggested he was buried between 1550 and 1635, however, building records indicate that the crypt underwent a renovation around 1600, so he likely was buried after that date. He was the youngest person buried in the crypt, according to the statement.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

2,000-Year-Old Sculptures Unearthed in Turkey

2,000-Year-Old Sculptures Unearthed in Turkey

During the ongoing archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Aizanoi in the Çavdarhisar district of the western province of Kütahya, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, the heads of the Greek mythology gods Eros and Dionysus and the demigod Herakles have come to light.

2,000-Year-Old Sculptures Unearthed in Turkey

Another find was the statue of a man with a height of 2 meters and 10 centimeters.

The statues date back 2,000 years ago, stated Gökhan Coşkun, a professor from Kütahya Dumlupınar University and also the excavation director. “Only half of its pedestal and one foot is missing in the male statue, while other parts are completely preserved.”

Excavations in the ancient city of Aizanoi have been carried out particularly in the Penkalas Stream, with a team of 80 workers and 20 technical staff.

The ancient city, which dates back to 3,000 B.C., is believed to be one of the metropolises of the period with its historical structures, such as theater, stadium, agora and Zeus Temple.

Noting that the restoration of the Roman-era marble bridge, called No: 2, was completed during the excavations in Penkalas Stream, Coşkun said that works have been continuing on the completely ruined bridge, called No: 3.

Stating that new artifacts are found every day, Coşkun said, “This year, we found surprising finds that made us very excited during our work in the area where the bridge is located.

Since the previous season, we have been finding many large and small pieces of marble sculptures in this area, some of which, if complete, would reach 3 to 3.5 meters in height. This season, we uncovered many blocks of bridge No: 3. Also, we found a sundial and many marble statue pieces.”

Expressing that they were very excited about the statue they found in the recent excavations, Coşkun said, “This statue is almost the only intact statue we have found so far.

It is a statue of a man with a height of 2 meters and 10 centimeters, missing only half of its pedestal and one foot. Other parts are completely preserved. I hope that we will find this missing piece in 2023.”

As for the other statue heads belonging to Greek mythology, Coskun said, “Among these is a Dionysus head with a height of approximately 40 centimeters. We also found a Herakles head.

In 2020, we found the body of a Herakles statue. But this head does not belong to this body.

Apart from this, there are also statue heads of various gods and goddesses of the Ancient Greek pantheon. One of the prominent examples is the Eros head, which is about 20 centimeters high.

The artifacts we found in this area are from different periods, but we can say that the statue pieces date back 1,800-2,000 years ago.”

EUROPE, WORLD

Study Suggests Europe’s Hunter-Gatherers Produced Pottery

Study Suggests Europe’s Hunter-Gatherers Produced Pottery

Study Suggests Europe’s Hunter-Gatherers Produced Pottery
Researchers conducted experiments to see how hunter-gatherers might have used early pottery to cook food.

Broken, charred and still crusted with nearly 8000-year-old food, the remnants of ancient pottery found across northern Eurasia wouldn’t be mistaken for fine china.

But the advent of this durable technology—used to cook and store abundant plant and animal resources—was a huge step forward for hunter-gatherers in this part of the globe. It was also home-grown, new research suggests.

For decades, researchers believed pottery arrived in Europe along with agriculture and domesticated animals, as part of a “package” of technologies that spread northward from Anatolia beginning about 9000 years ago.

Pots found in Northern Europe dating around the same time were thought to be mere knockoffs by hunter-gatherers copying their more sophisticated farmer neighbors, says Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the University of Göttingen who was not involved with the new research. “A generation ago, nobody looked to the East.”

But a study published today in Nature Human Behaviour tells a different story. Beginning about 20,000 years ago, the know-how needed to make and use pottery spread among groups of hunter-gatherers in the Far East.

This containers replaced less durable vessels made of hide and skin, and were better able to withstand fire than wood bowls. Starting about 7900 years ago, clay pots became common from the Ural Mountains to southern Scandinavia within just a few centuries.

To map pottery’s spread, Rowan McLaughlin, an archaeologist at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and colleagues analyzed broken shards collected from 156 sites around the Baltic Sea and across the European part of the former Soviet Union—many stored in museums in modern-day Russia and Ukraine.

By sampling burned crusts of food stuck to the broken pots—remnants of bygone meals—they were able to get hundreds of new radiocarbon dates.

Fat residues revealed whether meat from ruminants like deer or cattle was on the menu, or whether people were boiling fish soup, pork, or plants instead. And comparing decorations and pot shapes helped the team map how pottery trends spread from community to community.

Though the raw material to make clay pots was widely available, the technical knowledge needed to shape and fire them must have been passed from person to person. New cooking and food preparation techniques had to be learned as well.

Put together, the data suggest pottery spread across parts of northern Eurasia rapidly, the team reports. Within a few hundred years, the technology swept north and west from the Caspian Sea, all the way to the eastern shore of the Baltic and southern Scandinavia.

The speed of the spread suggests potterymaking knowledge passed from group to group, rather than being introduced by new people migrating into the region. “There’s no way a population could grow that fast,” McLaughlin says.

Burned crusts of food on a pot used by early hunter-gatherers in northeastern Europe about 7500 years ago

Lucy Kubiak-Martens, an archaeobotanist at BIAX Consult, a commercial archaeology company in the Netherlands who was not involved with the paper, agrees with that interpretation. “It seems the knowledge traveled, not people,” she says.

If so, that would contrast with how similar technology spread out from Anatolia: Recent genetic evidence suggests that around the same time, farmers from Anatolia brought their own pottery styles and traditions with them as they expanded into southern Europe.

More research could help unravel exactly how it spread. For example, if hunter-gatherer societies were patrilocal—with women leaving home to marry men from other communities—“pottery could be a female craft that spread from village to village through marriage,” McLaughlin says.

The study provides evidence that hunter-gatherers were far more sophisticated than archaeologists once assumed, argues co-author Henny Piezonka, an archaeologist at Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel. In fact, she says, mobile hunter-gatherer societies from prehistoric Japan to the shores of the Baltic adopted new technologies without abandoning their roving lifestyles: Rather than being a step behind farmers, they were simply on a different path altogether.

“Hunter-gatherer societies are not backwards or simple, but were innovators in their own right,” Piezonka says.

The Iron Curtain, meanwhile, may have further obscured the narrative of prehistoric pottery’s spread west across Asia. “Hunter-gatherer pottery existed all along northern Eurasia for 10,000 years,” Piezonka says, “but the evidence was mostly published in Russian, and European archaeologists just didn’t know about it.” The result was a Euro-centric tale of triumphant farmers and pastoralists introducing important technologies to Europe, she says.

That began to change in the late 1990s, when researchers from Western Europe joined forces with colleagues in Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics. The new study reflects this more recent legacy of collaboration. Submitted before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, it includes co-authors from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, although the authors say several Ukrainian scholars withdrew their names from the final publication to avoid copublishing with Russian academics.

“It’s a very nice example of how cooperation between colleagues in Eastern and Western Europe emerged in the last 20 years,” Terberger says. “It’s extremely sad all these contacts have been so damaged by the Russian war in Ukraine.”

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Skull found in Turkey with neat hole may have been the work of mystics

Skull found in Turkey with neat hole may have been the work of mystics

Skull found in Turkey with neat hole may have been the work of mystics
Trepanated skull of a woman-Tumb 3 Corseaux-En Seyton-on display 6, Cantonal Museum of Archeology and History.

A 3,200-year-old skull was recently uncovered in Turkey’s eastern Van province. This find was made even more intriguing by the skull’s clearly man-made triangle-shaped hole, indicating that the deceased owner had undergone an ancient medical procedure now called trepanation.

Trepanation, a procedure that involves drilling a hole into the patient’s skull, is one of the oldest known surgical procedures in human history and a practice used by ancient humans all over the world. Archaeologists have found trepanned skulls in Europe, the Americas, Africa and China. 

Skull-drilling in the 21st century

The practice is still used today to treat subdural hematomas, but surgeons have refined the process and now refer to it as a craniotomy or a burr hole. 

Burr holes tend to be used in emergency situations after a traumatic head injury to relieve pressure due to fluid buildup in the skull which puts undue pressure on brain tissue. Craniotomies, per the National Cancer Institute, resemble ancient trepanation more so than burr holes; the surgeon removes a small piece of the skull in order to gain access to the brain.

This is sometimes used to relieve pressure, but can also be used to remove a tumor or a tissue sample, as well as to repair a skull fracture or brain aneurysm (a bulge in a blood vessel wall). 

Unlike in ancient trepanation practices, modern surgeons nearly always replace the removed piece of the skull once they have finished their procedure. 

Detail from The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicting trepanation (c.1488–1516).

What was the practice used for in ancient times?

According to the science news website Live Science, trepanation was used in ancient times to treat head injuries and pain, and some scientists believe it was used to ritually remove evil spirits from the body. 

A 2013 article published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology concluded that often, patients did survive the procedure and would heal after surgery. Researchers found scarring from trepanation, but the injury to the skull had healed. 

Researchers have not yet determined whether the skull found recently in Turkey belonged to a survivor or a victim of trepanation. They also do not yet know – and perhaps never will find out – whether the procedure was performed in order to treat a medical issue or exorcise demons. 

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

A large hall from the time of Viking Harald Bluetooth discovered

A large hall from the time of Viking Harald Bluetooth discovered

A large hall from the reign of King Harald Bluetooth of Norway was unearthed during housing construction work near Hune, a village in the Jammerbugt Municipality of North Jutland, Denmark.

The hall was up to 40 meters long and 8-10 meters wide, with 10-12 oak posts supporting the roof. They are rectangular in cross-section and measure up to 90×50 cm.

The hall probably served as a crucial location for political gatherings, for hosting visitors, and as the hub of social activity in the community’s social life.

Preliminary dating places the hall in the last half of the ninth century or the very first part of the eleventh century, but it was probably in use during the reign of Harald Bluetooth.

A rune stone near the excavation site has a date that fits this time frame. The stone, which dates from between 970 and 1020, is located in Hune Kirke and is inscribed with the words “Hove, Thorkild, and Thorbjrn set their father Runulv den Rdnilde’s stone.”

A rune stone near the excavation site.

The hall’s design is reminiscent of structures found at Harald Bluetooth’s ring castles, including Fyrkat at Hobro and Aggersborg at Aggersund.

The researchers have only excavated a portion of the hall, but they believe that additional buildings and features lie beneath the surface to the east of the hall, as buildings of this type rarely stand alone.

Thomas Rune Knudsen, from North Jutland Museums said: “This is the largest Viking Age find of this nature in more than ten years, and we have not seen anything like it before here in North Jutland.”

Excavations will resume in the New Year, with a Carbon-14 analysis on organic remains for more accurate dating, the results of which are expected to be published by the end of 2023.

King Harald Bluetooth, a Viking-born king who turned his back on old Norse religion and converting to Christianity. He is noted for bringing Christianity to Denmark and earned the nickname Blåtand (meaning blue tooth) because of a dead tooth that is said to have been dark blue.

EUROPE, PORTUGAL, WORLD

Saint Anthony of Padua revealed in stunning facial approximation

Saint Anthony of Padua revealed in stunning facial approximation

A team of international researchers has revealed a facial approximation of what Saint Anthony of Padua may have looked like.

Saint Anthony of Padua revealed in stunning facial approximation
A facial approximation of Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost and stolen articles.

A newly released image shows what Saint Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese priest who lived and died in the 13th century, may have looked like.

Using CT (computed tomography) scans of the priest’s skull, an international team of researchers created a lifelike facial approximation of St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost and stolen articles.

The final image includes a man with a cap of thinning brown hair crowning his head. The man wears a brown robe, just as Franciscan friars did in the Middle Ages.

However, this wouldn’t be the first time that a facial reconstruction was made of the religious figure. In 1981, Italian sculptor Roberto Cremesini created a replica of St. Anthony’s skull using plaster.

The piece was the result of an exhumation of the saint, which Pope John Paul II authorized, according to the new study, which will be published in the March 2023 issue of the journal Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage. 

More than 30 years later, in 2014, researchers from the University of St. Anthony of Padua’s Anthropology Museum, along with a team of international forensic researchers, made another facial reconstruction using only a digital copy of the exhumed skull, according to a Catholic News Agency article.

That image features a man, his face angled to the viewer, also with a balding head of dark hair, dressed in a robe to make him appear more lifelike.

“Today’s work is an update on the technique and shows a clear evolution from the 2014 face,” Cícero Moraes, the study’s lead author and a Brazilian graphics expert who also worked on the 2014 reconstruction, told Live Science in an email.

“The present approximation has greatly improved anatomical coherence…and is more compatible with a real face.” 

In addition to the facial approximation, Moraes and his co-authors, Luca Bezzi, an Italian archaeologist, and Nichola Carrara, with the University of St. Anthony of Padua, also made a reconstruction of the endocranium, the skull’s base, which was exceedingly large compared to the average human skull.

In other words, St. Anthony had a very large head. “The fact is that this volume is large even compared to modern individuals,” Moraes said.

St. Anthony died in 1231 in Padua at age 36; he was canonized a year later.