Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

Man Finds Secret Window Hidden Behind Wallpaper in 19th-Century Home

Man Finds Secret Window Hidden Behind Wallpaper in 19th-Century Home

A man discovered a secret window hidden behind wallpaper in his house, thought to date back to the 19th century, as he lovingly renovated the property. Alex Howard is restoring the antique grandeur to his home, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has been sharing progress to his TikTok page, @housedoctoralex.

Howard, an author, has been painstakingly removing all the woodchip wallpaper throughout the house—similar to popcorn style—when he found something unusual lurking behind the hardboard. He shared a clip of himself up a ladder armed with a wallpaper scraper, as he pokes a hole through the covering, and realizes there’s something on the other side. Howard immediately rips off the wallpaper, shouting “window” as he uncovered the black-rimmed frame. He captioned the video, which can be seen here: “Wtf I found a hidden window in my flat,” adding: “Well that was unexpected.”

In the comments, he revealed the woodchip was “getting steamed off and re-lined next month,” explaining the window was covered by flimsy sheets of hardboard. Speaking to Newsweek, Howard explained the two-bedroom apartment was built around 1890, and he and his wife are slowly returning it to its former glory after it’s “no doubt been home to countless students and tyrannical landlords over the years.”

He said: “There’s nearly always a window connecting the kitchen alcove and a box room (which has often been converted into a kitchen bathroom). Presumably, it was the Victorian idea of giving that little interior space some natural light. In fact, I learnt only yesterday they are called ‘borrow windows,’ presumably because you’re borrowing light from another room.

“When we arrived, I did that classic ‘dad’ thing of tapping up the wall to hear if the tone changed. Sure enough, I discovered that the window had just been dry-walled over. The fact that there was then a layer of woodchip on top of that, suggests that it was done at least as far back as the 70s.”

He added the glass was single-glazed, saying: “They’re that old pre-war ripply glass like all the windows in this flat. All our windows make things look a bit wibbly, and distorted when you look through them because of the more unrefined, pre-war glazing techniques. You can see the oddly replaced pane because it doesn’t distort.”

Photo of the hidden windows. Alex Howard discovered secret windows lurking underneath wallpaper in his 19h-century house.

The clip, shared in June, amassed more than 400,000 views, and people were so intrigued that Howard shared a follow-up clip. It shows he found a pair of windows, with two panes each, covered up between two rooms.

“So some of you have been asking about the backstory to these here windows that I discovered yesterday,” he said.

Howard, who moved in two months ago, gave viewers a mini-tour, saying: “I’ve worked it out, follow me down the hall, and into the box room. But why you might say might one block windows to a box room.

“It was once a bedroom. The reason I know is that up here there’s a light switch which controls the lights in the room. This means at some point there was a mezzanine level up here with a bed installed when this was rented out as its own separate bedroom.

“Some of you may have heard of HMO, or houses in multiple occupancies, before this was introduced any room could be rented out to someone regardless of whether or not it had a window in it. Thankfully we live in more enlightened times now and you can only let out a room if it’s got a window.”

It’s thought that as the window connects two rooms, rather than leading to the outside, they were covered to give each tenant privacy.

Howard explained: “This is what we’re putting the blocked-up window down to—the room on the other side is a box room with its plug sockets/switches mounted high up the wall. We reckon it was rented out as a room with a mezzanine bed, pre-HMO regulations when landlords crammed these flats full of students to cash in.

“But what is clear is that the blocked-up window is an attempt to make that postage stamp of a box room ‘private.’ Pretty sad to think that tiny, windowless space was some poor student/servant’s room at one point!”

He added that the smaller room was what the U.K. refers to as a “box room,” which is essentially a glorified cupboard, which is why the bed was on a mezzanine.

READ ALSO: UNDERGROUND LABYRINTH WITH SECRET PASSAGES, AND TUNNELS IN DOBROGEA PLATEAU, ROMANIA

Howard clarified they’re “just a bit bigger than a walk-in cupboard,” adding: “They’re small rooms, bigger than a cupboard but smaller than a conventional room, that was traditionally used for lodgers. This one’s about 6×5.'”

Numerous people commented on the original clip, with Liam Burgeson asking: “Who does these things.”

Mecha_genki said: “We had this too! Didn’t notice it because it was on the side we never went down”

While MissMisty wrote: “Why was the window covered in craft paper? Lean against it too hard and your arm would go through.”

Marvin Harold joked: “Previous owner must have worked nights.”

EUROPE, SERBIA, WORLD

Burial Mounds in Serbia reveal skeletons of 5,000-year-old painted men

Burial Mounds in Serbia reveal skeletons of 5,000-year-old painted men

Archaeologists have discovered dye-coloured bones dating back around 5,000 years at a burial site in southeastern Europe where unusually tall men were laid to rest.

Burial Mounds in Serbia reveal skeletons of 5,000-year-old painted men
A reconstruction of the tomb and one of the immigrants from the northeast steppes was found in the sacred burial mounds on the plains of Serbia.

The burial site, located in Vojvodina in northern Serbia, was excavated by researchers between 2016 and 2018. However, only recently was expert analysis carried out.

The burial site consisted of two large mounds 131 feet across and between 10 and 13 feet tall.

Inside, the researchers found that some bones were marked with red colouring, thought to be due to “the use of ochre on the bodies of the dead,” according to Piotr Włodarczak from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, one of the excavation supervisors, in a statement to the government-affiliated Science in Poland public information service.

Ochre is a type of earth that has been coloured by iron oxide. This can give it a red hue and it has been used as a colouring pigment. Red in particular was considered sacred by some, Włodarczak said.

Another thing the researchers noticed about the remains is that the deceased men were over 1.8 meters tall, or around 5 ft. 11 in. This would have been an above-average height for the time—it’s thought that the men were buried around 3,000 BCE, and men living in this part of Europe then would usually have been about 1.6 meters or 5 ft. 3 in. tall, according to Science in Poland.

The height of the men, as well as the use of ochre, led the researchers to believe that they were newcomers to the region and had probably come there from the steppes of what would be south Russia or Ukraine today.

Genetic analysis of the remains suggested the men had themselves come from this region or were immediate descendants of people who did.

The influx of nomads from eastern to more western parts of Europe in this period would have had a significant impact on the culture of Europe, Włodarczak said.

READ ALSO: THREE WELL-PRESERVED ANCIENT BOATS UNEARTHED IN SERBIA

It’s not the only significant archaeological finding to be reported recently. In the United Kingdom last week, a Roman mosaic hidden beneath the streets of London for more than 1,500 years was discovered.

The 26-foot-long mosaic was found at a construction site near the capital’s largest building, The Shard. It’s set to be transported for preservation later this year and there are hopes it will be publicly displayed in future. It’s thought that the mosaic may have been part of a large dining room called a triclinium.

Archaeologists also recently unearthed a 4,000-year-old board game from the Bronze Age in Oman.

A stock photo shows an archaeologist using a brush to carefully examine something in the ground. Archaeologists in Serbia have found burial sites of people who are thought to have travelled there thousands of years BCE.
EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Possible Medieval Children’s Cemetery Found in Southern Turkey

Possible Medieval Children’s Cemetery Found in Southern Turkey

Possible Medieval Children’s Cemetery Found in Southern Turkey

A furnace for commercial production and a child’s grave with glass bracelets and gifts inside has been found for the first time during this year’s excavations in the ancient city of Kelenderis, established on the Mediterranean coast in the southern province of Mersin 2,800 years ago.

Located next to a fisherman’s shelter in the Aydıncık district on the Mersin-Antalya highway, the excavation and restoration/conservation works started in 1987 in the ancient city of Kelenderis and have been ongoing for 35 years uninterruptedly.

For the first time, the skeleton of a child, who was buried with four solid glass bracelets on his arm, gifts, clothes and a wooden coffin, has been unearthed in the ancient city, where nearly 150 tombs have also been found around the Odeon over the last 35 years.

In addition, during the excavations conducted in the region, a furnace, which is thought to be used for tile production, was unearthed for the first time, documenting commercial production.

Speaking about the exciting discovery, the head of the excavations Mahmut Aydın said, “Excavations continue for 12 months of the year in the ancient city of Kelenderis. This year, we have completed the excavation and consolidation of the caves, the sitting area, and the supporting walls behind the Odeon structure.

Now we found a furnace that excites us. We knew for years that there was production here, but we couldn’t find the oven.

The oven is 1,300 years old. We think that roof tiles were produced inside the furnace. Because during the excavations we carried out last year and this year, a large number of roof tiles, dated to the seventh century, were found around the furnace.

Since the roof tiles were faulty, we found them scattered around it. When we completely empty the inside of the furnace, we might find even more faulty roof tiles.”

Speaking about the child’s grave, Aydın said, “We have previously uncovered nearly 150 tombs here, but none of them had burial gifts. In this one, we uncovered four glass bracelets, an inscription on a ceramic piece and a cup. This was a first.

At the same time, there were several baby graves around this child’s grave. We understand from here that a part of the Odeon was used as a children’s burial area.

When the carbon 14 analysis results come, we will be able to identify them more clearly. But we believe that this area was used as a burial area in the Middle Ages. As it is different from other burials, we will only be able to determine exactly when the child died with carbon 14 analysis.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

6,000-Year-Old Settlement Found Outside Stonehenge Could “Rewrite British History”

6,000-Year-Old Settlement Found Outside Stonehenge Could “Rewrite British History”

The culture that built Stonehenge might be much older than previously thought. In research that could “rewrite” long-established British history, University of Buckingham archaeologists have discovered a 6,000-year-old Mesolithic settlement located close to the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge.

The discovery of the site, which predates Stonehenge by at least 1,000 years, has massive implications for scholarly understanding of the origins of British civilization.

What they found: History.com reports that the site at Blick Mead is about 1.5 miles from Stonehenge and contains “untouched samples of stone tools, flints and even evidence of possible Mesolithic structures — the only finds of their kind in the Stonehenge World Heritage site.”

The encampment may be proof that Blick Mead was occupied by humans well before Stonehenge was completed between 3,000 and 1,500 B.C., and that Britain had been settled by people before its land bridge to Europe was submerged under what we now call the English Channel more than 8,000 years ago.

Previously, archaeologists had assumed that the Stonehenge site was unoccupied prior to its construction. But the new dig site contains evidence of feasting in the form of aurochs carcasses, indicating that it might have been a meeting site of special significance for hunter-gatherer tribes. It is also located near a valuable natural spring.

“It’s the first proof of people living there earlier, and indicates that Stonehenge could have been planned for years,” a project spokesman told the Daily Mail. “It’s the first indication of a settlement, not just people passing through and dropping tools.”

“British prehistory may have to be rewritten,” dig leader David Jacques said in a press release. “This is the latest-dated Mesolithic encampment ever found in the U.K. Blick Mead site connects the early hunter-gatherer groups returning to Britain after the Ice Age to the Stonehenge area all the way through to the Neolithic in the late 5th millennium B.C.”

“Blick Mead could explain what archaeologists have been searching for centuries — an answer to the story of Stonehenge’s past,” he said.

This has been a big year for Stonehenge: University of Birmingham experts have released other major findings this year, including the results of a sophisticated surveying operation that revealed the Stonehenge site was much bigger than previously understood.

Instead of a standalone structure, the findings suggested that the monument was just the centrepiece of a far larger complex involving at least 17 chapels and hundreds of smaller features.

The survey revealed other secrets of Stonehenge, such as the existence of a burial mound constructed at least 4,000 to 5,000 years ago atop the ruins of a gigantic 6,000-year-old wooden “house of the dead.” New Scientist Sumit Paul-Choudhury writes that the hall was “used to store bodies that had been ritualistically defleshed and disassembled.”

But there’s one major problem: The BBC reports that scheduled tunnel construction to alleviate congestion on the nearby A303 roadway poses the potential to disrupt archaeological study of the site.

“Our only chance to find out about the earliest chapter of Britain’s history could be wrecked if the tunnel goes ahead,” Jacques said. Some researchers worry that the new tunnel could radically alter the local water table, potentially causing serious damage to subsurface relics that have been buried for millennia. 

“There is nothing to celebrate about a proposal that would inflict at least a mile of massively damaging road building on the surface of our most iconic world heritage site,” Friends of the Earth spokesman Mike Birkin told the Guardian. “We have a global duty to safeguard the whole site. The international bodies who hold legal responsibility for world heritage sites have not even been consulted — and there are grave concerns about the damage a short tunnel could cause.”

Hopefully, the authorities can work out a plan that preserves Stonehenge and its remaining secrets for future study — because apparently, it still has much to teach us.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Timber From 17th-Century Spanish Shipwreck Discovered In Caves Off Oregon’s Coast

Timber From 17th-Century Spanish Shipwreck Discovered In Caves Off Oregon’s Coast

View of Nehalem Beach, where the ship was wrecked, with Neahkahnie Mountain in the distance Maritime Archaeological Society

In 1693, the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a Manila galleon loaded with silk, porcelain and beeswax, set sail from the Philippines on a trading expedition to Mexico. But the ship—and its valuable cargo—never reached its destination. Instead, the vessel ended up shipwrecked off the coast of Oregon, becoming one of roughly 3,000 ships lost in the region to date.

Over the next two centuries or so, explorers, merchants, Indigenous peoples, scholars and curious locals alike traded stories about the fabled wreck, which was “occasionally visible” along the Oregon shoreline, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia’s Cameron La Follette. In 1813 or 1814, fur trader Alexander Henry detailed how members of the Clatsop tribe frequently exchanged “lumps of beeswax, fresh out of the sand, which they collect on the coast … where the Spanish ship was cast away some years ago.” The fate of the ship’s crew is unclear, but Indigenous oral histories suggest that some survived the disaster.

Despite widespread interest in the 17th-century ship, tangible evidence of the so-called “Beeswax Wreck” remained elusive until recently.

Last week, reports Kristin Romey for National Geographic, a team spearheaded by the Maritime Archaeological Society (MAS) successfully recovered a dozen timbers from the Santo Cristo de Burgos’ wooden hull.

The find makes the vessel one of only three Manila galleons identified on the North American West Coast, as well as one of just three in the world with surviving wood pieces, per the Oregon Coast Beach Connection.

An amateur has found a new piece of timber from the Spanish galleon known as the Beeswax wreck. To date, many artifact fragments have been found on this rough coastline area, including pieces of Chinese porcelain. This image shows an unnamed wooden shipwreck have buried in a sand beach.

Fisherman Craig Andes brought the hull fragments to society’s attention in early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. He’d first noticed the pieces of wood while exploring sea caves near the beach town of Manzanita in 2013 but only decided to bring in experts after realizing that the smaller fragments were on the verge of being swept away.

Initially, the MAS team was sceptical of Andes’ discovery.

“I was convinced it was driftwood,” the society’s president, Scott Williams, tells National Geographic. “To think that 300-year-old ship timbers could survive the Oregon coast was just crazy.”

Then, however, testing revealed that the timbers came from an Asian tropical hardwood felled in the mid- to late-17th century—a result that prompted Williams and his colleagues to take a closer look at the caves. They confirmed Andes’ suspicions that summer but were unable to retrieve the pieces, as the caves are only accessible via water or a dangerous rock scramble.

Beeswax with a Spanish shipping mark from a lost Spanish galleon that washed up on the coast near Manzanita, Oregon. Courtesy of the Clatsop County Historical Society.

Thanks to weather- and Covid-related delays, the official recovery mission—funded in part by the National Geographic Society—didn’t take place until June 13. MAS archaeologists, staff from cultural resource management firm SEARCH Inc., and representatives of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department and local sheriff’s offices secured the timbers in just 90 minutes, wrapping up the expedition before high tide.

“The last few timbers, I ended up staying behind to get those bundled up so I had to swim out to the jet ski because I got trapped where I couldn’t get out any other way,” archaeologist Stacy Scott tells KPTV Fox 12 Oregon.

According to a separate Oregon Coast Beach Connection report, the Santo Cristo de Burgos likely ran aground in shallow water, which rarely preserves shipwrecks. But storms and a massive tsunami in 1700 scattered pieces of the wreck, perhaps depositing the newly recovered timbers into the sea caves. Other possible explanations for the fragments’ improbable survival include the cold, less salty conditions of Oregon’s North Coast and shifting sands that buried and shielded the timbers, writes the Astorian’s Katie Frankowicz.

These Kangxi period Chinese porcelain fragments were part of the precious cargo carried by the unlucky Spanish galleon that sank off the Oregon coast nearly 300 years ago.

In the decades following the shipwreck, objects from the vessel washed ashore, fueling rumours of the enigmatic wreck’s existence. Per a timeline compiled by MAS, the flow of beeswax tapered off in the late 1860s, with an 85-pound chunk discovered in 1894 deemed “the largest piece found in 20 years.” Though locals at one point disagreed whether the wax was natural or came from a shipwreck, by 1920, most appeared to accept the latter scenario.

During the 20th century, the Beeswax Wreck became the stuff of local legend, spawning stories of buried treasure and perhaps even inspiring Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Goonies. Continued interest in the ship led to the launch of the Beeswax Wreck Project in 2006 and MAS’ formation in 2015.

Though the wooden pieces are a significant find, Williams tells the Astorian that archaeologists “haven’t found what we would call ‘The Wreck.’ We don’t know if something like ‘The Wreck’ exists.” Pieces of the galleon’s lower hull could still be hidden nearby; the team hopes to recover additional hull fragments from other caves in the near future.

“Will this answer big questions? Probably not,” says marine archaeologist James Delgado to the Astorian. “But it’s another step in a process that could potentially lead to further discovery.”

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Pompeii: Ancient pregnant tortoise surprises archaeologists

Pompeii: Ancient pregnant tortoise surprises archaeologists

When Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago Pompeii’s ancient residents were frozen in place by ash. So too it turns out we’re the city’s flora and fauna – including a pregnant tortoise with her egg.

Pompeii: Ancient pregnant tortoise surprises archaeologists
Experts believe the tortoise had been looking for a comfortable place to lay her egg when volcanic disaster struck in 79 AD

Archaeologists found the reptile’s remains buried under ash and rock where it had laid undiscovered since 79AD. The tortoise was sheltering beneath an already-destroyed building when volcanic disaster struck.

Archaeologists found the remains while excavating an area of the city that its ancient inhabitants had been rebuilding after an earlier earthquake devastated Pompeii in 62AD.

Around 2,000 years ago the 14cm (5.5in) tortoise had burrowed into a tiny underground lair beneath a shop destroyed in that earlier quake.

Experts say the fact it was found with an egg suggests it was killed while trying to find somewhere peaceful to lay its offspring.

The pregnant reptile was discovered alongside its egg

Oxford University archaeologist Mark Robinson, who discovered the remains of another tortoise at a nearby Pompeii site in 2002, told the BBC there were two explanations for how the reptile had gotten there.

“One is that it is a pet tortoise that possibly escaped and made its way onto what were the ruins of the great earthquake,” he said.

A likelier possibility is that it was a tortoise from the nearby countryside that had wandered into the ancient city, he said.

“Pompeii was substantially wrecked and not everywhere could be rebuilt after the earthquake. The flora and fauna from the surrounding countryside had moved into the town.”

The reptile was discovered in a tiny lair beneath the Pompeii building’s ancient floor

Experts say the discovery illustrates the richness of Pompeii’s natural ecosystem in the period after the earthquake.

“The whole city was a construction site, and evidently some spaces were so unused that wild animals could roam, enter and try to lay their eggs,” said Pompeii’s director-general, Gabriel Zuchtriegel.

One visitor to Pompeii, a Finnish PhD student who happened to be passing by the site when the discovery was made, described what he saw to the BBC as “spectacular.”

“They had just removed the shell of the animal, so what was visible was the skeleton and the egg,” Joonas Vanhala said. “It was a light-brown, sandy colour.”

“I wouldn’t have recognised it as an egg if they hadn’t told me,” he added.

The egg did not survive intact
EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Researchers Return to Greece’s Antikythera Shipwreck

Researchers Return to Greece’s Antikythera Shipwreck

The so-called Antikythera mechanism, recovered from the wreckage of an ancient cargo ship off the coast of Antikythera Island in Greece, might be the world’s oldest analogue computer. The mystery surrounding its purpose and origin continues to fascinate scientists and enthusiasts alike to this day. But it’s not the only treasure salvaged from that Antikythera wreck.

Researchers Return to Greece’s Antikythera Shipwreck
A diver with the Return to Antikythera project carefully excavates an artifact.

An ongoing underwater archaeological project most recently recovered a large marble head of a bearded male figure believed to be part of a statue of Hercules. Divers also recovered a marble plinth with the lower legs of another statue, two human teeth, and several pieces of the cargo ship’s equipment.

As we’ve previously reported, in 1900, a Greek sponge diver named Elias Stadiatis discovered the wreck, which was apparently surrounded by rotting corpses on the sea floor. The captain, Dimitrios Kondos, didn’t believe Elias at first and thought the nitrogen in his breathing mix had affected the diver’s senses. So Kondos dove down to the site himself, emerging with an arm from a bronze statue. 

Kondos and his crew had recovered all kinds of artefacts from the shipwreck by mid-1901, including 36 marble sculptures (representing Hercules, Ulysses, Diomedes, Hermes, and Apollo, among others); a bronze statue dubbed “The Philosopher” (circa 340 BCE); a bronze lyre; pieces of glasswork; and three marble horse statues. Along with the Antikythera mechanism, these precious artefacts are now housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

The salvage work ended that summer, however, after one diver died and two others were paralyzed from decompression sickness. No further attempt was made to excavate the treasures of the Antikythera wreck until famed explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau visited the site in 1953. Twenty-three years later, Cousteau returned and worked with archaeologists to recover nearly 300 more artefacts. They dredged a section of the wreck to reveal artifacts previously hidden from view.

These included hull planks, ceramic jars, bronze and silver coins, jewellery, and more marble and bronze statues. Cousteau’s 1976 expedition also recovered scattered human bones from at least four different people.

The wreck was left alone again for nearly 40 years until a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) marine archaeologist named Brendan Foley (now at Lund University in Sweden) got permission from the Greek government in 2012 to undertake a complete diving survey of the wreckage site. As a bonus, they found a second ancient shipwreck just a few hundred meters south of the Antikythera wreck.

Foley’s team used mixed-gas closed-circuit rebreather technology for their survey, which gave divers over half an hour of time underwater each day—much longer than prior expeditions. Furthermore, the Exosuit—described as “Iron Man for underwater science”—allowed divers to descend to 1,000 feet (over 300 meters) and remain underwater for several hours, with no need to decompress as they returned to the surface.

The bearded head of a statue, most likely Hercules.
A researcher examines the marble head.

Since then, the Return to Antikythera project has recovered numerous additional items, and the team believes there could be hundreds more buried beneath the sediment. For instance, the 2014–2016 fieldwork yielded wood from the hull or decks, parts of two lead anchors, bronze nails and spikes, bronze spears from statues, glass bowls, ceramic decanters, a gold ring, and several “puzzling bronze objects.”

The highlight was an ancient weapon known as a “dolphin”: a lead bulb with an iron spike on its tip that could be dropped through the deck and hull of an enemy vessel.

The divers also recovered parts of a human skeleton in 2016: a partial skull with three teeth, two arm bones, several ribs, and two femurs, all from a single individual. Because the bones were surrounded by iron objects that had corroded during their time in the ocean, all the bones were stained an amber-red from iron oxide.

Even more parts of bronze and marble statues were recovered during the 2017 excavation, along with a red marble sarcophagus lid, a large section of hull planking, and even more human remains. All of these will be closely examined to learn more about the wreck itself and the unfortunate people on board.

The 2022 expedition managed to relocate several natural sea-floor boulders (each weighing about 8.5 tons) that had been partially covering the wreck, allowing divers to explore new parts of the ship.

The marble head they recovered most likely belongs to a headless statue, dubbed “Herakles of Antikythera,” retrieved by the sponge divers back in 1900.

The marble plinth is being cleaned and restored; it was covered in various marine deposits. The objects will be analyzed with X-rays, among other techniques, while the teeth will undergo genetic and isotopic analysis.

The exact location where each artefact was found has been carefully documented and will be added to the 3D model of the site currently being developed. The team also collected sediment samples for micro-analysis in hopes of learning more about the dimensions of the wreck. The Return to Antikythera project will continue its work, and perhaps one day it will unearth more pieces of the original Antikythera mechanism—or something even more amazing.

EUROPE, NETHERLANDS, WORLD

Dutch Archaeologists Unearth 2000-Year-Old Roman Temple Complex

Dutch Archaeologists Unearth 2000-Year-Old Roman Temple Complex

The excavation was carried out in the village of Herwin-Hemeling situated in the eastern central province of Gelderland close to the Netherland-German border, also listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site

A 2,000-year-old Roman temple complex in Netherland was uncovered by Dutch archaeologists. The archaeologists belonged to the private archaeological consulting firm RAAP.

These religious relics belonged to Netherlands’ Roman era. These were the first actual ruins of the temple found in the entire country. A part of it belonged to the northernmost territory of the legendary Roman Empire which was very powerful.

One of the votive blocks or small altars dedicated to the gods was found at one of the two Roman temples, the first ever found on Dutch soil.

The excavation was carried out in the village of Herwin-Hemeling situated in the eastern central province of Gelderland close to the Netherland-German border. The site was situated close to Roman Limes (Limes Germanicus) UNESCO World Heritage Site.

According to a report, the Cultural Heritage Agency in a press release said,” The remains of statues of deities, reliefs and painted plasterwork have all been discovered at the site.

One particularly remarkable feature is the discovery of several complete votive stones, dedicated to various gods and goddesses. This is a highly unusual find in the Netherlands, but also in international terms.”

As per the findings, Roman soldiers erected votive stones which were small altars that were found at the Herwin-Hemeling site. These votive stones paid homage to Hercules Magusanus, a hybrid figure which represented Greek-Roman Hercules and a mythic hero, Magusanus – who was worshipped by the German tribes who had occupied the area during the Roman era.

Other artefacts that were discovered were Jupiter and Serapis, a syncretic deity which represented the king Roman gods Jupiter and the Egyptian god known as Serapis. Along with these, Mercury, a Roman god was also erected. He was a messenger between the realm of the living and the land of the dead.

Not just statues alone, archaeologists also discovered deep pits where Roman soldiers lit large sacrificial fires. They also uncovered inscribed roof tiles, plasterwork decorated with painted images and other broken remnants of limestone sculptures.

Along with religious findings, other military objects were also discovered like battle armour, horse harnesses and spears and lances.

Other Findings

Archaeologists were aware of the possible Roman settlement in the area before they began the excavation process. In 2021, archaeologists discovered a few ancient Roman artefacts there.

According to the Dutch national cultural heritage agency, archaeologists informed the authorities of the possibility of the discovery of artefacts on a larger scale. The research team discovered remains of two Roman-era temples which dated long back to the first and fourth centuries.

Archaeologists uncovered a large Gallo-Roman temple on a hill which displayed a tiled roof and brightly painted walls. The second temple which was discovered was smaller and was situated a few metres from the first temple. The area suggested an important and pious gathering place for Roman soldiers.