The 1,000-year-old Church was found under a cornfield in Germany

The foundation walls of the large church of the rediscovered Royal Palace of Helfta in Eisleben in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt have been unearthed by archaeologists. The church was discovered earlier this month, and the foundation walls are now completely exposed.

According to the team studying the site, there is evidence of two dwellings at the site by Otto I and his son, Otto II ‘the Red,’ with the former attending the church’s inauguration.

Otto I, often known as Otto the Great, was King of Germany from 936 to 973 and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 962 till his death in 973.

“With a length of 98 feet (30 meters) and a width of around 66 feet (20 meters), Otto had effectively built a church that resembles a miniature cathedral,” said project manager Felix Biermann.

“This is a magnificent, exceptionally large church, which proves the importance of this location in the Ottoman era,” the team said.

The church is thought to have been dedicated to Saint Radegund, the Thuringian princess and Frankish queen who founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross in Poitiers, before 968. She is also the patron saint of several churches in France and England and of Jesus College in Cambridge.

The church, which had been standing for roughly 500 years, was destroyed during the Reformation when the Western Church was split into Protestantism and what is now the Roman Catholic Church.

In addition to the foundation walls, a number of coins and a tiled stove from the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as a fragment of a bell, were found on the site.

Zenger News, A cemetery containing 70 graves was also found, as well as several stone tombs from the 10th to the 15th century, which, Biermann, was “the burial place for the aristocratic families of the region.” He said.

“In addition, belt fittings, belt buckles made of bronze, coins, knives and various utensils came to light. Numerous disc brooches from the Ottoman times, made of bronze, enameled and with glass inlays in a rectangular and circular shape, were excavated,” said Biermann.

“It is amazing to me what the archeologists and excavation helpers are bringing to light during this excavation,” said the mayor of the city, Carsten Staub.

The long-lost royal palace ruins atop the Kleine Klaus were the starting point for the current discoveries, which were unearthed in 2009 by geomagnetic prospecting, with the exploration gradually moving outside.

Aside from the church, the Palatinate included residential and commercial structures with pit dwellings, as well as grand residential buildings and possibly an auditorium where meetings were held.

Biermann said that the current excavations will continue until September.

Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff said the discovery will close “an important gap in the history of the country.”

800-Year-Old Hoard Unearthed in Northern Germany

A trainee metal detectorist in northern Germany recently hit on something his mentor never expected: an 800-year-old hoard of gold jewelry and silver coins that hints at the area’s trade connections.

The large hoard contained a dazzling collection of artifacts. “The hoard consisted of two very high-quality gold earrings set with semi-precious stones, a gilded pseudo-coin brooch, two gilded stone-studded finger rings, a ring fragment, a small formerly gilded perforated disc, a ring brooch, and about 30 silver coins, some of them heavily fragmented,” Ulf Ickerodt, director of the State Archaeological Department of Schleswig-Holstein (ALSH), told Live Science in an email. 

For decades, amateur and professional archaeologists have been working together to investigate the region of Schleswig-Holstein, and in particular the UNESCO world heritage site of Haithabu.

Known as Hedeby in Danish, the site was the second-largest Nordic town and was important to the Vikings between the eighth and 11th centuries.

Haithabu was destroyed and abandoned around 1066, ending the Viking era in the region, but a century or two later someone purposefully buried the bag full of valuables nearby.

The detectorists came across the hoard while walking a well-studied patch of land. They reported the find to the ALSH, and a team of archaeologists then excavated the site to reveal items including silver and gold objects with preserved textile fragments adhering to them.

Perhaps the most remarkable items in the hoard are the two earrings. “They probably date to the time around and after 1100 and are in the tradition of Byzantine goldsmiths,” Ickerodt said.

The hoard also contained an imitation of an Islamic coin — an Almohad gold dinar — that had been made into a brooch. The Almohad caliphate was a Muslim dynasty that ruled over southern Spain and northern Africa between the 12th and 13th centuries.

The 30 silver coins, minted during the time of Danish King Valdemar II, suggest that the hoard was buried sometime after 1234. 

The combination of Danish coins and western Mediterranean jewelry is particularly interesting and hints at the cosmopolitan nature of the area. 

“Islamic coins were well known in southern Scandinavia between the 9th and 11th centuries,” Marjanko Pilekić, a numismatist in Germany who was not involved in this study, told Live Science by email.

The money may have “reached this area en masse through long-distance trade contacts, robbery, tribute, among others,” he said. “It was a popular practice to pierce or loop the coins and wear them.”

The discovery of hoards is rare in Schleswig-Holstein, and it’s unclear whether these items were personal property or stolen, if they were meant to be delivered to someone else, or if they were buried for ritual reasons.

“Especially in times of crisis,” Ickerodt said, “the resulting danger leads to the hiding of possessions.” The Haithabu area was not abandoned for long after its destruction in the mid-11th century.

Across the inlet of Schlei, Schleswig had begun developing as a settlement and trading center. “An extensive north-south and east-west trade network have developed here since the early Middle Ages, in which the Mediterranean region, the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea were integrated,” Ickerodt said. “The hoard was certainly not put down by chance.”

The first Roman fort with wooden defenses was discovered in Germany

For the first time, archaeologists have discovered wooden defenses surrounding an ancient Roman military base. The fence topped with sharpened wooden stakes, akin to today’s barbed wire, is the kind of fortification known to have existed from ancient writings—including by Caesar—but no surviving examples had previously been found.

The intimidating defense measures are located in what is now the town of Bad Ems in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Excavations on the site began after a local hunter, Jürgen Eigenbrod, noticed faint markings on the ground in a field in 2016.

The differences in color in sections of the grain, it turned out, were caused by the remnants of ditches dug by the Romans.

Using geomagnetic prospecting, archaeologists have since discovered evidence of no fewer than 40 towers at the site, as well as a smaller camp, on opposite sides of the valley.

The area appears to have only served as a camp for a couple of years before burning down, reports Frankfurt’s Goethe University.

It appears that the ancient Romans were tunneling into the earth, searching for deposits of silver. At first, archaeologists believed that fire remains and melted slag were evidence that the Romans had set up a smelting works to process silver ore.

But the writings of the ancient historian Tacitus reveal that the Roman governor Curtius Rufus’s efforts to mine silver in the area failed in the year 47 A.D. Expecting untold riches, the Romans had set up a heavily fortified base manned by military troops—which explains the barbed wire-like defenses, meant to deter sudden raids.

Unfortunately for them, a rich vein of the precious metal would not be unearthed in the area until millennia later, during archaeological excavations in 1897.

There was enough silver there that Romans could have continued mining operations for two centuries—if they had only kept digging.

The remains of the ancient fire, it would seem, came from a watch tower, not a profitable smelting works.

These futile ancient efforts make for a fascinating story—Frederic Auth, the leader of the excavations since 2019, won first prize for his account of the history of the site at the 2022 Wiesbaden Science Slam.

Research and excavations are slated to continue, ledby Markus Scholz, a professor of archaeology and ancient Roman history of Roman at Goethe University; archaeologist Daniel Burger-Völlmecke, and Peter Henrich of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Rhineland-Palatinate. Meanwhile, the ancient wooden spikes are now at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz.

Elephant Bones Suggest Neanderthals Gathered in Large Groups

On the muddy shores of a lake in east-central Germany, Neanderthals gathered some 125,000 years ago to butcher massive elephants. With sharp stone tools, they harvested up to 4 tons of flesh from each animal, according to a new study that is casting these ancient human relatives in a new light.

The degree of organization required to carry out the butchery—and the sheer quantity of food it provided—suggests Neanderthals could form much larger social groups than previously thought.

The find comes from a trove of animal bones and stone tools uncovered in the 1980s by coal miners near the town of Neumark-Nord. Beginning in 1985, archaeologists spent a decade observing the mining work, recovering animal bones and stone tools from a sprawling site.

Dating to a relatively warm period in Europe known as the Eemian interglacial, 75,000 years before modern humans arrived in Western Europe, the discoveries include the bones and tusks of more than 70 mostly adult male straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct species almost twice the size of modern African elephants that stood nearly 4 meters tall at the shoulder. Most had been left in dozens of piles along the ancient lakeshore over the course of about 300 years.

“We wondered, ‘What the hell are 70 elephants doing there?’” says Lutz Kindler, an archaeozoologist at the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center.

To find out, he and his colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, also an archaeozoologist at MONREPOS, spent months examining the 3400 elephant bones, which are now stored in a warehouse. Some weighed dozens of kilograms and required a forklift to move. Under a microscope, Gaudzinski-Windheuser says, nearly every bone showed signs of butchery.

Although scientists have long known Neanderthals were capable hunters, these cutmarks “seem to be the first evidence of large-scale elephant hunting,” says April Nowell, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria who was not involved with the research.

Gouges and scratches on nearly every bone show the hunters were thorough. “They really went for every scrap of meat and fat,” says University of Leiden archaeologist and study co-author Wil Roebroeks. The bones hadn’t been gnawed by scavengers like wolves or hyenas, suggesting nothing was left for them.

The meat from a single elephant would have been enough to feed 350 people for a week, or 100 people for a month, the researchers calculate. In the past, Neanderthals were thought to live in small, highly mobile groups of about 20 individuals at most, but the elephant bounty suggests far bigger groups—big enough to slaughter and process an entire elephant and big enough to consume it—once lived near the site, the researchers report today in Science Advances.

“This is really hard and time-consuming work,” Kindler says. “Why would you slaughter the whole elephant if you’re going to waste half the portions?”

The elephants provided ideal samples for this work, the authors noted. At ancient sites featuring hundreds of slaughtered horses or gazelle, there’s no way to know for sure whether all the animals were killed at the same time. “If you find 100 butchered horses, you don’t know if it was one event or 20,” Roebroeks says. “With an elephant, it’s clear Neanderthals were able to deal with a huge amount of food in one go.”

The researchers “make a good case these huge food packages mean much larger groups,” says University of Reading archaeologist Annemieke Milks, who was not involved in the research. “Maybe it’s a large, seasonal gathering, or they’re storing food—or both.”

Nowell agrees, adding that felling an elephant must have required careful orchestration. The hunters likely singled out adult males, which roam alone without the protection of a female-led herd. “It would necessitate a high level of competence in sequencing and planning out the hunt and coordinating everybody.”

That doesn’t mean Neanderthals always lived and worked in large groups. But the results, like other recent findings, show these human ancestors were more sophisticated than once assumed, capable of adapting their behavior to a wide variety of environments and climates. “If one regional group of Neanderthals was capable of such behavior, other groups elsewhere surely would have been capable, too,” says retired University of Nevada, Reno, archaeologist Gary Haynes. “This lets us imagine Neanderthals as more like modern humans rather than as humanoid brutes, as they once were interpreted.”

New AI Tool ‘Fragmentarium’ Brings Ancient Babylonian Texts Together

An artificial intelligence (AI) bot was developed by linguists at the Institute for Assyriology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany to assist in putting together and deciphering illegible fragments of ancient Babylonian texts. It’s been dubbed “the Fragmentarium.”

Enrique Jiménez, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Literatures at the Institute of Assyriology, is leading a team digitizing every surviving Babylonian cuneiform tablet. Since 2018, the team has processed over 22,000 text fragments.

The team created the Fragmentarium, a groundbreaking database that automates the assembly of text fragments. The team worked with the Iraq Museum and the British Museum to photograph thousands of fragments.

This new AI program, which operates on both systematic and automated methods, has already identified hundreds of new manuscripts.

Furthermore, it matches up old text fragments, including pieces from the most recent tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh which is considered the first work of literature in the world.

This ancient Mesopotamian odyssey was written in the Akkadian language in 130 BC and tells the story of Gilgamesh, a ruler of the Mesopotamian city-state Uruk (Iraq).

According to the researchers, the oldest known version of the epic, which was written in cuneiform characters on clay tablets over 4,000 years ago, is “significantly younger” than this recently discovered version of the ancient Epic. It is very interesting, remarks Jiménez, that people were still copying Gilgamesh at this late period.

“There’s so much work to do in the study of Babylonian literature. The new texts we’re discovering are helping us understand the literature and culture of Babylon as a whole,” said Enrique Jiménez.

He plans to publish the Fragmentarium, along with a digital version of the Epic of Gilgamesh—the first containing all transcriptions of cuneiform fragments that are currently known—In February 2023.

“Everybody will be able to play around with the Fragmentarium. There are thousands of fragments that have not yet been identified,” says Jiménez.

Around 200 academics from around the world have used the online platform for their research projects since the project began.

Remains of Lost WWII Pilot Identified

Authorities have positively identified the remains of an Army Air Forces pilot from Ohio who died when his plane was shot down over Germany during World War II, the Defense Department announced Thursday.

On May 29, 1944, 1st Lt. Carl Nesbitt was the pilot of a B-17G Flying Fortress bomber during a huge bombing mission over Leipzig, Germany, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

German fighters attacked the bomber’s formation roughly 28 miles northeast of Leipzig, and the plane was shot down.

Six of the 10 crew members were able to escape the plane before it crashed near Horst, while Nesbitt and the rest were killed. Their bodies were believed to have been buried in a local cemetery and, after the war ended, there was no evidence of Nesbitt being a prisoner of war or having survived.

Nesbitt, 23, of Lima, Ohio, was assigned to the 569th Bombardment Squadron, 390th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 13th Bombardment Wing, 3rd Air Division, 8th Air Force.

The American Graves Registration Command, which worked to recover fallen service members in Europe after the war, found the remains of a crew member buried in a cemetery in Horst during a search in September 1946.

But after 1950, worsening diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, which then controlled that part of Germany, prevented the AGRC from investigating further, and Nesbitt was declared nonrecoverable on April 21, 1953.

In July 2012, an investigation team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a DPAA predecessor, found the crash site and recovered evidence of a B-17 crash. In 2015, the landowner allowed DPAA to excavate, and the work was done during the summer 2019.

Crews recovered possible material evidence and possible remains, which were eventually sent to a lab at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska.

Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, mitochondrial DNA analysis and circumstantial and material evidence to identify Nesbitt’s remains. He will be buried May 15 in Annville, Pennsylvania.

Nesbitt was accounted for last September, DPAA officials said, but his family only recently received their full briefing on the case.

3,000-year-old wishing well uncovered in Germany. Take a look at the items left inside

Whether it’s Rome’s iconic Trevi Fountain or a water feature at the nearby mall, wish-filled waterworks are common — but perhaps not a new phenomenon.

Archaeologists in Germering unearthed a 3,000-year-old wooden wishing well, the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection said in a Dec. 20 news release. Unlike today’s coin-filled fountains, this well was filled with over 100 well-preserved artifacts.

At the bottom of the 16-foot well, archaeologists found a variety of items that appeared intentionally placed.

Considering the depth of the well, the artifacts may have been ritual offerings or religious sacrifices made during a long drought, archaeologist Marcus Guckenbiehl said in the release.

Over 70 finely crafted clay vessels were unearthed from the well, with photos showing the decorated cups, pots and bowls. Experts noted these ceramics were not everyday items.

The excavation also revealed 26 bronze robe pins at the bottom of the well.

A bracelet, two metal spirals, and four amber beads were all recovered from the well, too. 

Additionally, archaeologists found a mounted animal tooth and a wooden scoop inside the well. The number and quality of items indicated the artifacts did not fall into the well accidentally, experts said.

The wishing well is one of over 70 found at the excavation area – but the only well found with relics inside. The findings are extremely rare, archaeologist Jochen Haberstroh said in the release.

Archaeologists are excavating the site before the construction of a letter distribution center.

The wishing well and its trove of artifacts will be studied further to gain more insight into the daily life of settlers 3,000 years ago.

Germering is about 10 miles west of Munich in the southern region of Bavaria.

3000 years old wooden wishing well discovered in Germany

In the town of Germering, in the Germany state of Bavaria, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a well-preserved Bronze Age wooden well filled with ritual deposits.

People may have sunk jewelry and ceramics as offerings in the special water spring, similar to how coins are still thrown into so-called wishing wells today, according to the archaeologists.

The area of ​​today’s town of Germering in Upper Bavaria was a settlement area early on. Numerous finds from prehistory and early history bear witness to this.

Many new ones have been added since the beginning of 2021: In the run-up to construction work, numerous traces of settlements from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages were discovered on an excavation area of ​​around seven hectares.

This also includes the remains of wells that were used by people of different eras to supply water. But one of the wells discovered on the site differed significantly from the others, reports the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (BlfD).

This wooden water point is dated to be more than 3000 years old and, at around five meters (16.4 feet), reached particularly deep into the ground compared to others.

“It is extremely rare for a well to survive more than 3,000 years so well. Its wooden walls have been completely preserved at the bottom and are still partly damp from the groundwater. This also explains the good condition of the finds made from organic materials, which are now being examined more closely. We hope this will provide us with more information about the everyday life of the settlers of the time,” adds Dr. Jochen Haberstroh, a responsible archaeologist at the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments.

The team of archaeologists discovered in what was once the base of the fountain: 26 bronze clothing pins, a bracelet, two metal spirals, a mounted animal tooth, amber beads and more than 70 ceramic vessels.

The archaeologists emphasize that this filling makes this well fundamentally different from the others on the excavation site.

These expensive items, which were typically discovered in Middle Bronze Age graves, were not items for everyday use (1800-1200 B.C.). The state they were in when discovered at the bottom of the well suggests they were carefully lowered into the water rather than dropped or thrown.

“Even today, fountains have something magical about them for many people. They drop coins in the hope that their wishes will be granted. We cannot exactly explain what motives our ancestors 3000 years ago made to offer jewelry and other valuable gifts. But it can be assumed that they were intended as sacrifices for a good harvest,” explains Mathias Pfeil from the BlfD.

There may also be a clue in the unusual features of the well: “The depth of this well shows that it was used at a time when the groundwater level had dropped considerably, which indicates a long drought and certainly poor harvest yields.

One can possibly see a reason why the people who lived here at that time sacrificed part of their possessions to their gods in this well,” says Marcus Guckenbiehl, city archaeologist and archivist of Germering.

Archaeologists have been working in advance of construction work for a letter distribution center on the site where the well has now been discovered since the beginning of 2021.

The excavations are among the largest area excavations in Bavaria this year. In the meantime, scientists have documented approximately 13,500 archaeological finds, primarily from the Bronze Age and early Middle Ages.

Some of the discoveries are currently being examined and conserved at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation.