Enormous Skull Found in Alaska May Belong to the Legendary King Bear of Inuit Mythology

An enormous, elongated polar bear skull emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site southwest of Utqiaġvik in Alaska. Experts claim that it is quite different from most modern polar bear skulls and reassure that it is one of the biggest polar bear skulls ever found.

Inuvialuit Hunters and the “Weasel Bear”

Inuvialuit have been hunting polar bears – nanuq – in Canada’s Western Arctic for many decades. Passing knowledge and understanding of polar bear hunting from one generation to the next, based on experience, is the very foundation of Inuvialuit wisdom and tradition.

Inuvialuit hunters have seen hundreds of bears during their lifetime and have taken high risks, since polar bear hunting is an extremely dangerous endeavor. However, their passion and need for survival doesn’t leave them many other choices.

If you get a chance to be around them, you will definitely hear them talking about “tiriarnaq” or “tigiaqpak” (meaning weasel bear), an incredibly unique polar bear that is enormous, narrow-bodied and moves fast like a demon.

Oral history and traditional knowledge in Inuit culture talks about “weasel” or “king” bears, and the huge, fully intact and unusually shaped polar bear skull that emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site near Utqiaġvik has added more fuel to the fire.

One of the Biggest and Most Distinct Polar Bear Skulls Ever Found

According to Anne Jensen, an Utqiaġvik-based archaeologist and leader of the excavation and research programs in the region, this is one of the biggest polar bear skulls ever found, and it appears to be different from most modern polar bear skulls. It is slender, elongated in the back and has uncommon structural features around the nasal and other areas.

“It looks different from your average polar bear,” said Anne Jensen , and added that after radiocarbon dating she and her colleagues estimate that the big bear skull comes from the period between the years 670 and 800 AD.

Despite looking different, scientifically it’s not determined yet what makes this skull differ from other found polar bear skulls and genetic testing is needed at this point to provide the scientists with more details.

“It could have been a member of a subspecies or a member of a different “race” in genetic terms — similar to the varying breeds that are found among dogs — or possibly something else entirely,” said Jensen as adn.com reports.

The Skull is Just One of the Many Newly Found Treasures

Even though the majority of the scientific world has focused almost entirely on the curiously enormous polar bear skull, the excavation of the now-eroding site, which is called Walakpa, has been successful in spotting a number of other archaeological treasures.

The excavation of the site uncovered another first for Alaska, four mummified seals, naturally preserved in an old ice cellar. Jensen’s team was able to recover one of them last summer, an adult female that was named Patou. 

Jensen said , “The excavated seal was much more modern than the polar-bear skull, dating back to only the mid-1940s. Still, it and the other seals amounted to a startling find: They are the only mummified seals ever discovered outside of Antarctica’s Dry Valley.”

Jensen also expressed her satisfaction with the new finds, since she was one of the many people who believed the Walakpa site had already been thoroughly excavated back in the late 1960’s, when Smithsonian anthropologist Dennis Stanford excavated the area for the first time.

As she says, “Everyone had the opinion — I was one of them — that he had pretty well excavated the site and there was nothing left to be done.”

Finally, the closed-up site was also considered to be intact and pretty much safe from erosion and thaw, which wasn’t the case at all – as Jensen and her colleagues told adn.

‘Lost’ 1,500-year-old Teotihuacan village discovered in the heart of Mexico City

Archeologists have unearthed the lost remains of a Teotihuacan village, including human burials, in the heart of Mexico City.

Ceramics found scattered around the site, which is located 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) northwest of the city’s historical center, indicate the village dates from around A.D. 450 to 650 and may have housed a community of artisans and craftspeople.

“The finding was surprising,” said Juan Carlos Campos-Varela, an archaeologist at Mexico’s National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) Directorate of Archeological Salvage, who co-led the dig.

“It shows that 1,300 years ago, the islets inside Lake Texcoco, on which Mexico City was founded [after the lake was drained], already supported a permanent population that took advantage of the resources of the lake environment,” he told Live Science in an email.

The newly excavated settlement may have formed during the “ruralization” of Teotihuacan, an ancient metropolis that flourished in the highlands of what is now central Mexico between A.D. 100 and 650, Campos-Varela said.

The village is located 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Teotihuacan and may have been one of several small towns that supported themselves through subsistence farming and fishing as the ancient city reached its zenith.

These settlements maintained commercial ties to Teotihuacan, and the new discoveries shed light on the role these settlements played in the city’s supply network, Campos-Varela said.

“The discovery is rare because it occurred in a fully urbanized context where the possibility of finding archeological evidence associated with the Teotihuacan culture was very low,” he added.

Gifted craftspeople

Archeologist Francisco González Rul discovered the first clues to this village’s existence in the 1960s, during construction works in the Mexican capital. Based on the ceramics he unearthed, González Rul suggested at the time that the inhabitants were self-reliant fishers and gatherers. The new excavations confirmed this.

Several previously unseen architectural structures—including post holes, flooring, channels, and an artesian well — as well as ceramics have come to light. The excavation also unearthed three human burials containing the skeletons of two adults and a child.

Teotihuacan ceramics are categorized into phases, according to a 2016 study in the journal PLOS One. The newfound ceramics displayed features that correspond to the Xolalpan (A.D. 350 to 550) and Metepec (A.D. 550 to 600) phases in the 2016 study, which enabled the researchers to date the remains of the village and its inhabitants. 

The Teotihuacans were gifted artists and craftspeople, said Michael Smith, a professor of archeology and director of the Teotihuacan Research Laboratory at Arizona State University. “To decorate the walls of their houses and temples, the Teotihuacanos used the same fresco technique used by Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel,” Smith told Live Science in an email. “They also used the fresco technique on ceramic vessels.”

The ceramics could reveal important information about trade with Teotihuacan through chemical analysis, Smith said. 

Archeologists have concluded the excavations and are now analyzing the discovered materials and bones. Much of Teotihuacan’s sprawling architecture remains buried, but the site is largely unaffected by modern construction and will eventually be unearthed in its entirety, Arizona State University said.

Who Craved the Giant Handprints in the White Mountain Petroglyphs, Wyoming?

We are not in total darkness about how our ancient ancestors lived their lives thousands of years ago. One reason for this is that they etched their daily lives, including struggles, celebrations, fears, or rituals, on rocks, stones, and caves that we can see even today. These illustrations, like the White Mountain Petroglyphs, are like a historical legacy that silently tells us stories of their lives.

The White Mountain Petroglyphs are a powerful testimony to the lives of the Native American tribes who lived there between 200 and 1,000 years ago.

Apart from hundreds of carved figures in the area, there are giant handprints that look like someone has scooped a part of the mountain and let it solidify. These mysterious handprints are perhaps one of the most captivating things to see if you ever visit the remote White Mountains site.

Where can you find the White Mountain Petroglyphs? Who made them?

The White Mountain Petroglyph site in Wyoming’s Red Desert was once the home of Native American tribes. The site roughly starts ten miles north of Rock Springs. But to reach the White Mountains, where the petroglyphs are, one must drive 16 miles on a dirt road from the main site and walk a quarter mile on foot.

Petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings) are the windows to the past, giving us almost a first-hand account of the lives of those who made them. Here, on the mountain face canvas, there are carvings and handprints that are the most tangible connections we have with the Great Basin Native Americans who lived there between 200 to 1,000 years ago. They include the Shoshone, Arapaho, and Ute tribes.

It is interesting to note that in other parts of the World, petroglyphs can be as old as 20,000 years. They started to diminish with the discovery and introduction of other forms of writing surfaces, different forms of art, and pictographs. But many cultures, like the Native Americans, continued to create them until contact was made with  Western culture, sometimes as late as the 18th or even the 19th century.

The petroglyphs have animals, symbols, and mysterious handprints.

The markings tell us a lot about the beliefs and culture of the people who lived here several hundred years ago and more. There are carvings in the White Mountains that look like bison and elk hunts. There are also buffalos and wild horses carved on the rock face. Apart from the animals, there are also various interesting geometric shapes and tiny footprints that embellish the rock face.

Though not much is known about these shapes or symbols, the local Native Americans consider them sacred. They feel connected to nature and feel positive when they visit the site.

According to a Native American elder, symbols are important and communal.  They feel the rocks are alive and connected to them. Some carvings also depict horses and warriors with swords. They tell us about their contact with European cultures.

But the most mysterious of all is the deep-set handprints that are somehow left within solid sandstone as if someone had mysteriously softened the rocks. These petroglyphs are important to understand the culture and beliefs of the people who made them.

How were the deep handprints in the White Mountain Petroglyphs site made?

The handprints, deeply embedded in the sandstone, give an effect of mountain-scooping. According to historians, the handprints were created by the Easter Shoshone tribes between 1,000-1,800 CE. Thousands of people since then have continued to make the same motion with their hands across the soft sandstone. This, in turn, has created the effect of handprint carving deep into the rocks.

According to a website on Wyoming history, this was the birthing place for the Plains and Great Basin Tribes. The locals tell a fascinating story about how these handprints originated. Native women used to visit the White Mountains when they were giving birth. As their labor started and they had their contractions, their hands used to seek support on the mountain face and created deep handprints into the soft sandstone.

Standing against the rocks, they gave birth. Today, the site is considered sacred by  Native Americans, and visitors are urged to respect the site and not destroy any part of history through vandalism. Unfortunately, though, reckless damage to the site has already happened.

Could the White Mountain Natives melt stones?

The petroglyphs on the White Mountain are made of sandstone, a softer rock that gradually hardens with time. They were probably engraved with a harder object than the sandstone. Therefore, maybe melting stones was not necessary in this case.

But what about the handprints that look like they have been scooped out of the mountain? They are deep set in solid sandstone, giving an impression that, somehow, the ancients could soften the rocks like snow. Though these have not been studied much, experts believe the birthing story might have a logical explanation. These stones were soft, and years of pushing your hands into the mountains can make these handprints really deep and big.

Not just in the White Mountains but worldwide, there are similar examples of stone bending and carvings. Scientists and historians often discuss how ancient civilizations knew advanced mechanisms to melt or soften stones.

One interesting theory, based on the shaping of stones in Peru, is that the ancients knew a plant that could melt stones. Scientists also believe ancient cultures knew advanced science and used high temperatures to shape rocks. This unknown process vitrified the surface of the rocks, turning them glasslike, on which they carved. But the process remains a mystery.

White Mountain Wyoming. Undeniable evidence of a now lost method of plasticing stone. This is a rare example in North America. Is common in Peru, Egypt, India. pic.twitter.com/kh3wNBmDMu

— Rob Heatherly (@RobHeatherly1) September 26, 2020

The petroglyphs in the White Mountains have not been researched, or studied by anyone formally, yet. They remain elusive and hidden, getting only 12,000 visitors a year. Let us hope when visiting the site, the visitors respect the sacredness and tread lightly to preserve the petroglyphs for as long as possible.

Hundreds of well-preserved prehistoric animals were found in an ancient ash bed in Nebraska

Scientists have excavated fossils of 58 rhinos, 17 horses, 6 camels, 5 deers, 2 dogs, a rodent, a saber-toothed deer, and dozens of birds and turtles in Nebraska.

In that distant past, Nebraska was a grassy savanna. Trees and shrubs dotted the landscape. It likely resembled today’s Serengeti National Park in East Africa.

The watering holes attracted prehistoric animals among Nebraska’s tall grasslands. From horses to camels and rhinoceroses, with wild dogs looming nearby, animals roamed the savanna-like region.

Then, one day, it all changed. Hundreds of miles away, a volcano in southeast Idaho erupted. Within days, up to two feet of ash covered parts of present-day Nebraska.

Some of the animals died immediately, consumed with ash and other debris. Most of the animals lived for several more days, their lungs ingesting ash as they searched the ground for food. Within a few weeks, northeast Nebraska was barren of animals, except for a few survivors.

More than 12 million years later, in 1971, a fossil was found in Antelope County, near the small town of Royal. The skull of a baby rhino was discovered by a Nebraska paleontologist named Michael Voorhies and his wife while exploring the area. The fossil was exposed by erosion. Soon after, exploration started in the area.

It was found that birds and turtles died quickly as their skeletons lie at the bottom of the ash, right on what was the sandy bottom of the watering hole. Other animals occur in layers.

Above the birds and turtles lie dog-sized saber-tooth deer. Then five species of pony-sized horses, some with three toes. Above those are camel remains.

Atop them, all are the biggest, the rhinos, in a single layer. All of this is buried under about 2.5 meters (8 feet) of ash. It must have blown into the water, covering the dead.

Fossils in the ash bed are whole. They haven’t been squashed flat. Their bones are all still in place. They’re also fragile. Most fossils form when groundwater soaks into bones and teeth.

Over time, minerals from the water fill in the gaps and even replace some of the original bone. The result is a hard, rock-like fossil that can stand the test of time.

Here, however, the ash eventually locked the skeletons away from the water. After the watering hole dried up, the super-fine ash left no room between particles for new water to seep in.

The ash protected the bones, preserving them in their original positions. But they didn’t mineralize much. When scientists remove the ash around them, these bones start to crumble.

Within a few years, as more discoveries were made, the fossil site grew into a tourist attraction. Today, people visit Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park to check out hundreds of fossils from 12 species of animals, including five types of horses, three species of camels, as well as a saber-toothed deer. The infamous saber-toothed cat remains a dream discovery.

Visitors view fossils inside the Hubbard Rhino Barn, a 17,500-square-foot facility that protects the fossils while allowing visitors to roam on a boardwalk. Kiosks provide information on fossils located in specific areas.