The Ant People legend of the Hopi Native Americans and connections to the Anunnaki

The more you look at ancient texts and stories from around the world, you can’t help but see surprising patterns. Some are so glaring that it takes real effort to ignore them, but that’s what many people do. One example is from the Hopi Native American tribe and their beliefs in “Ant People.” The Hopi of the American Southwest is sometimes referred to as “the oldest of people” by other Native American tribes.

Once you learn about the Ant People, you can’t help but compare them to the ancient Sumerian texts of the Anunnaki. Why? Let’s take a simplified look, respecting the truth that only members of the Hope tribe could fully explain.

In ancient cultures, there is a common thread of worshipping extraterrestrial beings from the stars who will one day return. Animals symbolic of these beliefs appear frequently in ancient art.

The Hopi have a reverence for ants, similar to the way the Egyptians Sumerians and other cultures had a special reverence for cows. The cows may have represented our Milky Way galaxy, and in the case of the ants, they described beings from the stars known as the Ant People.

The Hopi words for the Ant People or Ant Friends (Anu Sinom) create a direct link to the stories of the Anunnaki. It could be coincidental, but it is quite striking. The Babylonian sky god was named Anu, which is the Hopi word for ant. The word, Naki translates to “friends.” Thus, Anu-Naki translates to “ant friends” in Hopi. In both languages, they are describing extraterrestrial beings, but the Hopi say these Ant People came from under the ground.

Another strikingly similar word is the Hopi word Sohu, meaning “star,” and the Egyptian word sahu means “stars of Orion.” This constellation is seen repeatedly across the globe. Ancient Astronaut theorists observe Orion and other systems such as the Pleiades appearing over and over in the layout of the pyramids and ancient structures. Another coincidence?

In the Hopi legend, these Ant People were their saviours, taking them underground and teaching them how to survive two extreme cataclysms. Once again, we see stories of a great flood like that described in Sumerian texts and the Bible.

Surviving underground with the Ant People, the Hopi ancestors learned how to grow food with little water and build dwellings in the rocks. They learned about the stars and mathematics and would put those skills to use when they founded a new civilization.

When it was safe to return to the surface, the Ant People instructed the building of incredibly complex habitations such as what is seen today at Chaco Canyon. From above, they might appear like a giant ant mound. The structures included Kivas, a Hopi word for round semi-subterranean ceremonial rooms that were entered by ladders from above.

According to the National Park Service:

“During ceremonies today, the ritual emergence of participants from the kiva into the plaza above represents the original emergence by Puebloan groups from the underworld into the current world.”

Petroglyphs depicting the Ant People appear still appear today, and the Hopi continue to tell the story in dances and rituals.

Below are some intriguing images of Hopi ceremonies taking place inside the kivas.

Ancient Origins elaborates on the legend:

“One of the most intriguing Hopi legends involves the Ant People, who were crucial to the survival of the Hopi—not just once but twice. The so-called “First World” (or world-age) was apparently destroyed by fire—possibly some sort of volcanism, asteroid strike, or coronal mass ejection from the sun. The Second World was destroyed by ice—Ice Age glaciers or a pole shift. During these two global cataclysms, the virtuous members of the Hopi tribe were guided by an odd-shaped cloud during the day and a moving star at night that led them to the sky god named Sotuknang, who finally took them to the Ant People—in Hopi, Anu Sinom . The Ant People then escorted the Hopi into subterranean caves where they found refuge and sustenance.”

Stories that giants and other strange beings have lived deep inside the Earth are seen around the globe. In the Hopi legend, these beings were benevolent and helped the tribe even to their own detriment.

“In this legend, the Ant People are portrayed as generous and industrious, giving the Hopi food when supplies ran short and teaching them the merits of food storage. In fact, another legend says that the reason why the ants have such thin waists today is because they once deprived themselves of provisions in order to feed the Hopi.”

The thin waisted ants with their elongated heads and antennae resemble some of the ancient petroglyphs. Across the globe, an African species of Ant called the Pharaoh Ant to remind some of a tiny version of Pharoah Akhenaten, famous for his strange alien appearance.

The History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series covers this subject in Series 4, episode 9 (See a clip below). In addition to depictions of the Ant, People are wall paintings that show an unmistakable similarity to cuneiform symbols from ancient Sumeria. These symbols are associated with the “WingMakers,” according to the show.

Just as in ancient Egypt, there were matriarchal dynasties, DNA findings from Chaco Canyon show a possible maternal dynasty that ruled for hundreds of years between A.D. 800 and 1250. Scientific American published a story on this in 2017 after researchers examined the remains of 14 people found a burial crypt that ended up at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The Chaco Canyon settlement had thousands of Anasazi inhabitants, who believed in protecting Mother Earth. However, the ancient Puebloans mysteriously disappeared, along with any signs of the Ant People. Today researchers believe that climate change drove them away as the growing population couldn’t sustain itself.

The Anasazi integrated with tribes like the Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblo. As the modern world faces extreme challenges from climate change today, the teachings of these tribes are more important than ever. Can we learn to respect the natural world and live in harmony with Mother Earth? Or are we headed for inevitable disasters, like those described in the Hopi legends?

Ancient Astronaut theorists often speculate if extraterrestrial beings could play a part in helping humans overcome impending future disasters. In the case of the Hopi legends, it appears they did just that. Could the Ant People return from deep in the Earth or from their home in the stars in our time of need?

Possible Spanish Cross Discovered at St. Mary’s Colonial Fort

The tiny, dirt-encrusted cross showed up in the sifting screen at the Maryland dig site, and when archaeologist Stephanie Stevens spotted it she said she gasped, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”

It was a strange object, with two crossbars instead of one, and unusual flared ends on the vertical and horizontal pieces. Stevens, the crew chief at the newly-discovered colonial fort at St. Mary’s, Md., didn’t know exactly what she had, but she knew it was important.

What she had found was a rare 370-year-old Spanish cross that had likely been made in the pilgrimage city of Caravaca, Spain, around 1650 and had made its way 4,000 miles to a meadow in southern Maryland.

“It’s a … fascinating object,” said archaeologist Travis Parno, director of research for Historic St. Mary’s City. “We’ve grown accustomed to finding Catholic artefacts… just because there was such a powerful Catholic and particular Jesuit presence.

But research soon revealed this cross was Spanish in origin and tied to an ancient Spanish legend about the appearance of a miracle cross that held a splinter of the one on which Jesus died.

But St. Mary’s was an English colony.

“What is a Spanish artefact doing here?” Parno said Thursday. . “Given the [tense] relationships between Spain and England it’s always interesting to find a Spanish object.”

The find came on Oct. 25 during excavation of the historic fort at St. Mary’s, the first permanent English settlement in Maryland and one of the earliest in what would become the United States.

Last March, Historic St. Mary’s City announced that the outlines of the palisaded fort, which had been erected by White settlers in 1634, had finally been discovered. Archaeologists had been looking for it since the 1930s.

Maryland’s original 150 colonists, including many English Catholics fleeing Protestant persecution, had arrived at St. Mary’s on two ships, the Ark and the Dove, in late March 1634.

The fort soon began giving up secrets to the archaeologists. Pieces of pottery, pins, hundreds of musket balls and birdshot, arrowheads, a trigger guard for a musket turned up.

Then, last April, Parno revealed that a 380-year old English shilling, made of silver in the royal mint in the Tower of London, had been found — also by crew chief Stevens.

“It was quite a revelation,” Parno said at the time.

Now, here was another one, excavated from what appears to be the cellar of a large building inside the fort.

At first, the archaeologists weren’t exactly sure what it was.

“It stuck out … because it’s got the double bar cross,” Parno said. “Usually, if you’ve got a double bar cross and a slash at the bottom of the cross you associate that with Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox.”

“Without that slash at the bottom, it was, ‘Ok, where did this thing come from?’” he said. Was it a French Cross of Lorraine, which has two plain horizontal pieces?

“This one didn’t quite match any of those images,” he said. “It’s got those flares on the ends of the bars. It almost looks like bells, [with] a very ornate almost Baroque design to it.”

“That was when we started really digging into this and found this example of these Caravaca crosses,” he said.

The crosses stem from a 700-year-old legend about angels miraculously delivering a cross, said to hold a fragment of Christ’s cross, to an imprisoned priest who was about to say Mass before a Muslim king in Caravaca.

In later versions of the cross, the angels carry it by the vertical bar, while Jesus hangs crucified on the upper bar. The St. Mary’s cross lacks the angels and the figure of Jesus. “This is sort of the stripped-down version,” Parno said.

The artefact is tiny and fits easily in the palm of a hand. It’s made of a copper alloy, Parno said. And it probably was manufactured in or near Caravaca, about 250 miles southeast of Madrid. It has a broken hole at the top of the vertical piece, perhaps for a necklace or rosary.

But how did it get to Maryland?

Was there a Spaniard at St. Mary’s? There’s no such evidence, Parno said. Was it brought to St. Mary’s by a Jesuit Catholic priest who had visited Spain? Also unlikely, because dates don’t line up well, he said.

Was it carried by a devout Catholic among the settlers? Possibly.

Perhaps the best scenario is that the cross was acquired in a trade with local Native Americans, Parno said.

“We know that Spanish material culture, particularly religious material culture, was … traded in … networks up and down the East coast,” he said. There were then Spanish outposts in Florida and South Carolina. The cross might have been given to Native Americans as part of Spanish missionary work and then traded to someone at St. Mary’s, he said.

“If you have a Catholic colonist who’s interested in a Caravaca cross that an indigenous person is wearing … maybe it was a reverse exchange — an object that was European and ended up in indigenous hands and then ended up back in colonial hands,” he said.

“Every day we’re going out there, we’ve got new mysteries that we’re shaking our heads at,” he said. “Every time we think we’ve figured something out, three more questions emerge.”

Archaeological dig reveals participants in California’s Gold Rush dined on salted Atlantic cod

It turns out San Francisco has been a destination for lovers of imported delicacies since its earliest Gold Rush days. According to results published recently in the peer-reviewed Journal of Anthropological Research, an excavation at Thompson’s Cove in San Francisco has shown “Atlantic cod were imported during the 1850s, likely as a (largely) deboned, dried and salted product from the East Coast of the United States.”

The results underscore the importance of global maritime trade in northern California during the Gold Rush. Co-author Brittany Bingham, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Kansas, performed genetic analysis on 18 cod bones recovered from Thompson’s Cove to determine if they came from cod caught in the deep nearby waters of the Pacific or were shipped in packages by boat from Atlantic fisheries. Her results on five specimens for ancient DNA show Atlantic cod were imported during the debut of the Gold Rush.

Bingham said bones tend to be better preserved and more suitable for analysis than other materials left behind from the rapid surge in San Francisco’s population. (In the first year of the Gold Rush, between 1848-49, the area’s 800 residents quickly swelled to more than 20,000.)

“Bones preserve better than other things that don’t last in the archaeological record as well,” she said. “You won’t get a quality DNA sample from every bone — some are burned, and soil and other factors can affect preservation, so we typically check for DNA and determine what we’re looking at. But often people move bones elsewhere and maybe they’re thrown in a different place than the rest of the bones, so you don’t have the whole specimen to look at. That’s where people like me come into play, and we’ll take the one tiny piece of bone that might have been found and figure out what it actually came from.”

The results of Bingham’s analysis were among the first archaeological results to confirm findings from historical newspapers and invoices: The early history of San Francisco included the importation of a wide range of fish and seafood to support the population boom.

The project came about when the Musto Building built-in 1907 at Thompson’s Cove — where the city was first settled — undertook a mandatory retrofitting to be more resilient to earthquakes, triggering a California compliance law requiring archaeological work in conjunction with construction at the site. Today, the building is home to a private social club.

Kale Bruner, who earned her doctorate in anthropology at KU, worked on the Thompson’s Cove site as construction took place. Today, Bruner serves as a research associate at the Museum of the Aleutians.

“Compliance work is challenging in a lot of ways because you don’t really get a lot of control over the excavations, and this case was kind of an extreme example of that — the fieldwork conditions were overwhelming — and I was the only archaeologist on-site,” Bruner said. “They were fortunately only excavating dirt in one location at a time, so I only had one piece of machinery to be watching, but we were hitting archaeologically significant material constantly. It was two years essentially of monitoring that kind of activity and documenting as rapidly as possible everything that was being uncovered.”

Aside from evidence of Atlantic cod, the authors reported about 8,000 total specimens or fragments of animal bone, and a total number of artefacts collected that numbered nearly 70,000. The work will yield more academic papers on the historical significance of the site.

Lead author Cyler Conrad, adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico and archaeologist with Los Alamos National Laboratory, has published other findings from work at Thompson’s Cove, including evidence of a California hide and tallow trade, eating of wild game, hunting of ducks and geese, and even importation of Galapagos tortoise.

He described the Gold Rush era as exciting and chaotic, a time that in some ways mirrored the supply chain problems plaguing the world in the COVID-19 era.

“During the Gold Rush, it took many months for vessels to arrive in San Francisco, so often when you needed things is not when they would arrive, and when things would arrive, they were often not needed anymore,” Conrad said. “You find these descriptions of San Francisco as this kind of a muddy mess, a kind of a tent city where there were shacks built upon shacks all the way up until the shoreline, just stacked with crates and boxes.

Even at Thompson’s Cove, I think Kale excavated several essentially intact crates of frying pans and shovelheads. You can imagine shiploads of shovels might arrive, but maybe everyone had a shovel already or maybe it was winter, and no one was in the goldfields and you have all this material that accumulates right along the shoreline — but that was convenient for our work.”

Conrad said the work to determine the Atlantic origins of cod bones found at the site was a significant contribution to understanding maritime trade of the era when Atlantic cod was either shipped by boat all the way around Cape Horn — or shipped to Panama, then hauled across the isthmus, before being shipped up to the Northern California goldfields.

“We have this really fascinating aggregation of material, and it’s remarkable we only found 18 bones we can identify to the genus of cod from the Atlantic,” he said. “Brittany’s DNA work was critical for this because it’s difficult to distinguish between bones of Atlantic versus Pacific cod — their bone morphology is virtually the same. We’ve been able to tie the DNA from Brittany’s work with some slight differences in the very far tail vertebrae. If you think how cod was prepped and salted, they removed almost all bones, except for the very last few bones. Perhaps this was rapidly prepared and exported cod from the East Coast, because of this rush to the goldfields and demand for food.

Perhaps they were just kind of shipping out whatever they could. There are some interesting details in the cod bones, and we would never have been able to answer these questions without DNA — and it really supports this identification that, yes, these are Atlantic cod — and that opens up a whole new window into this human experience.”

The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. The university’s mission is to lift students and society by educating leaders, building healthy communities and making discoveries that change the world. The KU News Service is the central public relations office for the Lawrence campus.

Massive 1,100 Year Old Maya Site Discovered In Georgia’s Mountains

In Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, the Mayans constructed astonishing temples – but now some assume that the ancient people fled their dissolving civilization and ended up in Georgia.

A 1,100-year-old archaeological site is believed by the historian and architect Richard Thornton to show that Mayan refugees fled Central America and ended up near Blairsville in the North Georgian mountains.

His amazing theory is based on the discovery of 300 to 500 rock terraces and mounds that date to 900AD on the side of the Brasstown Bald mountain – around the time the Mayans started to die out.

Mr Thornton’s blockbuster theory revolves around the area near Brasstown Bald potentially being the ‘fabled city of Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto failed to find in 1540’. He described it as ‘certainly one of the most important archaeological discoveries in recent times.

The Mayans died out around 900AD for reasons still debated by scholars – although drought, overpopulation and war are the most popular theories, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The remains were first found by retired engineer Carey Waldrip when he went walking in the area in the 1990s. Archaeologist Johannes Loubser excavated part of the site and wrote a report about it in 2010, but does not believe the rock terraces are Mayan.

‘I think that (Mr Thornton) selectively presents the evidence,’ Mr Loubser told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ‘But he’s a better marketer than I and other archaeologists are.’

Mr Loubser, who excavated a rock wall and small mound, added that claims like this must be backed up with ‘hard evidence’ because of the various conflicting opinions in the archaeological world.’

Mr Loubser believes the structures could have been built by the Cherokee Indians or an earlier tribe between 800AD and 1100AD. He stopped digging because he realized the site could be a grave.

Still, Mr Thornton claims early maps of the location named two villages ‘Itsate’, which was how Itza Mayans described themselves. The terrace structures and dates helped him reach his conclusion.

‘It was commonplace for the Itza Maya to sculpt a hill into a pentagonal mound,’ he argues. ‘There are dozens of such structures in Central America.’

But not everyone is impressed by Mr Thornton’s theory. He cited University of Georgia archaeology professor Mark Williams in an article on Examiner.com.

‘I am the archaeologist Mark Williams mentioned in this article,’ Professor Williams said on Facebook. ‘This is total and complete bunk. There is no evidence of Maya in Georgia. Move along now.’

‘The sites are certainly those of Native Americans of prehistoric Georgia,’ Professor Williams told ABC News. ‘Wild theories are not new, but the web simply spreads them faster than ever.’

Mr Thornton wasn’t bothered by the ensuing debate, in fact, that’s exactly what he wanted. ‘I’m not an archaeologist. I’m a big picture man,’ said Mr Thorton to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ‘We’re hoping this article stirs up some interest. I was just trying to get the archaeologists to work some more on the site and they come back snapping like mad dogs.’

He works with a company called His pared his map of the Georgia site, it reminded him of other Mayan works. ‘It’s identical to sites in Belize,’ he argued.

The Mayans have been under intense scrutiny over the past few years as rumours abound about their mysterious 5,125-year calendar allegedly predicting the apocalypse on December 21 2012.

But various experts have spoken out against Doomsday, including Mexico’s ‘Grand Warlock’ Antonio Vazquez, to say that the Mayan calendar instead will just reset and a new time-span will begin.

Large discovery of Native American artifacts in Willamette Valley

Volunteer archaeologist Megan Wonderly discovers an obsidian Native American tool during the excavation. The tool, known as a biface, is an estimated 1,000 to 4,000 years old and could help researchers better understand early trade routes.

Thanks to a discovery by a local landowner, archaeologists unearthed the first recorded Native American tools of their kind in the Willamette Valley this summer.

While building a pond on his property, the landowner, who was not identified, found 15 obsidian hand axes. He reported his discovery to the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, which led an archaeological dig at the site in June.

The tools, known as bifaces, are a rare find, said assistant state archaeologist John Pouley, who led the dig.

“Of approximately 35,000 recorded archaeological sites in Oregon, few, likely less than 25, consist of biface caches,” he said.

The tools are an estimated 1,000 to 4,000 years old. They were found on the traditional territory of the Santiam Band of the Kalapuya, which stretches between present-day Portland and Roseburg.

During the dig, archaeologists consulted the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation.

With the assistance of the tribes, local universities and private archaeological firms, Pouley and his team determined that the unfinished tools were from the Obsidian Cliffs in the Central Oregon Cascades. They likely would have been used in trades before being worked into finished tools, Pouley said.

It’s unusual to find unfinished tools and the discovery will help archaeologists better understand prehistoric trade networks in the Pacific Northwest, Pouley said.

Pouley plans to write a report on the tools after the excavation is complete. He and his team will also present their findings at an anthropological conference in Spokane, Washington next year.

None of this would have been possible without the landowner, Pouley said.

“This site makes you wonder how many archaeological sites with the potential to shed light on the history of human occupation within Oregon have been found before, and never reported,” Pouley said. “We encourage anyone that finds artefacts on their property to contact us.”

Billionaire hands over $70 million of stolen artefacts

Michael H. Steinhardt, the billionaire hedge fund pioneer and one of New York’s most prolific antiquities collectors, has surrendered 180 stolen objects valued at $70 million and been barred for life from acquiring any other relics, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement Monday.

The prosecutor’s office struck an agreement with Mr. Steinhardt after a four-year multinational investigation that determined that the seized pieces had been looted and smuggled from 11 countries, trafficked by 12 illicit networks and appeared on the international art market without lawful paperwork, the office said.

“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,” District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said, adding: “This agreement establishes that Steinhardt will be subject to an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities.”

Mr. Steinhardt, a Brooklyn native who turns 81 on Tuesday, is a major contributor to New York University and to numerous Jewish philanthropies. There is a Steinhardt conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and a Steinhardt Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In a statement on Monday, his lawyer, Andrew J. Levander, said: “Mr. Steinhardt is pleased that the District Attorney’s yearslong investigation has concluded without any charges, and that items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries.

Many of the dealers from whom Mr. Steinhardt bought these items made specific representations as to the dealers’ lawful title to the items, and to their alleged provenance. To the extent these representations were false, Mr. Steinhardt has reserved his rights to seek recompense from the dealers involved.”

According to prosecutors, 171 of the 180 seized antiquities first surfaced in the possession of accused antiquities traffickers, including two who have been convicted in Italy — Giacomo Medici and Giovanni Becchina.

They said the investigation revealed that 101 of the items, all covered in dirt and encrustations, were visible and identifiable in photographs found in the possession of known traffickers.

Christos Tsirogiannis, an associate professor at the University of Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark, who specializes in searching photographic archives seized from antiquities dealers, said traffickers use such photos to advertise their looted wares to small groups of wealthy collectors. Dr. Tsirogiannis is one of about 60 researchers, investigators and foreign law enforcement officials credited by the prosecutors’ office with assisting in the case.

As part of its inquiry, Mr. Vance’s office said, prosecutors executed 17 search warrants and worked with officials in 11 countries — Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey.

In explaining the agreement not to prosecute so long as Mr. Steinhardt abides by all its terms, Mr. Vance said the arrangement would allow for the items to be “returned expeditiously to their rightful owners” rather than being held as evidence. It would also help his office to “shield the identity of the many witnesses here and abroad whose names would be released at any trial.”

Nonetheless, the case and other recent seizures demonstrate that the office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit is ready to reach far back in time to confiscate objects based on a New York state statute that allows prosecutors to return stolen property to its “rightful owners” regardless of when a theft might have occurred.

Mr. Steinhardt’s dealings with prosecutors over suspect antiquities date back to the 1990s. In 1997, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Steinhardt had illegally imported a golden bowl, known as a phiale, from Italy in 1992.

The object, dating to 450 B.C. and costing $1 million, was seized from Mr. Steinhardt’s home in 1995. The judge rejected his contention at the time that he was an “innocent owner” with no knowledge of irregularities.

In 2018, investigators raided his office and Fifth Avenue home and took away several ancient works they said had been looted from Greece and Italy. That seizure came on the heels of a 2017 seizure of a marble statue stolen from a temple in Sidon, Lebanon, which Mr. Steinhardt relinquished and which has been returned.

The 2017 seizure led to the formation of the trafficking unit, which pressed the case that was resolved on Monday. Officials said the unit has recovered more than 3,000 items valued at $200 million, and that at least 1,500 have been returned to their owners and countries of origin. It said hundreds are ready to be repatriated “as soon as the relevant countries are able to receive them amid the pandemic,” and more than 1,000 objects are being held awaiting the outcome of criminal proceedings.

(Separately, in March 2019, Mr. Steinhardt was accused of a pattern of sexual harassment by several women who worked for the nonprofits he supported.)

The confiscated items, which decorated Mr. Steinhardt’s homes and offices, and which he often lent to major museums, came mostly from Italy, Greece and Israel, according to a list compiled by investigators.

They include:

A ceremonial libations vessel, or rhyton, that depicts a stag’s head, purchased from the Merrin Gallery of Manhattan for $2.6 million in November 1991. Officials said the item, which dates to 400 B.C., first appeared on the international art market without provenance after rampant looting in Milas, Turkey. In March 1993, prosecutors said, Mr. Steinhardt lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was when law enforcement officials seized it. It has since been repatriated.

A larnax, or small chest for human remains, from Crete, that dates between 1400-1200 B.C. Officials said the item, valued at $1 million, was purchased from a known antiquities trafficker and traced to Mr. Steinhardt through a financial institution based in Malta.

The “Ercolano Fresco,” purchased from Robert Hecht, who had faced accusations of trafficking in antiquities, “with no prior provenance” for $650,000 in November 1995. Dating to 50 B.C. and valued at $1 million, it depicts an infant Hercules strangling a snake sent by Hera to slay him. The fresco was looted in 1995 from a Roman villa in the ruins of Herculaneum, near Naples, officials said.

A gold bowl looted from Nimrud, Iraq, and purchased without provenance papers, officials said, for $150,000 in July 2020, at a time when objects from Nimrud were being trafficked by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Made of gold with a scalloped-flower design, the object surfaced in October 2019 when a Customs and Border Protection officer notified Mr. Vance’s office that someone on a flight from Hong Kong to Newark was hand-carrying the bowl for Mr. Steinhardt.

Three stone death masks that appeared to be encrusted with soil in photographs recovered by the Israeli authorities. They date to 6000 B.C. and were purchased by Mr. Steinhardt for $400,000 in October 2007.

Prosecutors said Mr. Steinhardt had owned and traded more than 1,000 antiquities since 1987, and his art collection was valued at about $200 million.

Another “Erased” Black Cemetery Identified in Florida

An unmarked African American cemetery with hundreds of graves has been found at the site of a downtown office building in Clearwater, Fla. It’s at least the fourth abandoned African American cemetery rediscovered in recent years in Florida. The finds are forcing communities to come to terms with their history and racist policies that targeted Black neighbourhoods.

Barbara Sorey-Love has experienced some of that history firsthand. She was born in the basement of Clearwater’s hospital 69 years ago and grew up in Clearwater Heights, a neighbourhood that no longer exists.

“Back then we were called coloured,” she says. “That’s where the coloured mothers and children were housed.”

Several years ago, Sorey-Love helped form the Clearwater Heights Reunion Committee, a group of people who grew up in the neighbourhood before it became a victim of urban renewal. The group began asking questions about the old St. Matthews cemetery. It was closed in the mid-1950s and sold to developers who were supposed to move the graves to a new location.

Using ground-penetrating radar and later by excavating, archaeologists found something many residents had suspected — most of the graves had never been moved. Sorey-Love recently visited the excavation site, now an office building’s parking lot.

“I went over and looked in the burial site,” she says. “And it was like the skeleton was looking up at me saying, ‘Thank God you found me.'”

Archaeologists believe several hundred people may be buried under the parking lot and a building that now stands on the site. It’s not the only African American cemetery recently rediscovered in Clearwater. A little over a mile away, an investigation has found dozens of graves at the site of a now shuttered public school. In both cases, community members are working with local officials to decide what to do next.

And it’s not just happening in Clearwater. Just across the bay in Tampa, investigations conducted by the Tampa Bay Times helped uncover at least two more African American cemeteries that were abandoned and built over. Some of the graves are under the parking lot at Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays. Hundreds more were found at the site of a public housing complex.

In all these cases, Black residents were told the graves had been relocated.

“There were bodies still there and a large number of them,” says Antoinette Jackson, chair of the anthropology department at the University of South Florida says. “That caught everybody’s attention.”

The cemeteries were all closed in the 1950s, as cities around Florida’s Tampa Bay began to grow rapidly in the post-war era. Property that had been developed and used by the Black community was taken for other uses and neighbourhoods were wiped out by interstate exchanges. Jackson says the cemeteries were deliberately forgotten.

“Oftentimes,” she says, “we don’t use the word lost or abandoned. We are really saying erased, physically erased from the landscape for other purposes.”

In Clearwater, city council records from the mid-1950s show officials discussed using road improvements as an “inducement to confine Negro home building and purchasing to the existing area.”

Jeff Moates, with the Florida Public Archaeology Network, worked on the cemetery investigation in Clearwater. He says assessments levied by the city were “used as a tactic to kind of isolate the African American community. There were certain policies that further marginalized an already marginalized group of people.”

The land was used for a new shopping centre. The city paid the developers to move the graves to a new location. But, with the discovery of hundreds of graves still on the site, Clearwater officials are facing tough decisions. The company that now owns the property says it received assurances that the graves had been moved.

At a recent meeting, city councilman Mark Bunker said he was struck by what he saw in the archaeological report.

“We weren’t on the commission at that time,” he says, “but, the city does have some responsibility in dealing with this.”

Another councilman said he wasn’t sure the city should be held responsible for something done nearly 70 years ago. Meanwhile, investigations will continue on the site. The rediscovery of lost or erased Black cemeteries raises many issues, including who’s liable for righting past wrongs. A task force created by the state legislature will soon issue a report with recommendations for local and state officials.

University of South Florida anthropologist Antoinette Jackson recently helped create the Black cemetery network, a website and organization linking African American cemeteries that are being rediscovered and investigated around the country. The idea, she says is “to put a face and stories and people and communities on the map and in the public domain.”

A bill is also in the works in Congress that would create an African American Burial Grounds Network under the direction of the National Park Service.