Possible Grave of Medieval Christian Hermit Excavated in Spain
This summer, a tomb embedded in the rock by the main entrance to the San Tirso and San Bernabé Hermitage situated in the karst complex of Ojo Guareña (Merindad de Sotoscueva, Burgos) was excavated; its structure of slabs holds the skeleton of an adult individual in the supine position, with its head to the west, set between two small limestone blocks.
One of the dates obtained in 2020 evinces a Hispano-Visigothic period chronology related to the transition between the end of the seventh century and the start of the eighth, while the human remains from the lower level are associated with a transition phase between the end of the eighth century and the start of the ninth, in the High Middle Ages.
“In both cases, these push the evidence known to date for the start of Christian worship at this emblematic site back several centuries,” says Ana Isabel Ortega, an archaeologist attached to the Fundación Atapuerca and the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH).
The anthropological studies, especially the analyses of stable isotopes of hydrogen, carbon and strontium, together with the dating for the remains, offer us a glimpse into the life of this person, who could have been associated with the first hermits who sought a retreat in this idyllic setting where they could live in isolation, during centuries of great turbulence linked to the arrival of the Moors, just as was the case elsewhere close to the upper course of the River Ebro and its tributaries in the south of the province of Cantabria, the north of Burgos, Álava and La Rioja.
Apart from Ortega, the excavation team was made up of Pilar Fernández, Sofía de León and Raquel Lorenzo, restorers at the CENIEH, and Miguel Ángel Martín.
The other collaborators were Aitor Fernández, an employee of the Ayuntamiento de Merindad de Sotoscueva, as well as Clara López, Alberto Gómez and Eduardo Sainz Maza, who are guides to the San Bernabé Cave. Josu Riezu and Txus Riezu also furnished their support.
Once the excavation has concluded and the human remains have been recovered, these will be consolidated and restored at the CENIEH.
They will subsequently be subjected to dating, morphometric and paleopathological studies, while Ana Belén Marín and Borja González, researchers from the EvoAdapta R+D+i Group at the Universidad de Cantabria, will participate in isotopic studies.
Hub of Christianity
San Bernabé Cave became a hub of Christianity during the High Middle Ages as a centre for religion and pilgrimage, with the foundation of a church devoted to San Tirso and San Bernabé in a process that appropriated the former pagan sanctuary in the Ojo Guareña karst enclave caves, intimately bound up with the process that gave rise to the Kingdom of Castile.
‘I don’t care’: text shows modern poetry began much earlier than believed
New research into a little-known text written in ancient Greek shows that “stressed poetry,” the ancestor of all modern poetry and song, was already in use in the 2nd Century CE, 300 years earlier than previously thought. In its shortest version, the anonymous four-line poem reads “they say what they like; let them say it; I don’t care.” Other versions extend with “Go on, love me; it does you good.”
The poem inscribed on a cameo on a medallion of glass paste (2nd to 3rd century CE) found in a sarcophagus around the neck of a deceased young woman in what is now Hungary.
The experimental verse became popular across the Eastern Roman Empire and survives because, as well as presumably being shared orally, it has been found inscribed on twenty gemstones and as a graffito in Cartagena, Spain.
By comparing all of the known examples for the first time, Cambridge’s Professor Tim Whitmarsh (Faculty of Classics) noticed that the poem used a different form of meter to that usually found in ancient Greek poetry. As well as showing signs of the long and short syllables characteristic of traditional “quantitative” verse, this text employed stressed and unstressed syllables.
Until now, “stressed poetry” of this kind has been unknown before the fifth century when it began to be used in Byzantine Christian hymns.
Professor Whitmarsh says: “You didn’t need specialist poets to create this kind of musicalized language, and the diction is very simple, so this was a clearly a democratizing form of literature. We’re getting an exciting glimpse of a form of oral pop culture that lay under the surface of classical culture.”
The new study, published in The Cambridge Classical Journal, also suggests that this poem could represent a “missing link” between the lost world of ancient Mediterranean oral poetry and song, and the more modern forms that we know today.
The poem, unparalleled so far in the classical world, consists of lines of 4 syllables, with a strong accent on the first and a weaker on the third. This allows it to slot into the rhythms of numerous pop and rock songs, such as Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”
Whitmarsh says: “We’ve known for a long time that there was popular poetry in ancient Greek, but a lot of what survives takes a similar form to traditional high poetics. This poem, on the other hand, points to a distinct and thriving culture, primarily oral, which fortunately for us in this case also found its way onto a number of gemstones.”
Asked why the discovery hasn’t been made before, Whitmarsh says: “These artefacts have been studied in isolation. Gemstones are studied by one set of scholars, the inscriptions on them by another. They haven’t been seriously studied before as literature. People looking at these pieces are not usually looking for changes in metrical patterns.”
Whitmarsh hopes that scholars of the medieval period will be pleased: “It confirms what some medievalists had suspected, that the dominant form of Byzantine verse developed organically out of changes that came about in classical antiquity.”
In its written form (which shows some minor variation), the poem reads:
Λέγουσιν: They say
ἃ θέλουσιν: What they like
λεγέτωσαν: Let them say it
οὐ μέλι μοι: I don’t care
σὺ φίλι με: Go on, love me
συνφέρι σοι: It does you good
The gemstones on which the poem was inscribed were generally agate, onyx or sardonyx, all varieties of chalcedony, an abundant and relatively inexpensive mineral across the Mediterranean region.
The poem is preserved in a graffito from an upper-storey room in Cartagena Spain (2nd to 3rd century CE).
Archaeologists found the most beautiful and best-preserved example around the neck of a young woman buried in a sarcophagus in what is now Hungary. The gem is now held in Budapest’s Aquincum Museum.
Whitmarsh believes that these written accessories were mostly bought by people from the middle ranks of Roman society. He argues that the distribution of the gemstones from Spain to Mesopotamia sheds new light on an emerging culture of “mass individualism” characteristic of our own late-capitalist consumer culture.
The study points out that “they say what they like; let them say it; I don’t care” is almost infinitely adaptable, to suit practically any countercultural context. The first half of the poem would have resonated as a claim to philosophical independence: the validation of an individual perspective in contrast to popular belief. But most versions of the text carry an extra two lines which shift the poem from speaking abstractly about what “they” say to a more dramatic relationship between “you” and the “me.” The text avoids determining a specific scenario but the last lines strongly suggest something erotic.
The meaning could just be interpreted as “show me affection and you’ll benefit from it” but, Whitmarsh argues, the words that “they say” demand to be reread as an expression of society’s disapproval of an unconventional relationship. The poem allowed people to express a defiant individualism, differentiating them from trivial gossip, the study suggests. What mattered instead was the genuine intimacy shared between “you” and “me,” a sentiment which was malleable enough to suit practically any wearer.
Such claims to anticonformist individuality were, however, pre-scripted, firstly because the ‘careless’ rhetoric was borrowed from high literature and philosophy, suggesting that the owners of the poetic gems did, after all, care what the classical litterati said. And secondly, because the gemstones themselves were mass-produced by workshops and exported far and wide.
Whitmarsh says: “I think the poem appealed because it allowed people to escape local pigeon-holing, and claim participation in a network of sophisticates who ‘got’ this kind of playful, sexually-charged discourse.”
“The Roman Empire radically transformed the classical world by interconnecting it in all sorts of ways. This poem doesn’t speak to an imposed order from the Imperial elite but a bottom-up pop culture that sweeps across the entire empire. The same conditions enabled the spread of Christianity; and when Christians started writing hymns, they would have known that poems in this stressed form resonated with ordinary people.”
Whitmarsh made his discovery after coming across a version of the poem in a collection of inscriptions and tweeting that it looked a bit like a poem but not quite. A Cambridge colleague, Anna Lefteratou, a native Greek speaker, replied that it reminded her of some later medieval poetry.
Whitmarsh says: “That prompted me to dig under the surface and once I did that these links to Byzantine poetry became increasingly clear. It was a lockdown project really. I wasn’t doing the normal thing of flitting around having a million ideas in my head. I was stuck at home with a limited number of books and re-reading obsessively until I realized this was something really special.”
There is no global catalogue of ancient inscribed gemstones and Whitmarsh thinks there may be more examples of the poem in public and private collections, or waiting to be excavated.
2,000-Year-Old Roman-Era Chandelier is One-of-a-Kind!
A Roman chandelier, which is believed to be the last one remaining, has been reconstructed by Spanish archaeologists after they discovered it among the ruins of a workshop.
The round lamp which was used during the Roman Empire to light up large spaces has a diameter of half a metre and has spots for 32 candles or fuses.
The rare artefact, which has been lovingly restored by local art teacher Eva Maria Mendiola, is on display at the Elda Museum in Alicante, Spain.
It is believed the light, from the 1st Century AD, was made by a potter named Lucius Eros, The Times reports.
According to El Pais, Augustus and Tiberius were ruling while Eros was alive and he used to engrave his name on the moulds he made.
The round lamp which was used during the Roman Empire to light up large spaces has a diameter of half a metre and has spots for 32 candles or fuses
It is believed the light, from the 1st Century AD, was made by a potter named Lucius Eros.
His branding made it possible to identify the craftsman that had originally made the precious item which was found during an archaeological dig.
Another four lamp moulds were found at the archaeological site Elo-Monastil, which is where Eros is believed to have had his workshop and several kilns.
His workshop was first discovered in 1989 before further kilns were found in 2009 and 2010.
The rare artefact, which has been lovingly restored by local art teacher Eva Maria Mendiola, is on display at the Elda Museum in Alicante, Spain.
Speaking in 1989, professor of Ancient History at the University of Alcalá de Henares Antonio M. Poveda explained the chandeliers of this style would have taken a lot of expertise to make.
As a result, they were quite rare and were only made to order for wealthier people in other cities, including what is now known as Elche and Alicante, with large rooms to light up.
This latest discovery is the first of its kind to have been preserved.
The lights worked by poking fuse through holes in the multiple tubes and oil was piped in to keep it alight.
They were soon replaced by lamps made of metal materials.
In Madrid, a 76,000-year-old Neanderthal hunting camp was discovered
In Madrid, archaeologists have uncovered an ancient camp where Neanderthals conducted ‘hunting parties’ 76,000 years ago to chase down big bovids and deer. Archaeologists think it is the largest such camp in the Iberian Peninsula region, with a total area of 3,200 square feet (300 square meters).
They think it may have acted as an intermediary between Neanderthals hunting their prey and the place of final consumption, where the whole group would take advantage of the resources that the hunting parties had gathered.
An analysis of fauna at the Abrigo de Navalmaíllo site in Pinilla del Valle, Madrid helped researchers make the discovery.
Findings: An ancient camp where Neanderthals hosted ‘hunting parties’ to track down large bovids and deer 76,000 years ago has been found in Madrid. Animal remains (pictured) recovered from the site helped archaeologists identify the camp
Covering a space of 3,200 sq ft (300m2), archaeologists believe the Abrigo de Navalmaíllo site in Pinilla del Valle, Madrid (pictured) could be the largest such camp in the Iberian Peninsula region
Faunal remains from the Navalmaíllo site include a) jaw of a large bovid; b) rhinoceros molar; c) horse molar; d) molar hyena; e) stone tool cutting marks, and f) percussion mark to access the medulla of a long bone
A taphonomic study of fauna at the Abrigo de Navalmaíllo site showed that it matched remains found at similar hunting camps but not those at previously identified Neanderthal residential camps (pictured above)
This looks at the entire process of what happens after an organism dies and eventually becomes a fossil.
‘We have been able to demonstrate with great certainty that the Neanderthals of Navalmaíllo hunted mainly large bovids and deer that they processed at the site and that they would later move to a second referential place,’ said Abel Moclán, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution.
‘This aspect is very interesting since there are very few deposits in the Iberian Peninsula where this type of behaviour has been identified.
‘For all this, we have used very powerful statistical tools, such as Artificial Intelligence.’
Archaeologists have previously found evidence of other Neanderthal activity in the region, including the making of stone tools or the use of fire.
With this latest discovery, researchers think it was used as a short-term base by Neanderthal groups.
Animals were captured locally, transported to the camp, and following their processing, parts of them would have been transported elsewhere.
All phases of butchery were identified, along with the extraction of marrow from long bones, revealing an interest in obtaining this nutritious food.
Human use of animal resources at the site reflects a focus on hunting large bovids and cervids, or deer, while horses, rhinoceroses and small-sized animals were much less frequent, the researchers said.
The activity of carnivores was also identified, but these animals, including hyenas, mostly left behind the remains of small prey or fed upon carcasses abandoned at the camp by human hunters.
‘Navalmaíllo is one of the few archaeological sites in Iberia that can be interpreted as a hunting camp,’ the study’s authors said, but added that ‘it is probable that more hunting camps are present in the Iberian Peninsula but are yet to be found.’
This map of the Iberian Peninsula shows the location of the Abrigo de Navalmaíllo excavation sites as well as those sites dated in the Upper Pleistocene
These graphs show the types of very large, large, medium and small-sized animals found at the site. Human use of animal resources at the site reflects a focus on primary access to large bovids and cervids. Access to horses, rhinoceroses and small-sized animals was much less frequent, the researchers said
Earlier this month separate research claimed that cave paintings drawn by Neanderthals of swirling dots, ladders, animals and hands show our distant cousins were more artistic than first thought.
A flowstone formation at the Cueva de Ardales, Málaga in Spain is stained red, originally thought to be a natural coating of iron oxide deposited by flowing water.
However, samples of the red residue allowed a team from Barcelona University to re-examine its origins and confirm it was created by Neanderthals 65,000 years ago.
They found the ochre-based pigment was intentionally applied by Neanderthals, as modern humans had yet to make their appearance on the European continent.
66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Skin Impression Discovered In Spain
In Spain, detailed skin impressions of a giant dinosaur discovered 66 million years ago in a muddy riverbank have been discovered. The fossil was created over centuries by sand petrifying into sedimentary rock, and it clearly shows the pattern of massive scales that once lined the creature’s hide.
Detailed skin impressions of a massive dinosaur that rested in a muddy river bank some 66 million years ago have been uncovered in Spain. The fossil was formed by sand petrifying into sedimentary rock over millennia and distinctively shows the pattern of large scales that once lined the creatures hide
The prints are thought to have been left by a titanosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period, just before dinosaurs went extinct.
‘This is the only registry of dinosaur skin from this period in all of Europe, and it corresponds to one of the most recent specimens, closer to the extinction event, in all of the worlds,’ said lead researcher Victor Fodevilla, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
‘There are very few samples of fossilized skin registered, and the only sites with similar characteristics can be found in the United States and Asia.’
Instead, the team envisions the creature that made the impressions with a huge four-footed sauropod, possibly a Titanosaurus – one of the biggest animals ever to walk the Earth.
And researchers found footprints near the site that support the titanosaur theory.
‘The fossil probably belongs to a large herbivore sauropod, maybe a titanosaur, since we discovered footprints from the same species very close to the rock with the skin fossil,’ said Fodevilla.
A titanosaur, a silhouette representing the size of a hatchling titanosaur, relationship to a human at birth, tiny titanosaur babies weigh about as much as average human babies, 6 to 8 pounds. But in just a few weeks, they’re shedding the tiny descriptor and are at least the size of golden retrievers, weighing 70 pounds, knee-high to a person. And by age 20 or so, they’re bigger than school buses
The discovery was made in the village of Vallcebre, near Barcelona, in an area that was once the bank of an ancient river. It is thought the dinosaur left an imprint of its scales when it laid down in the mud to rest. Over time, the region where the animal left its prints was eventually covered with sand.
And over the course of thousands of years, the area petrified to form sandstone, preserving the astonishing impressions recently discovered by the researchers.
Since the sand acted as a mold, what is seen on the rock is a relief from the animal’s original skin.
How the process happened is unique, as the Late Cretaceous period corresponds to the moment shortly before dinosaurs became extinct, there are few places on Earth containing sandstone from this period.
Characterizing these dinosaurs is very important in order to understand how and why they disappeared. Two skin impressions were found, one about 20 centimetres across and the other five centimetres, separated by a distance of 1.5 meters.
And experts believe they were made by the same animal.
The ‘rose’ pattern of the scales is characteristic of certain dinosaurs, said the researchers, who describe their find in the journal Geological Magazine.
‘The fact that they are impression fossils is evidence that the animal is from the sedimentary rock period, one of the last dinosaurs to live on the planet,’ said Fondevilla.
‘When bones are discovered, dating is more complicated because they could have moved from the original sediment during all these millions of years.’
This discovery also verifies the excellent fossil registry of the Pyrenees in terms of dinosaurs living in Europe shortly before they became extinct.
‘The sites in Berguedà, Pallars Jussà, Alt Urgell and La Noguera, in Catalonia, have provided proof of five different groups of titanosaurs, ankylosaurids, theropods, hadrosaurs and rhabdodontids,’ said Àngel Galobart, head of the Mesozoic research group at the ICP and director of the Museum of Conca Dellà in Isona.
‘The sites in the Pyrenees are very relevant from a scientific point of view since they allow us to study the cause of their extinction in a geographic point far away from the impact of the meteorite.’
Archaeologists digging near the ancient Talayotic settlement of Son Catlar in Menorca, Spain have unearthed a treasure trove of artefacts from Roman soldiers, dating back to around 100 B.C.
The discovery, which happened in late July, includes an assortment of items found at the site, according to a statement from the University of Alicante.
Included in the find were ‘weapons, knives, three arrowheads, spearheads, projectiles, surgical tools, a bronze spatula probe, and so on,’ the statement explained.
Son Catlar is the largest Talayotic settlement in the area, surrounded by a stone wall that measures 2,850 feet (870m) in length, according to Heritage Daily.
Occupation in the area started between 2,000 and 1,200 B.C. and lasted until the late Roman period, which ended around 476 A.D.
Archaeologists digging near the Talayotic settlement in Menorca, Spain have unearthed a treasure trove of artefacts from Roman soldiers
Other items include three arrowheads, spearheads, projectiles, surgical tools, a bronze spatula probe and more
It’s likely that the stone barrier was built several hundred years prior, between the 5th and 4th centuries, B.C., according to Spanish news outlet La Vanguardia.
It’s possible that the Roman soldiers, who conquered the area in the second century B.C., associated the stone barrier with Janus – the Roman god of doors, gates and transitions – given how superstitious they were, Heritage Daily added.
‘This type of gate was characteristic of Punic culture, and it was used as a defence system to protect against possible sieges by the Romans,’ the statement from the university explained.
‘Roman soldiers were very superstitious and used to perform these rites. At that time, the world of gates was charged with magic.
The Romans gave a sacred value to the gates of the cities, and sealing one definitively would entail certain actions of a magical nature.’
The dig leader, Fernando Prados, suggested it was the Roman superstitions that may have led to the discoveries being in such good condition, as the soldiers believed they had a ‘magical protective character … against evil spirits when sealing doors.’
‘The conservation of the entire perimeter of the wall at Son Catlar makes the site a source of great value, as it provides a great deal of scope for studying the archaeology of conflict and war,’ Prados added in the statement.
The wall also has sentry boxes and square towers known as Talayots, which gives the region its name, according to the World Heritage Convention.
It was built using cyclonic masonry, which according to the WHC, meant it was constructed ‘without mortar,’ only using the blocks themselves.
The wall was later strengthened, possibly due to the Roman conquest of the territory or the Punic Wars, the university added.
The Punic Wars took place from 264 to 146 B.C., and artefacts stemming from these times have been recovered in recent years.
In 2013, archaeologists found a treasure trove of items, including helmets, weapons and ancient bronze battle rams found off the Sicilian coast from 2013, from the First Punic War.
Study confirms ancient Spanish cave art was made by Neanderthals
A study of the pigments used in wall paintings in the Cueva Ardales caves in southern Spain originated from Neanderthals. The cave was discovered in 1821 when an earthquake exposed the cave entrance.
Pedro Cantalejo, director of the Andalusian cave of Ardales, looks at Neanderthal cave paintings inside the cavern on March 1, 2018.
In 1918, the famous prehistorian Henri Breuil visited the cave and discovered the first Palaeolithic paintings and engravings.
The research, “The symbolic role of the underground world among Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals” published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) was conducted by Àfrica Pitarch Martí and her colleagues from Collaborative Research Center 806 “Our Way to Europe”, where they performed a geoscientific analysis on red pigments from a massive stalagmitic pillar in the cave system.
This combination of pictures obtained on July 29, 2021, shows a general view and close-up of a partly coloured stalagmite tower in the Spanish cave of Ardales, southern Spain Joao Zilhao UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA/AFP
The edges of the pillar show an entire series of narrow sinter plumes. In these sinter curtains alone, red paint spots, dots, and lines were applied in 45 places.
The objective was to characterise the composition and possible origin of the pigments.
The results showed that the composition and arrangement of the pigments cannot be attributed to natural processes, but that they were applied by spraying and in some places by blowing.
The researchers found that the nature of the pigments does not match natural samples taken from the floor and walls of the cave, suggesting that the pigments were brought into the cave from outside.
Dating of the pigment suggests that they were applied on two separate occasions, the first being more than 65,000 years ago, whilst the other has been dated to 45,300 and 48,700 years ago during the period of Neanderthal occupation.
The cave paintings found in three caves in Spain, one of them in Ardales, were created between 43,000 and 65,000 years ago.
According to the authors, these are not art in the strict sense, but rather markings of selected areas of the cave whose symbolic meaning is unknown.
1,500-year-old Visigoth Sarcophagus Found at Roman Villa Site
Archaeologists from the University of Murcia, financed by the Mula municipal council, the Cajamurcia Foundation, and supported by CEPOAT have excavated a sarcophagus at the site of the Roman necropolis at Los Villaricos, located 5km East of the city of Mula, in Murcia, Spain.
The discovery was made during the summer season of excavations among the ruins of a previously excavated Roman villa, which was abandoned around the 5th century AD.
During the Roman period, Los Villaricos was a large-scale agricultural site, focusing on the production and storage of olive oil.
A closeup of the Visigoth sarcophagus was found at the abandoned Roman farming villa in Spain.
In later years, elements of the villa were repurposed for Christian worship, whilst the villa’s central patio area was used as a necropolis, referred to as the ‘ necropolis ad sanctos ’.
Excavations in this area uncovered a two-metre-long sarcophagus, that is decorated with a swirling geometric pattern and renderings of ivy leaves, whilst a Chi-Rho symbol was carved on its top which is a form of Christogram by superimposing the first two (capital) letters—chi and rho (ΧΡ)—of the Greek word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ (Christos), in such a way that the vertical stroke of the rho intersects the centre of the chi.
It is believed that the sarcophagus dates from the 6th century AD, during a period when waves of Germanic tribes swept into the former Roman territories, amongst them the Visigoths.
Under the Visigoths, many Roman structures were abandoned or re-purposed, whilst part of the villa site was built over with a small Christian church sometime during the 5-7th century AD.
Rafael González Fernández, professor of Ancient History from the University of Murcia described the discovery as “spectacular and unexpected, which corroborates previous studies on the chronology of the necropolis”.
