Category Archives: WORLD

ASIA, EUROPE, WORLD

First evidence of unknown ancient ‘Israeli Silk Road’ uncovered in Arava trash dump

First evidence of unknown ancient ‘Israeli Silk Road’ uncovered in Arava trash dump

Newly uncovered remains of fabrics from the Far East dating to some 1,300 years ago in Israel’s Arava region suggest the existence of a previously unknown “Israeli Silk Road,” according to a team of researchers from Israel and Germany.

“Our findings seem to provide the first evidence that there was also an ‘Israeli Silk Road’ used by merchants along the international trading routes,” said Prof. Guy Bar-Oz from the University of Haifa, who is leading the excavation.

In a joint excavation sponsored by Germany and carried out by the University of Haifa, the University of Göttingen, and the Israel Antiquities Authority, large quantities of cotton and silk fabrics that likely originated in China, India and modern-day Sudan during the 8th century CE were uncovered in a massive garbage pit at the Nahal Omer site in the Arava Valley, according to a statement issued by the researchers on Wednesday.

“As far as textiles are concerned, Nahal Omer is the most important of all the ancient sites discovered to date in Israel,” the researchers said in the press release.

The findings have not been published in a scientific article yet, as the first season of the ongoing excavation was only completed two weeks ago, Bar-Oz told The Times of Israel. Nevertheless, researchers say they provide far-reaching implications for our understanding of ancient trade routes and, for the first time, the role this region played in the ancient world.

“The findings include a large proportion of imported items, including fabrics bearing typical Indian origin and silk items from China,” said Dr. Orit Shamir from the Israel Antiquities Authority, an expert on ancient textiles in Israel.

“This is the first time that these items dating back to this period have been found in Israel,” she said.

A map showing the traditional routes of the Silk Road.

The Silk Road was a network of trade routes used to move exotic goods from China through India, Egypt, and the Middle East to Europe. Most routes were active between the second century CE and the mid-15th century. According to Bar-Oz, his team’s findings seem to provide the first evidence that there was also an Israeli route used by traveling international merchants.

“This route branched off from the traditional Silk Route that passed to the north of Israel, crossing the Arava and connecting to the main historical trade routes that crossed the country, as well as to the main ports of Gaza and Ashkelon that served as a major gateway to the Mediterranean world,” he explained.

Analyzing ancient garbage

According to the archaeologists, their ongoing investigation is unique in that it explores changes in the Arava Valley over long periods of time by analyzing “accumulations of garbage at sites along the trading routes.”

By examining trash mounds at Nahal Omer, which dates to the seventh century CE — the beginning of the Islamic Era in the region — the researchers hope to learn about the everyday lives of traders passing through ancient Israel and to gain an idea of the products they were carrying.

Excavations will resume next summer, said Bar-Oz, and there will be at least two more seasons. Much further research will be carried out on the uncovered textiles, he noted.

Bar-Oz, who specializes in locating and analyzing deposits of trash on ancient trade routes, told The Times of Israel that others have carried out numerous archaeological excavations at Nahal Omer and the surrounding region before, but nobody thought to focus on garbage deposits and the valuable information they could provide.

“We started examining not the well or the fortress or the wall, but things in the perimeter,” he said,

Previous research and academic discussion about ancient trade relied mainly on historical accounts, often from people located far away, according to Bar-Oz.

Prof. Dr. Guy Bar-Oz, School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures, University of Haifa.

“We discovered the trash mounds [at Nahal Omer] two years ago and started digging,” he said. “This was new.”

Archaeological remains that allow researchers to touch the material itself are rare but at Nahal Omer they were found in abundance.

“We dug holes five meters deep — imagine the volume of a Suzuki Alto made of garbage. Nearly all mounds we found included mainly organic material. The large volume of such material is the mind-blowing aspect of this excavation,” Bar-Oz said.

“The items we found allowed us to touch, see and measure them with molecular tools. It made it possible to track the production line of the goods that were moved along the trade route,” he added.

Bleached linen textile, dinolite Nofar Shamir.

High demand

Analyzing their findings, researchers were surprised to find “a veritable treasure trove” that included fabrics, items of clothing, hygienic products, leather straps, belts, socks, shoe soles, and combs.

This wealth of organic material allows the researchers to precisely date the items to the 7th-8th centuries CE using carbon dating, a method that uses the properties of radiocarbon to determine the age of organic material.

Uncleaned textiles uncovered at Nahal Omer.

This was made possible due to the dry conditions in Israel’s Negev desert. Materials that would usually disintegrate in humid climates were excellently preserved, researchers said.

One specific finding that excited researchers was fabrics bearing ikat design, a technique originating from Indonesia that includes tying the yarns before dyeing the warp or weft. Ikat fabrics have only been found at a small number of sites in the Middle East and researchers say these findings at Nahal Omer represent one of the earliest archaeologically documented occurrences of this type of textile. Another find included fabrics woven together in a complex process common in Iran and other parts of Central Asia.

“The variety and richness of the findings show that luxury goods from the East were in high demand at the time,” said the IAA’s Shamir.

A view of Timna Park in the Arava Valley in southern Israel, January 26, 2021.

“The findings from the excavation reflect unique contacts on a global level with sources of fabric manufacturing in the Far East. They provide us with new ways to track political, technological and social interactions that have been constantly reshaped by trade networks,” said Bar-Oz.

“We can now explore in more detail the long-distance movement of goods, geographic diffusion of people and ideas and connections along the roads and production centers. All these were, until now, historically and archaeologically invisible or incompletely recorded. Our new findings are an important step in that direction,” he concluded.

Preserved textile from Nahal Omer that was made in the so-called warp-ikat technique.

While the excavation at Nahal Omer provides an invaluable account of the vivid life in ancient Israel, its findings are not the oldest in the area. Last month, Israeli archaeologists from the University of Haifa discovered the earliest evidence of cotton in the ancient Near East during excavations at Tel Tsaf, a 7,000-year-old town in the Jordan Valley.

Tel Tsaf, located near Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, has in recent years provided a wealth of exciting discoveries, including the earliest example of social beer drinking and ritual food storage.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Column Cleaning at Egypt’s Great Hypostyle Hall Completed

Column Cleaning at Egypt’s Great Hypostyle Hall Completed

Egypt has completed the restoration of 37 columns as part of the Karnak Temples’ Great Hypostyle Hall restoration project.

Column Cleaning at Egypt’s Great Hypostyle Hall Completed

Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the restorers have cleaned the surface of the columns, removing sand, dust and bird pots. He added that the columns’ original engravings and colours now appear.

Furthermore, Waziri noted that the first phase of the project started in July 2021 with the restoration of the 16 opened papyri shaped columns located in the centre of the hall.

The Karnak was the largest and most important religious complex in ancient Egypt. Therefore, its development never ceased for over a 1000 years.

Located in the south of Upper Egypt on the east bank of the city of Luxor, Karnak houses several temples, obelisks and shrines built throughout the Middle and New Kingdoms.

The temple of Amun-Ra is particularly famous for the vast Hypostyle Hall constructed during the reign of King Seti I.

Ptolemaic rulers and Copts altered parts of the complex for their own use.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Bronze Age eating, social habits in the Balearic Islands documented in study

Bronze Age eating, social habits in the Balearic Islands documented in study

La Cova des Pas, near the town of Ferreries, is a prehistoric mass burial site with the largest collection of complete human skeletons found in Menorca.

Researchers from a variety of Spanish institutions have managed to reconstruct the diet of some 50 individuals buried more than 3,000 years ago in the Cova des Pas’ necropolis in Menorca.

The study, coordinated by the UAB, indicates a diet of plants and meat, with all individuals having the same access to food, implying that they were a socially egalitarian group.

These findings form part of the study on eating habits of Bronze and Iron Age groups living in the Balearic Islands and contribute to the debate on the emergence and development of the first complex societies on the archipelago. This is the most complete study conducted to date of the paleodiet of ancient populations inhabiting the Balearic Islands.

The individuals buried at the Cova des Pas site in Menorca between 3,600 and 2,800 years ago ate what the land had to offer, mainly plants, and also had a significant intake of animal protein.

This has been confirmed by a Spanish research team that has reconstructed the dietary pattern of 49 individuals buried in this collective tomb of the Talayotic culture, considered one of the largest and most exceptional prehistoric collections of human remains in the Balearic Islands.

The results also indicate that children were breastfed until they were about four years old and that all population groups had equal access to food, without distinctions by sex or age. The study was recently published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

The research was coordinated by UAB researchers Assumpció Malgosa and Carlos Tornero, who is also linked to the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA).

Pau Sureda, researcher at the Institute of Heritage Sciences (INCIPIT-CSIC), and Xavier Jordana, lecturer at the UAB and researcher at the Tissue Repair and Regeneration Laboratory of the University of Vic—Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC), as well as Filiana Sotiriadou, student of the UAB master’s degree in Biological Anthropology, also participated.

The study expands knowledge about the diet of the first Balearic population groups, a controversial subject of study. It confirms a mixed diet based on plants, with cereals such as wheat, and meat from goat and sheep herds, with little consumption of marine resources, and reinforces previous studies carried out at other Menorcan sites.

“Contrary to what has been seen in other settlements of the same period in Formentera or Mallorca, the consumption of marine food resources would have been occasional in these individuals,” says Carlos Tornero, Ramón y Cajal researcher in the UAB Department of Prehistory.

The research also contributes to the debate on the emergence and development of the first complex societies in the archipelago.

“These societies emerged and developed on the Balearic Islands during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, between 3,600 and 2,600 years ago, including the Naviform (present in all the islands) and Talayotic (only in Mallorca and Menorca) cultures,” explains Pau Sureda, researcher at INCIPIT-CSIC.

But the fact that all the population groups had the same access to food would indicate that these Menorcan groups were socially egalitarian, without the hierarchical organizations or population units differentiated by their social function or economic resources typical of more complex societies.

“Our results are consistent with previous studies of different Menorcan settlements and with paleodemographic and taphonomic studies carried out on individuals from the Cova des Pas, which found no differences in life expectancy or treatment of burials,” says Assumpció Malgosa, lecturer of Physical Anthropology at the UAB and director of the Biological Anthropology Research Group (GREAB-UAB).

The research was conducted using the combined analysis of stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in samples of collagen from the skeletal remains of the individuals, which made it possible to identify the consumption of plant and animal foods from land and water, as well as in samples of faunal remains from the Son Mercer de Baix site, the closest site physically and temporally to the necropolis, to reconstruct the food chain and interpret the human data.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Three-room Urartian tomb with liquid offering area (libation) found in eastern Turkey

Three-room Urartian tomb with liquid offering area (libation) found in eastern Turkey

Three-room Urartian tomb with liquid offering area (libation) found in eastern Turkey

A three-room Urartian tomb with a rock-cut libation (liquid offering area) to offer gifts to the gods was unearthed in the Erciş district of Van, in eastern Turkey.

In order to identify the historical structures in the Madavank region, which is registered as an Immovable Cultural Heritage in the Çelebibağ District, research was conducted in the area by Van Museum Director Fatih Arap and Van Yüzüncü Yıl University (YYÜ) Faculty of Letters Archeology Department Head Prof Dr Rafet Çavuşoğlu.

During this study, it was determined that there was an Urartian tomb with 3 rooms in the area close to the area where the Urartian worship area emerged as a result of the withdrawal of Lake Van.

Prof Dr Rafet Çavuşoğlu said that important structures belonging to the Urartian period were identified in the region.

Researchers told AA that there are two small burial chambers to the right and left of the main chamber.

The chamber tomb dug into the calcareous rock, reflects the Urartians’ classical characteristics. According to researchers, treasure hunters caused minor damage to the tomb.

Emphasizing that the tomb is an important remnant in terms of Urartian architecture, Çavuşoğlu said, “The three-room chamber tomb is entered through an oval arched door. Then there is a small chamber on the left and right.

It is not a well-known practice, but a channel for liquid libation was opened just above the entrance. “It is a chamber tomb we have seen for the first time. The important thing for us is that the tomb consists of 3 rooms, two rectangular openings above the entrance, and liquid libation were made here,” he said.

A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid, or grains such as rice, as an offering to a deity or spirit, or in memory of the dead. The libation could be poured onto something of religious significance, such as an altar, or into the earth.

EUROPE, WORLD

Largest-Known Flower Preserved in Amber Is Nearly 40 Million Years Old

Largest-Known Flower Preserved in Amber Is Nearly 40 Million Years Old

Largest-Known Flower Preserved in Amber Is Nearly 40 Million Years Old

The largest-known fossilized flower encased in amber, dating back nearly 40 million years, was again discovered in the Baltic region of Northern Europe.

Researchers have reexamined the rare amber fossil, which was first identified as the property of a pharmacist by the name of Kowalewski in what is now the Russian city of Kaliningrad in 1872.

According to Eva-Maria Sadowski, a postdoctoral researcher at Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde and author of the new study, the striking fossil had been languishing largely forgotten in the collection of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR).

This tawny blossom, which looks like it was just plucked out of a bouquet, is the largest flower ever found in amber, the team reported on Thursday in a new study published in Scientific Reports. The blossom is so well preserved that the researchers were able to identify its floral descendants now residing a continent away.

The sticky resin from a conifer tree near the Baltic Sea preserved the bloom for millions of years.

In 1872, scientists identified the flower fossil as an extinct evergreen plant named Stewartia Kowalewskii.

Researchers have now reexamined the specimen and determined that it was a case of mistaken identity. They discovered that the flower came from a different genus entirely: Symplocos, a flowering species that grows in southeast China and Japan today.

As such, they proposed a new name for the fossil—Symplocos Kowalewskii. The first record of an ancient Symplocos plant preserved in Baltic amber.

At 28 millimeters (1.1 inches) across, the fossilized flower may not sound particularly large. But it is about three times the size of most other amber-preserved flowers and larger than nearly half of all other Baltic amber pieces.

The specimen, which is kept at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Berlin, was found in an amber deposit in what is Kaliningrad, Russia, and was first described in the late 19th century.

According to Dr. Sadowski, earlier research revealed that amber from this region dates to the late Eocene epoch, between approximately 33.9 million and 38 million years ago, which suggests that this specimen also comes from the late Eocene.

Fossils like the one described in the new study are key to reconstructing what ancient ecosystems were like, Dr. Sadowski said.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Mesolithic Artifacts Unearthed in Northern England

Mesolithic Artifacts Unearthed in Northern England

Mesolithic Artifacts Unearthed in Northern England
Animal bones, tools and weapons, along with rare evidence of woodworking, were unearthed during excavations at the site near Scarborough

Finds discovered at a Stone Age settlement unearthed in North Yorkshire have helped shed new light on the lives of hunter-gatherers living around 10,500 years ago.

Archaeologists uncovered animal bones, tools and weapons, along with rare evidence of woodworking, during excavations at the site near Scarborough.

Experts said the items suggested their owners were far from “struggling to survive”, as many may imagine of people alive at the time.

Dr Nick Overton, from the University of Manchester, said the excavation had enabled them to learn more about “these early prehistoric communities”.

The site originally lay on the shore of an island in an ancient lake and dates to the Mesolithic period, according to the team from the universities of Manchester and Chester, with thick deposits of peat gradually burying and preserving the site over thousands of years.

“It is so rare to find material this old in such good condition,” Dr Overton said.

“The Mesolithic in Britain was before the introduction of pottery or metals, so finding organic remains like bone, antler and wood, which are usually not preserved, are incredibly important in helping us to reconstruct peoples’ lives.”

Artefacts found on the lake bed included a decorated antler point

The team said the dig uncovered evidence of a wide range of animals being hunted, including elk and red deer, and smaller mammals such as beavers and water birds.

The bodies of hunted animals were also butchered and parts of them intentionally deposited into the wetlands at the island site, they said.

Hunting weapons made of animal bone and antler had also been decorated and taken apart before being deposited on the island’s shore.

This, the archaeologists believed, showed that Mesolithic people had strict rules about how the remains of animals and objects used to kill them were disposed of.

A barbed antler point was also unearthed

Dr Amy Gray Jones, from the University of Chester, said: “People often think of prehistoric hunter-gatherers as living on the edge of starvation, moving from place to place in an endless search for food.

“But here we have people inhabiting a rich network of sites and habitats, taking the time to decorate objects, and taking care over the ways they disposed of animal remains and important artefacts.

“These aren’t people that were struggling to survive. They were people confident in their understanding of this landscape, and of the behaviours and habitats of different animal species that lived there,” she added.

The excavations are featured in episode five of the new series of Digging for Britain.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Genome Study Reveals Family Ties in Bronze Age Greece

Genome Study Reveals Family Ties in Bronze Age Greece

Bronze Age family harvesting grain, as depicted by artist Nikola Nevenov.

If you wanted to hang on to your land in Bronze Age Greece, you could do worse than marry your cousin.

A team of international researchers analyzing the genomes of ancient human remains has discovered that, unlike in other European societies of the period, first cousins in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece frequently married each other.

Experts from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, together with an international team of partners, analyzed more than 100 genomes of Bronze Age people from the Aegean.

The team behind the study, published Monday in the scientific journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution, say their findings provide “exciting insights” into the social order of the Aegean Bronze Age.

By analyzing the DNA of people buried in a tomb under the courtyard of a house in a Mycenaean hamlet,on the Greek mainland, the researchers managed to reconstruct the family tree of its inhabitants from the 16th century BCE.

I used DNA analysis to find my birth family and it sent me across three continents

Archaeologist Professor Philipp Stockhammer, one of the study’s lead authors, told CNN: “We wanted to have a look at how were people buried together genetically related and about what you can learn about the relevance of the genetic relativeness for the structure of society.”

“We managed to construct the first family pedigree for the Mediterranean. We can see who lived together in this house from looking at who was buried outside in the courtyard.

“We could see, for example, that the three sons lived as adults in this house. One of the marriage partners brought her sister and a child. It’s a very complex group of people living together.”

Even more surprising was the discovery that around half of those living on the islands married their cousins, while the proportion on the mainland was about a third.

“It’s not 100%, but not everybody has a cousin,” Stockhammer said.

“People have studied thousands of ancestral genomes and there’s hardly any evidence for societies in the past of cousin-cousin marriage. From a historical perspective this really is outstanding,” he added.

Stockhammer and his colleagues believe such unions were down to economics, to prevent family land from being divided.

He explained: “All of the driving force is to unite the land within the family. If you look at what people were growing, it was grapes and also olives for olive oil, but both grapes and olives might need to be at a certain place for decades.

“If you marry in your family it means that you focus on staying in the same area.”

He said that, by contrast, in other parts of Bronze Age Europe, women often traveled hundreds of miles in order to marry. Resources in those areas would have been more plentiful, he explained.

“In Greece, there’s not much space to grow things and things that you plant need decades to grow,” he said.

“We can completely see the cousin to cousin marriage from the genomic evidence. It’s too many people doing it to say it’s pure chance – but it isn’t 100%. I would say it was quite a strict practice.

“It’s an unwritten rule because everyone has done it.”

Stockhammer explained the significance of the discovery, saying: “With this knowledge we are basically forced to rethink the social organizations in this period and societies that were behind these amazing works of art and architecture.

“It’s a society where we have written records about palace administrations but we are now able to say something about the normal people.”

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Prehistoric population once lived in Siberia, but mysteriously vanished, genetic study finds

Prehistoric population once lived in Siberia, but mysteriously vanished, genetic study finds

Prehistoric population once lived in Siberia, but mysteriously vanished, genetic study finds
A skull from one of the individuals analyzed in the new study, which revealed the existence of a previously unknown group of hunter-gatherers living in Siberia more than 10,000 years ago. (Image credit: Sergey V Semenov)

Researchers investigating prehistoric DNA have discovered a mysterious group of hunter-gatherers that lived in Siberia perhaps more than 10,000 years ago. 

The find was made during a genetic investigation of human remains in North Asia dating from as far back as 7,500 years ago. The study also revealed that gene flow of human DNA not only traveled from Asia to the Americas — as was previously known — but also in the opposite direction, meaning people were moving back and forth like ping pong balls along the Bering Land Bridge. 

Furthermore, the team examined the remains of an ancient shaman who lived about 6,500 years ago in western Siberia. This spot is more than 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) west of the group that he had genetic ties with, according to the new genetic analysis.

North Asia, particularly the area stretching from western to northeastern Siberia, was pivotal in humanity’s trek across the globe. Previous work has shown that the first people to arrive in the Americas, since at least 13,000 years ago, likely came either across or along the coast of the land bridge that once connected North Asia with North America. This corridor, known as Beringia, is now flooded by the Bering Strait.

However, much remains unknown about the genetic makeup of the people who lived in this key region at that time. This is because prehistoric human remains with enough DNA to examine from this region “are extremely rare and hard to find,” study senior author Cosimo Posth, an assistant professor in archaeo- and paleogenetics at the University of Tübingen in Germany, told Live Science.

Many of the prehistoric individuals examined in the study were found in the Altai region of Siberia.

In the new study, the scientists analyzed 10 prehistoric human genomes from previously discovered individuals who lived in North Asia as far back as 7,500 years ago. 

Many of the individuals were found in an area known as the Altai, a crossroad for migrations between northern Siberia, Central Asia and East Asia for millennia, located near where modern-day Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together. Previous research in the Altai revealed the first evidence of the mysterious and much older human lineage known as the Denisovans, who together with the Neanderthals are the closest extinct relatives of modern humans.

A view of the Nizhnetytkesken Cave site in Altai, Russia

The scientists discovered that a previously unknown group of hunter-gatherers in the Altai was “a mixture between two distinct groups that lived in Siberia during the last Ice Age,” Posth said. DNA from these prehistoric hunter-gatherers was found in many later communities across North Asia, from the Bronze Age (about 3000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.) to the present day, “showing how great the mobility of those foraging communities was,” he added. 

In addition, the researchers discovered multiple episodes of gene flow from North America to Asia over the past 5,000 years, with genes from the New World reaching Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on the Pacific Ocean and central Siberia. 

“While there has been a lot of work showing flows of genetic ancestry into the Americas, there has been less evidence for backflow from the American continent to Eurasia,” said Vagheesh Narasim, a geneticist at the University of Texas at Austin, who did not participate in this study. “This work presents a new sample from northeastern Asia to support these results.”

By examining 10 prehistoric genomes, researchers found multiple episodes of gene flow from North America to Asia over the past 5,000 years.

Study lead author Ke Wang, a junior professor in anthropology and human genetics at Fudan University in China, was most surprised by the findings concerning a man’s remains in Nizhnetytkesken Cave in the Altai, who was found with a religious costume and artifacts one might expect of a shaman. His bones date back about 6,500 years, making him about a contemporary of the newly revealed Altai group, but the research team’s analysis revealed that he had genetic ties with groups in the Russian Far East, more than 900 miles to the west of his remains.

“This implies that individuals with very different [genetic] profiles were living in the same region,” Wang told Live Science. “His grave goods appear different from other archeological sites, implying mobility of both culturally and genetically diverse individuals into the Altai region.”

This discovery raises a number of interesting questions and possibilities about people in the region at that time. 

Could this discovery regarding this potential shaman “that far west mean that his ancestral group was more widespread than we previously thought?” Shevan Wilkin, a biomolecular archaeologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, who did not take part in this research, told Live Science. “Or does it mean that he was, in fact, a traveling religious practitioner or healer? All very interesting.”

Overall, the study shows that prehistoric groups were more connected than previously believed. 

All in all, “geographically distant hunter-gatherer groups showed evidence of genetic connections to a much larger extent than previously expected,” Posth said. “This suggests that human migrations and admixtures [interbreeding between groups] were not the exception but the norm also for ancient hunter-gatherer societies.”

Wang, Posth and their colleagues detailed their findings online Jan. 12 the journal Current Biology.