Category Archives: WORLD

SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

This Circular Island in Argentina Not Only Floats, But Also Rotates Constantly

This Circular Island in Argentina Not Only Floats, But Also Rotates Constantly

This Circular Island in Argentina Not Only Floats, But Also Rotates Constantly

South America’s second longest river, the Paraná, which has a length of 4,880 kilometers, flows through three countries: Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. 4,880 kilometers is no short distance – it gives plenty of opportunities for discovering amazing things.

In the case of the Paraná, one of the most exciting discoveries was made at its delta: an island 120 meters in diameter, almost completely circular in shape, and floating freely on its axis.

So-called floating islands are found in many parts of the world, including Finland, Turkey, Italy, Serbia, the Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine, Lake Titicaca on the border between Bolivia and Peru, Lake Loktak in India, and many other places. However, this Argentinean island stands out from the rest because of its shape and its continuous rotation.

Floating islands are usually based on large roots that have ended up in the water and on which some other aquatic plant starts to grow. Plants found along the shoreline of wetlands often spread inwards from the shore, to where their roots no longer reach the deeper parts of the lake or river. When this happens, they use the oxygen in their root mass as buoyancy and the surrounding vegetation as support to survive in the water.

However, occasional violent storms can tear away these floating islands of vegetation, which can then be carried back and forth across the lake by the wind. Usually, they find calm somewhere again along the shoreline or break up completely due to stronger winds.

In some cases, however, the floating islands may persist for longer periods. In the aforementioned Lake Titicaca, for example, a group of 120 islands has been taken by an indigenous tribe, the Uru, but these islands require constant maintenance to survive.

The unusual piece of land known only as “El Ojo” (Eye Island) was formed by some very special currents that keep the circular island in constant motion. As it collides with its surroundings, it repeatedly detaches the muddy bits that might have given it a rest.

The island itself was just recently discovered by Argentine filmmaker Sergio Neuspiller, who was looking for a location for one of his films about paranormal phenomena when he came across the island in the delta. He didn’t know at the time that the piece of land was spinning around slowly – he only found out when he returned to the site shortly afterwards and was surprised to see that the island had moved elsewhere in the meantime.

The movement can also be seen in Google satellite images taken at different times.

The recordings also prove that the island has been in the Paraná delta for almost 20 years, since 2003.

Neuspiller got preoccupied with the question of the rotating island later, around 2016, when he, together with an engineer from New York, started raising funds to find out what’s behind the phenomenon.

They wanted to collect 50,000 dollars to solve the mystery, but since not even a fifth of the amount came together, their investigation, which would have also covered the supernatural, was not completed. What a shame.

NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Study Investigates Source of Amazon’s “Dark Earth”

Study Investigates Source of Amazon’s “Dark Earth”

Indigenous people in the Amazon may have been deliberately creating fertile soil for farming for thousands of years.

Study Investigates Source of Amazon’s “Dark Earth”
Growing crops in the Amazon’s nutrient-poor dirt is tough. In a tradition that may be thousands of years old, indigenous Kuikuro people in Brazil overcome this issue by making their own fertile soil from ash, food scraps and controlled burns.

At archaeological sites across the Amazon River basin, mysterious patches of unusually fertile soil dot the landscape. Scientists have long debated the origin of this “dark earth,” which is darker in color than surrounding soils and richer in carbon.

Now, researchers have shown that indigenous Kuikuro people in southeastern Brazil intentionally create similar soil around their villages. The finding, presented December 16 at the American Geophysical Union meeting, adds evidence to the idea that long-ago Amazonians deliberately manufactured such soil too.

The fact that Kuikuro people make dark earth today is a “pretty strong argument” that people were also making it in the past, says Paul Baker, a geochemist at Duke University who was not involved in the research.

In doing so, these early inhabitants may have inadvertently stored massive quantities of carbon in the soil, says study presenter Taylor Perron, an earth scientist at MIT. The technique, he says, could provide a blueprint for developing methods of sustainably locking atmospheric carbon in tropical soils, helping fight climate change.   

Indigenous people have altered the Amazon for thousands of years

The Western world has long viewed the Amazon as a vast wilderness that was relatively untouched before Europeans showed up. At the center of this argument is the idea that the Amazon’s soil, which is poor in nutrients like other tropical soils, precluded its inhabitants from developing agriculture at a scale required to support complex societies.     

But a slew of archeological finds in recent decades — including the discovery of ancient urban centers in Amazonian areas of modern-day Bolivia — has revealed that people were actively shaping the Amazon for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans (SN: 5/25/22).

Most scientists today agree that the presence of dark earth near archaeological sites means that long-ago Amazonians used this soil to grow crops. But while some archaeologists argue that people purposely made the soil, others contend that dark earth was laid down through geologic processes.

Perron and colleagues reviewed interviews of Kuikuro people conducted by a Kuikuro filmmaker in 2018. Those conversations revealed that Kuikuro villagers actively make dark earth — eegepe in Kuikuro — using ash, food scraps and controlled burns.

“When you plant where there is no eegepe, the soil is weak,” explained elder Kanu Kuikuro in one of the interviews. “That is why we throw the ash, manioc peelings and manioc pulp.”

The researchers collected soil samples from around Kuikuro villages and archaeological sites in Brazil’s Xingu River basin. The team found “striking similarities” between dark earth samples from ancient and modern sites, Perron says. Both were far less acidic than surrounding soils — probably thanks to the neutralizing effect of ash — and contained higher levels of plant-friendly nutrients.

Soil that bears a striking resemblance to dark earth can be found in and around Kuikuro villages (one seen here from above) in southeastern Brazil.

Dark earth could store a lot of carbon in the Amazon

These analyses also revealed that dark earth holds twice the amount of carbon as surrounding soils on average. Infrared scans of the Xingu region suggest that the area is pockmarked with dark earth, and that as much as roughly 9 megatons of carbon — the annual carbon emissions of a small, industrialized country — may have gone unaccounted in the area, the researchers reported at the meeting.  

This number, while preliminary, could inflate to roughly the annual carbon emissions of the United States when all dark earth across the Amazon is taken into consideration, Perron says.

Figuring out how much carbon is actually stored in the Amazon could help improve climate simulations. But the researchers’ estimates are a “huge extrapolation from a very small dataset,” Baker cautions — a sentiment echoed by Perron.

Pinning down the true value of carbon stored in the Amazon’s dark earth will require more data, says Antoinette WinklerPrins, a geographer at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the study. Still, the research has “profound implications of the past and future” of the Amazon, she says.

For one thing, the technique highlights how ancient people were able to thrive in the Amazon by developing sustainable farming that doubled as a carbon-sequestration technique. With more and more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, making dark earth — or something like it — could be a method of mitigating climate change while supporting agriculture in the tropics.

“People in the ancient past figured out a way to store lots of carbon for hundreds or even thousands of years,” Perron says. “Maybe we can learn something from that.”

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Ice Age Hunting Camp Identified in Mexico

Ice Age Hunting Camp Identified in Mexico

This story begins anywhere from 4,000 to 17,000 years ago, when woolly mammoths roamed the Earth. It picks up in Mexico in the mid-1950s, when the remains of a couple of those mammoths — and stone tools with traces of human use — were found in the central part of the country.

Ice Age Hunting Camp Identified in Mexico
Bones of a woolly mammoth found in México state in the 1950s were recently re-examined by a Mexican research team using new technology.

Now flash forward to the present day, when a recent study of those artifacts, using modern science and technology, is giving new glimpses into what researchers now believe was an Ice Age camp of humans in what is today México state.

“The study indicates that it was a seasonal hunter-gatherer camp,” archaeologist Patricia Pérez Martínez, author and coordinator of the project, said Tuesday during a presentation of the study’s findings.

The animal remains and artifacts, found nearly seven decades ago during a public works project in the small community of Santa Isabel Ixtapan, represent “the first material evidence of the existence of this type of site on the shores of Lake Texcoco, around 9,000 years ago,” Pérez said.

Lead researcher on the study Patricia Pérez Martínez heads the Hunter-Gatherer Technology Laboratory at the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

The findings are significant because small villages of humans in that time period usually existed in caves and rock shelters, often in mountainous regions, usually in the northern region of Mexico.

“Finding a seasonal hunter-gatherer camp in the open air is very [rare],” Pérez said. 

Indeed, the Santa Isabel Ixtapan site is the only one in the Valley of México with direct evidence of stone tools and mammoth bones, she added.

The first set of bones was found here in 1954, and then two years later, another mammoth’s remains, along with stone tools, were found about 250 meters away. Then, between 2019 and 2021, more bones and “possible mammoth traps” were discovered.

These days, in tribute to the area’s prehistoric past, there is a sculpture of the long-tusked, giant beast in the middle of a roundabout in Santa Isabel Ixtapan.

The research project, “Interaction of First Settlers and Megafauna in the Basin of México,” is a joint effort between INAH and the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), where Pérez heads the Hunter-Gatherer Technology Laboratory.

Employees hard at work at the Hunter-Gatherer Technology Laboratory.

The effort to reevaluate the site was carried out with advanced technology tools and testing methods that Pérez said can lead to fresh findings about the landscape, megafauna (large animals) and human interactions with the surroundings.

Her hypothesis is that the ancient human inhabitants used and subsisted on the lake’s resources, which she said is supported by the discovery of small fragments of fish bone (seemingly cooked in some sort of charcoal) and obsidian microflakes (indicating residue from a stone that was possibly carved into a tool).

“Since the flakes are very small fragments, we hope that in the next [field research] session, scheduled for this year, we will be able to do extensive excavation that will give us a better context,” said Pérez.

“Likewise, in 2023, the soil samples will be studied in our laboratories, and the traces of use of the three tools found with the second mammoth — which are exhibited in the National Museum of Anthropology — will be analyzed,” she said. 

“Initially, they were thought to be hunting projectile points, but recently, more detailed observations place them as knives, possibly used for butchering.”

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Byzantine monk chained with iron rings unearthed near Jerusalem

Byzantine monk chained with iron rings unearthed near Jerusalem

Byzantine monk chained with iron rings unearthed near Jerusalem

A skeleton chained with iron rings was discovered at Khirbat el-Masani, about four kilometers northwest of Jerusalem, along the ancient route connecting Lod with Jerusalem via Nebi Samuel/Nabi Samwil.

The 1500-year-old skeleton, chained with iron rings, belonged to a Byzantine monk. No doubt, he wanted to achieve a very special goal and he indeed did it.

In the pursuit of salvation, atonement for sin, or spirituality, ascetic monks led a life marked by abstinence from sensual pleasures.

More extreme forms of asceticism included self-inflicted pain and voluntary suffering, chaining the body to rocks or keeping it in a cell, praying seated on a pillar in the elements, and solitary confinement.

Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority previously discovered a tri-apsidal Byzantine-era church at Khirbat el-Masani, which was once a part of a monastery with a road inn for passing pilgrims.

The church is partly rock-cut and built using limestone ashlars (finely dressed stone), which may have been dedicated to Saint Zachary by the priest Sabinus.

In the past, the site was surveyed in the Jerusalem Survey Map, and a small excavation was conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Dr. Gaby Mazor, exposing the front part of two of the apses.

An extensive excavation carried out at the site in 2017, directed by Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists Zubair Adoi and Kafir Arbiv and funded by Moriah Jerusalem Development Corporation, uncovered a large architectural complex, comprising the monastery and road-inn and, most prominently, the church, enabling an understanding of the plan, construction methods and the date of the church.

Archaeologists recently found the skeleton of a monk, chained with iron rings around his neck, hands, and feet, was discovered in a cist grave next to two small niche-like closed cells in the central apse of the church.

The interred was probably an ascetic monk living in or near the church compound, who bore the chains as part of his devotion.

The practice originated in Syria in the 4th or 5th century AD, but the discovery of the burial shows that during the Byzantine period, this form of extreme asceticism spread as far south as the Jerusalem region.

While the discovery of a chain-clad skeleton is extremely rare in the region, an Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Elena Kogan-Zehavi made a similar discovery in 1991 at Khirbat Tabaliya (Givat Ha-Matos), located between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

New study investigates the development of the Scandinavian gene pool over the latest 2000 years

New study investigates the development of the Scandinavian gene pool over the latest 2000 years

A new study resolves the complex relations between geography, ancestry, and gene flow in Scandinavia – encompassing the Roman Age, the Viking Age, and later periods.

Researchers investigated a 2,000-year genetic transect through Scandinavia spanning the Iron Age to the present, based on 48 new and 249 published ancient genomes and genotypes from 16,638 modern individuals.

A surprising increase of variation during the Viking period indicates that gene flow into Scandinavia was especially intense during this period.

An international study coordinated from Stockholm and Reykjavik investigates the development of the Scandinavian gene pool over the latest 2000 years. In this effort the scientists relied on historic and prehistoric genomes, and from material excavated in Scandinavia.

These ancient genomes were compared with genomic data from 16,638 contemporary Scandinavians. As the geographical origin and the datings were known for all these individuals, it was possible to resolve the development of the gene pool to a level never realised previously.

Archaeological excavation at Sandby Borg.

Dr Ricardo Rodríguez Varela at the Centre for Palaeogenetics*, who analyzed all the data and extracted some of the ancient DNA used in the study, explains: “With this level of resolution we not only confirm the Viking Age migration.

We are also able to trace it to the east Baltic region, the British-Irish Isles and southern Europe. But not all parts of Scandinavia received the same amounts of gene flow from these areas. For example, while British-Irish ancestry became widespread in Scandinavia the eastern-Baltic ancestry mainly reached Gotland and central Sweden.”

The gene pool bounced back after the Viking period

Another new discovery in this study was what happened to the gene pool after the Viking period. The scientists were surprised to find that it bounced back in the direction of what it looked like before the Viking period migration.

Professor Anders Götherström at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, who is a senior scientist on the study, is intrigued: “Interestingly, the non-local ancestry peaks during the Viking period while being lower before and after.

The drop in current levels of external ancestry suggests that the Viking-period migrants got less children, or somehow contributed proportionally less to the gene pool than the people who were already in Scandinavia.”

Yet a new discovery was the history of the northern Scandinavian gene pool. There is a genetic component in northern Scandinavia that is rare in central and western Europe, and scientists were able to track this component in northern Scandinavia through the latest 1000 years.

Underwater excavations of the ship Kronan.

Dr Ricardo Rodríguez Varela comments, “We suspected that there was a chronology to the northern Scandinavian gene pool, and it did indeed prove that a more recent influx of Uralic ancestry into Scandinavia define much of the northern gene pool. But if it is recent, it is comparatively so. For example, we know that this Uralic ancestry was present in northern Scandinavia as early as during the late Viking period”.

Based on well-known Swedish archaeological sites

The study is based on a number of well-known Swedish archaeological sites. For example, there are genomes from the 17th century warship Kronan, from the Viking and Vendel period boat burials in the lake Mälaren Valley, and from the migration period ring fortress Sandby borg on Öland.

Anders Götherström conclude: “We were working on a number of smaller studies on different archaeological sites. And at some point it just made sense to combine them into a larger study on the development of the Scandinavian gene pool.

The study, published today in Cell, is an international effort with several collaborators, but it was led by Dr Ricardo Rodríguez Varela and Professor Anders Götherstörm at Stockholm University, and Professor Agnar Helgason, and Kristjáan Moore at deCODE in Reykavijk.

The article “The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present” is published in Cell.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Head Wounds of Medieval Victim Analyzed

Head Wounds of Medieval Victim Analyzed

Head Wounds of Medieval Victim Analyzed
The facial reconstruction of the Cittiglio murder victim, who was killed sometime between the 11th and the 13th centuries in what seems to have been a surprise attack.

More than 700 years ago, a medieval “case of raw violence” ended a young man’s life with four sword blows to the head, according to a new study of the medieval “cold case.”

The brutality of the wounds suggests the murder may have been “a case of overkill,” study lead author Chiara Tesi, an anthropologist at the University of Insubria’s Center for Osteoarchaeology and Paleopathology in Italy, told Live Science. Tesi and her colleagues analyzed the victim’s skeletal remains with modern forensic techniques, including computed tomography (CT) — three-dimensional X-ray scans — and precision digital microscopy of the skull injuries.

“The individual was probably taken by surprise by the attacker” and was unable to properly protect his head, she said in an email. After initially attacking the victim from the front, the murderer seems to have chased the man as he turned, likely trying to escape, as the deepest wounds were inflicted from behind, according to a study published in the December issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Brutal murder

Archaeologists discovered the victim’s skeleton in 2006 at the church of San Biagio in Cittiglio, a small town in Italy’s northern Varese province.

The oldest parts of the church are thought to date from the eighth century A.D., but the battered skeleton was found in a tomb in an atrium built near the entrance in the 11th century; radiocarbon dating indicates the victim was buried there before A.D. 1260.

The new study suggests the victim was a man who was between 19 and 24 years old when he was murdered. A study of the excavation published in 2008(opens in new tab) in the Fasti Online journal noted some of his injuries, but Tesi said the new study has revealed further injuries and the sequence of the murder.

She said the young man likely blocked or dodged the assailant’s initial attack, though the first blow still caused a shallow lesion on the top of the skull. 

As he turned away to escape, however, “the victim was then hit in rapid succession by two other strikes, one affecting the auricle [ear] region and the other the nuchal [back of the neck] region,” she said. “At the end, probably exhausted and face down, he was finally hit by a last blow to the back of the head that caused immediate death.” This “evident overkill” suggested there may have been a complex motive for the murder,  Tesi said; such a frenzied attack appeared to show the attacker was determined to finish his deadly job.

The latest study found the murder victim was probably killed by four sword blows to the head; the first caused a slight wound, but the others seem to have killed him as he was trying to escape the attack.

Medieval remains

The new study shows that the injuries were all caused by the same bladed weapon — probably a steel sword — while the position of the wounds suggest the injuries were inflicted by a single assailant, she said.

The researchers scoured historical records in an attempt to determine the victim’s identity, but “we didn’t find anything,” Tesi said. 

His prominent burial, however, suggests he may have been a member of the powerful De Citillio family that had originally established the church. 

A healed wound on the victim’s forehead suggests that he had experience in warfare; while features of his right shoulder blade were probably caused by “the habitual practice of archery and the use of a bow from an early age,” Tesi said — possibly a sign that he had often gone hunting for sport.

To examine how the sword blows impacted by the victim’s now-decomposed soft tissues, the researchers created a reconstruction of the victim’s face. “We tested wound formation by placing a blade on the reconstructed head and replicating the blows received by the subject,” she said.

The reconstruction helped assess the severity of the injuries.

“They’re using the head as a way of showing these multiple wounds to the skull,” Caroline Wilkinson(opens in new tab), the director of the Face Lab(opens in new tab) at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, told Live Science. “It’s really interesting — a good use of forensic techniques to look at trauma to the head, and how those wounds have been caused.”

Wilkinson was not involved in the new study but has worked on reconstructing the faces of some of the victims of a medieval massacre of Jews in the English city of Norwich. Facial depictions “can create a personal narrative around human remains, rather than just looking at specimens in a glass box,” she said.

Tesi also believes that the reconstruction can help people relate to the victim. 

“Seeing the face and eyes of a young man is definitely more emotional than simply looking at a skull,” she said.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Remains of Byzantine monastery found near Jerusalem

Remains of Byzantine monastery found near Jerusalem

Remains of what archaeologists believe is a Byzantine monastery found near Beit Shemesh.

Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the remains of a Byzantine monastery outside the city of Beit Shemesh west of Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Thursday.

During the expansion of the Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood, archaeologists conducted a survey of the location and found the remnants of an ancient walls and cisterns. Subsequent excavations of the site unearthed an oil press, wine press and mosaics.

The size and scale of the installations indicate that production was on an industrial scale, and that the residents relied upon the sale of wine and olive oil for their livelihood.

One of the mosaics found at the site bears colorful geometric designs, a cluster of grapes and flowers.

Although a church or inscription has yet to be found in the complex, archaeologists posit that the site was a Byzantine monastery, dating back some 1,500 years, based on the site’s style and dating.

Remains of Byzantine monastery found near Jerusalem
A mosaic found at what archaeologists believe is a Byzantine monastery found near Beit Shemesh.

“The impressive construction, the dating to the Byzantine period, the magnificent mosaic floors, window, and roof tile artifacts, as well as the agricultural-industrial installations inside the dwelling compound are all known to us from numerous other contemporary monasteries,” IAA excavation directors Irene Zilberbod and Tehila Libman said in a statement.

“Thus it is possible to reconstruct a scenario in which monks resided in a monastery that they established, made their living from the agricultural installations and dwelled in the rooms and carried out their religious activities.”

The new neighborhood will be constructed around the site and the archaeological remains will be preserved and developed as a landmark, the IAA said.

Aerial photo of remains that archaeologists believe were a Byzantine monastery found near Beit Shemesh.

Earlier this year archaeologists unearthed a Byzantine monastery near the entrance to the Bedouin village of Hura in the Negev Desert adorned with stunning mosaic floors.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

U.S. Museum Repatriates Sarcophagus to Egypt

U.S. Museum Repatriates Sarcophagus to Egypt

An ancient wooden sarcophagus that was displayed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science has been returned to Egypt after US authorities determined it was looted years ago.

U.S. Museum Repatriates Sarcophagus to Egypt
Mostafa Waziri, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, inspects the returned sarcophagus at the foreign ministry in Cairo.

The repatriation was part of Egyptian government efforts to stop the trafficking of its stolen antiquities. In 2021, authorities in Cairo succeeded in getting 5,300 stolen artefacts returned to Egypt from across the world.

Mostafa Waziri, the top official at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the sarcophagus dates back to the late dynastic period of ancient Egypt, an era that spanned the last of the Pharaonic rulers from 664BC until Alexander the Great’s campaign in 332BC.

The sarcophagus, almost 3 metres (9.5 ft) tall with a brightly painted top surface, may have belonged to an ancient priest named Ankhenmaat, though some of the inscription on it has been erased, Waziri said.

It was symbolically handed over at a ceremony on Monday in Cairo by Daniel Rubinstein, the US chargé d’affaires in Egypt.

The handover came more than three months after the Manhattan district attorney’s office determined the sarcophagus was looted from Abu Sir Necropolis, north of Cairo.

It was smuggled through Germany into the US in 2008, according to Manhattan district attorney Alvin L Bragg.

“This stunning coffin was trafficked by a well-organised network that has looted countless antiquities from the region,” Bragg said at the time. “We are pleased that this object will be returned to Egypt, where it rightfully belongs.”

Bragg said the same network had smuggled a gilded coffin out of Egypt that was featured at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.

The Met bought the piece from a Paris art dealer in 2017 for about $4m (£3.35). It was returned to Egypt in 2019.