Category Archives: WORLD

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Book of the Dead: The ancient Egyptian guide to the afterlife

Book of the Dead: The ancient Egyptian guide to the afterlife

Book of the Dead: The ancient Egyptian guide to the afterlife
A section of the “Book of the Dead,” a papyrus manuscript with cursive hieroglyphs and colour illustrations. Here we see Ani, Scribe of the Sacred Revenues of all the gods of Thebes, administrator of the Granaries of the Lords of Abydos, and his wife Tutu before a table of offerings of meat, cakes, fruit, flowers, etc. Hymn in honour of the Sun God Ra at his rising.

The “Book of the Dead” is a modern-day name given to a series of ancient Egyptian texts that the Egyptians believed would help the dead navigate the underworld, as well as serve other purposes. Copies of these texts were sometimes buried with the dead. 

The “‘Book of the Dead’ denotes the relatively large corpus of mortuary texts that were typically copied onto papyrus scrolls and deposited in burials of the New Kingdom [circa 1550 B.C. to 1070 B.C.],” wrote Peter Dorman, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, in an article published in the book “Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt(opens in new tab)” (Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 2017). 

The “Book of the Dead” became popular during the New Kingdom, but it was derived from the “Coffin Texts” — so named because they were often written on coffins — and the “Pyramid Texts” that were inscribed on the walls of pyramids, Dorman noted. The Coffin Texts were popular during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2030 B.C. to 1640 B.C.), while the Pyramid Texts first appeared in the Old Kingdom’s fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.).

BOOK OF THE DEAD’S SPELLS

The “Book of the Dead” includes individual chapters or spells. “The ancient Egyptians used the word rꜢ to designate each composition. The word rꜢ is generally translated as ‘spell’ or ‘utterance.’ It is written with the hieroglyph of a human mouth because the term was related to speech,” Foy Scalf, the head of research archives at the University of Chicago who holds a doctorate in Egyptology, told Live Science in an email. 

There wasn’t a standard book found in every tomb. Instead, each copy contained different spells. “No one such ‘book’ contains all known spells, but only a judicious sampling,” Dorman wrote, noting that “no single ‘Book of the Dead scroll is identical to another.”

The ancient Egyptians called these texts the “Book of Coming Forth by Day,” Dorman wrote, noting that this name reflected “the Egyptians’ belief that the spells were provided to assist the deceased in entering the afterlife as a glorified spirit, or akh.” 

These texts “prepared the Egyptians for life after death and [had] the power to conjure up all the parts of one’s body for the spiritual journey,” wrote Barry Kemp, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, in his book “How to Read the Egyptian Book of the Dead(opens in new tab)” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007). “The Book of the Dead, by means of its spells, conferred on the owner the power to navigate successfully — for eternity — through [the underworld’s] various realms,” Kemp wrote.

A section of the “Book of the Dead.” Here we see judgment of the dead, with the weighing of the heart ritual.

Some spells appear more frequently in copies of the “Book of the Dead” than others, and some were considered almost essential. One of these essential spells is now known as Spell 17, which discusses the importance of the sun-god Re (also called Ra), one of the most important Egyptian gods, Dorman noted. 

The ancient Egyptians believed that the body of the deceased could be renewed in the afterlife leaving a person to navigate a place of “gods, demons, mysterious locations and potential obstacles,” wrote Kemp. The chapters of the “Book of the Dead” described some of the things one might encounter — such as the weighing of the heart ceremony in which a person’s deeds were weighed against the feather of the goddess Maat, a deity associated with justice. 

The spells were often illustrated. “Pictures [were] of great importance in the New Kingdom collection of funerary texts now called the Egyptian Book of the Dead,” wrote Geraldine Pinch, an Egyptologist, in her book “Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction(opens in new tab)” (Oxford University Press, 2004). “Many owners of Books of the Dead would have been unable to read the hieroglyphic texts, but they could understand the complex vignettes that summarized the contents of the spells,” Pinch wrote. 

The spells were not gender-specific. It didn’t have “spells that were used particularly by women” or spells that were used primarily by men, Marissa Stevens, an Egyptologist and assistant director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Live Science in an email.

MULTIPLE PURPOSES

This small papyrus features “Book of the Dead” spells 100 and 129. On the top are the text and vignette for spell 129. At the left of the vignette is the god Osiris holding a was-scepter; behind him stands a large djed-pillar. In front of the god is an offering table with food topped by a large lotus flower. On the right is water with two boats. In the left one is the phoenix, while five deities stand in the right one. The lower part of the papyrus features spell 100. This time, Osiris is depicted on the right side, again with a djed-pillar behind him. In front of the god is the emblem for the east, and to the left of this is a boat being punted by a woman (the deceased) with a long oar. Behind her sits the sun god and then the phoenix.

The “Book of the Dead” is most famous for its guidance to the deceased, but it likely also served other purposes. “Too often has the ‘Book of the Dead’ been called a ‘guide’ to the afterlife; it was so much more than that,” Scalf told Live Science. “Probably the most important function of the ‘Book of the Dead,’ which can only be inferred from indirect evidence, is that it helped to assuage people’s fears about the unknowns of death,” Scalf said, noting that wealthy ancient Egyptians also arranged to have their bodies mummified and get their coffins decorated with religious texts in an effort to control what happened to them once they died. 

Additionally, the spells in the “Book of the Dead” could be used when a person was still alive. “Most of the spells from the ‘Book of the Dead’ are not designed to ‘navigate’ the underworld,” Scalf said. “Most of the spells are about transformation and transcendent experience. In the earthly life, a ritualist may use rites and incantations to transcend everyday experience [use the spells in a ceremony to have a religious experience],” said Scalf said, noting that “many of the spells include instructions for how to use them on Earth” — which shows that they were likely used by living people too, Scalf said.

Many of these spells could then also be used in the afterlife, the Egyptians believed. “A person may use these same spells to help transform their existence, but in many ways, it is a similar transcendent experience. The spells are largely about elevating to the plane of existence of the gods; only then would the person travel the underworld along with the gods themselves,” Scalf said.

COPIES FOR BURIAL

On the left, Osiris-Seker stands in a shrine in mummified form. The name Osiris-Seker represents the fusion of Seker, the god of death, with Osiris, the god of resurrection. The Papyrus of Ani ends with the tomb of Ani, the white building with the pyramidal top, located at the foot of the mountain of Amenta, at Thebes. Emerging from the mountain’s slope into a papyrus thicket is the head of Hathor in the form of the divine cow. This goddess, mistress of the necropolis, who welcomes the arrivals of the deceased to the underworld, is also associated with the protection of women. Standing before a lavish presentation of luxuriant offerings is another manifestation of Hathor, known as Tawaret. She has the head and body of a hippopotamus, the legs of a lioness and the tail of a crocodile.

Many copies of the “Book of the Dead” that have been discovered were unearthed in tombs and were likely not read much. And many of the “Book of the Dead” manuscripts that survive today were probably not read much before they were buried with the deceased, Scalf told Live Science.

“The longest of the papyrus manuscripts is over thirty meters [98 feet] in length; it would have been a very difficult manuscript to navigate when reading. These manuscripts [found in tombs] were prestige copies, largely meant for deposition in the grave,” Scalf said. 

Additionally, spells from the “Book of the Dead” were not always written down on manuscripts. For instance, Scalf noted that the spells were sometimes written down on the bandages that wrapped a person’s mummy. They were also inscribed on the walls of tombs and even on Tutankhamun’s golden death mask. 

It’s possible that people who couldn’t afford a copy of the spells may have had the spells read to them. “If you did not have a scroll in your tomb, hired priests or family members might have recited it for you during the funeral, or when visiting the tomb afterwards,” Lara Weiss, a curator of the Egyptian and Nubian collection at the Netherland’s National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, told Live Science in an email. 

The last known copies of the “Book of the Dead” were created in the first or second century A.D., Scalf wrote in a study published in the book “Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt.” Another series of funerary texts known as the “Books of Breathing” became popular in its place — which was derived, in part, from the “Book of the Dead,” Scalf wrote.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Hell’s Shells: 90 Million-Year-Old Egg From Turtle Bigger Than Humans

Hell’s Shells: 90 Million-Year-Old Egg From Turtle Bigger Than Humans

Nanhsiungchelyid turtle egg-containing a turtle embryo, China.

A giant fossilized turtle egg — believed to have been laid by a turtle the length of a fully grown human 90 million years ago — has been found with the embryo inside.

The tennis ball-sized egg, which is protected by an unusually thick outer shell, was found in 2018 by a farmer in China’s Henan Province, who sent it to a university for analysis.

The research team, which included scientists from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, the Henan Geological Museum and Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum, carried out CT scans on the egg.

The scans revealed that within the thick fossilized shell, a turtle embryo that was 85 per cent developed had been preserved.

Further examination revealed that the embryo was probably a member of the Yuchelys nanyangensis species, which went extinct during the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago. The fossilized find is also believed to be part of the Nanhsiungchelyidae, an extinct family of land turtles from the Cretaceous period that were native to Asia and North America.

Such turtles were flat-shelled and lived on dry land, which was unusual at the time, said Darla Zelenitsky, a researcher from the Canada’s University of Calgary.

The fossilized remains of a Nanhsiungchelyid turtle in China.

While thousands of dinosaur eggs have been found in Henan Province over the past 30 years, Zelenitsky said they are rarely found in good condition.

“In comparison with dinosaur eggs, turtle eggs — especially those with preserved embryos — rarely fossilize because they’re so small and fragile,” she said.

Zelenitskythey said that this egg likely survived because of its unusually thick shell, which the research team measured at 0.07 inches, several times thicker than the eggs of Galapagos turtles at 0.01 inches.

Judging by the size of the shell, the team estimated that it was laid by a turtle with a 5.3-foot-long carapace, meaning that from its neck to its tail, it would have been longer than some humans are tall.

Zelenitsky said that part of the shell was broken from the inside, so it’s possible that the embryo tried to hatch but has been trapped in its shell for 90 million years.

The study was published online on Aug. 18 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

The 9,000-Year-Old Underground Megalithic Settlement of Atlit Yam

The 9,000-Year-Old Underground Megalithic Settlement of Atlit Yam

Atlit Yam is an ancient submerged Neolithic village off the coast of Atlit, Israel.

Not far off the coast of the village of Atlit in the Mediterranean Sea, near Haifa in Israel, lies the submerged ruins of the ancient Neolithic site of Atlit Yam.

The prehistoric settlement, which dates back to the 7th millennium BC, has been so well preserved by the sandy seabed that a mysterious stone circle still stands as it was first erected, and dozens of human skeletons lay undisturbed in their graves.

Atlit Yam is one of the oldest and largest sunken settlements ever found and sheds new light on the daily lives of its ancient inhabitants.

Today, Atlit Yam lies between 8 – 12 metres beneath sea level and covered an area of 40,000 square metres. The site was first discovered in 1984 by marine archaeologist Ehud Galili, and since then underwater excavations have unearthed numerous houses, stone-built water wells, a series of long unconnected walls, ritual installations, stone-paved areas, a megalithic structure, thousands of flora and faunal remains, dozens of human remains, and numerous artefacts made of stone, bone, wood and flint.

A diver explores a well at the site of Atlit Yam, an ancient submerged Neolithic village off the coast of Atlit, Israel.

At the centre of the settlement, seven megaliths (1.0 to 2.1 metres high) weighing up to 600 kilograms are arranged in a stone semicircle.

The stones have cup marks carved into them and were once arranged around a freshwater spring, which suggests that they may have been used for a water ritual. Another installation consists of three oval stones (1.6 – 1.8 metres), two of which are circumscribed by grooves forming schematic anthropomorphic figures.

Another significant structural feature of the site is the stone-built well, which was excavated down to a depth of 5.5. metres. At the base of the well, archaeologists found sediment fill containing animal bones, stone, flint, wood, and bone artefacts. This suggests that in its final stage, it ceased to function as a water-well and was used instead as a disposal pit. The change in function was probably related to salinization of the water due to a rise in sea-level.

The wells from Atlit-Yam had probably been dug and constructed in the earliest stages of occupation (the end of the 9th millennium BC) and were essential for the maintenance of a permanent settlement in the area.

The ancient artifacts unearthed at Atlit Yam offer clues into how the prehistoric inhabitants once lived.

Researchers have found traces of more than 100 species of plants that grew at the site or were collected from the wild, and animal remains consisted of bones of both wild and domesticated animals, including sheep, goat, pig, dog, and cattle, suggesting that the residents raised and hunted animals for subsistence. In addition, more than 6,000 fish bones were found. Combined with other clues, such as an ear condition found in some of the human remains caused by regular exposure to cold water, it seems that fishing also played a big role in their society.

The archaeological material indicates that Atlit-Yam provides the earliest known evidence for an agro-pastoral-marine subsistence system on the Levantine coast.

The inhabitants were some of the first to make the transition from being hunter-gatherers to being more settled farmers, and the settlement is one of the earliest with evidence of domesticated cattle.

Human Remains Reveal Oldest Known Case of Tuberculosis

A human skeleton was found at the site of Atlit Yam, an ancient submerged Neolithic village off the coast of Atlit, Israel.

Ten flexed burials encased in clay and covered by thick layers of sand were discovered, both inside the houses and in the vicinity of Atlit Yam, and in total archaeologists have uncovered 65 sets of human remains.

One of the most significant discoveries of this ancient site is the presence of tuberculosis (TB) within the village. The skeletons of a woman and child, found in 2008, have revealed the earliest known cases of tuberculosis in the world. The size of the infant’s bones, and the extent of TB damage, suggest the mother passed the disease to her baby shortly after birth.

What Caused Atlit Yam to Sink?

One of the greatest archaeological mysteries of Atlit Yam is how it came to be submerged, a question that has led to heated debate in academic circles. An Italian study led by Maria Pareschi of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Pisa indicates that a volcanic collapse of the Eastern flank of Mount Etna 8,500 years ago would likely have caused a 40-metre-high tsunami to engulf some Mediterranean coastal cities within hours.

Some scientists point to the apparent abandonment of Atlit Yam around the same time, and the thousands of fish remains, as further evidence that such a tsunami did indeed occur.

However, other researchers have suggested that there is no solid evidence to suggest a tsunami wiped out the settlement. After all, the megalithic stone circle still remained standing in the place in which it had been constructed. One alternative is that climate change caused glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise and the settlement became flooded by a slow rise in the level of the Mediterranean that led to a gradual abandonment of the village.

Whatever the cause of the submerging of the settlement, it was the unique conditions of clay and sandy sediment under salty water that enabled this ancient village to remain so well preserved over thousands of years.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

1,300-Year-Old Corn God Statue Shows How the Maya Worshipped Maize

1,300-Year-Old Corn God Statue Shows How the Maya Worshipped Maize

1,300-Year-Old Corn God Statue Shows How the Maya Worshipped Maize
The depiction of a young Maya maize god is consistent with other portrayals of beheaded Maya deities.

While excavating a section of the ancient Maya city of Palenque last summer, archaeologists in Mexico were surprised to see the tip of a large nose emerging from underneath the dirt.

As they carefully brushed away more debris at El Palacio, nostrils, a chin and the parted lips of a half-open mouth appeared.

Now, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has revealed that the ancient face was part of a 1,300-year-old stucco head depicting a young Hun Hunahpu, the Maya’s maize god.

The find is the first of its kind at the Palenque archaeological site, which is located in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

“The discovery of the deposit allows us to understand how the ancient Maya of Palenque constantly revived the mythical passage on the birth, death and resurrection of the maize god,” Arnoldo González Cruz, an archaeologist who was part of the find, says in a statement.

The face emerged from an archaeological dig in Mexico. National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)

The nine-inch-tall head had an east-west orientation that archaeologists believe represents the emergence of the maize plant at dawn, per INAH. They say Palenque’s Maya residents likely placed the large stone sculpture over a pond to symbolize the entrance to the underworld.

The sculpture was intended to depict a beheaded figure, echoing other Maya art depicting various headless gods.

Maize, or corn, was not only an important source of food for the Maya—it also played a fundamental role in their beliefs. According to the Popol Vuh, the Maya’s K’iche’-language creation story, gods created humans out of yellow and white corn.

As such, the Maya worshipped Hun Hunahpu, whom they believed was decapitated every fall around harvest time, then reborn the following spring at the start of the new growing season, as Ariella Marsden reports for the Jerusalem Post. Because of this pattern, the Maya also associated Hun Hunahpu with the cycle of human life and the changing seasons.

First domesticated about 9,000 years ago in what is now Mexico, maize played an important role in both Mesoamerican culture and the history of archaeology. As author Charles C. Mann writes in Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn, cobs of ancient maize discovered in New Mexico “were among the first archaeological finds ever carbon-dated.”

The head of a young Maya maize god was made of stucco and buried in a pond archaeologists think was once used for stargazing.

Archaeologists dated the stucco statue to the Late Classic Period of roughly 700 to 850 B.C.E. They believe it represents a youthful maize god because of the figure’s “tonsured,” partially-shaven haircut, which looks like ripe maize. This depiction of the deity was common at the time, per the Dallas Museum of Art, and symbolized “mature and fertile” corn.

When they first built the maize god’s pond, the Maya likely peered into it to study the reflection of the night sky. Later, researchers say, they symbolically shuttered the pond by breaking down some of the stucco and filling it in with shells, carved bone fragments, pieces of ceramics, obsidian arrowheads, beads, vegetables and the remains of animals, including quail, river turtles, whitefish and dog.

They topped the pond with a limestone slab, then surrounded it with three short walls and filled everything in with loose stones and soil.

Because it was preserved in a humid environment for such a long time, the divine head must now undergo a drying process, undertaken by INAH’s National Coordination for the Cultural Heritage Conservation, to preserve it. After more than a thousand years underground, the stone sculpture is being reborn—just like the beloved deity it depicts.

WORLD

Cold Sore Virus Detected in Ancient Human Remains

Cold Sore Virus Detected in Ancient Human Remains

Cold Sore Virus Detected in Ancient Human Remains
Researchers found ancient herpes DNA in the teeth of a man from the eighteenth century who was a fervent pipe smoker.

Ancient DNA extracted from the teeth of humans who lived long ago is yielding new information about pathogens past and present.

In one of the latest studies, researchers uncovered and sequenced ancient herpes genomes for the first time, from the teeth of long-dead Europeans. The strain of herpes virus that causes lip sores in people today — called HSV-1 — was once thought to have emerged in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. But data published in Science Advances on 27 July indicate that its origin was much more recent: around 5,000 years ago, during the Bronze Age.

The findings hint that changing cultural practices during the Bronze Age — including the emergence of romantic kissing — could have factored into HSV-1’s meteoric rise.

This and other studies related to tooth-extracted DNA are leading to surprising insights into our shared history with the disease, says Christiana Scheib, an archaeomolecular biologist at the University of Tartu in Estonia. “All of the pathogens we have today were once novel infections,” she says. “It’s important to study ancient DNA so we can understand these past experiences and keep future generations safe from epidemics.”

Breakthroughs in bones

Teeth are treasure chests for ancient DNA because of their ability to protect biological molecules from degradation. In the past decade, scientists have used increasingly powerful sequencing technologies to reconstruct the genomes of long-dead humans and animals — the oldest being a mammoth that died 1.6 million years ago — using DNA found in their teeth.

In the process, they have also sorted through the genetic material of bacteria and viruses preserved in teeth. Molars, incisors and so on have blood vessels in their roots, so when a person or animal dies, these bones become repositories for whatever pathogens were moving through their bloodstream at the time of death.

The realization that teeth are caches for pathogen DNA has opened the study of ancient diseases to “a completely different kind of knowledge than what we could have accessed before”, says Martin Sikora, an ancient-genomics researcher at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

This genetic information has provided researchers with molecular evidence to pinpoint when and where pathogens were at a given time, Sikora says. In 2013, scientists used DNA extracted from teeth to confirm that the Justinian plague, which swept across the Mediterranean and northern Europe in the sixth century, was the first major outbreak of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. And in June, a different group of researchers reported that the strain of Y. pestis that launched the Black Death — which killed upwards of 60% of people in some parts of Eurasia in the fourteenth century — probably evolved in what is now Kyrgyzstan, on the basis of DNA from teeth found in that region.

Sifting through remains

Studying ancient DNA can also help researchers to learn about the history of less deadly pathogens, such as the strain of oral herpes that has infected about two-thirds of the global population under age 50 today. In 2016, Scheib and her colleagues were looking for traces of Y. pestis in the 600-year-old tooth of a teenager who died in St John’s Hospital in Cambridgeshire, UK, when they stumbled across genetic sequences that seemed to match those of HSV-1.

Until that point, “there was no published ancient herpes DNA at all”, she says. The oldest herpes genome on record had been isolated from someone living in New York in 1925. The discovery led Scheib and her colleagues to look for signs of herpes in other remains. For this, the team needed to find people who had died of active infections. HSV-1 spends most of its time hiding in the nervous system of its host. But during times of stress, the virus moves into the bloodstream and flares up into ‘cold’ sores.

After sorting through dozens of remains, the researchers eventually found and extracted herpes DNA from the teeth of three people who died from active infections, including a young woman buried outside what is now Cambridge, UK, in the sixth century.

By evaluating the genetic mutations that evolved among the four ancient genomes and comparing them with modern HSV-1 strains, the researchers deduced that they all had a common ancestor that popped up around 5,000 years ago. Before this, different versions of herpes were circulating, Scheib says. But HSV-1 evolved to ruthlessly outcompete them.

Kiss and tell

Exactly what led this new variety of herpes to be more successful than older versions is still unclear. But Scheib says the team’s analysis suggests that HSV-1 emerged during a period of intense migration during the Bronze Age when it could have hitched a ride with people as they moved into Europe from the steppe grasslands of Eurasia.

And it might also have spread with the growing practice of romantic kissing, which was invented around 3,500 years ago on the Indian subcontinent and was probably later taken up in Europe, during Alexander the Great’s military campaigns in the fourth century. Herpes is usually spread from parent to child through close contact. Romantic kissing might have provided HSV-1 with a faster route to infect people and could have helped the virus outcompete earlier versions of herpes, the researchers say.

Fully unravelling the history of herpes and other pathogens will require older and more geographically diverse samples, but this study is a good example of the kind of information that can be accessed with ancient DNA, says Daniel Blanco-Melo, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Theoretically, researchers could sequence DNA from pathogens that infected even older humans and animals, potentially living one million years ago, Sikora says. This might allow scientists to learn about the organisms that infected ancient human species, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. But technological limitations mean that researchers are currently able to sequence only the genetic material of pathogens that contain double-stranded DNA, excluding many important RNA viruses, such as the ones that cause polio and measles.

Still, ancient DNA is providing a window into our shared history with the disease, Sikora says. “We’re at the beginning of the maturation of this field,” he adds. “I expect we’re going to get very exciting new insights in the next couple of years.”

ARGENTINA, CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Remains of a woman from 800 years ago were found in a Wooden canoe

Remains of a woman from 800 years ago were found in a Wooden canoe

Remains of a woman from 800 years ago were found in a Wooden canoe
An illustration of a deceased young woman lying in a wampos (ceremonial canoe) with a pottery jug near her head.

Up to 1,000 years ago, mourners buried a young woman in a ceremonial canoe to represent her final journey into the land of the dead in what is now Patagonia, a new study finds. The discovery reaffirms ethnographic and historical accounts that canoe burials were practised throughout pre-Hispanic South America and refutes the idea that they may have been used only after the Spanish colonization, according to the authors of the study.

“We hope this investigation and its results will resolve this controversy,” said archaeologist Alberto Pérez, an associate professor of anthropology at the Temuco Catholic University in Chile and the lead author of the study, published Wednesday (Aug. 24) in the journal PLOS One.

Canoe burials are well attested and are still practised in some areas of South America, Pérez told Live Science. But because wood rots rapidly, the new finding is the first known evidence of the practice from the pre-Hispanic period. “The previous evidence was important and was based on ethnographic data, but the evidence was indirect,” he said.

The archaeological site in northwest Argentina was excavated between 2012 and 2015 before a well was built at the location, which is on private land.

The burial described in the study, at the Newen Antug archaeological site near Lake Lacár in western Argentina, indicates that mourners buried the woman on her back in a wooden structure crafted from a single tree trunk that had been hollowed out by the fire.

The same burning technique has been used for thousands of years to make “dugout” canoes known as “wampos” in the local Mapuche culture, and evidence suggests that Indigenous people prepared the woman’s remains so that she could embark on a final canoe journey across mystical waters to her final abode in the “destination of souls,” Pérez said.

Pre-Hispanic burial

The woman’s grave is the earliest of three known pre-Hispanic burials at the Newen Antug site, which archaeologists excavated between 2012 and 2015, before a well was built at the location, which is on private land. The location is at the northern extreme of the region known as Patagonia, which consists of the temperate steppes, alpine regions, coasts and deserts of the southern part of South America.

Radiocarbon dating indicates the woman was buried more than 850 years ago and possibly up to 1,000 years ago, while her sex and age at death — between 17 and 25 years old — were estimated from her pelvic bones and the wear on her teeth, according to the study. (Evidence suggests the Mapuche have lived in the region since at least 600 B.C.)

A pottery jug decorated with white glaze and red geometric patterns, placed in the grave by her head, suggests a connection with the “red on white bichrome” tradition of pre-Hispanic ceramics on both sides of the Andes mountains, the researchers found. This is the earliest known example of this type of pottery being used as a grave gift, according to the study.

Canoes known as wampos in the Mapuche language were constructed by hollowing out a single tree trunk with fire, with thicker walls at the bow and stern.

Given its age and the humid climate, the burial canoe has rotted away, and only fragments of wood remain. But tests suggest that the fragments came from the same tree — a  Chilean cedar (Austrocedrus chilensis) — and that it had been hollowed out with fire.

Shells found in the grave show that her body was placed directly on a bed of Diplodon chilensis, a type of freshwater clam that was likely brought from the shores of Lake Lacár more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) away, the researchers wrote.

The young woman was buried more than 800 years ago in a wampo, or ceremonial canoe, that researchers think symbolized a boat journey to the land of the dead.

In addition, the position of the body — with the arms gathered above the torso, and the head and feet raised — indicates that the woman was buried inside a concave structure with thicker walls at the ends, which correspond to the bow and stern of a canoe, Pérez said.

Taken together, these aspects suggest the woman was interred in a traditional canoe burial representing the Mapuche belief that a soul must make a final boat journey before it arrives in the land of the dead. “The material evidence all goes in the same direction, and there is a whole battery of ethnographic and historical information that accounts for it,” Pérez told Live Science in an email.

Destination of souls

According to Mapuche belief, the destination of the deads’ souls was “Nomelafken” — a word in the Mapuche language that translates to the “other side of the sea” — and the newly dead would make a metaphorical boat journey for up to four years before they arrived at a mythical island called Külchemapu or Külchemaiwe, Pérez and his colleagues wrote in the study.

A historical report from the 1840s by the Chilean politician Salvador Sanfuentes remarked that local people “site the graves of their dead on the bank of a stream to allow the current to carry the soul to the land of souls” and that ceremonial canoes were buried as coffins to carry the dead on this journey, the researchers wrote.

The metaphor of the recently deceased making such a canoe journey to a final destination seems to have been prevalent throughout South America in pre-Hispanic times, and possibly for thousands of years, Pérez noted.

“We infer that this was a widespread practice on the continent, although it is little known to archaeology due to conservation problems,” such as the degradation of wood in humid climates, he said. “The antiquity of these practices is uncertain, but we know such navigation technologies were used there more than 3,500 years ago, so we can estimate that date as a potential time limit.”

The new study has great scientific importance for archaeological and anthropological research in the Patagonia region, said Nicolás Lira, an assistant professor of archaeology, ethnography and prehistory at the University of Chile who wasn’t involved in the research.

“The findings … are of exceptional preservation for the humid environment of the region, where rivers and lakes shape the landscape in an interconnected [river] system that facilitated and encouraged navigation,” Lira told Live Science in an email. 

Juan Skewes, an anthropologist at Alberto Hurtado University in Chile who wasn’t involved in the study, said the Newen Antug burial was “strong evidence” of a shared cultural tradition between the east and west “slopes” of the Andes. 

Meanwhile, historical and ethnographic records suggest such canoe burials represented a symbolic relationship between the Mapuche people and bodies of water, but that relationship wasn’t their only consideration, Skewes said. For example, “trees are part of almost every aspect of the Mapuche’s daily life, Skewes said. “Aside from having associations with mortuary practices, they are linked to childbirth and to the memories of the dead.” That might mean that the construction of a burial wampo from a single tree could have had extra meaning, in addition to the canoe’s symbolic function during the final voyage of the dead, he said.

ANTARCTICA, WORLD

The Discovery of a ‘hidden world’ under Antarctic ice has scientists jumping for joy

The Discovery of a ‘hidden world’ under Antarctic ice has scientists jumping for joy

Researchers discovered swarms of shrimplike amphipods while they were exploring an underground Antarctic river.

A never-before-seen ecosystem lurks in an underground river deep below the icy surface of Antarctica. Researchers recently brought this “hidden world” into the light, revealing a dark and jagged cavern filled with swarms of tiny, shrimplike creatures.    

The scientists found the secret subterranean habitat tucked away beneath the Larsen Ice Shelf — a massive, floating sheet of ice attached to the eastern coast of the Antarctic peninsula that famously birthed the world’s largest iceberg in 2021.

Satellite photos showed an unusual groove in the ice shelf close to where it met with the land, and researchers identified the peculiar feature as a subsurface river, which they described in a statement.

The team drilled down around 1,640 feet (500 meters) below the ice’s surface using a powerful hot-water hose to reach the underground chamber. 

When the researchers sent a camera down through the icy tunnel and into the cavern, hundreds of tiny, blurry flecks in the water obscured the video feed. Initially, the team thought their equipment was faulty.

But after refocusing the camera, they realized that the lens was being swarmed by tiny crustaceans known as amphipods. This caught the team off guard, as they had not expected to find any type of life this far below the icy surface. 

“Having all those animals swimming around our camera means there’s clearly an important ecosystem process happening there,” Craig Stevens, a physical oceanographer at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Auckland, New Zealand, said in a statement.

The discovery of the secret shrimp-infested structure had the team “jumping up and down for joy,” Stevens added.

Experts have long suspected that there is a vast network of rivers, lakes and estuaries underneath Antarctica, but until now these features have been poorly studied. It was previously unknown if they harboured life, which makes the new finding even more important.

“Getting to observe and sample this river was like being the first to enter a hidden world,” lead researcher Huw Horgan, a glaciologist at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, told The Guardian.

Horgan first spotted hints of the subsurface structure in 2020 while looking at a satellite photo of the area. It was visible as a long depression, or groove, stretching across the ice — a hallmark of an underground river.

However, despite being prominent in the satellite images, the groove initially eluded surface detection, Stevens said. “But then we found this tiny, gentle slope and guessed we’d got the right spot.”

Researchers drilled more than 1,600 feet under the Larsen Ice Shelf.

After sending the camera down into the river, the team was surprised to learn that the cavern looked drastically different from what they had predicted.

The researchers had expected that the roof of the chamber would be smooth and flat. But instead, they found that the roof was very uneven and had lots of steep undulations.

The cavern was also much wider nearer the roof. “It looked like a loaf of bread, with a bulge at the top and narrow slope at the bottom,” Stevens said. 

The researchers also unexpectedly discovered that the water column underground split into four or five distinct layers of water flowing in opposite directions. “This changes our current understanding and models of these environments,” Stevens said. “We’re going to have our work cut out understanding what this means.”

The underside of the river’s icy roof looked nothing like what the researchers were expecting.

The team arrived above the buried river just in time to make another interesting observation. The researchers set up camp a couple of days before the record-shattering eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga on Jan. 15.

The massive explosion caused pressure waves that rang Earth’s atmosphere like a bell, and sensors the researchers had placed on the ice’s surface recorded similar pressure waves moving through the underground chamber. “Seeing the effect of the Tongan volcano, which erupted thousands of kilometres away, was quite remarkable,” Stevens said. “It is a reminder about just how connected our whole planet is.” 

The scientists will continue to study the newfound subsurface ecosystem and hope to learn more about how the nutrients in the water are cycled through Antarctica’s underground water networks to support the abundance of life that lives there. 

However, the researchers also worry that even hidden ecosystems like this one may be at risk from rapidly warming temperatures caused by climate change. “The climate is changing, and some key focal points are yet to be understood by science,” Steven said. “But what is clear is that great changes are afoot.”

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

New Thoughts on Societal Changes in Bronze Age Crete

New Thoughts on Societal Changes in Bronze Age Crete

A modern scientific analysis of ancient stone tools is challenging long-held beliefs about what caused radical change on the island of Crete, where the first European state flourished during the Bronze Age: the ‘Minoan civilization.’ 

New Thoughts on Societal Changes in Bronze Age Crete
Lead researcher Tristan Carter in front of a quarry obsidian exposure on Melos

About 3,500 years ago, Crete underwent significant cultural transformations, including the adoption of a new language and economic system, burial customs, dress and drinking habits – all of which could be traced to the neighbouring Mycenaean Greek mainland.

At roughly the same time, many important sites across the island were destroyed and warriors’ graves appeared at the famed palace of Knossos, leading scholars to long believe that these seismic changes had been the result of a Mycenaean invasion.

A new study, published online in the journal PLOS One questions that theory.

“Our findings suggest a more complex picture than previously believed,” explains Tristan Carter, a lead author of the study and professor in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University who has conducted research in north-central Crete for nearly three decades.

“Rather than wholescale cultural change, our study has found evidence of significant continuity after the alleged invasion. While new practices can be initiated through external forces such as invasion, migration, colonialism, or cross-cultural intermarriage, we also know of examples where locals choose to adopt foreign habits to distinguish themselves within their own society,” says Carter.  

Rather than looking at things like burial, art, or dress, practices that tend to shift with fashion, archaeologists have begun to look more closely at more mundane, everyday practices as a better insight into a culture’s true character, he explains.   

For the study, the researchers analyzed a sample of tools the Bronze Age Cretans fashioned from obsidian, a black volcanic glass which is sharper than surgical steel when freshly flaked.  

Vassilis Kilikoglou, director of the Demokritos national research centre in Athens, used a nuclear reactor to determine the origin of the raw materials and found them to be from the Cycladic island of Melos.

When these results were considered together with the way the obsidian blades had been made and used for work such as harvesting crops, it was clear the community had lived the same way their predecessors had for the past thousand years, which continued to be distinct from life on the Greek mainland.

“Our analysis suggests the population had largely remained local, of Minoan descent,” says Carter and Kilikoglou.  

“This is not to say an invasion of Crete didn’t occur, but that the political situation across the rest of the island at this time was more complex than previously believed with significant demographic continuity in many areas.”

The researchers believe that while local elites were strategically aligned with Mycenaean powers, as evidenced by their conspicuous adoption of mainland styles of dress, drinking, and burial, most people continued to live their lives in much the same way as before.