Category Archives: WORLD

ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

44,000-Year-Old Cave Painting Could Be the Earliest Known Depiction of Hunting

44,000-Year-Old Cave Painting Could Be the Earliest Known Depiction of Hunting

A 44,000-year-old cave painting of a hunting scene that involves humans and animals might be the oldest recorded story. It was discovered, by a group of archaeologists from Griffith University, Australia, in a cave on the Indonesian island Sulawesi.

Researchers think this mural might be the oldest rock art ever painted — the first sign of the ability of human being’s to paint, but also the earliest proof of our relationship with the spiritual or supernatural.

The painting in the cave depicts a scene where a group of part-human, part animal-like figures are hunting large animals that look a lot like pigs found in Sulawesi, along with a species of small-bodied buffalo called the ‘anoa’. Human beings with heads of animals seem to be carrying spears or ropes to help in their hunt.

The animals in the rock art that is being hunted by the half-human, half-animals beings.

Half-animal, half-human figures

The “human” figures in rock art, dubbed “therianthropes” are human figures with animal characteristics. These types of figures have shown up in cultures all around the world — from 17,000-year-old paintings of bird-headed human beings being charged by a bison in France’s Lascaux caves to a 40,000-year-old carved figure called “the Lion Man” in Germany.

“The hunters represented in the ancient rock art panel at Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 are simple figures with human-like bodies, but they have been depicted with heads or other body parts like those from birds, reptiles, and other faunal species endemic to Sulawesi,” Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a rock art expert and PhD student in Griffith University, said in a statement.

This depiction of therianthropes may be the oldest evidence of the human ability to “imagine the existence of supernatural beings, a cornerstone of religious experience,” which means that they might have begun to have a semblance of understanding of religion or spiritual ideas.

“The images of therianthropes at Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 may also represent the earliest evidence for our capacity to conceive of things that do not exist in the natural world, a basic concept that underpins modern religion,” Adam Brumm, an archaeologist who was part of the study said.

“Early Indonesians were creating art that may have expressed spiritual thinking about the special bond between humans and animals long before the first art was made in Europe, where it has often been assumed the roots of modern religious culture can be traced.” 

There is a handprint in red, at the left end of the mural that acts as a signature of the artist.

Cave art at a possible sacred site

The cave itself, researchers think, might have been a sacred site. It is not easily accessible, what with it being perched on a clifftop 20 meters above the valley floor — it would have required some climbing.

“Accessing it requires climbing, and this is not an occupation site. So people were going in there for another reason,” Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist part of this study told Ars Technica in an interview.

There was no evidence of the cave being used as a living place. There was no trace of the usual debris of human life—stone tools, discarded bones, and cooking fires—anywhere in the cave or in the much larger chamber beneath it.

The entrance of the cave is 20 meters above the valley.

The cave, which was given the name “Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4” when it was unearthed in 2017, is one of the hundreds of caves in the Maros-Pangkep limestone-rich region of South Sulawesi in Indonesia. In an interview with Nature, Brumm said, “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I mean, we’ve seen hundreds of rock art sites in this region, but we’ve never seen anything like a hunting scene.”

To confirm the art was the oldest, the group of archaeologists carried out dating tests by calcite build-up on the painting. The researchers were able to determine that calcite build-up on one pig began forming at least 43,900 years ago. The build-up on the two buffaloes is older than 40,900 years. The rock art previously considered to be the oldest was found in sites in Europe, and dated back to between 14,000 to 21,000 years ago.

A wide view of the entire painting, with annotations.

Archaeological findings like these are growing important in our understanding of humankind’s roots and evolution. There’s a fear this rock art might soon be lost altogether because of deterioration. The art is peeling and they do not know what is causing it.

“It would be a tragedy if these exceptionally old artworks should disappear in our own lifetime, but it is happening,” Oktaviana said.

“We need to understand why this globally significant rock art is deteriorating – now.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

‘Rare and significant’ brooch found at site linked to KING ARTHUR

‘Rare and significant’ brooch found at site linked to KING ARTHUR

A 1,500-year-old brooch has been found at the site linked to King Arthur

Archaeologists stumbled across the “rare and significant” piece of jewellery and hailed it as the first evidence that the area was home to the rich and powerful during the time. The Romano-British brooch was discovered in a field at St Mabyn, Cornwall, less than a mile from Castle Killibury hill fort, previously identified as the origin of Arthur’s Camelot.

The discovery has now raised the prospect that the brooch might once have belonged to his queen, Guinevere.

The hill fort is today known as Castle Killibury and has not previously yielded much interest after being ploughed for centuries.

The brooch was found in a meadow known as Chapelfield, where developers are now seeking planning permission to build 14 houses.

The piece of jewellery is made of a copper alloy and archaeologists think it dates from the 5th or 6th century – around the time a real King Arthur might have lived.

The trench where the brooch was found in St Mabyn

Although many sites claim to be associated with Arthur, what makes the Castle Killibury hill fort of potential significance is that the connection was first suggested by Welsh writers. 

Usually, claims are made to serve more parochial interests.

Romano-British copper alloy brooches signify that the people who lived here had some importance

The artefact is currently undergoing recording and conservation at the Royal Cornwall Museum.

The owners of the brooch, who also own the field where it was found, live in Malaysia.

But the publicly-available archaeological report attached to Cornwall Council’s planning documents says: “The brooch is a rare and significant find, suggestive of a reasonably ‘well-healed’ Romano-British farmstead settlement.”

The trench is located less than a mile from Castle Killibury hill fort
The discovery gives weight to the argument that the area was home to the rich and powerful

The archaeologists were surprised by the discovery, as they had been expecting only medieval finds.

Some Arthurian scholars claim that the 11th-century Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen – thought to be the very first literary reference to a legendary King Arthur – placed his headquarters at “Celliwig in Cornwall”.

They suggest that the similarity of the name, and the fact that it is a hill fort from the right period in history, place the site at Castle Killibury. 

Other scholars dispute this and say the Culhwch and Olwen story places Arthur’s headquarters in Wales.

The St Mabyn brooch was found in May and is described in a report written last month. 

It comes just weeks after archaeologists, commissioned by English Heritage found evidence of an important Romano-British castle at Tintagel, long celebrated by poets as King Arthur’s birthplace.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

The “Pompeii” Of Bronze Age Houses Was Just Uncovered In Britain

The “Pompeii” Of Bronze Age Houses Was Just Uncovered In Britain

In the marshy fens of Cambridgeshire, archaeologists have uncovered what is being described as the “best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found” in Britain.

The "Pompeii" Of Bronze Age Houses Was Just Uncovered In Britain
The dwellings are preserved exactly as they were when they collapsed into a river.

The incredible find provides a snapshot into the everyday life of those living in the marshes around 3,000 years ago. Following a fire, the circular houses and their contents collapsed into an underlying river and became enveloped in a thick layer of silt, perfectly frozen in time. 

The houses show an astonishing level of preservation. Not only have the posts that supported the floors and beams of the roof survived in situ but an array of objects from everyday life have also been spectacularly preserved.

From textiles and tools to cooking pots that still contain their last meal, the incredible conditions have led some to compare it to a Bronze Age Pompeii.

The extent of domestic objects found sandwiched between the roof and the floor when the house collapsed is unprecedented from any British site.

“It feels almost rude to be intruding,” explained Mark Knight, director of the site that is being excavated by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, to The Guardian.

“It doesn’t feel like archaeology anymore, it feels like somebody’s house has burned down and we’re going in and picking over their goods.” These goods were not just everyday objects either, many were precious and expensive at the time.

A bronze sickle has been found, for example, as have glass beads that may once have formed a necklace.

The dwellings were originally discovered in 1999 when a series of poles were noticed sticking out of the edge of the fen. But it wasn’t until 2006 when extensive excavations revealed the true extent of what had been preserved in the waterlogged ground, that the significance of the site really became apparent.

The settlement was built on a series of poles sunk deep into the river channel over which they sat. At the time they were standing, the region would have been a watery network of rivers winding their way through the marshes before emptying out into the Northern Sea.

And yet despite residing in the marshes, it seems that the people were not living off them. The researchers were surprised to find that they were not eating fish, eels or clams, nor were they using reeds to make things with. Instead, it seems they were eating domestic animals such as pigs and sheep.

The spine of a cow was even found in one of the smaller buildings, leaving some to suggest that the meat may have been left to hang before the fire destroyed everything.

Considering the closest dry land where grazing could have occurred at the time was around half a kilometre (0.3 miles) away, this completely changes how archaeologists thought Bronze Age people utilized the landscape and resources surrounding them.  

This could imply that the location of the settlement had less to do with food, and more to do with control.

During this time, the rivers would have been the main transport links, so perhaps by controlling these, the inhabitants could have gained wealth, power, and status, an idea supported by the variety of food found buried in the buildings.  

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Fossils May Represent China’s Earliest Hominins

Fossils May Represent China’s Earliest Hominins

Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigación Sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) form part of a team of Chinese, Spanish, and French scientists that has just published a study of what may prove to be China’s most ancient human fossil, in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Remains of jawbone and teeth of Gongwangling skull/Xing Song

The researchers employed microCT, geometric morphometry, and classical morphology techniques to investigate the remains of the maxillary and five teeth from the skull unearthed at the Chinese site of Gongwangling.

This site is on the vast plains on the northern slopes of the Quinling Mountains (province of Shaanxi, in central China) and was discovered by the scientist Woo Ju-Kang in 1963.

The age of the site was reevaluated in 2015 through regional palaeomagnetism studies.

Those data suggest that the Gongwangling remains date from something over 1.6 million years ago, and so they could belong to one of the first human beings to colonize what is now China.

According to the new study, there exist similarities between the Gongwangling teeth and those from rather more recent Chinese sites: Meipu and Quyuan River Mouth; but some variability is also presented, suggesting a certain diversity among the populations of H. Erectus that colonized Asia during the Pleistocene.

The importance of this new work lies in the scarcity of information about the early colonisation of Asia.

The Dmanisi site (Republic of Georgia) has furnished very significant evidence of the earliest inhabitants of Asia, who arrived from Africa around two million years ago. But much more information is needed to connect Dmanisi with the classic H. erectus populations of China (Hexian, Yiyuan, Xichuan, or Zhoukoudian), who lived in this great continental mass between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago.

“The Gongwangling site helps to plug this enormous lapse of time and it suggests that Asia might have been settled by successive populations of the species H. Erectus at different moments of the Pleistocene”, comments José María Bermúdez de Castro, coordinator of the Paleobiology Program at the CENIEH.

Characteristics of Homo erectus

The Gongwangling skull presents all the characteristics described for H. Erectus: low and very long cranium, with very thick bones that protected a brain of some 780 cubic centimetres; steeply inclined frontal, with pronounced superciliary arches that form a sort of twin visor above the eyes; flattened parietals which rise at the top to produce a sagittal keel; maximum parietal thickness at the skull base.

The Gongwangling occipital is incomplete, but the reconstruction shows how this bone turns abruptly to comprise the skull base.

Close collaboration between Chinese scientists, led by Liu Wu, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), and the Spanish scientists at the CENIEH who, in alphabetical order, were Bermúdez de Castro, Laura Martín-Francés, and María Martinón-Torres, has been essential to this new study of the fossil teeth from China.

EUROPE, WORLD

Origins of the Black Death identified

Origins of the Black Death identified

The Black Death, the biggest pandemic in our history, was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and lasted in Europe between the years 1346 and 1353.

Despite the pandemic’s immense demographic and societal impacts, its origins have long been elusive.

Now, a multidisciplinary team of scientists, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the University of Tübingen, in Germany, and the University of Stirling, in the United Kingdom, have obtained and studied ancient Y. pestis genomes that trace the pandemic’s origins to Central Asia.

View of the Tian Shan mountains. Studying ancient plague genomes, researchers traced the origins of the Black Death to Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan.

In 1347, the plague first entered the Mediterranean via trade ships transporting goods from the territories of the Golden Horde in the Black Sea. The disease then disseminated across Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa claiming up to 60 per cent of the population in a large-scale outbreak known as the Black Death.

This first wave further extended into a 500-year-long pandemic, the so-called Second Plague Pandemic, which lasted until the early 19th century.

The origins of the Second Plague Pandemic have long been debated. One of the most popular theories has supported its source in East Asia, specifically in China. On the contrary, the only so-far available archaeological findings come from Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan. These findings show that an epidemic devastated a local trading community in the years 1338 and 1339.

Specifically, excavations that took place almost 140 years ago revealed tombstones indicating that individuals died in those years of an unknown epidemic or “pestilence”. Since their first discovery, the tombstones inscribed in the Syriac language, have been a cornerstone of controversy among scholars regarding their relevance to the Black Death of Europe.

In this study, an international team of researchers analysed ancient DNA from human remains as well as historical and archaeological data from two sites that were found to contain “pestilence” inscriptions.

The team’s first results were very encouraging, as DNA from the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, was identified in individuals with the year 1338 inscribed on their tombstones.

“We could finally show that the epidemic mentioned on the tombstones was indeed caused by plague”, says Phil Slavin, one of the senior authors of the study and historian at the University of Stirling, UK.

Researchers found the Black Death’s source of strain

Excavation of the Kara-Djigach site, in the Chu-Valley of Kyrgyzstan within the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains. This excavation was carried out between the years 1885 and 1892.

But could this have been the origin of the Black Death? Researchers have previously associated the Black Death’s initiation with a massive diversification of plague strains, a so-called Big Bang event of plague diversity. But the exact date of this event could not be precisely estimated and was thought to have happened sometime between the 10th and 14th centuries.

The team now pieced together complete ancient plague genomes from the sites in Kyrgyzstan and investigated how they might relate to this Big Bang event.

“We found that the ancient strains from Kyrgyzstan are positioned exactly at the node of this massive diversification event. In other words, we found the Black Death’s source strain and we even know its exact date [meaning the year 1338]”, says Maria Spyrou, lead author and researcher at the University of Tübingen.

Plague inscription from the Chu-Valley region in Kyrgyzstan. The inscription is translated as follows: “In the Year 1649 [= 1338 CE], and it was the Year of the tiger, in Turkic Bars. This is the tomb of the believer Sanmaq. [He] died of pestilence”.

But where did this strain come from? Did it evolve locally or did it spread in this region from elsewhere? Plague is not a disease of humans; the bacterium survives within wild rodent populations across the world, in so-called plague reservoirs. Hence, the ancient Central Asian strain that caused the 1338-1339 epidemic around Lake Issyk Kul must have come from one such reservoir.

“We found that modern strains most closely related to the ancient strain are today found in plague reservoirs around the Tian Shan mountains, so very close to where the ancient strain was found. This points to an origin of Black Death’s ancestor in Central Asia”, explains Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The study demonstrates how investigations of well-defined archaeological contexts and close collaborations among historians, archaeologists and geneticists can resolve big mysteries of our past, such as the infamous Black Death’s origins, with unprecedented precision.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Archaeologists Unearthed the tomb of a Giant Warrior, horses and a witch in Germany

Archaeologists Unearthed the tomb of a Giant Warrior, horses and a witch in Germany

Close to a burial ground in Theiben, a little town in Germany an unbelievable revelation was made. Two bodies were found close to each other with one being of a goliath and the other being of a young lady accepted to be a witch.

Authorities on the matter agree, these all date back to the Merovingian period which endured from the fifth to the eighth century and this could possibly be confirmation of Giants and witches living in old times.

As a matter of first importance, we should address the Giant. He was 7 feet tall, which probably won’t seem like much at the time yet the vast majority were 4 feet or so around that time so he’d be totally overshadowing any other individual.

A sword was found close to his body which means the way that he was a hero, doubtlessly the head of his clan. He was obviously either guarding the woman close to him or he was ensuring she doesn’t get away.

She then again was restricted and had an iron bar in her chest which is an obvious indicator that she was accepted to be a witch at that point. She was accepted to be 18 years of age and she was covered with her face down.

Three ponies’ skeletons were additionally found at the entryway, which was extremely normal for antiquated human advancements to do. They would kill the ponies so the dead could ride them into life following death.

Among the most amazing remaining parts are those of a lady matured somewhere in the range of 16 and 18, covered face-down “with her options limited and an iron bar penetrating her chest. It appears to be that she was covered this way so her spirit wouldn’t forsake the burial place. Purposes behind this might be that she was incapacitated or twisted, had unique, maybe baffling and accordingly alarming capacities, or that she was essentially viewed as a witch,” as made sense of by the lead prehistorian Nexus News Feed.

Paleologist accept that the iron bar puncturing the chest through her back was to forestall a restoration. Her head confronting the earth and situated toward the east – normally west – was to point the ‘perishing soul’ away from the living.

The grave of a GIANT middle age hero

Archaeologists likewise uncovered the body of a 2-meter-high man – exceptionally tall for the time span – with a blade and a lance. The remaining parts of the goliath man are likely those of a champion, maybe a pioneer.

Monster Germany prehistoric studies, Giant fighter found in Germany old goliath Germany

He holds an iron sword with his left hand and stays of a lance sits to his right side. His garments were shut with a pin

Three pony internments and a lot of bones

3 ponies have additionally uncovered almost a graveyard in Germany.

In the interim 3 pony skeletons have been uncovered. Archaeologists accept there is no connection with the dead, in spite of the fact that they should be visible as a means to head out to the next world while checking other antiquated civilisations out.

What’s more, the archaeologists uncovered a grave in which human bones were stacked up. They haven’t tracked down any conceivable clarifications for this mass grave.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Ancient Humans Tamed Fire as Early as 1 Million Years Ago, Study Suggests

Ancient Humans Tamed Fire as Early as 1 Million Years Ago, Study Suggests

Ancient Humans Tamed Fire as Early as 1 Million Years Ago, Study Suggests
The heat of a fire can make lasting changes to nearby stones

An artificial intelligence tool has revealed hidden evidence of ancient fire at a 1-million-year-old archaeological site in Israel. Applying the technology at other sites could revolutionise our understanding of when and where humans first began controlling fire, which is widely considered to be one of the most significant innovations of all time.

Archaeologists already have a few techniques for identifying whether ancient humans used fire. For instance, you can look for signs that prehistoric bones are discoloured – or that stone tools are warped – in a way that is consistent with exposure to temperatures of 450°C or more.

But this sort of evidence is rarely found at sites that are more than 500,000 years old.

Last year, a group of researchers in Israel unveiled a deep-learning AI tool that can identify subtler signs of fire caused by exposure to temperatures of between 200 and 300°C.

The team trained the algorithm by gathering chunks of flint from non-archaeological sites in the Israeli countryside, heating them to particular temperatures in the lab and then tasking the AI with identifying subtle changes in the flint’s response to UV light.

Now, the team, working with Michael Chazan at the University of Toronto in Canada, has used the algorithm to look at flints from a 1-million-year-old ancient human site called Evron Quarry in Israel.

“The reason we chose Evron Quarry was that it uses the same kind of flint they had used in the previous study,” says Chazan. “But there was just no reason to think there would be evidence of burning there.”

To Chazan’s surprise, the AI tool suggested that many of the flint tools at the site had been heated, mostly to temperatures of about 400°C.

Flint tools found at the Evron Quarry.

The team then took a closer look at chunks of bone recovered from the site and, using existing techniques, confirmed that they had been heated too.

Chazan says no one would have bothered testing the bones for heat exposure without the flint results from the AI.

The clustering of the heated stones and bones hints that ancient humans had control over the fire at Evron Quarry, rather than this being evidence of natural wildfire.

At the moment, there is a small amount of evidence that humans were using fire 1.5 million years ago. However, Chazan thinks the AI tool could be used to test a popular hypothesis that fire – and cooking – was widespread between about 1.8 and 2 million years ago.

“In the past, I’ve said: no, I don’t really think that’s right,” says Chazan. Now he isn’t so sure.

EUROPE, HUNGARY, WORLD

Medieval Coin Minted in Norway Found in Hungary

Medieval Coin Minted in Norway Found in Hungary

A metal detectorist has discovered a small silver coin marked with the name of a famous Viking king.  However, it was unearthed not in Scandinavia, but in southern Hungary, where it was lost almost 1,000 years ago.

Medieval Coin Minted in Norway Found in Hungary
The small silver coin was found near the Hungarian village of Várdomb. It dates to between 1046 and 1066 and is inscribed with the name of the Norwegian king.

The find has baffled archaeologists, who have struggled to explain how the coin might have ended up there — it’s even possible that it arrived with the travelling court of a medieval Hungarian king. The early Norwegian coin, denominated as a “penning,” was not especially valuable at the time, even though it’s made from silver, and was worth the equivalent of around $20 in today’s money.

“This penning was equivalent to the denar used in Hungary at the time,” Máté Varga, an archaeologist at the Rippl-Rónai Museum in the southern Hungarian city of Kaposvár and a doctoral student at the Hungary’s University of Szeged, told Live Science in an email. “It was not worth much — perhaps enough to feed a family for a day.”

An 1865 engraving of the Harald Hardrada penning coin. (Image credit: By Zeichner: C. I. Schive, Lithograf Bucher in Bergen – C. I. Schive: Norges Mynter i Middelalderen. Christiania 1865.

Metal detectorist Zoltán Csikós found the silver coin earlier this year at an archaeological site on the outskirts of the village of Várdomb, and handed it over to archaeologist András Németh at the Wosinsky Mór County Museum in the nearby city of Szekszárd.

The Várdomb site holds the remains of the medieval settlement of Kesztölc, one of the most important trading towns in the region at that time. Archaeologists have made hundreds of finds there, including dress ornaments and coins, Varga said.

There is considerable evidence of contact between medieval Hungary and Scandinavia, including Scandinavian artefacts found in Hungary and Hungarian artefacts found in Scandinavia that could have been brought there by trade or travelling craftsmen, Varga said.

But this is the first time a Scandinavian coin has been found in Hungary, he said.

Who was Harald Hardrada?

The coin found at the Várdomb site is in poor condition, but it’s recognizable as a Norwegian penning minted between 1046 and 1066 for King Harald Sigurdsson III — also known as Harald Hardrada — at Nidarnes or Nidaros(opens in new tab), a medieval mint at Trondheim in central Norway.

The description of a similar coin(opens in new tab) notes that the front features the name of the king “HARALD REX NO” — meaning Harald, king of Norway — and is decorated with a “triquetra,” a three-sided symbol representing Christianity’s Holy Trinity. 

The other side is marked with a Christian cross in double lines, two ornamental sets of dots, and another inscription naming the master of the mint at Nidarnes.

Harald Hardrada (“Hardrada” translates as “hard ruler” in Norwegian) was the son of a Norwegian chief and half-brother to the Norwegian king Olaf II, according to Britannica(opens in new tab). He lived at the end of the Viking Age and is sometimes considered the last of the great Viking warrior-kings.

This is a photo showing the Kirkwall Cathedral’s stained glass window of Harald Hardrada.

Traditional stories record that Harald fought alongside his half-brother at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030, where Olaf was defeated and killed by the forces of an alliance between Norwegian rebels and the Danish; Harald fled in exile after that, first to Russia and then to the Byzantine Empire, where he became a prominent military leader.

He returned to Norway in 1045 and became its joint king with his nephew, Magnus I Olafsson; he became the sole king when Magnus died in battle against Denmark in 1047. 

Harald then spent many years trying to obtain the Danish throne, and in 1066 he attempted to conquer England by allying with the rebel forces of Tostig Godwinson, who was trying to take the kingdom from his brother, King Harold Godwinson.

But both Harald and Tostig were killed by Harold Godwinson’s forces at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in northern England in 1066; whereupon the victor and his armies had to cross the country just a few weeks before the Battle of Hastings against William of Normandy — which Harold Godwinson lost, and with it the kingdom of England.

Medieval travels

The penning found at Várdomb could have been lost more than 100 years after it was minted, but it’s more likely that it was in circulation for between 10 and 20 years, Varga and Németh said. That dating gives rise to a possible connection with a medieval Hungarian king named Solomon, who ruled from 1063 to 1087.

According to a medieval Hungarian illuminated manuscript known as the “Képes Krónika” (or “Chronicon Pictum” in Latin), Solomon and his retinue (a group of advisors and important people) encamped in 1074 “above the place called Kesztölc” — and so the archaeologists think one of Solomon’s courtiers at that time may have carried, and then lost, the exotic coin.

“The king’s court could have included people from all over the world, whether diplomatic or military leaders, who could have had such coins,” Varga and Németh said in a statement.

Another possibility is that the silver coin was brought to medieval Kesztölc by a common traveller: the trading town “was crossed by a major road with international traffic, the predecessor of which was a road built in Roman times along the Danube,” the researchers said in the statement.

“This road was used not only by kings, but also by merchants, pilgrims, and soldiers from far away, any of whom could have lost the rare silver coin,” they wrote. 

Further research could clarify the origins of the coin and its connection with the site; while no excavations are planned, Varga said, field surveys and further metal detection will be carried out at the site in the future.