Ireland is famous for its peat bogs – peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. They are the most efficient carbon sink on earth and cover 1.4 million square miles of the earth. They also tend to preserve bodies and artefacts that wind up in them, so they are a great source of archaeological findings of the Neolithic and Iron Age periods.
Peat bogs don’t normally make the top lists of things to see and do while in Ireland, but they are a window into the past. Another attraction in Ireland is Sean’s Bar – it is reputed to be the oldest pub in Europe having been established in 900 AD.
The Development Of The Peat Bogs Of Ireland
Bogs are one of the things that characterize Ireland. They cover around 1,200,000 hectares or around a sixth of the island. Only Finland has more bogs relative to its size than Ireland in Europe.
There are two very distinctive types of bogs blanket bogs and raised bogs.
1.Blanket Bogs: Expensive And Generally Form In Wet or Upland Areas 2. Raised Bogs: Smaller And Generally Form In Lowland Areas
Blanket bogs are found wherever there is high rainfall and in Ireland, that’s particularly in the west. They are by far the largest in Ireland and have formed because of human interaction.
After the Ice Age, Ireland was slowly colonized and covered with forests and by 4000 BC Ireland was almost entirely forested. Then the Neolithic Age farmers came and started to clear the land to build farms. First, they cleared the upland areas because forests were not so thick there. But without the trees, the nutrients in the soil became washing out (or leached). The soil became more acidic and the land became waterlogged.
By the Bronze Age around 500 BC, farmers were clearing the lower lands as the uplands were no longer usable. But the debris did not decompose and a layer of peat began to build up. The peat also buried the remains of the Neolithic farms.
By the Norman era around 1,000 AD, the lowlands were almost completely devoid of forests and blanket bogs were well established.
Preserved Kings, Sacrifices, And Artifacts In The Bogs
Go to the National Museum of Ireland and one will see the Kingship and Sacrifice exhibit. It is the result of findings from the museum’s Bog Bodies Research Project. The project was initiated following the discovery of two Iron Age bog bodies at Oldcroghan, Co. Offaly, and Clonycavan, Co. Meath.
The remains of these bodies were dated to between 40 BC and 200 BC and were notable for being in a good state of preservation. The museum offers exhibits based on the theory that human sacrifice and the deposition of the victims in bogs along tribal boundaries are related to sovereignty and kingship rituals during the Iron Age.
Preserved Bog Bodies: Gallagh Man (Co. Galway) Baronstown West Man (Co. Kildare)
Some exhibits include preserved bodies, royal regalia, weapons, boundary markers, horse trappings, and other artefacts. The exhibits also delve into what has been discovered in other Iron Age bogs in Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, and England.
One can also learn about Cashel Man. He was found naked in at least two meters of peat with his head, neck, and left arm removed by the milling machine.
Cashel Man:
Age: 20-25 Years Oldest: One Of the Oldest Bog Bodies In Europe Date: 2,000 BC
He was a young adult male and the wounds on his body suggest he had been the victim of human sacrifice (there were injuries on the lower back and a broken arm). Although the cause of death was not possible to know because of the damage from the milling machine.
It is known that in the past the ritual killing of young men took place in ancient Ireland.
Céide Fields – Neolithic Farms
“Beneath the wild boglands of north Mayo lies a system of fields, dwelling areas and megalithic tombs which together make up the most extensive Stone Age monument in the world.”
Heritage Ireland
The Céide Fields is an archaeological site in the west of Ireland and is described as the most extensive Neolithic site in Ireland. It has the oldest known field system anywhere in the world and is thought to be around 5,500 years old.
Today it is on UNESCO’s tentative list to be World Heritage-listed and was originally discovered in the 1930s.
It wasn’t for another 40 years that they were studied archaeologically. What was discovered under the peat bog was a complex of fields, houses, and megalithic tombs concealed by the growth of blanket bogs over the course of many centuries.
The people who lived there were farmers who cleared large areas of forest to farm.
As of the time of writing the site is closed to the public because of ongoing work, check their website for current information.
Caral (also referred to as Caral-Supe) is a stunning ancient city located in the Supe Valley of Peru. Today travellers can visit the Caral Ruins, which are believed to be the remains of one of the oldest cities in the Americas.
Caral is the oldest civilization in the Americas.
Rewind time and the city of Caral was once a thriving metropolis for its local residents around the same time that the Egyptian pyramids were being built! Interestingly, Caral remains relatively unknown on an international level.
The ancient city of Caral
Caral: A brief history
The Caral Ruins have located about 200 km (125 miles) north of Lima in Peru. Paul Kosok, American history and government professor were one of the first to study Caral in 1948. At the time, his findings were largely ignored due to the fact that he didn’t find any typical and sought after Andean artefacts on site. Peruvian anthropologist and archaeologist, Ruth Shady, later took over the exploration of this desert city of pyramids.
The evidence collected suggests that Caral was inhabited some 5,000 years ago, between 2600 and 2000 BCE (Before the Common Era, or Before Christ). For comparative purposes, the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt was built around 2600 BCE.
The remains of Caral are well preserved
Excavators described Caral as the oldest American urban centre, but this claim to fame was later challenged when older ancient sites were found close by. Caral is however the largest known ancient city in the Andean region. Researchers believe that the city may have been an urban design model that was later adopted by various Andean civilizations over the course of the next millennia. In this respect, the discovery of Caral answers questions about the development of other early cities built after Caral and the origins of civilization in the Andes.
The size of Caral – think BIG
Caral is approximately 60 hectares in size and was home to 3,000 inhabitants. This makes Caral one of the biggest Norte Chico sites: the Norte Chico civilization was a complex pre-Colombian society encompassing over 30 population centres in what is now known as the Norte Chico region of the north-central Peruvian coast.
Caral is only one of a total of 19 settlements found in the Supe Valley. The remains of the Caral urban complex spreads out more than 150 acres (607,000 ms) and include residential buildings, temples and plazas. The most stunning findings at Caral include the Main Pyramid, the Amphitheater Pyramid, and the residential Quarters of the Elite. The main pyramid at Caral is 60 ft (18 m) tall and almost as large as 4 football fields! Ruth Shady believes that Caral was the main focus of the civilization living in the Supe Valley.
Stairs leading up to a temple excavated at Caral
What sets Caral apart?
What sets Caral apart is not just its size, but also its age. Carbon dating of various organic materials found throughout the site indicates that the pyramids are approximately 5,000 years old!
These visitors admire the beautiful amphitheatre at Caral
Interestingly, the people that lived in Caral were dedicated to buildings with civic intensity, and dedication to construction improvements and additions, and the city saw periods of great change. They were always making and remaking the stone-and-mortar walls, plazas, and residences; building new floors; painting and repainting surfaces; breaking down walls, and making new ones. They were truly one of the first civilizations that we’re focused on making home improvements.
The artefacts: Love, not war
No weapons, battlements or mutilated bodies were found during the Caral excavations. This crucial evidence lead anthropologist Ruth Shady’s research to suggest that this was a peaceful society based on commerce and pleasure.
When excavating one of the pyramids, flutes made from pelican and condor bones were found along with cornetts made from llama and deer bones. The stunning remains of a child found wrapped and buried with a stone bead necklace were also discovered.
Another artefact found at Caral was a quipu. The quipu is a record-keeping system in which knots are tied on a rope. According to Gary Urton, a quipu was used in a binary manner, to record both phonological and logographic data. The Incas later used and perfected this system, providing further proof that the Caral civilization culture impacted the Inca Empire.
An Inca quipu that is on display in Lima’s Larco Museum
The fabled missing link
For many decades, archaeologists have searched for a missing link in archaeology or a “mother city”- a city that could answer questions about why and how humans became civilized. Researchers have long looked for the answer to this question in other parts of the world, such as in Egypt, China, India, and Mesopotamia (Iran). No one expected that the first signs of city life could be found in a Peruvian desert.
For many years historians believed that the fear of war was perhaps a primary motivator for people to build cities and form complex societies to protect themselves against threats. Caral however has no traces of warfare or weapons, yet the city became a thriving metropolis. This finding challenges modern ideas of the origins of cities as based on conflict.
A detailed map of Caral
Ruth Shady explained that Caral was home to a gentle society: “This great civilization was based on trade in cotton. Caral made the cotton for the nets, which were sold to the fishermen living near the coast. Caral became a booming trading centre and the trade spread.”
Caral was built on the basis of trade, not bloodshed. Warfare actually emerged way later in history. And this is what the finding of Caral as a “mother city” indicates: civilizations are not born in conflict – they are born in peace. It is time to re-think the emergence of civilization!
After almost 10 years of excavation, the great proportions of this grand site are now emerging in Caral, but much work remains to be done. When standing in the main plaza with pyramids surrounding you on every side, the power of a long-lost ancient city is felt. Discoveries made in the area continue to help answer the question: how and why did humans become civilized?
What Ancient DNA Reveals About Life in Africa 20,000 Years Ago
Kondoa Irangi rock art in present-day Tanzania features the cultural expressions of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists over a 2,000-year span.
Every person alive on the planet today is descended from people who lived as hunter-gatherers in Africa. The continent is the cradle of human origins and ingenuity, and with each new fossil and archaeological discovery, we learn more about our shared African past. Such research tends to focus on when our species, Homo sapiens, spread out to other landmasses 80,000–60,000 years ago. But what happened in Africa after that, and why don’t we know more about the people who remained?
Our new study, conducted by an interdisciplinary team of 44 researchers based in 12 countries, helps answer these questions. By sequencing and analyzing ancient DNA (aDNA) from people who lived as long ago as 18,000 years, we roughly doubled the age of sequenced aDNA from sub-Saharan Africa. And this genetic information helps anthropologists like us understand more about how modern humans were moving and mingling in Africa long ago.
TRACING OUR HUMAN PAST IN AFRICA
Beginning about 300,000 years ago, people in Africa who looked like us—the earliest anatomically modern humans—also started behaving in ways that seem very human. They made new kinds of stone tools and began transporting raw materials up to 250 miles, likely through trade networks. By 140,000–120,000 years ago, people made clothing from animal skins and began to decorate themselves with pierced marine shell beads.
While early innovations appeared in a patchwork fashion, a more widespread shift happened around 50,000 years ago—around the same time that people started moving into places as distant as Australia. New types of stone and bone tools became common, and people began fashioning and exchanging ostrich eggshell beads. And while most rock art in Africa is undated and badly weathered, an increase in ochre pigment at archaeological sites hints at an explosion of art.
Ostrich eggshell beads were popular trade items, tracing the reach of ancient social networks.
What caused this shift, known as the Later Stone Age transition, has been a longstanding archaeological mystery. Why would certain tools and behaviours, which up until that point had appeared in a piecemeal way across Africa, suddenly become widespread? Did it have something to do with changes in the number of people or how they interacted?
THE CHALLENGE OF ACCESSING THE DEEP PAST
Archaeologists reconstruct human behaviour in the past mainly through things people left behind—remains of their meals, tools, ornaments, and sometimes even their bodies. These records may accumulate over thousands of years, creating views of daily livelihoods that are really averaged over long periods of time. However, it’s hard to study ancient demography, or how populations changed, from the archaeological record alone.
This is where DNA can help. When combined with evidence from archaeology, linguistics, and oral and written history, scientists can piece together how people moved and interacted based on which groups share genetic similarities.
But DNA from living people can’t tell the whole story. African populations have been transformed over the past 5,000 years by the spread of herding and farming, the development of cities, ancient pandemics, and the ravages of colonialism and slavery. These processes caused some lineages to vanish and brought others together, forming new populations. Using present-day DNA to reconstruct ancient genetic landscapes is like reading a letter that was left out in the rain: Some words are there but blurred, and some are gone completely. Researchers need ancient DNA from archaeological human remains to explore human diversity in different places and times, and to understand what factors shaped it.
Unfortunately, aDNA from Africa is particularly hard to recover because the continent straddles the equator and heat and humidity degrade DNA. While the oldest aDNA from Eurasia is roughly 400,000 years old, all sequences from sub-Saharan Africa to date have been younger than around 9,000 years.
BREAKING THE “TROPICAL CEILING”
Because each person carries genetic legacies inherited from generations of their ancestors, our team was able to use DNA from individuals who lived between 18,000–and 400 years ago to explore how people interacted as far back as the last 80,000–50,000 years. This allowed us, for the first time, to test whether demographic change played a role in the Later Stone Age transition.
Our team sequenced aDNA from six individuals buried in what are now Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia. We compared these sequences to previously studied aDNA from 28 individuals buried at sites stretching from Cameroon to Ethiopia and down to South Africa. We also generated new and improved DNA data for 15 of these people, trying to extract as much information as possible from the small handful of ancient African individuals whose DNA is preserved well enough to study.
Genetic data reveals people’s movements and engagements across the Eastern African Rift Valley during the ice ages.
This created the largest genetic dataset so far for studying the population history of ancient African foragers—people who hunted, gathered, or fished. We used it to explore population structures that existed prior to the sweeping changes of the past few thousand years.
DNA WEIGHS IN ON A LONGSTANDING DEBATE
We found that people did in fact change how they moved and interacted around the Later Stone Age transition. Despite being separated by thousands of miles and years, all the ancient individuals in this study were descended from the same three populations related to ancient and present-day Eastern, Southern, and Central Africans. The presence of Eastern African ancestry as far south as Zambia, and Southern African ancestry as far north as Kenya, indicate that people were moving long distances and having children with people located far away from where they were born. The only way this population structure could have emerged is if people were moving long distances over many millennia.
Additionally, our research showed that almost all ancient Eastern Africans shared an unexpectedly high number of genetic variations with hunter-gatherers who today live in Central African rainforests, making ancient Eastern Africa truly a genetic melting pot. We could tell that this mixing and moving happened about 50,000 years ago when there was a major split in Central African forager populations.
We don’t know why people began “living locally” again. Changing environments as the last ice age peaked and waned between about 26,000 and 11,500 years ago may have made it more economical to forage closer to home, or perhaps elaborate exchange networks reduced the need for people to travel with objects. We also noted that the individuals in our study were genetically most like only their closest geographic neighbours. This tells us that around 20,000 years ago, the foragers in some African regions were almost exclusively finding their partners locally. This practice must have been extremely strong and persisted for a very long time, as our results show that some groups remained genetically independent of their neighbours over several thousand years. It was especially clear in Malawi and Zambia, where the only close relationships we detected were between people buried around the same time at the same sites.
Alternatively, new group identities may have emerged, restructuring marriage rules. If so, we would expect to see artefacts and other traditions, like rock art, diversify, with specific types clumped into different regions. Indeed, this is exactly what archaeologists find—a trend known as regionalization. Now we know that this phenomenon not only affected cultural traditions, but also the flow of genes.
NEW DATA, NEW QUESTIONS
As always, aDNA research raises as many questions as answers. Finding Central African ancestry throughout Eastern and Southern Africa prompts anthropologists to reconsider how interconnected these regions were in the distant past. This is important because Central Africa has remained archaeologically understudied, in part because of political, economic, and logistical challenges that make research there difficult.
Additionally, while genetic evidence supports a major demographic transition in Africa 50,000 years ago, we still don’t know the key drivers. Determining what triggered the Later Stone Age transition will require closer examination of regional environmental, archaeological, and genetic records to understand how this process unfolded across sub-Saharan Africa.
Finally, this study is a stark reminder that researchers still have much to learn from ancient individuals and artefacts held in African museums, and highlights the critical role of the curators who steward these collections. While some human remains in this study were recovered within the past decade, others have been in museums for a half-century.
Even though technological advances are pushing back the time limits for aDNA, it is important to remember that scientists have only just begun to understand human diversity in Africa, past and present.
Ancient DNA reveals surprises about how early Africans lived, travelled and interacted
A new analysis of human remains that were buried in African archaeological sites has produced the earliest DNA from the continent, telling a fascinating tale of how early humans lived, travelled and even found their significant others.
An interdisciplinary team of 44 researchers outlined its findings in “Ancient DNA reveals deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers.” The paper was published today in Nature and reports findings from ancient DNA from six individuals buried in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia who lived between 18,000 and 5,000 years ago.
“This more than doubles the antiquity of reported ancient DNA data from sub-Saharan Africa,” said David Reich, a professor at Harvard University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute whose lab generated the data in the paper. “The study is particularly exciting as a truly equal collaboration of archaeologists and geneticists.”
The study also reanalyzed published data from 28 individuals buried at sites across the continent, generating new and improved data for 15 of them. The result was an unprecedented dataset of DNA from ancient African foragers — people who hunted, gathered or fished.
Their genetic legacy is difficult to reconstruct from present-day people because of the many population movements and mixtures that have occurred in the last few thousand years.
Thanks to this data, the researchers were able to outline major demographic shifts that took place between about 80,000 and 20,000 years ago. As far back as about 50,000 years ago, people from different regions of the continent moved and settled in other areas and developed alliances and networks over longer distances to trade, share information and even find reproductive partners. This social network helped them survive and thrive, the researchers wrote.
Elizabeth Sawchuk, an author of the study who is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta and a research assistant professor at Stony Brook University, said a dramatic cultural change took place during this timeframe, as beads, pigments and other symbolic art became common across Africa. Researchers long assumed that major changes in the archaeological record about 50,000 years ago reflected a shift in social networks and maybe even changes in population size. However, such hypotheses have remained difficult to test.
Kondoa Irangi rock art in present-day Tanzania features the cultural expressions of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists over a 2,000-year span.
“We’ve never been able to directly explore these proposed demographic shifts, until now,” she said. “It has been difficult to reconstruct events in our deeper past using the DNA of people living today, and artefacts like stone tools and beads can’t tell us the whole story. Ancient DNA provides direct insight into the people themselves, which was the missing part of the puzzle.”
Mary Prendergast, an author of the paper and associate professor of anthropology at Rice University, said there are arguments that the development and expansion of long-distance trade networks around this time helped humans weather the last Ice Age.
“Humans began relying on each other in new ways,” she said. “And this creativity and innovation might be what allowed people to thrive.”
The researchers were also able to demonstrate that by about 20,000 years ago, people had stopped moving around so much.
“Maybe it was because by that point, previously established social networks allowed for the flow of information and technologies without people having to move,” Sawchuk said.
Prendergast said the study provides a better understanding of how people moved and mingled in this part of Africa. Previously, the earliest African DNA came from what is now Morocco — but the individuals in this study lived as far from there as Bangladesh is from Norway, she noted.
“Our genetic study confirms an archaeological pattern of more local behaviour in eastern Africa over time,” said Jessica Thompson, an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale University, and author of the study and one of the researchers who uncovered the remains. “At first people found reproductive partners from wide geographic and cultural pools. Later, they prioritized partners who lived closer, and who were potentially more culturally similar.”
The research team included scholars from Canada, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, the United States, Zambia and many other countries. Critical contributions to the study came from curators and co-authors at African museums who are responsible for protecting and preserving the remains.
Potiphar Kaliba, director of research at the Malawi Department of Museums and Monuments and an author of the study, noted that some of the skeletons sampled for the study were excavated a half-century ago, yet their DNA is preserved despite hot and humid climates in the tropics.
“This work shows why it’s so important to invest in the stewardship of human remains and archaeological artefacts in African museums,” Kaliba said.
The work also helps address global imbalances in research, Prendergast said.
“There are around 30 times more published ancient DNA sequences from Europe than from Africa,” she said. “Given that Africa harbours the greatest human genetic diversity on the planet, we have much more to learn.”
“By associating archaeological artefacts with ancient DNA, the researchers have created a remarkable framework for exploring the prehistory of humans in Africa,” said Archaeology and Archaeometry program director John Yellen of the U.S. National Science Foundation, one of the funders behind this project. “This insight is charting a new way forward to understanding humanity and our complex shared history.”
Ancient Bowl From Tibet Shows Alexander the Great – the Jewish Version
An ancient silver bowl with Greek-style reliefs found in Tibet decades ago does not show scenes from Homer’s “Iliad,” as has been postulated. Rather, the bowl shows Alexander the Great and his servants, based on a Jewish version of the “Alexander Romance” dating to the fifth or sixth century C.E. that had been previously unknown, according to a new paper published in the Bulletin of the Asia Institute.
Alexander himself is shown three times on this bowl: once picking fruit from the Tree of Life, and twice drinking from the Fountain of Life, claim authors Anca Dan of CNRS, University Paris Sciences & Letters, and Frantz Grenet of the College de France.
The bowl also has the earliest known depiction in the Far East of the terrestrial Paradise, the two scholars say in their paper. Their innovative view of the bowl’s Jewish origin is based, among other things, on the fact that the nude figure they believe represents Alexander the Great, shown drinking the Water of Life and picking the frankincense from the Tree of Life – is circumcised, which was not a habit known among the Macedonians.
The bowl from Tibet, was probably made or ordered by a Jewish merchant on the Silk Road
If Dan and Grenet are right about their interpretation of the dish’s Jewish origin, then the bowl indicates that Jews involved in long-distance trade along the Silk Road played a role in the evolution of the Alexander legends in the centuries following the king’s death. In short, this one wee bowl indicates Jewish influence in medieval Central Asia (between northern India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan) centuries before the Arabic conquest.
Medieval fanfic
The earliest versions of the Alexander Romance – accounts of real and imagined exploits of the powerful ruler of ancient Macedonia – which were written in Greek, Latin, Armenian and Syriac, date to the third century C.E. and relate to the boy king’s military campaign that began in his homeland and reached as far as India. The main text of the Romance was wrongly ascribed to Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew and Alexander’s official historian. Two extant texts describe the Jewish legend that Alexander the Great arrived at the Garden of Eden. The first is a passage in Aramaic in the Babylonian Talmud, written sometime in the sixth century C.E. It relates that Alexander washed his face in the Water of Life and arrived at the Gate of the Lord, through which only the righteous may enter, based on Psalm 118:20: “He ascended along the length of the entire spring until he reached the entrance of the Garden of Eden. He raised a loud voice, calling out: ‘Open the gate for me!’” (Tamid 32b, Babylonian Talmud).
The second, Sefer Toldot Alexandros ha-Makdoni (the history of Alexander the Macedonian), is part of a collection of Hebrew texts compiled by Eleazar of Worms (now in Germany) in roughly 1325, which is preserved in a manuscript in Oxford. It describes how Alexander was circumcised by his doctors so that he could enter the Garden of Eden as a righteous person. The images on the bowl seem to combine elements from both the Tamid and the Sefer Toldot Alexandros ha-Makdoni. If so, they indicate that the Jews of Central Asia had developed their version of Alexander’s accession to Paradise before the Islamic conquest, Dan and Grenet contend.
Alexander, nude, holding a long-necked flask and drinking bowl
In the Garden of Eden
The interior of the bowl is smooth, as befits practical tableware. The exterior bears a dense riot of imagery done in reliefs that project up to 9 millimetres above the silver surface, the authors explain. It shows six male figures. According to Dan and Grenet, Alexander himself is shown three times, once picking fruit from the Tree of Life, and twice drinking from the Fountain of Life. The researchers recognize two Indian carriers of the Water of Life, and a priest playing on an Indian drum with strings (dhol).
Between each man is a gnarled tree with a snake climbing up toward a nest. In each nest the birds are at a different stage of life: In one there are eggs, in another, a bird is feeding chicks, and finally, one nest shown empty could indicate that the serpent ate them. Between the two figures of Alexander picking fruit from the Tree of Life and drinking from the Fountain of Life, however, the birds are nesting in flourishing trees, as in an eternal spring, the authors explain. As for the Jewish bent of the Alexander depiction, the state of his penis is unmistakable even though the bowl is very small: 6.5 centimetres in height, 21 centimetres in rim diameter and with a capacity of 120 cubic centimetres, which is about half a cup. Its weight corresponds to 250 drachms, in keeping with standard measurements used in ancient Bactria and Sogdiana (4.43 to 4.55 grams).
Tree of Life with snake approaching bird on a nest; images of Alexander are on both sides of the tree
Priest playing the drum
Clearly, the absence of the monarch’s foreskin was of importance, which argues that the artisan or maybe the commissioner of the art was Jewish. The ancient Greeks did depict naked young men, frequently, but did not circumcise. Neither did Macedonians, or the Indians or Iranians conquered by the Macedonians, Dan observes.
Speaking of prohibitions, Jews aren’t supposed to show graven images and nudity isn’t a hallmark of Jewish art. The bowl may have been commissioned by a Hellenized Jew living in central Asia who adored Alexander but did not necessarily shrink at such depictions, the researcher suggests.
There are precedents of nudity in ancient Jewish art: for example, the synagogue of Dura Europos, a city that existed in Syria from 300 B.C.E. to the year 256 C.E., has frescoes showing people dressed to the nines but also a nude woman in the water – a maid or Pharaoh’s daughter herself – rescuing baby Moses.
Moses was found in the river. Fresco from Dura Europos synagogue
Back to the bowl. Even if it was commissioned by a Jew, why would the conqueror have been shown thus trimmed? Because, according to the Jewish version of his “Romance” (from which only medieval versions survive), he had to be in order to visit the Garden of Eden, albeit briefly. The bowl, actually made of a silver alloy with a high concentration of copper, had been obtained in Lhasa half a century ago by Dr David Snellgrove, a professor of Tibetan Buddhist studies at the SOAS University of London, the authors say. The reinterpretation of it by Dan and Grenet was undertaken based on photographs of the bowl, which today belongs to a private owner in Japan who displays it in the Ancient Orient Museum in Tokyo.
Closeup of Alexander the Great’s penis on the Tibetan silver bowl: That is circumcised
Alexander in the altogether
Alexander the Great died young, aged just 32, but left a giant Hellenistic mark on culture wherever he went, which includes Judea. En route to conquering his nemesis Persia, the Macedonian forces he led rolled over Judea and seized control of Jerusalem itself in the year 332 B.C. Centuries later, in the first century C.E., historian Flavius Josephus was aware of (and wrote about) Alexander’s alleged visit to Jerusalem and his meeting with the priests (“Antiquities of the Jews,” 11.317-345). Never mind the veracity of the account; clearly, Alexander was intimately involved with the ancient Jewish world. He isn’t mentioned by name in the Bible though some choose to believe that the prophet Daniel foresaw him and the fate of his Macedonian empire. But accounts of Alexander’s life, and traditions and legends about the young king, appear time and again in other Hebrew literature. He appears by name in the First Book of the Maccabees – in fact, the first chapters are all about this industrious Macedonian. That first book was apparently written in Hebrew (going by its use of idiom) over 2,100 years ago, after the rise of the Hasmonean kingdom, a century and a half after Alexander’s death. The original version has been lost and all that remains is a Greek translation in the Septuagint that tells how Alexander conquered Judea and later, how his empire was shattered by his death.
Servant bearing a vessel
Alexander holding frankincense
Before addressing his seemingly Jewish trait, why should one think it’s Alexander at all (in three of the six cases)? Because the image on the bowl is of a young man whose hairdo complies with the classical canon, short and abundant, and is done in his specific hairstyle: two curls are flipped upward, away from the forehead, recalling a lion’s mane, Dan explains.
“Alexander was probably born when the Sun was in Leo. The lion was a symbol of kingship and Macedonian kings were showing themselves hunting the lion, as heirs of Heracles, the Greek hero who fought the Nemean lion,” she adds.
His depiction in the nude fits with the Greek version of the Romance, which has the emperor consulting with the Oracle of the Sun and Moon, at the end of the Earth, for which purpose nudity was de rigueur. “The bare Alexander has only a royal mantle or a scarf draped over his shoulder, a symbol of royalty in the Sassanian culture of Iran, which continued to influence Central Asia after the Hunnic invasions, in the 5th century C.E.,” Dan explains. The scarfed Alexander holds a long-necked flask in one hand, of a type known from Syria and Egypt in the 3rd to 4th centuries C.E. (so the silver bowl couldn’t date to before that, Dan argues). Such flasks were used to hold small amounts of precious liquid and here the researchers think the flask is supposed to hold the Water of Life, in keeping with the Jewish version of the Alexander legend – it is only in the Jewish version that the king himself, as opposed to his cook or other servants, attains the Water of Life.
Regarding the trees, Dan and Grenet suspect they’re frankincense-secreting trees of Boswellia serrata that grow in the Indus Valley, which Alexander partly conquered. Possibly the bowl-maker or person who commissioned it was involved in the incense trade. The Greek and Latin versions of the Alexander Romance describe his visit to a sacred Indian wood “full of frankincense and opobalsamum.”
Alexander with a handful of frankincense: The state of his member is very clear
In the trees are birds who sometimes escape the snake and sometimes don’t, images that may depict the fight between good and evil, Dan suggests. She and Grenet reject the explanation published in 1973 by Philip Denwood that the bowl represents an episode of Homer’s life, in which a snake that ascended a plane tree near Artemis’ sanctuary in Aulis ate eight chicks and their mother, and was then turned to stone, presaging the nine years of war between Greeks and Trojans.
The tree isn’t a plane tree, the authors point out, and the bowl doesn’t show eight chicks and a mother bird. None of the characters mentioned in the “Iliad” and nothing from the Greek temple in Aulis is depicted in this bowl.
Pseudo-letters to his mother
The Alexander Romance is comprised of various texts which were rewritten, revised, reinvented, rehashed, changed, and generally evolved throughout antiquity and Middle Ages. The scenes on the bowl could plausibly be based on two apocryphal letters ostensibly written by Alexander the Great that appear in a 5th-century Greek version of the Romance: one where he ostensibly tells his mother Olympias and his teacher Aristotle about his discovery of the Fountain of Life in the Land of Darkness and of the Blessed; and one about gathering aromatic plants (frankincense) around the Oracle of the Sun and the Moon, at the end of his expedition, as related in the pseudo-missive “Letter about the Marvels of India.”
And there you have it. A beautiful young man with classic artistic hallmarks of the young conqueror plus a very clearly circumcised penis, among incense trees, attended by servants. If Dan and Grenet are right about the identification of the iconic man on the bowl and about its origin, then this bowl – a “unique visual representation” of Alexander’s legend in the Jewish context – is also the earliest attestation of the Alexander Romance in the Indo-Iranian world, Grenet says.
The bowl was manufactured at the time of the Sassanian (aka Neo-Persian) Empire, which ruled from the year 224 to 651 C.E, in its eastern regions, which were already dominated by the Huns called “Hephtalites” who occupied Central Asia between 457 and 565 C.E. And if all this is correct then, Dan and Grenet suggest, not only ancient Greek and Roman and Indo-Iranian traditions but Jewish traditions too may have contributed to the awe we feel for Alexander to this very day, as well as to the image of Paradise in various cultures – even among the most eastward Zoroastrians. The base of the bowl is also interesting, in showing six fish in three pairs of two, possibly swimming in the paradisiac Fountain of Life after being resurrected following desiccation for consumption. The frankincense tree recalls the Tree of Life, with its serpent, and the two Alexanders on each side of the tree may correspond to the stereotypical image of Adam and Eve in Eden in Judeo-Christian representations as of the third and fourth century onward; or they may correspond with Zoroastrian representations of a couple in Heaven.
Alexander the Great in the Temple of Jerusalem, Sebastiano Conca (1680–1764)
What about the Jewish prohibition on making graven images? Well, iconoclasm in Late Antiquity may not have been all it’s been thought to be, Grenet and Dan postulate. Depicting the king as a circumcised man allowed to visit the glory of Paradise does not smack of worship per se, but may be indicative of the Jewish appropriation of the figure of Alexander as one of “the righteous”: Jewish tradition goes so far as to suggest that the great conqueror, upon encountering the high priest of the Jews in Jerusalem, bowed before him. It bears adding that to this day some Jews name their children Alexander but nary a one is named, for instance, Ahasuerus.
Possibly, then, living at some point in the 5th century or early 6th, in the Hephthalite Empire that ruled central Asia at the time, was a well-to-do Jew – there were many Jews in that region. This one had become imbued with Hellenic culture, Dan and Grenet sum up; and he wished to salute Alexander, protector of his religion and his people in the form of this beautiful bowl showing stories of the legends of the young king, cut in the only way he could possibly have entered Paradise as the story says.
A tsunami wiped out ancient communities in the Atacama Desert 3,800 years ago
A recent study of geological deposits and archaeological remains has identified a massive earthquake and tsunami that wiped out communities along the coastline of Chile’s the Atacama Desert around 3,800 years ago. Studying the ancient disaster—and people’s responses to it—could help with modern hazard planning along the seismically active coast.
A long-forgotten disaster
Broken walls and toppled stones reveal the calamity that struck Zapatero, an ancient community in what’s now northern Chile, about 4,000 years ago. The people who lived along the coast of the Atacama Desert 5,700 to 4,000 years ago built villages of small stone houses atop massive piles of shells (Zapatero’s shell-filled midden is two meters deep and spans six square kilometres). Usually, these houses stood adjacent to each other, opening onto inner patios. People buried their dead beneath the houses’ floors. The cement floors were made from algae ash, seawater, and shells—the same material that held the stone walls together.
But stones and mortar failed in the face of the ocean’s power. One house at Zapatero stands in ruins, with the stones from its walls toppled inland as if struck by a giant wave. Another lies with its stones scattered back toward the sea, in exactly the pattern you’d expect from “strong currents associated with tsunami backwash,” University of Chile archaeologist Diego Salazar and his colleagues say. In a third house, the floors are covered in a layer of washed-in sand laden with the remains of marine algae and echinoderm spines, mingled with chunks of rock, shells, and sediment ripped up from the ground.
Elsewhere on the Zapatero midden, Salazar and his colleagues found similar layers of sand and ripped-up ground left behind by an ancient tsunami, along with channels gouged out by the tsunami’s strong, sudden current. When the archaeologists radiocarbon-dated shells from these layers, they found that many of the shells were actually older than the ones in undisturbed layers underneath—evidence that something had churned up the ground and ripped these older shells from their resting places to deposit them on the surface.
The same story is written in ruins and sediment at other archaeological sites along a several-hundred-kilometre stretch of the Atacama coastline. In recent surveys, Salazar and his colleagues also found geological evidence of an earthquake and tsunami that struck the region: layers of sandy, shell-laden seafloor sediment lifted several meters above sea level by seismic upheaval. The researchers radiocarbon-dated shells in these uplifted chunks of ancient coastline, along with shells and charcoal in the layers just above and below the tsunami deposits, and narrowed the date of the ancient disaster to around 3,800 years ago, give or take a century or two.
Combined, the geological and archaeological evidence points to a natural disaster of epic proportions: a rupture along a 1,000-kilometer stretch of the fault system where the Nazca Plate is slowly sliding under the South American Plate. The estimated magnitude 9.5 megathrust earthquake would have shoved parts of the coastline upward and triggered a tsunami 19 to 20 meters high along a huge stretch of the Chilean coast (and all the way across the Pacific in New Zealand, where geologists have also found deposits from a tsunami of about the same age).
The combined earthquake and tsunami struck a devastating blow for ancient people who lived close to the Pacific Ocean with a hyperarid desert at their backs. Archaeological evidence reveals that people abandoned the coast for centuries after the disaster.
Abandoned villages and scattered camps
The Atacama Desert is a hard place to live. It’s the driest desert in the world outside Antarctica, with less than 1 millimetre of rain a year. But people have lived—and thrived—here for at least 12,000 years. In part, they’ve pulled it off by turning to the sea.
Just offshore, the Humboldt Current wells up with nutrient-rich water, fueling a rich, teeming coastal ecosystem that’s still one of the world’s most productive fisheries. Thanks to the long, slow tectonic collision between the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate, the region is also fraught with seismic hazards. But for millennia, people traded that sporadic, long-term risk for the riches of the ocean. They left behind archaeological evidence of their presence and their adaptations to life in this unique environment.
But in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami 3,800 years ago, people deserted the settlements of shell middens and stone houses that dotted the Atacama coast. The sea has always been vital to life in the Atacama, but it’s clear that, for centuries, no one wanted to live too close.
Above the layers of sand and debris from the waves, mixed with toppled walls, there’s little or no trace of human activity at sites like Zapatero. The only evidence speaks of very short visits: small hearths and a sparse scattering of artefacts lying atop flood debris and broken stone walls. When people had to return to the ruins of their ancestors, they clearly didn’t want to stay long.
Archaeologists can see the wariness in the abandoned buildings and short-lived camps at places like Zapatero, but they can also read it in larger-scale changes that span the whole north Chilean coast. In one 100-kilometer stretch near Taltal, an area of northern Chile rich in archaeological sites, a survey revealed a 65 per cent decrease in the number of settlements after around 3,800 years ago.
Northeast view of the Zapatero archaeological in the Taltal region of northern Chile.
That date marks not only the estimated arrival of the tsunami, but the boundary between two archaeologically distinct cultures, Archaic IV (5,700 to 4,000 years ago) and Archaic V. After that boundary, settlements are scarcer, and both homes and cemeteries tend to be farther inland and on higher ground. Close to shore, what settlements there are get smaller, with fewer artifacts left buried and scattered.
Ancient mine gets the shaft
Even very important resources, like the iron oxide mine at San Ramón, were abandoned.
“Iron oxide was used as a pigment for several reasons, including the realization of pictures on stones that can be found in several sites along this region of the coastal Atacama Desert,” University of Chile geologist Gabriel Easton, a co-author of the recent study, tells Ars. These pigments appear to have been important for local communities and were involved in their rites and ceremonies.
A 3 centimetre-wide vertical crack in the wall of the mine probably dates to the earthquake 3,800 years ago, and after that, work here seems to have stopped. “The San Ramón 15 archaeological site constitutes one of the most ancient [pieces of] evidence of mining activity in the Americas, exploited since 12,000 years ago, and abandoned after around 4,000 years ago, most possibly because of the effects caused by the earthquake in the region,” Easton tells Ars.
But this is still a seismically active zone, and the risk of a major earthquake or tsunami is real. That’s why Salazar and his colleagues say the 3,800-year-old disaster they’ve revealed is important not just to our understanding of the past but our plans for the future. Most of the hazard assessments for coastal northern Chile are based on historical data that goes back just a few centuries, but the fault system in the region runs on a much larger temporal scale. Data about ancient quakes and tsunamis like the one that reshaped society here 3,800 years ago could offer a longer-term perspective to hazard planners.
Unfortunately, the Indigenous people who still live in the Atacama, including the Changos (recently recognized by the Chilean government after years of effort) lost much of their history, traditional culture, and lore to the ravages of European conquest, epidemics, and centuries of marginalization. But learning how their ancestors responded and adapted could help all of us prepare to face the next disaster.
According to Salazar and his colleagues, the aftermath of the ancient Atacama disaster is a reminder that resilience doesn’t mean a “return to the pre-shock state” but rather “the capacity of human communities to absorb changes… allowing for their long-term adaptation.”
Does Composition of Roman Coins Reflect Currency Crisis?
New scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii has brought fresh understanding to a financial crisis briefly mentioned by the Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero in his essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, and solved a longstanding historical debate.
Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool have analysed coins of the period and revealed a debasement of the currency far greater than historians had thought, with coins that had been pure silver before 90BC cut with up to 10 per cent copper five years later.
Dr. Ponting at the University of Liverpool said: “The Romans had been used to extremely fine silver coinage, so they may well have lost confidence in the denarius when it ceased to be pure. The precise level of debasement might have been less important to contemporaries than the mere realisation that the coin was adulterated and no longer made of true ‘silver’.”
Professor Butcher at the University of Warwick said “The discovery of this significant decrease in the value of the denarius has shed new light on Cicero’s hints of a currency crisis in 86BC. Historians have long debated what the statesman and scholar meant when he wrote “the coinage was being tossed around so that no one was able to know what he had.” (De Officiis, 3:80) and we believe we have now solved this puzzle.”
The reference is part of an anecdote describing self-serving behaviour by Marius Gratidianus, who took credit for a proposal for currency reform worked out jointly by the tribunes and the college of praetors and became hugely popular with the public as a result.
But what was the cause of the coinage being ‘tossed about, and what were the solutions for which Gratidianus took credit?
Rome and the Coinages of the Mediterranean 200 BCE – 64 CE, a five-year research project funded by the ERC aims to increase our understanding of the economies of classical Rome and other Mediterranean states by analysing the composition of their coins and cross-referencing the findings with the historical record.
The research team includes Professor Kevin Butcher at the University of Warwick, Dr Matthew Ponting at the University of Liverpool, and Dr Adrian Hillier at ISIS Neutron and Muon Facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
Dr Ponting said: “Our minimally invasive sampling technique used to take samples from these important coins has revealed a significant decline in the value of the denarius – from being a pure silver coin, the denarius first dropped to under 95% fine, and then it fell again to 90%, with some coins as low as 86%, suggesting a severe currency crisis.”
Professor Kevin Butcher explains the context: “In the years after 91 BC, the Roman state was in danger of becoming bankrupt. The Romans were at war with their own allies in Italy, and by the conclusion of the war, in 89 BC, there was a debt crisis.
“By 86 BC there appears to have been a crisis of confidence in the currency, too. Cicero related how the Roman tribunes approached the college of praetors to resolve the crisis before Gratidianus claimed sole credit for the collective effort.
“One theory is that Gratidianus fixed the exchange rate between the silver denarius and the bronze as (which had only recently been reduced in weight). Another is that he published a method for detecting fake denarii, and so restored faith in the coinage.
“Unfortunately, Cicero’s choice of words is too obscure for historians to determine exactly what was going on. His purpose in writing about it wasn’t to illuminate monetary history; he was just using the incident as an illustration of a Roman magistrate behaving badly by taking credit for the work of others.
“It has long been thought that there was a very slight devaluation of the denarius between 89-87, but was it enough to trigger a currency crisis?”
The results of the metallurgical analysis suggest that the financial difficulties experienced by Rome in these years led to a relaxation of standards at the mint in 90 BC, with the result that the silver content of the coinage declined in two stages so that by 87 BC the coinage was deliberately alloyed with 5-10% copper.
Professor Butcher added: “This could be the meaning of Cicero’s words: that the value of the coinage was ‘tossed about’ because nobody could be certain whether the denarii they had were pure or not.
“It is all the more noteworthy that around the time Gratidianus published his edict, the standard of fineness rose sharply, reversing the debasement and restoring the denarius to a high-quality currency.
“Although the precise chronology remains uncertain, the new scientific data suggest that it could have been the main aim of Gratidianus’ edict, rather than something to do with exchange rates between silver and bronze or detecting forgeries.”
In the decades that followed, the Romans avoided debasing the denarius again, until the state once again faced huge expenses during the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar. Even then, the Roman mint did not go as far as it had in the time of Gratidianus.
These findings are part of a larger EU-funded study that aims to examine the financial and monetary strategies of Mediterranean states from c. 150 BCE to a major coinage reform in c. 64 CE by providing a detailed and reliable set of analyses of the chemical composition of all major silver coinages of that period.
WA Aboriginal site near Rio Tinto mine more than 50,000 years old, a new study reveals
An Aboriginal sacred place located 65 metres from a land bridge used by Rio Tinto to haul iron ore is at least 50,000 years old, with new research finding evidence of occupation during the height of the last ice age. The mining giant, which funded the latest excavation, has promised to ensure the site “is preserved for future generations”.
Traditional owners say the latest excavation at the Aboriginal sacred site Yirra is globally significant and needs to be protected.
Archaeological exploration at the site, known as Yirra by the Yinhawangka traditional owners, has yielded stone tools, charcoal and bone which show a 50,000-plus year habitation, making it one of the oldest sites yet found in Australia. The research is the first traditional owner-led, non-mining related, heritage excavation in Yinhawangka country, and the first time Rio Tinto has participated in such exploration.
The initiative is part of the company’s efforts to improve its relationships with traditional owner groups in the wake of the Juukan Gorge disaster, when the iron ore giant destroyed a 46,000-year-old rock shelter against the consent of Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura traditional owners.
A subsequent 2021 federal parliamentary inquiry heard that archaeological work was usually perfunctory, and only done as part of a mining company’s application to destroy Aboriginal heritage sites under Western Australia’s previous heritage laws.
Heritage experts told the inquiry that very few sites were studied in detail before the sign-off to destroy was given. The work at Yirra marks a significant departure from that practice.
Yinhawangka people told the Juukan Gorge inquiry they were concerned for the integrity of Yirra, which was recorded in the WA heritage system but was not a registered site and therefore “unprotected”. The traditional owners said Yirra was very close to a “massive” (110-metre high) land bridge that haul pack trucks used to deliver ore from the mine pit. They said large boulders had rolled onto the site and there was significant soil erosion.
Experts say the Yirra site is among the oldest known places of human habitation in Australia.
Rio Tinto’s cultural heritage management plan did not provide for any actions relating to Yirra at that time, they said.
Now there are calls for more work of this kind to be done.
“We hope that Yirra will help us tell our ancestral story to Australia and our future generations. We would still be visiting this site if it wasn’t for the mining leases,” Yinhawangka Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) chair Halloway Smirke said.
“All Pilbara groups should have this kind of scientific work done on cultural sites.
“Important sites like Yirra need to be protected, especially when they turn out to be amongst the oldest known places of human habitation in Australia,” Smirke said.
YAC heritage manager, archaeologist and anthropologist Dr Anna Fagan said the study was globally significant.
“This was the first study of its kind to be done, not for mining compliance or heritage clearance, but for Yinhawangka People and Country. The Yirra findings help overturn and reset ideas of desert presence in Australia and I’m confident in global narratives,” Dr Fagan said.
A spokesperson for Rio Tinto said the company acknowledged the significance of Yirra “and is committed to working in partnership with the Yinhawangka people” to preserve it.
“We’ve undertaken a geotechnical study to further our understanding of the surrounds of the site and implemented additional controls,” the spokesperson said, without elaborating.
YAC conducted the archaeological work in collaboration with Archae-aus heritage consultants, and researchers from the University of Western Australia. Archae-aus director Fiona Hook, who excavated the site with her husband, the late Dr Bruce Veitch, and traditional owners more than 20 years ago, said the importance of the site has now been proven beyond doubt.
“When the old dates were returned, I was overwhelmed by emotion. I’ve worked with three generations of Yinhawangka People at this place. It is such an immense relief that we finally got to return to the site and excavate Yirra again after 20 years of waiting,” Hook said.
“This is a wonderful outcome for the Yinhawangka people and we welcome this incredible discovery,” Rio’s iron ore chief executive Simon Trott said.
“These findings at Yirra are a major archaeological breakthrough of international significance, expanding knowledge of Aboriginal occupation in the Pilbara,” Trott said.
Rio Tinto is in talks with other traditional owner groups in the Pilbara to fund further traditional owner-led cultural research and archaeological excavations, a spokesperson said.
