Category Archives: WORLD

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Pompeii victim’s genome successfully sequenced for the first time

Pompeii victim’s genome successfully sequenced for the first time

The genome of a victim of the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius over the ancient city of Pompeii has been sequenced for the first time, scientists have revealed, shedding new light on the health and diversity of those who lived in the Roman empire at the time of the disaster.

Pompeii victim’s genome successfully sequenced for the first time
Although the experts sequenced DNA from a man and a woman, they were only able to sequence the entire genome from the man’s remains.

In a study published in Scientific Reports on Thursday, a team led by Gabriele Scorrano, an assistant professor of geogenetics at the University of Copenhagen, extracted DNA from two victims, a man and a woman, whose remains were found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii, a Domus that was first excavated in 1914.

Although the experts sequenced DNA from both victims, they were only able to sequence the entire genome from the man’s remains due to gaps in the sequences obtained from the woman.

Before this study, only short stretches of mitochondrial DNA from human and animal remains found in Pompeii had been sequenced.

The two individuals were found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii.

The man was aged between 35 and 40 when he was killed in the violent eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. Comparisons of his DNA with genetic codes obtained from 1,030 ancient humans, as well as 471 modern western Eurasian individuals, suggested his DNA shared the most similarities with modern individuals from central Italy and those who lived during the ancient Roman period.

Analysis of his mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA also identified groups of genes commonly found in Sardinia, but not among those who lived in Italy during the empire, suggesting there may have been high levels of genetic diversity across the Italian peninsula at that time.

Further analysis of the man’s skeleton also identified lesions in one of the vertebrae and DNA sequences suggested he may have had tuberculosis before his death.

The female was aged over 50 and believed to have been affected by osteoarthritis.

“This could have been the reason for which they waited for it all to finish, maybe in the security of their home, compared to other victims who were fleeing and whose remains were found in open spaces,” said Serena Viva, an anthropologist at the University in Salento who was on the study’s team.

The scientists speculated it may have been possible to successfully recover ancient DNA from the man’s remains as pyroclastic materials released during the eruption could have provided protection from environmental factors that degrade DNA, such as atmospheric oxygen.

The Pompeii ruins were discovered in the 16th century, with the first excavations beginning in 1748. About 1,500 of the estimated 2,000 victims have been found over the centuries. Excavations in 2020 of a villa in on what would have been the outskirts of the ancient city revealed the remains of two men, believed to be a master and his slave.

The scientists said the findings confirmed the possibility of retrieving ancient DNA from other victims of Pompeii to provide further insight into their genetic history.

“In the future, many more genomes from Pompeii can be studied,” said Viva. “The victims of Pompeii experienced a natural catastrophe, a thermal shock, and it was not known that you could preserve their genetic material.

This study provides this confirmation, and that new technology on genetic analysis allows us to sequence genomes also on damaged material.”

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

4,000-yr-old Tablet is the World’s Oldest Customer Service Complaint

4,000-yr-old Tablet is the World’s Oldest Customer Service Complaint

In a cuneiform tablet from ancient Mesopotamia, roughly 1750 BC, what is probably the oldest complaint in history was found.

Complaining is as humane as holding on to outrage, and in the ancient city of Ur, in present-day Iraq, this archaeological piece was discovered by a man named Nanni, according to IFL Science, who complains about a supplier known as Ea-Nasir. 

Nanni complains about his provider Ea-nasir.

Ea-Nasir supposedly (because we only know of Nanni’s version) delivered the wrong grade of copper after his journey across the Persian Gulf to collect the metal.

He was also responsible for misdirection and delays in another delivery. And to top it all, he was rude to the servants Nanni sent to pick up the delivery. What a character that Ea-Nasir … but isn’t he unknown to us? In fact, as we see, there is not one complaint but several.

“Who do you take me for, why do you treat someone like me with such contempt?” Nanni asks, thanks to a translation of the letter from Assyriologist Leo Oppenheim.

“I have sent gentlemen like us as couriers to collect the packaging with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory.”

He continues: “Is there anyone among the merchants who do business with Telmun who has treated me this way? Only you treat my messenger with contempt! “.

The language of the tablet is Akkadian, the first known Semitic language. The tablet is not very big, it measures 11.6 by 5 centimetres.

“How have you treated me for that copper? You have taken my money bag from me in enemy territory; now it’s up to you to restore (my money) to me completely,” he demands.

Although as explained by IFL Science, it seems that Nanni was sold to negotiate with Ea-Nasir.

“Please note that (from now on) I will not accept any copper that is not of good quality here, I will select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I will exercise my right of refusal against you because you have treated me with contempt.”

4,000-yr-old Tablet is the World’s Oldest Customer Service Complaint
Nanni complains about his provider Ea-Nasir. Now in the British Museum
AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

How did the ancient Egyptians drill through granite?

How did the ancient Egyptians drill through granite?

A question that has always intrigued archaeologists is how past civilizations made their objects and monuments. Works such as the exquisite staircases of Machu Picchu, the geoglyphs of Acre, and the pyramids of Egypt raise questions about the use of technologies and tools.

The lack of understanding usually leaves room for hypotheses about contact with aliens or the idea that these people were beyond their time; dangerous arguments when it comes to a faithful understanding of the past.

The ancient Egyptians, known for their temples, pyramids, and hieroglyphic writing, have always been a challenge for researchers.

And a skill that still intrigues many people is the ability to carve objects in granite – rock much harder than limestone or sandstone.

So, what tools did they have to hand? How long did the carving process take? Had they been helped by fantastic beings? Check out some of the possibilities below.

Egyptian artisans, the working class responsible for all the grandeur that has come to us, used instruments depicted in paintings that resisted time, showing the use of axes, saws, and bows, among others.

The most accepted theory is that these builders used wooden, bronze, and copper tools to carve the granite, mastering strict rules that allowed a good job.

Around 3500 BC, many copper tools were used, adding to the skills of the artisans, which made it possible to carry out any and all work with accuracy.

But would wooden tools be enough to carve granite? That was the main question during the nineteenth century when archaeologists came across artefacts like these.

Only later studies, not focusing on the objects themselves but on the way in which they were used, came closer to a solution.

Methods

According to current archaeology, the ancient Egyptians drilled granite with a method that consisted of introducing wooden wedges into a natural crack in the rock and soaking them with water. As the wet wood expanded, the original crack widened, and after successive repetitions of the process, the rock split into smaller pieces.

Stone artisans, ancient and modern, use this natural process based on weaker parts of the rock. Another method used was successive incisions in the stone with metal objects, which, little by little, carved lines and designs, intervening in different ways in the rock.

However, such methods do not seem to explain everything. The English engineer, Christopher Dunn, is one of the great promoters of these issues, and since 1977, he has been questioning himself about the use of technologies in Ancient Egypt.

Talking to Egyptologists and visiting sites, Dunn was not convinced by the wedge and water method alone.

According to him, “the quarry marks I saw did not convince me that the methods described were the only means by which the builders of the pyramids worked their rocks.”

The tools displayed as instruments for creating many artefacts are physically incapable of being reproduced. For the engineer, the artefacts would only have reached such a degree of precision with the use of saw blades and objects with a hardness comparable to that of a diamond.

Discussions like these are still current, and perhaps Egyptologists have yet to find tools that better explain the construction of these objects.

But what we must keep in mind is that maybe we are the limited ones, relying too much on our own technologies and applying contemporary ways of seeing the world to the past.

Space where a granite block was extracted in Aswan, Egypt
Ruins of a granite column
Replicas of tools used by Egyptian artisans
AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Mysteries Of Ancient Egypt: The Unfinished Obelisk Of Aswan

Mysteries Of Ancient Egypt: The Unfinished Obelisk Of Aswan

Abandoned thousands of years ago in the quarries of northern Aswan, ancient Egypt, the Unfinished Obelisk are a mass of granite 40 meters long (138 feet) and more than 1,090 tons (1,200 short tons) that makes up one of the most important mysteries of the archaeological world.

Historical origin

The creation of the obelisk was ordered by Hatshepsut (1508–1458 BC), the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The history of its origin is uncertain, but it is believed that the obelisk started to be built, possibly, to complement what would later be known as the Lateran Obelisk – originally built in Karnak and later sent to the Lateran Palace in Rome.

One of the biggest factors that puzzle scholars are the fact that the unfinished obelisk is a third larger than other ancient Egyptian obelisks erected throughout history.

It is estimated that it could measure more than 40 meters (138 feet) and weigh around 1,090 tons (1,200 short tons), if completed – to better understand, imagine the weight of 200 African elephants.

It is believed that the creators of the obelisk started to excavate it directly from a rock, but during the process, they noticed cracks under the granite.

This fact would have been the main reason that led them to abandon the project, however, the lower side of the obelisk remains, even today, fixed to the rock.

Important discoveries

Although this project has not been completed, from an archaeological and historical point of view, this obelisk is important for understanding the ancient Egyptian techniques used in stonework.

During the investigations, researchers discovered marks on the workers’ tools, which even after hundreds of years, remain preserved. In addition, they found lines of ocher colours marking the location of the workers.

Another surprising discovery was made in 2005 in the Aswan quarries. At the time, the researchers found an unfinished and partially worked obelisk base.

In addition, they found sculptures made of stones that may be linked to the place of origin from which other obelisks were created.

Currently, all of these discoveries are on display in an open-air museum, managed by the Egyptian government, which is considered an archaeological and heritage site.

A sea of ​​unknowns

Obelisks created by the ancient Egyptians are a great topic of debate because they raise numerous questions that we are still unable to answer to this day.

How did they carve them into a single block? How have they transported hundreds of miles away? How did they lift the huge, heavy columns?

There are numerous theories that indicate that the obelisks were transported by boats on the Nile River, although it is difficult to explain how the granite masses moved to the boats, or how the boats supported such a weight.

Carving the monuments directly into the bedrock was a common technique, and masons used stone balls to remove any imperfections until the surface was smooth.

There are still samples of these Dolerite balls in Aswan that were harder than granite and did not crack or break after repeatedly hitting the surface of the granite.

“It would have been the largest piece of stone worked by man to date”

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Qing Dynasty Tombs Discovered in Southern China

Qing Dynasty Tombs Discovered in Southern China

The file photo shows a cultural relic unearthed at the Houbeishan tomb complex in the city of Yongzhou, central China’s Hunan Province.

Archaeologists have found 25 tombs dating back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) in central China’s Hunan Province, according to the provincial cultural relics and archaeology research institute.

More than 60 cultural relics, including porcelain jars, porcelain bowls, copper hairpins and copper knives, were unearthed at the Houbeishan tomb complex in the city of Yongzhou.

Some of these porcelain jars, known locally as “food jars,” were found with food residue inside.

According to experts, there was a local burial custom to preserve food in tombs, and the practice continues to this day.

Archaeologists said the distribution of the tombs suggests that they belonged to a family and that the owners of two adjacent tombs were husband and wife.

“The discovery of the tombs provides new archaeological materials for understanding the funeral customs and local history and culture in southern China during the Qing Dynasty,” said Li Yiyuan, an associate research fellow with the institute. 

The file photo shows a cultural relic unearthed at the Houbeishan tomb complex in the city of Yongzhou, central China’s Hunan Province.
The file photo shows a porcelain bowl unearthed at the Houbeishan tomb complex in the city of Yongzhou, central China’s Hunan Province.
ASIA, VIETNAM, WORLD

Prehistoric Artifacts Discovered in a Vietnam Cave

Prehistoric Artifacts Discovered in a Vietnam Cave

Over 700 prehistoric artefacts have been discovered inside Tham Un cave in the northern mountainous province of Bac Kan’s Ba Be district. The discovery resulted from a fact-finding trip undertaken by the Institute of Archeology, the Vietnam Archeology Association, and the Bac Kan Museum.

Prehistoric Artifacts Discovered in a Vietnam Cave
Illustrative image (File photo)

Combing the entire cave, their team found traces of ancient people almost everywhere. Among the artefacts discovered were stone tools made from river pebbles.

According to Associate Professor, Dr Trinh Nang Chung, based on the overall study of the relics as well as the structure and age of the sediment, researchers believe that Tham Un was a residence of many generations of prehistoric people.

Its early inhabitants belonged to the late Bac Son Culture dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years, while the late inhabitants were from the Late Neolithic – Early Metal Ages dating back about 4,000 years.

This is a very important prehistoric relic cave, Chung stated.

Archaeologists are planning to excavate the site in the near future.

BOLIVIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Lost cities of the Amazon featuring terraces and PYRAMIDS are discovered

Lost cities of the Amazon featuring terraces and PYRAMIDS are discovered

A massive urban landscape that contained interconnected campsites, villages, towns and monumental centres thrived in the Amazon rainforest more than 600 years ago.

In what is now Bolivia, members of the Casarabe culture built an urban system that included straight, raised causeways running for several kilometres, canals and reservoirs, researchers report May 25 in Nature.

Such low-density urban sprawl from pre-Columbian times was previously unknown in the Amazon or anywhere else in South America, say archaeologist Heiko Prümers of the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn and colleagues.

Rather than constructing huge cities densely packed with people, a substantial Casarabe population spread out in a network of small to medium-sized settlements that incorporated plenty of open space for farming, the scientists conclude.

Airborne lasers peered through dense trees and ground cover to identify structures from that low-density urban network that have long eluded land-based archaeologists.

Earlier excavations indicated that Casarabe maize farmers, fishers and hunters inhabited an area of 4,500 square kilometres. For about a century, researchers have known that Casarabe people fashioned elaborate pottery and constructed large earthen mounds, causeways and ponds. But these finds were located at isolated forest sites that are difficult to excavate, leaving the reasons for mound-building and the nature of Casarabe society, which existed from about the year 500 to 1400, a mystery.

Prümers’ team opted to look through the Amazon’s lush cover from above, aiming to find relics of human activity that typically remain hidden even after careful ground surveys.

The scientists used a helicopter carrying special equipment to fire laser pulses at the Amazon forest as well as stretches of grassland. Those laser pulses reflect data from the Earth’s surface. This technique, called light detection and ranging, or lidar for short, enables researchers to map the contours of now-obscured structures.

Looking at the new lidar images, “it is obvious that the mounds are platforms and pyramids standing on artificial terraces at the centre of well-planned settlements,” Prümers says.

Lost cities of the Amazon featuring terraces and PYRAMIDS are discovered
The Lidar images revealed the cities architecture, consisting of stepped platforms topped by U-shaped structures, rectangular platform mounds, and conical pyramids
Two images of exactly the same area of the Salvatierra site. Left: a photo mosaic from drone footage; right: Lidar image. The discovery shows Amazonia was home to an early ‘urbanism’ created and managed by indigenous populations for thousands of years

Prümers’ team conducted lidar surveys over six parts of ancient Casarabe territory. The lidar data revealed 26 sites, 11 of them previously unknown.

Two sites, Cotoca and Landívar, are much larger than the rest. Both settlements feature rectangular and U-shaped platform mounds and cone-shaped earthen pyramids atop artificial terraces. Curved moats and defensive walls border each site.

Causeways radiate out from Cotoca and Landívar in all directions, connecting those primary sites to smaller sites with fewer platform mounds that then link up to what were probably small campsites or areas for specialized activities, such as butchering prey.

Lidar Image of the Cotoca site, revealing an array of elaborate and intricate structures unlike any previously discovered in the region, including 16ft-high terraces covering 54 acres – the equivalent of 30 football pitches – and 69ft-tall conical pyramids

The Casarabe society’s network of settlements joins other ancient and present-day examples of low-density urban sprawl around the world, says archaeologist Roland Fletcher of the University of Sydney.

These sites raise questions about whether only places with centralized governments that ruled over people who were packed into neighbourhoods on narrow streets, such as 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian metropolises, can be defined as cities.

Some past urban settlements organized around crop growing spanned up to 1,000 square kilometres or more in tropical regions. These include locales such as Southeast Asia’s Greater Angkor roughly 700 to 800 years ago and interconnected Maya sites in Central America dating to at least 2,300 years ago. Today, extended areas outside large cities, especially in Southeast Asia, mix industrial and agricultural activities over tens of thousands of kilometres.

Clusters of interconnected Casarabe settlements ranged in area from 100 square kilometres to more than 500 square kilometres. Spread-out settlements of the comparable areas include 6,000-year-old sites from Eastern Europe’s Trypillia culture.

Tropical forests that have gone largely unexplored, such as Central Africa’s Congo Basin, probably hosted other early forms of low-density urban development, Fletcher predicts.

Only further excavations guided by lidar evidence can begin to untangle the size of the Casarabe population, Prümers says. Whether primary Casarabe sites represented seats of power in states with upper and lower classes also remains unknown, he adds.

Casarabe culture’s urban sprawl must have encompassed a considerable number of people in the centuries before the Spanish arrived and Indigenous population numbers plummeted, largely due to diseases, forced labour and slavery says archaeologist John Walker of the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Whatever Casarabe honchos had in mind as their tropical settlement network spread, he says, “we may have to set aside some of our strongly held ideas about what the Amazon is, and what a city is, to better understand what happened.”

ASIA, CHINA, ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Vase Kept In Kitchen Turned Out To Be 250-Year-Old Relic, Auctioned For 1.5 Million Pounds

Vase Kept In Kitchen Turned Out To Be 250-Year-Old Relic, Auctioned For 1.5 Million Pounds

A royal blue 18th-century Chinese vase decorated with gold and silver, which sat in a U.K. kitchen for several years, just sold at auction for about $1.8 million after historians realized it had once belonged to an emperor. 

This close-up photo shows a crane image on the vase. A mix of silver and gold were used in the vase's decorations.
The 18th-century Chinese vase was auctioned for about $1.8 million.

However, the vase’s unclear history — combined with the looting of Chinese palaces in the 19th century — raises ethical concerns, according to an expert who was not involved with the sale. 

The vase is large, about 2 feet (0.6 meters) tall, and it is marked with a symbol associated with the Qianlong emperor — the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty, the country’s last imperial dynasty — who ruled China from 1735 to 1795, according to a statement released by the auction company Dreweatts, which sold the vase on May 18.

The vase is painted with a colour called “sacrificial blue” — so named because the same shade decorates parts of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

At this temple, the emperor of China would sacrifice animals in hopes that these sacrifices would ensure a good harvest. 

This close-up photo shows a crane image on the vase. A mix of silver and gold was used in the vase’s decorations.

The decorations on the vase are made of a mix of silver and gold, and they depict clouds, cranes, fans, flutes and bats — symbols of the emperor’s Daoist beliefs that are associated with a good and long life, said Mark Newstead, a specialist consultant for Asian ceramics and works of art with Dreweatts, said in a YouTube video. 

The combination of silver and gold used on this vase is “technically very difficult to achieve and that’s what makes it so special and unusual,” Newstead said, noting that a man named Tang Ying (1682-1756), who was the supervisor of an imperial porcelain factory in the eastern city of Jingdezhen, is sometimes credited with the creation of the technique used on this vase. 

This vase would likely have been placed in the Forbidden Palace — where the Chinese emperor resided — or in one of the emperor’s other palaces, Newstead said. 

During the Qianlong emperor’s rule, the government had to put down a number of rebellions. Despite this unrest, the arts flourished in China, wrote historian Richard Smith in the book “The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture(opens in new tab)” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015).

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the political situation worsened as China lost a number of wars against Europe and America, and foreign troops looted a number of palaces.

Uncertain origins

Much about the history of this vase is unknown. The vase was owned by a surgeon who “we believe bought it in the early 1980s,” Newstead told Live Science in an email.

The surgeon “was a buyer in the country salerooms in the [English] Midlands from the 1970s onwards and that is all we know,” Newstead said. After the surgeon died, the vase was passed on to his son. Neither the surgeon nor the son realized the true value and the vase was placed in the son’s kitchen for some time, and Newstead first saw it in the late 1990s.

The vase’s unclear origins and the history of foreign troops looting palaces in the 19th century raise some ethical concerns that the vase was plundered by foreign troops in the 19th or early 20th century, an expert told Live Science. 

“It could have been a gift from the emperor to one of his officials, and that official’s family could have sold it on the open market in the 20th century when they fell on hard economic times. And from there it would have been sold many more times. Or, it could be the product of the military plunder of 1860 or 1901, which would make its auction much more morally dubious,” Justin Jacobs, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., told Live Science in an email.

Jacobs has studied and written extensively about the pillaging of Chinese art in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

“We just don’t know [how the vase left China] and likely we never will,” Jacobs said.