Mysteries Of Ancient ‘Computer’ Found In Greek Shipwreck Solved By Scientists
Archaeologists claim to have solved the mysteries behind an ancient Greek “computer” that shouldn’t even exist. Known for its hidden relics archaeological treasures, Greece has offered great insights into a world long lost.
In fact, some of the earliest advances in understanding space and the position of Earth around the sun were made in ancient Greece.
The very first astronomical calculator was also built in ancient Greece. This “computer” has continued to stun scientists and archaeologists alike.
Known as the Antikythera Mechanism, the 2,000-year-old Greek hand-powered orrey is a mechanical model of the solar system. It’s also considered the world’s oldest analogue computer.
World’s oldest “analogue computer”
Using the Antikythera, Greek scientists used to track eclipses and astronomical positions. In addition, they used to trace the cycle of the Olympic Games (yes, the same ones we all have now).
The Antikythera Mechanism was first found in ruins of a shipwreck in 1901 off the coast of Greek island Antikythera (hence its name). A year later, it was identified as carrying gear by archaeologist Valerios Stais.
At first sight, the Antikythera Mechanism appeared as a hunk of corroded metal that “no one knew quite what to do with.”
In conversation with BBC, Professor Tony Freeth of the University College London said that “it was not recognised at all as being anything interesting when it was discovered, it was just a corroded lump about the size of a large dictionary.”
Using its bronze gear and calculative prowess, ancient Greeks used the Antikythera Mechanism to assess the cycle of the cosmos.
It is now kept in a museum in Athens – split into 82 fragments. But nobody really knew what it was for until Professor Freeth put it under the magical lens of x-ray.
Besides thousands of text characters in Greece, scientists discovered certain cogs that made the computer function. It could predict eclipses, follow the motion of the moon among a series of things.
Researchers Date Horned Helmets Discovered in Denmark
The two Viksø helmets were found in pieces a bog in eastern Denmark in 1942. Archaeologists think they were deliberately deposited there as religious offerings
Two spectacular bronze helmets decorated with bull-like, curved horns may have inspired the idea that more than 1,500 years later, Vikings wore bulls’ horns on their helmets, although there is no evidence they ever did.
Rather, the two helmets were likely emblems of the growing power of leaders in Bronze Age Scandinavia. In 1942, a worker cutting peat for fuel discovered the helmets — which sport “eyes” and “beaks” — in a bog near the town of Viksø (also spelled Veksø) in eastern Denmark, a few miles northwest of Copenhagen.
The helmets’ design suggested to some archaeologists that the artefacts originated in the Nordic Bronze Age (roughly from 1750 B.C. to 500 B.C.), but until now no firm date had been determined. The researchers of the new study used radiocarbon methods to date a plug of birch tar on one of the horns.
“For many years in popular culture, people associated the Viksø helmets with the Vikings,” said Helle Vandkilde, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “But actually, it’s nonsense. The horned theme is from the Bronze Age and is traceable back to the ancient Near East.”
The new research by Vandkilde and her colleagues confirms that the helmets were deposited in the bog in about 900 B.C. — almost 3,000 years ago and many centuries before the Vikings or Norse dominated the region.
That dates the helmets to the late Nordic Bronze Age, a time when archaeologists think the regular trade of metals and other items had become common throughout Europe and foreign ideas were influencing Indigenous cultures, the researchers wrote in the journal Praehistorische Zeitschrift.
The elaborately-horned Viksø helmets have been associated with medieval Vikings. But a new study fixes their date to about 900 B.C. – over a thousand years before any Vikings.
Horned helmets
In 1942, a man cutting peat for fuel found broken pieces of the helmets, according to the Danish Ministry of Culture.
When the muddy helmet fragments were first discovered, the man who found them thought they were bits of buried waste, so he set them aside. Later, a foreman noticed the fragments and stored them in a shed for later examination. Later examinations by archaeologists from the National Museum of Denmark showed that the “buried waste” fragments were actually parts of two bronze helmets decorated with curved horns. When excavating the peat pit, researchers also found the remains of a wooden slab that one of the helmets seemed to have stood on, which suggested they had been deliberately deposited in the bog.
But metal can’t be reliably dated, and further research suggested the wooden slab might have been placed in the bog earlier than the helmets. It wasn’t until 2019 that one of Vandkilde’s colleagues spotted the birch tar on one of the horns when she was preparing to take new photographs of the helmets at the National Museum of Denmark.
“She noticed that there was primary organic material in the horns and spoke to a colleague at the National Museum responsible for the collection, and they agreed to send a sample for absolute dating,” Vandkilde said.
Previously, any information about the helmets was based on their typology — the style they were made in and any symbols they were decorated with. But the new date is based on the radioactive decay of the isotope carbon 14, which can determine when the organic matter originated. This method let archaeologists pinpoint when the helmets were created and theorize their purpose, she said.
“Typology is quite often a good first step, chronologically speaking, but it is very important when we can have absolute dates, as we can with carbon 14,” Vandkilde said. “We now know with this new date that the helmets were deposited in the bog, perhaps by someone standing on a wooden platform, around 900 B.C.”
Sun symbolism
As well as the having eyes and beak of a bird of prey and curving bull’s horns, archaeologists think the helmets were decorated with plumes of feathers and manes of horsehair.
As well as their prominent horns, the Viksø helmets are adorned with symbols meant to look like the eyes and beak of a bird of prey; plumage that has since eroded was likely stuck into the ends of the horns with birch tar, and each helmet also may have had a mane of horsehair.
Both the bulls’ horns and the bird of prey were probably symbols of the sun, as similar iconography from the time has been found in other parts of Europe, such as on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia and in southwest Iberia. “It’s certainly not coincidental — there must have been some sort of connection there,” Vandkilde said.
It’s possible that the symbology of sun worship may have reached Scandinavia along a sea route, from the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast, that was used by the seafaring Phoenicians for trade after about 1000 B.C., “independent of the otherwise flourishing transalpine trading route,” the researchers wrote.
There is no sign that the Viksø helmets were ever used for war, which was usually carried out in Bronze Age Scandinavia with only rudimentary helmets or no helmets at all. “They were never used for battle,” Vandkilde said.
Instead, leaders probably wore the helmets as symbols of authority at a time when the region was becoming more politicized and centralized, she said.
“There are many signs of this, and our new dating of the Viksø helmets actually suits this very well — this picture of centralization and the importance of political leadership,” she said. “And those leaders must have used religious beliefs and innovative traits, like the horns, to further their power.”
Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy
The 200-year-old secrets of the child mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo in northern Sicily are to be revealed by a British-led team of scientists using X-ray technology.
The Catacombs contain 1,284 mummified and skeletonised bodies, the largest collection of mummies in Europe. While many of the children contained there are now skeletal, others have been described as appearing as if they are sleeping.
Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy
The two-year investigation will focus on the children who died between 1787 and 1880 and, initially, on 41 bodies residing within a bespoke “child chapel”.
None of the children’s identity, cause of death and medical history is known, and descriptive tags attached to them have long eroded away.
It is hoped that a better picture of the children’s lives and passing will be revealed by cross-referencing the anatomical findings with archival records, including two books containing names and years of death.
“We are going in January to carry out our fieldwork,” Squires said. “We will take a portable X-ray unit and take hundreds of images of the children from different angles.
“We are hoping to better understand their development, health and identity, comparing the biological fundings with the more cultural kind of things: the way the individuals have been mummified and the clothes they are wearing as well.”
The catacombs, once solely for the deceased friars of the Capuchin order, have become a popular, if macabre, tourist attraction, with every niche and crevice bearing bodies on open display. The preserved dead were often dressed in their finery and would be visited by their relatives.
The friars first established themselves at the church of Santa Maria della Pace in 1534. They created a mass grave for their dead which opened like a tank under an altar but, when that became full, the deceased was held in a vault, or charnel house, while a new crypt was dug.
When it came to relocating the bodies from the overfull vault, 45 of the deceased friars exhumed were found to have been naturally mummified, with their faces recognisable, a development that was taken to be an act of God.
Rather than bury the remains, the bodies were displayed as relics, propped in niches along the walls of the first corridor of the new cemetery. In 1787, a letter was published stating that everyone, including children, in the region had the right to be accommodated in the catacombs after death.
Almost all the research until today has been on the adult mummies, excepting a headline-grabbing examination of Rosalia Lombardo, who died of pneumonia a week shy of her second birthday on 6 December 1920.
Her startlingly complete preservation was investigated a decade ago by Dr Dario Piombino-Mascali, who is working with Squires on the latest project at the catacombs.
He said: “Many of the mummies are a result of natural dehydration. Other mummies were chemically treated. Those chemically treated are normally better preserved.
“Some of them are superbly preserved. Some really look like sleeping children. They are darkened by the time but some of them have got even fake eyes so they seem to be looking at you. They look like tiny little dolls.
“Of course, you want to do something to preserve them and to make sure their stories are told and give a sense that they are children. It is very upsetting when you deal with children in anthropology.”
Radiographic images – 14 per mummy, from head-to-toe – will be taken and examined by Dr Robert Loynes, a retired orthopaedic surgeon who has previously investigated ancient Egyptian mummies. Piombino-Mascali said it was vital that the work on the fragile corpses was “non-invasive”.
Images will be drawn by an artist from Los Angeles, Eduardo Hernandez, who will produce illustrations for use in educational leaflets for handing out at the catacombs and elsewhere. The project has received over £70,000 in funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. The last bodies interned in the catacombs died in the early 20th century.
Mind-Blowing Fossil Site Found in ‘Dead’ Heart of Australia
A spider fossil from McGraths Flat.
The arid heart of Australia may not easily support life now, but once, many aeons ago, it was lush and teeming. What is now arid desert and dry shrub- and grasslands were once thick with dense forests, alive with life.
In one of these grasslands, in the Central Tablelands of NSW, palaeontologists have found new evidence of this abundance of life. A new fossil site that can most aptly be described as “exceptional” has turned up fossils of spiders, insects, fish, plants and even a bird feather, dating to the Miocene 11 to 16 million years ago.
“The fossils we have found proof that the area was once a temperate, mesic rainforest and that life was rich and abundant here in the Central Tablelands, NSW,” said palaeontologist Matthew McCurry from the Australian Museum Research Institute.
“Many of the fossils that we are finding our new to science and include trapdoor spiders, giant cicadas, wasps and a variety of fish. Until now it has been difficult to tell what these ancient ecosystems were like, but the level of preservation at this new fossil site means that even small fragile organisms like insects turned into well-preserved fossils.”
Plant fossils from McGraths Flat.
The assemblage, named McGraths Flat, is so exceptional that it has been classified as a Lagerstätte – a sedimentary fossil bed that’s so extraordinary that sometimes even soft tissues have been preserved. In McGraths Flat, organisms have been so well preserved that even subcellular structures can be made out in some fossils.
Even more amazingly, it’s a type of rock in which exceptional fossils are not usually seen, an iron-rich rock called goethite.
“We think that the process that turned these organisms into fossils is key to why they are so well preserved,” McCurry said. “Our analyses suggest that the fossils formed when iron-rich groundwaters drained into a billabong and that a precipitation of iron minerals encased organisms that were living in or fell into the water.”
The fossils in the assemblage bear a resemblance to the ecosystems in modern Australian rainforests, the researchers said, but it’s the fine details that really make a difference.
For instance, subcellular structures called melanosomes that give tissues their pigment have been preserved in the site’s fossilized feather and also in the eyes of a fish and a fly.
The feather fossil.
Although the melanosomes themselves are unpigmented, their structure can be compared to the structure of modern melanosomes to help figure out how the tissues might have been hued. This allows the researchers to figure out what colours the various McGraths flat animals were, including the feather.
“The fossils also preserve evidence of interactions between species,” said microbiologist Michael Frese of the University of Canberra.
“For instance, we have fish stomach contents preserved in the fish, meaning that we can figure out what they were eating. We have also found examples of pollen preserved on the bodies of insects so we can tell which species were pollinating which plants.”
Animal fossils from McGraths Flat.
Soberingly, the fossils also might contain a hint of what’s in store for our future.
According to an analysis of the pollen grains in the assemblage, the McGraths Flat rainforest was being encroached upon by arid climate areas. This is not unexpected; during the Miocene, global temperatures had started to rise; it was during this period that the Australian continent started to transform from lush to arid.
Since global mean temperatures are rising, the ecosystem found in McGraths Flat could show us how life might change in Australia’s current rainforests in the years to come.
“The McGraths Flat plant fossils give us a window into the vegetation and ecosystems of a warmer world, one that we are likely to experience in the future,” said botanist David Cantrill of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in Australia.
“The preservation of the plant fossils is unique and provides important insights into a time period for which the fossil record in Australia is rather poor.”
7,200-year-old skeleton unearthed in Indonesia reveals unknown human group
The ancient remains of a hunter-gatherer girl who died over 7,000 years ago in Indonesia, has revealed clues to a mysterious group of humans from the past. The discovery, made in 2015, in the Leang Panninge cave on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island is the first discovery of ancient human DNA in the region, known as Wallacea.
In a study published, Griffith University archaeology professor and study co-author Adam Brumm said the girl, nicknamed Bessé,’ belonged to a mysterious group of modern humans from the Holocene era who archaeologists have named the Toaleans.
It is the first time an intact skeleton of the Toalean people had been found.
“We’ve got ancient DNA from the bones of this woman, but we could only reconstruct about 2 per cent of her complete genome,” Brumm told the ABC. “So that’s how degraded it was and it took a lot of work to get even that.”
Sulawesi is the largest island in Wallacea. White shaded areas represent landmasses exposed during periods of lower sea level in the Late Pleistocene.
Burial of the hunter-gatherer Toalean woman.
Through DNA analysis, archaeologists have confirmed a theory that the Toaleans were related to the first humans who lived in Wallacea around 65,000 years ago and could also tie the girl to the Aboriginal Australians and Papuans.
Half of Bessé’s genome is shared with present-day Aboriginals, Papuans, and Western Pacific Islander peoples. She was also partly related to the older human ancestors the Denisovans, whose remains have been found in Tibet and Siberia.
Further analysis found that Bessé’ also had strong genetic ties to an ancient Asian group of people who did not mingle with the ancestors of Aboriginals and Papuans.
“A really unexpected discovery is that within the DNA of this ancient woman, we found ancestry from a very ancient Asian population,” Brumm said. “We don’t know quite who they were.”
Excavations at Leang Panninge cave.
Prof. Akin Duli from the University of Hasanuddin said this meant the population and genetic history of early humans in the region were more complex than previously thought.
“It is unlikely we will know much about the identity of these early ancestors of the Toaleans until more ancient human DNA samples are available from Wallacea,” Duli said.
However, finding more preserved remains, like Bessé’s, is extremely difficult given the tropical, humid weather of the region.
Just two other DNA samples have been found in the whole region and they come from Laos and Malaysia.
Bessé’ has no relation to the present-day people of Sulawesi, which is unsurprising given they are known to be largely descended from people who came from the Taiwanese region 3,500 years ago.
The Toaleans have been a century-old archaeological mystery since the discovery of unique, finely crafted arrowheads in several southern Sulawesi caves in 1902.
Undated Toalean stone arrowheads, backed microliths, and bone projectile points.
7,000-year-old fortress wall uncovered in southern Turkey
A fortress wall dating 7,000 years back to the Chalcolithic Age has been unearthed at the Yumuktepe Mound in southern Turkey’s Mersin province. The Yumuktepe Mound is highly significant as a continuous settlement for 9,000 years since the Neolithic Age.
Two and a half months of excavations at the mound are coming to an end on Friday. This year’s excavations focused on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, were carried out by a 30-person team led by Isabella Caneva – a professor of archaeology at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy.
Caneva said that the 7-meter fortress wall discovered this season can now be shown to the public.
A fortress wall dating 7,000 years back to the Chalcolithic Age has been unearthed at the Yumuktepe Mound in southern Turkey’s Mersin province.
While every year’s excavations have provided historical insights, this year’s dig produced especially “striking” Neolithic and Chalcolithic findings, Caneva said.
Caneva said the layer in Yumuktepe Mound is special in that it contains very special architecture.
The fortress wall was made with a variety of materials, including a 1.5-meter-thick support wall made of limestone at the bottom, 2 meters of well-cut stones and 3 meters of mudbrick.
Previous excavations had discovered the existence of the castle, dating back to 5,000 B.C., but the team did not uncover the wall until this season’s deeper dig in the area.
“We didn’t know that there was such technology in that period in technical terms. Now we see it and it’s a special structure.
There was certainly a special product being made there because a normal village would not require such a thick and solid wall,” Caneva said, explaining that the village is the oldest site in the world known to produce molten copper.
“This is a very important product. Later on, there was a war for metal. It was an important technology and a valuable substance. Tools, flashy objects and weapons were all made with copper,” she said.
The team also discovered that homes in the Neolithic period were built in a certain way, continuously constructed on top of one another, for 2,000 years.
Caneva expressed hopes that the site will be developed into an open-air museum for visitors in the future.
Because of its long history, Rome has often yielded archaeological treasures in the most unexpected of places.
An ancient statue of a dog discovered in December may have once been positioned on a sloping roof.
The latest of these riches is an ancient dog statue, which was discovered during work on Rome’s water system just before Christmas.
An arm of the Italian Ministry of Culture devoted to archaeological endeavours announced the find on January 1, saying that the dog statue was found in the city’s Appio Latino district, which is also home to ancient Roman villas and an array of burial structures. Along with the statue, three tombs were also found.
According to the Ministry of Culture, one of the tombs seemed to contain evidence that a fire had taken place there, which may explain why it fell out of use.
The tombs were once part of a larger funerary complex built sometime between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE.
The dog statue, as well as an urn, were found about half a meter below street level, which means that these archaeological objects were essentially right underneath current-day Romans’ feet.
Fashioned out of terra cotta, the statue looks a lot like forms that once appeared as part of drainage systems on sloping rooftops.
Because this one has no holes in that water could pass through, however, the statue was likely intended just as a cute canine decoration.
In a statement, Daniela Porro, the special superintendent of Rome, said, “Once again Rome shows important traces of the past in all its urban fabric.”
Large discovery of Native American artifacts in Willamette Valley
Volunteer archaeologist Megan Wonderly discovers an obsidian Native American tool during the excavation. The tool, known as a biface, is an estimated 1,000 to 4,000 years old and could help researchers better understand early trade routes.
The 14 original obsidian bifaces were found in the cache. Archaeologists later found a fifteenth obsidian biface and several other stone tools on the site.
Thanks to a discovery by a local landowner, archaeologists unearthed the first recorded Native American tools of their kind in the Willamette Valley this summer.
While building a pond on his property, the landowner, who was not identified, found 15 obsidian hand axes. He reported his discovery to the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, which led an archaeological dig at the site in June.
The tools, known as bifaces, are a rare find, said assistant state archaeologist John Pouley, who led the dig.
“Of approximately 35,000 recorded archaeological sites in Oregon, few, likely less than 25, consist of biface caches,” he said.
The tools are an estimated 1,000 to 4,000 years old. They were found on the traditional territory of the Santiam Band of the Kalapuya, which stretches between present-day Portland and Roseburg.
During the dig, archaeologists consulted the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation.
With the assistance of the tribes, local universities and private archaeological firms, Pouley and his team determined that the unfinished tools were from the Obsidian Cliffs in the Central Oregon Cascades. They likely would have been used in trades before being worked into finished tools, Pouley said.
It’s unusual to find unfinished tools and the discovery will help archaeologists better understand prehistoric trade networks in the Pacific Northwest, Pouley said.
Pouley plans to write a report on the tools after the excavation is complete. He and his team will also present their findings at an anthropological conference in Spokane, Washington next year.
None of this would have been possible without the landowner, Pouley said.
“This site makes you wonder how many archaeological sites with the potential to shed light on the history of human occupation within Oregon have been found before, and never reported,” Pouley said. “We encourage anyone that finds artefacts on their property to contact us.”
