Category Archives: WORLD

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Billionaire hands over $70 million of stolen artefacts

Billionaire hands over $70 million of stolen artefacts

Michael H. Steinhardt, the billionaire hedge fund pioneer and one of New York’s most prolific antiquities collectors, has surrendered 180 stolen objects valued at $70 million and been barred for life from acquiring any other relics, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement Monday.

The prosecutor’s office struck an agreement with Mr. Steinhardt after a four-year multinational investigation that determined that the seized pieces had been looted and smuggled from 11 countries, trafficked by 12 illicit networks and appeared on the international art market without lawful paperwork, the office said.

“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,” District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said, adding: “This agreement establishes that Steinhardt will be subject to an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities.”

Mr. Steinhardt, a Brooklyn native who turns 81 on Tuesday, is a major contributor to New York University and to numerous Jewish philanthropies. There is a Steinhardt conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and a Steinhardt Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In a statement on Monday, his lawyer, Andrew J. Levander, said: “Mr. Steinhardt is pleased that the District Attorney’s yearslong investigation has concluded without any charges, and that items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries.

Many of the dealers from whom Mr. Steinhardt bought these items made specific representations as to the dealers’ lawful title to the items, and to their alleged provenance. To the extent these representations were false, Mr. Steinhardt has reserved his rights to seek recompense from the dealers involved.”

According to prosecutors, 171 of the 180 seized antiquities first surfaced in the possession of accused antiquities traffickers, including two who have been convicted in Italy — Giacomo Medici and Giovanni Becchina.

They said the investigation revealed that 101 of the items, all covered in dirt and encrustations, were visible and identifiable in photographs found in the possession of known traffickers.

Christos Tsirogiannis, an associate professor at the University of Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark, who specializes in searching photographic archives seized from antiquities dealers, said traffickers use such photos to advertise their looted wares to small groups of wealthy collectors. Dr. Tsirogiannis is one of about 60 researchers, investigators and foreign law enforcement officials credited by the prosecutors’ office with assisting in the case.

As part of its inquiry, Mr. Vance’s office said, prosecutors executed 17 search warrants and worked with officials in 11 countries — Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey.

In explaining the agreement not to prosecute so long as Mr. Steinhardt abides by all its terms, Mr. Vance said the arrangement would allow for the items to be “returned expeditiously to their rightful owners” rather than being held as evidence. It would also help his office to “shield the identity of the many witnesses here and abroad whose names would be released at any trial.”

Nonetheless, the case and other recent seizures demonstrate that the office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit is ready to reach far back in time to confiscate objects based on a New York state statute that allows prosecutors to return stolen property to its “rightful owners” regardless of when a theft might have occurred.

Mr. Steinhardt’s dealings with prosecutors over suspect antiquities date back to the 1990s. In 1997, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Steinhardt had illegally imported a golden bowl, known as a phiale, from Italy in 1992.

The object, dating to 450 B.C. and costing $1 million, was seized from Mr. Steinhardt’s home in 1995. The judge rejected his contention at the time that he was an “innocent owner” with no knowledge of irregularities.

In 2018, investigators raided his office and Fifth Avenue home and took away several ancient works they said had been looted from Greece and Italy. That seizure came on the heels of a 2017 seizure of a marble statue stolen from a temple in Sidon, Lebanon, which Mr. Steinhardt relinquished and which has been returned.

The 2017 seizure led to the formation of the trafficking unit, which pressed the case that was resolved on Monday. Officials said the unit has recovered more than 3,000 items valued at $200 million, and that at least 1,500 have been returned to their owners and countries of origin. It said hundreds are ready to be repatriated “as soon as the relevant countries are able to receive them amid the pandemic,” and more than 1,000 objects are being held awaiting the outcome of criminal proceedings.

(Separately, in March 2019, Mr. Steinhardt was accused of a pattern of sexual harassment by several women who worked for the nonprofits he supported.)

The confiscated items, which decorated Mr. Steinhardt’s homes and offices, and which he often lent to major museums, came mostly from Italy, Greece and Israel, according to a list compiled by investigators.

Billionaire hands over $70 million of stolen artefacts
The Stag’s Head Rhyton dates back to 400 BC and was looted from Milas, Turkey.
The Larnax, a 1400-1200 BC chest for human remains taken from Crete.
The Ercolano Fresco, looted from a Roman villa in Herculaneum, near Naples.

They include:

A ceremonial libations vessel, or rhyton, that depicts a stag’s head, purchased from the Merrin Gallery of Manhattan for $2.6 million in November 1991. Officials said the item, which dates to 400 B.C., first appeared on the international art market without provenance after rampant looting in Milas, Turkey. In March 1993, prosecutors said, Mr. Steinhardt lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was when law enforcement officials seized it. It has since been repatriated.

A larnax, or small chest for human remains, from Crete, that dates between 1400-1200 B.C. Officials said the item, valued at $1 million, was purchased from a known antiquities trafficker and traced to Mr. Steinhardt through a financial institution based in Malta.

The “Ercolano Fresco,” purchased from Robert Hecht, who had faced accusations of trafficking in antiquities, “with no prior provenance” for $650,000 in November 1995. Dating to 50 B.C. and valued at $1 million, it depicts an infant Hercules strangling a snake sent by Hera to slay him. The fresco was looted in 1995 from a Roman villa in the ruins of Herculaneum, near Naples, officials said.

A gold bowl looted from Nimrud, Iraq, and purchased without provenance papers, officials said, for $150,000 in July 2020, at a time when objects from Nimrud were being trafficked by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Made of gold with a scalloped-flower design, the object surfaced in October 2019 when a Customs and Border Protection officer notified Mr. Vance’s office that someone on a flight from Hong Kong to Newark was hand-carrying the bowl for Mr. Steinhardt.

Three stone death masks that appeared to be encrusted with soil in photographs recovered by the Israeli authorities. They date to 6000 B.C. and were purchased by Mr. Steinhardt for $400,000 in October 2007.

Prosecutors said Mr. Steinhardt had owned and traded more than 1,000 antiquities since 1987, and his art collection was valued at about $200 million.

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

Last meal of a man mummified in a bog reconstructed after 2400 years

Last meal of a man mummified in a bog reconstructed after 2400 years

The Tollund Man is one of the most famous ‘bog bodies’ ever discovered in northern Europe. Even though the 30- to 40-year-old human was buried in a bog more than 2,400 years ago, the acidic peat has mummified his body to a remarkable degree, preserving his hair, brain, skin, nails, and intestines – even the leather noose around his neck.

Last meal of a man mummified in a bog reconstructed after 2400 years
A close-up of Tollund Man’s face.

Despite all the evidence, we still don’t really know why he was killed. An updated analysis of the man’s gut has now revealed all the contents of his last meal, and it’s looking more and more like he was some sort of human sacrifice.

Roughly a day before the Tollund Man was hung and buried in the bog, researchers say he ate porridge, containing barley, flax, and seeds from plants and weeds.

That’s similar to what scientists found in the early 1950s when the body was first unearthed in what is now modern Denmark. But unlike past analyses, this one has also noticed a few new ingredients, like the fatty proteins of fish as well as remnants of threshing waste, which comes from separating grain.

That’s an intriguing discovery, as a recent analysis of another bog body, known as the Grauballe Man, has also turned up a surprisingly large quantity of threshing waste not noticed before.

The Grauballe Man was also killed and buried in an acidic bog, and the similar contents of his last meal to the Tollund Man’s last meal may indicate a ritual of sorts.

Tollund Man on display at Museum Silkeborg.

While other bog bodies appear to have eaten porridge or bread with a side of meat or berries, threshing waste and an abundance of seeds might indicate a special occasion. Either that, or these ingredients were simply added for flavor or nutrition.

“Although the meal may reflect ordinary Iron Age fare, the inclusion of threshing waste could possibly relate to ritual practices,” the authors write.

This isn’t the first time the Tollund Man or the Grauballe Man have been suspected victims of sacrifice.

While other bog bodies found might have fallen dead or drowned in the peat by accident, the way the Tollund Man was killed and then carefully buried, with his eyes and mouth closed shut and his body in a fetal position, has some scientists thinking he was a sacrifice to the gods.

Considering that the Tollund Man was buried near a place where Iron Age people used to dig for peat, it’s possible his body represented a form of gratitude for the land.

Some Roman historian accounts from the time have even written about similar human sacrifices in northwestern Europe, although these were often biased reports that might have stretched the truth about certain tribes.

The remarkably preserved face of Tollund Man.

Apart from the way in which the Tollund Man was buried, his gut is one of the juiciest clues we have. Further research will be needed to determine whether other bog bodies also ate meals containing threshing waste or seeds, or if these were, in fact, special ingredients given to humans before they were sacrificed.

The Tollund Man may be long dead, but his mystery continues to live on.

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

Millet bread and pulse dough from early Iron Age South India: Charred food lumps as culinary indicators

Millet bread and pulse dough from early Iron Age South India: Charred food lumps as culinary indicators

Prof.  Jennifer Bates and her coworkers, Kelly Wilcox Black and Prof. Kathleen Morrison, published a new archaeobotanical article, “Millet Bread and Pulse Dough from Early Iron Age South India: Charred Food Lumps as Culinary Indicators, ” in the Journal of Archaeological Science (Vol.137).

Jennifer is a former Postdoc in the Penn Paleoecology Lab, now an Assistant Professor at Seoul National University, Kelly is a PhD student at the University of Chicago, completing her dissertation. Kathleen is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. 

In the paper, the authors explore charred lumps from the site of Kadebakele, in southern India, where they have excavated for several years with the support of the Archaeological Survey of India and colleagues.

Millet bread and pulse dough from early Iron Age South India: Charred food lumps as culinary indicators

The site dates from around 2,300 BCE to CE 1600 or so, but these data are from the Early Iron Age, about 800 BC. Charred lumps are usually seen as not identifiable, but using high-quality imaging, they were able to show that (some of) these are charred remains of dough or batter; these would have been used to make bread-like dishes.

Comparing the data with experimental studies done by another lab group, they identified two kinds of food lumps, along with cattle dung lumps (likely fuel). 

They found a dough made primarily from millets that match the experimental results of “flatbreads” most closely. Millet flatbreads are still made in this region.

There was also a batter made primarily from pulses (beans, lentils, etc.). This highlights the great importance of pulses in the diet, something is also seen in the overall botanical assemblage.

As far as we know, there hasn’t been any previous understanding of how these foods might have been prepared, and this paper is the first glimpse at food making in South Asian prehistory. 

The work contributes to our understanding of cooking, diet, and daily life in the South Indian Iron Age, a period without historical documents, and also establishes the value of a data source previously assumed to be too difficult to study on a routine basis (that is, without using SEM).

Professor Bates, Ms Wilcox Black and Professor Morrison argue that work like this allows archaeologists to move beyond “taxa lists” (lists of plants and animals used — you could think of these as possible ‘ingredients’) to approach issues of culinary practice (combinations of ingredients as well as techniques).

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Another “Erased” Black Cemetery Identified in Florida

Another “Erased” Black Cemetery Identified in Florida

An unmarked African American cemetery with hundreds of graves has been found at the site of a downtown office building in Clearwater, Fla. It’s at least the fourth abandoned African American cemetery rediscovered in recent years in Florida. The finds are forcing communities to come to terms with their history and racist policies that targeted Black neighbourhoods.

Barbara Sorey-Love has experienced some of that history firsthand. She was born in the basement of Clearwater’s hospital 69 years ago and grew up in Clearwater Heights, a neighbourhood that no longer exists.

“Back then we were called coloured,” she says. “That’s where the coloured mothers and children were housed.”

Another “Erased” Black Cemetery Identified in Florida
Archaeologists work to uncover graves at the former site of the Zion cemetery found underneath the Robles Park Village housing complex in Tampa, Fla. Another unmarked African-American cemetery with hundreds of graves has been found at the site of a downtown office building in Clearwater, Fla.

Several years ago, Sorey-Love helped form the Clearwater Heights Reunion Committee, a group of people who grew up in the neighbourhood before it became a victim of urban renewal. The group began asking questions about the old St. Matthews cemetery. It was closed in the mid-1950s and sold to developers who were supposed to move the graves to a new location.

Using ground-penetrating radar and later by excavating, archaeologists found something many residents had suspected — most of the graves had never been moved. Sorey-Love recently visited the excavation site, now an office building’s parking lot.

“I went over and looked in the burial site,” she says. “And it was like the skeleton was looking up at me saying, ‘Thank God you found me.'”

Archaeologists believe several hundred people may be buried under the parking lot and a building that now stands on the site. It’s not the only African American cemetery recently rediscovered in Clearwater. A little over a mile away, an investigation has found dozens of graves at the site of a now shuttered public school. In both cases, community members are working with local officials to decide what to do next.

And it’s not just happening in Clearwater. Just across the bay in Tampa, investigations conducted by the Tampa Bay Times helped uncover at least two more African American cemeteries that were abandoned and built over. Some of the graves are under the parking lot at Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays. Hundreds more were found at the site of a public housing complex.

In all these cases, Black residents were told the graves had been relocated.

“There were bodies still there and a large number of them,” says Antoinette Jackson, chair of the anthropology department at the University of South Florida says. “That caught everybody’s attention.”

The cemeteries were all closed in the 1950s, as cities around Florida’s Tampa Bay began to grow rapidly in the post-war era. Property that had been developed and used by the Black community was taken for other uses and neighbourhoods were wiped out by interstate exchanges. Jackson says the cemeteries were deliberately forgotten.

“Oftentimes,” she says, “we don’t use the word lost or abandoned. We are really saying erased, physically erased from the landscape for other purposes.”

In Clearwater, city council records from the mid-1950s show officials discussed using road improvements as an “inducement to confine Negro home building and purchasing to the existing area.”

Jeff Moates, with the Florida Public Archaeology Network, worked on the cemetery investigation in Clearwater. He says assessments levied by the city were “used as a tactic to kind of isolate the African American community. There were certain policies that further marginalized an already marginalized group of people.”

The land was used for a new shopping centre. The city paid the developers to move the graves to a new location. But, with the discovery of hundreds of graves still on the site, Clearwater officials are facing tough decisions. The company that now owns the property says it received assurances that the graves had been moved.

At a recent meeting, city councilman Mark Bunker said he was struck by what he saw in the archaeological report.

“We weren’t on the commission at that time,” he says, “but, the city does have some responsibility in dealing with this.”

Another councilman said he wasn’t sure the city should be held responsible for something done nearly 70 years ago. Meanwhile, investigations will continue on the site. The rediscovery of lost or erased Black cemeteries raises many issues, including who’s liable for righting past wrongs. A task force created by the state legislature will soon issue a report with recommendations for local and state officials.

University of South Florida anthropologist Antoinette Jackson recently helped create the Black cemetery network, a website and organization linking African American cemeteries that are being rediscovered and investigated around the country. The idea, she says is “to put a face and stories and people and communities on the map and in the public domain.”

A bill is also in the works in Congress that would create an African American Burial Grounds Network under the direction of the National Park Service.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

5 Ice Age Mammoths Discovered Near Busy Road in England

5 Ice Age Mammoths Discovered Near Busy Road in England

Experts who unearthed a 200,000-year-old mammoth graveyard say it is “one of Britain’s biggest Ice Age discoveries in recent years”. Archaeologists found the remains of five animals, including two adults, two juveniles, and an infant, at a quarry near Swindon.

5 Ice Age Mammoths Discovered Near Busy Road in England
The remains of at least five Ice Age mammoths were found at the quarry

The dig began after two keen fossil hunters spotted a Neanderthal hand axe.

Officials from the archaeological organisation DigVentures said that what they went on to find was “exceptional”.

The remains belong to a species of Steppe mammoth, an ancestor of the Woolly mammoth.

Close to the mammoth remains, the team also found a number of stone tools made by Neanderthals.

A research team led by archaeologists from DigVentures discovered “surprisingly well-preserved” evidence at the site

DigVentures began the excavations after being alerted to the site by Sally and Neville Hollingworth, from Swindon.

Ms Hollingworth said: “We were originally hoping to find marine fossils, and finding something so significant instead has been a real thrill.

“Even better than that is seeing it turn into a major archaeological excavation

“We couldn’t be more pleased that something we’ve discovered will be learned from and enjoyed by so many people.”

Excavations were carried out in 2019 and 2020 after Sally and Neville Hollingworth spotted the remains in 2017

Lisa Westcott Wilkins from DigVentures said: “Finding mammoth bones is always extraordinary, but finding ones that are so old and well preserved, and in such close proximity to Neanderthal stone tools is exceptional.”

Other discoveries at the site include delicate beetle wings and fragile freshwater snail shells as well as stone tools.

Research is ongoing to understand why so many mammoths were found in one place, and whether they were hunted or scavenged by Neanderthals.

The team recovered bones including tusks, leg bones, ribs and vertebrae belonging to a species of Steppe mammoth

Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said: “This represents one of Britain’s most significant Ice Age discoveries in recent years.

“The findings have enormous value for understanding the human occupation of Britain, and the delicate environmental evidence recovered will also help us understand it in the context of past climate change.”

The discoveries are explored in a new BBC documentary ‘Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard’, with Sir David Attenborough

It is believed the site dates back to between 210,000 to 220,000 years ago.

With sites from this period rarely so well-preserved, it is thought these new discoveries will help archaeologists, palaeontologists, and palaeoenvironmental scientists address big questions about Neanderthals, mammoths, and the impact of a rapidly changing climate on life in Ice Age Britain.

The discovery will be featured in a new BBC One documentary Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard which will be broadcast on 30 December.

Some of the bones are now being examined for evidence of butchery, and further work is being planned at the site
AFRICA, EGYPT, EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Egypt retrieves 36 smuggled artefacts from Spain

Egypt retrieves 36 smuggled artifacts from Spain

Pharaonic artefacts that were smuggled out of Egypt in 2014 were returned to the country on Monday. The 36 pieces were seized on arrival at Valencia, Spain, that year.

“This handover came as a result of effective judicial co-operation, and the result of concerted efforts between the Public Prosecution, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt in Spain,” read a prosecution statement posted on Facebook on Monday.

The repatriated items include busts made from limestone, marble and granite; bowls, vases, figurines and an ornate wooden box.

A collection of 36 ancient Egyptian artefacts that were just returned to Egypt 7 years after they were smuggled out of a port in Alexandria.

Prosecutors celebrated the return of the smuggled artefacts as a win for Egyptian-Spanish bilateral relations.

In their statement, they thanked Spain’s security officials for their commitment to preserving Egypt’s cultural heritage.

The artefacts were received by an Egyptian delegation including the country’s ambassador at a ceremony held at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid on Monday.

They had been taken there to be assessed before the Egyptian delegation was contacted to come and retrieve them.

Spanish and Egyptian officials attend a ceremony at Madrid’s National Archaeological Museum. The ceremony was held to mark the return of a group of smuggled artefacts from Spain to Egypt.

Investigations into the smuggling of these artefacts began in June 2014, the public prosecutor’s statement read.

It said that security officials had proved at the time that the smuggled items left the coastal Egyptian city of Alexandria before they were seized by Spanish officials at the port of Valencia in the same year.

Egypt repatriates 114 smuggled artefacts from France

The items had been hidden onboard a container ship and forged documents were submitted to Spanish authorities to facilitate the smuggling.

Since 2014, Egyptian prosecutors have been following up on the case with Spanish authorities, the statement, released on Monday, said.

This year, Spain’s judiciary ruled that the items should be returned to Egypt. Word was sent to Egyptian officials, who formed a delegation to retrieve them.

A collection of ancient Egyptian relics was seized by Spanish authorities at a port in Valencia in 2014. The items were smuggled out of Egypt in 2014 and returned in 2021.

Egyptian artefacts have long been smuggled overseas.

The practice increased markedly in the period that followed a popular uprising in 2011 that caused a wave of political instability and lapses in security. The country’s tourism ministry announced this year that in the past decade, Egyptian authorities had repatriated 30,000 artefacts.

They had reached France, Denmark, Belgium and the US, among many countries.

Several prominent Egyptologists have launched awareness campaigns to help Egypt to retrieve smuggled artefacts, many of which are sold at discreet auctions at some of the world’s foremost auction houses.

A haul of more than 5,000 artefacts housed at the Museum of the Bible, in Washington, DC, was returned to Egypt in January.

AFRICA, WORLD

Stone Age beads made from ostrich eggshells formed the earliest known social network

Stone Age beads made from ostrich eggshells formed the earliest known social network

Humans are social creatures, but little is known about when, how, and why different populations connected in the past. Answering these questions is crucial for interpreting the biological and cultural diversity that we see in human populations today. DNA is a powerful tool for studying genetic interactions between populations, but it can’t address any cultural exchanges within these ancient meetings.

Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have turned to an unexpected source of information—ostrich eggshell beads—to shed light on ancient social networks.

In a new study published in Nature, researchers Drs. Jennifer Miller and Yiming Wang report 50,000-years of population connection and isolation, driven by changing rainfall patterns, in southern and eastern Africa.

A string of modern ostrich eggshell beads from eastern Africa.

Ostrich eggshell beads: a window into the past

Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads are ideal artefacts for understanding ancient social relationships. They are the world’s oldest fully manufactured ornaments, meaning that instead of relying on an item’s natural size or shape, humans completely transformed the shells to produce beads.

This extensive shaping creates ample opportunities for variations in style. Because different cultures produced beads of different styles, the prehistoric accessories provide researchers with a way to trace cultural connections.

“It’s like following a trail of breadcrumbs,” says Miller, lead author of the study. “The beads are clues, scattered across time and space, just waiting to be noticed.”

To search for signs of population connectivity, Miller and Wang assembled the largest ever database of ostrich eggshell beads. It includes data from more than 1500 individual beads unearthed from 31 sites across southern and eastern Africa, encompassing the last 50,000 years. Gathering this data was a painstakingly slow process that took more than a decade. 

Climate change and social networks in the Stone Age

By comparing OES bead characteristics, such as total diameter, aperture diameter and shell thickness, Miller and Wang found that between 50,000 and 33,000 years ago, people in eastern and southern Africa were using nearly identical OES beads.

The finding suggests a long-distance social network spanning more than 3,000 km once connected people in the two regions. 

“The result is surprising, but the pattern is clear,” says Wang, co-corresponding author of the study. “Throughout the 50,000 years we examined, this is the only time period that the bead characteristics are the same.”

Oldupai Gorge, Tanzania, an important site in studies of human evolution, is experiencing drying and shorter, more irregular rainy reasons

This eastern-southern connection at 50-33,000 years ago is the oldest social network ever identified, and it coincides with a particularly wet period in eastern Africa. However, signs of the regional network disappear 33,000 years ago, likely triggered by a major shift in global climates.

Around the same time that the social network breaks down, eastern Africa experienced a dramatic reduction in precipitation as the tropical rain belt shifted southward. This increased rain in the large area connecting eastern and southern Africa (the Zambezi River catchment), periodically flooding riverbanks and perhaps creating a geographic barrier that disrupted regional social networks. 

“Through this combination of paleoenvironmental proxies, climate models, and archaeological data, we can see the connection between climate change and cultural behaviour,” says Wang.

Weaving a story with beads

Stone Age beads made from ostrich eggshells formed the earliest known social network
Digital microscope images of archaeological ostrich eggshell beads.

Together, the results of this working document a 50,000-year-long story about human connections, and the dramatic climate changes that drove people apart.

The data even provides new insight into variable social strategies between eastern and southern Africa by documenting different bead-use trajectories through time. These regional responses highlight the flexibility of human behaviour and show there’s more than one path to our species’ success. 

“These tiny beads have the power to reveal big stories about our past,” says Miller. “We encourage other researchers to build upon this database, and continue exploring the evidence for cultural connection in new regions.”

AFRICA, WORLD

Researchers discovered a 2 billion-year-old ancient nuclear reactor in Africa

Researchers discovered a 2 billion year old ancient nuclear reactor in Africa

The Oklo-reactor in Gabon, Africa is one of the most intriguing geological formations found on planet Earth. Here, naturally occurring fissile materials in two billion-year-old rocks have sustained a slow nuclear fission reaction like that found in a modern nuclear reactor.

Uranium-235 is a radioactive element with a half-life of 700 million years.

Traces of it are found in almost all rocks, especially magmatic rocks, and its decay is believed to be one of the sources of Earth’s inner heat. Because it decays over time at a constant rate, its concentration in the Earth’s crust is almost everywhere the same – except in Oklo.

The Oklo-Formation, a succession of sandstone and siltstone, was deposited two billion years ago by a large river. Microbial activity of the first lifeforms caused the element uranium, derived from weathered magmatic rocks, to become concentrated in certain layers of the sediments.

Later tectonic movements buried the layers deep underground.

Simplified geology of the Oklo-Okèlobondo natural nuclear reactors.

In 1972, chemical analysis showed an unusually low concentration of uranium-235 in the ore mined in the Oklo open pit mine. However, there were high concentrations of elements like caesium, curium, americium and even plutonium to be found. Such elements are formed today only in nuclear reactors, as the uranium decays during controlled nuclear fission.

When uranium-235 decays, it will emit three neutrons. If one of the emitted neutrons hits another uranium atom, this atom will also decay and a chain reaction will begin. In most rocks, there is either not enough uranium to sustain nuclear fission or it decays too fast to cause a chain reaction.

In the Oklo-reactor, two factors came together to sustain slow nuclear fission for hundreds of thousands of years. Weathering of magmatic rocks and bacterial activity concentrated the uranium enough to start a nuclear chain reaction. Then the water that infiltrated the formation along faults slowed down the emitted neutrons enough to sustain slow and stable nuclear fission. As the uranium decays, it forms other radioactive elements fueling the reactor.

Over time the Oklo-reactor has produced large quantities of toxic plutonium and caesium-isotopes, which have since decayed into stable and harmless barium. During this process, however, no harmful radioactivity has leaked into the environment.

As the planet warms due to our carbon emissions, burning oil and coal is no longer a sustainable way to meet humanity’s hunger for energy.

Many experts believe that nuclear energy could be a temporary solution until renewable energy sources are ready to meet the demand. Unfortunately, nuclear energy comes with radioactive waste.

A permanent repository for nuclear waste must contain toxic elements and radioactivity for at least 100,000 years. The problem is that we don’t know what materials to use for the containers to store the waste.

Steel will rust, concrete can leak and even glass is damaged by the emitted radiation. By studying the Oklo-reactor, scientists hope to find a way to safely dispose of nuclear waste as produced by modern reactors.

Research by a team of scientists of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D. C. and published in the journal PNAS has investigated how the Oklo-reactor was able to work so long and yet not pollute the environment. In rocks recovered from the Oklo mine, barium (the ‘trace’ left by the former radioactive elements) is not found evenly distributed but rather found in nests surrounded by a thin layer of ruthenium compounds.

Native ruthenium is a rare and inert metal often associated with ore of other elements. The scientists believe that the radioactive plutonium and caesium were encapsulated and safely isolated from the environment by a shell of ruthenium-compounds. If so, containers made of ruthenium alloys could be used to safely store radioactive waste for a very long time.

As the Oklo-reactor demonstrates, the ruthenium compounds remain stable even if exposed to radioactivity and corrosion by water over vast geological periods.