Category Archives: WORLD

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy

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.

Scientists Hope to Solve the Mystery of 163 Child Mummies Discovered in Italy
Catacombs of Palermo

Dr Kirsty Squires, of Staffordshire University, will head a first attempt to tell the stories of some of the 163 children whose remains lie within the corridors and crypts of the famous underground tomb.

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.

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

Mind-Blowing Fossil Site Found in ‘Dead’ Heart of Australia

Mind-Blowing Fossil Site Found in ‘Dead’ Heart of Australia

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.”

The research has been published in Science Advances.

ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

7,200-year-old skeleton unearthed in Indonesia reveals an unknown human group

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.
EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

7,000-year-old fortress wall uncovered in southern Turkey

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.

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.

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.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Terracotta Dog Unearthed in Rome

Terracotta Dog Unearthed in Rome

Because of its long history, Rome has often yielded archaeological treasures in the most unexpected of places.

Terracotta Dog Unearthed in Rome
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.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Large discovery of Native American artefacts in Willamette Valley

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.”

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

Medieval Runes Discovered in Norway

Medieval Runes Discovered in Norway

An ongoing excavation in the Medieval Park in Oslo found objects with runic inscriptions just before Christmas.

Just before Christmas, archaeologists Solveig Thorkildsen and Ingeborg Hornkjøl, both with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, NIKU, found two rare objects. A stick inscribed with runes, a so-called rune stick, and a bone, also inscribed with runes, was discovered a few days apart during an ongoing dig at the Medieval Park in Oslo.

Earlier in December, a unique knife handle depicting a king with a hunting falcon on his arm was found in the same place. The findings have been done just about halfway through the excavation.

This large bone may be the rib of a cow or a horse. Further examinations are needed in order to determine the origins.

Runes high on the wish list

“My heart was pounding. Finding runes was at the top of my wish list for this dig,” Solveig Thorkildsen says in an article on niku.no. It was Thorkildsen who found the large bone, probably a rib, which was inscribed with runes on both sides. The rune stick was found by Ingeborg Hornkjøl. It was found in a deep ditch where water was constantly seeping in. The water had washed out a piece of wood, which Hornkjøl thought looked a bit different.

“I thought to myself this cannot be true, this is not true, it’s not true! But it was true!” she says to niku.no.

The rune stick is a piece of wood that is inscribed on three sides, both in Norse and Latin.

The rune stick has inscriptions in both Latin and Norse, on three sides.

Interesting finds

NIKU asked Kristel Zilmer to interpret the runes on the two objects. Zilmer is a professor of runology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo.

“These are two interesting findings that expand our knowledge about runes, writing and written language in the towns of the Middle Ages,” she says to niku.no.

The context of the runic inscriptions is often unknown, according to Karen Langsholt Holmqvist, who recently defended her PhD on graffiti from the Middle Ages. As the context is often vital for understanding the meaning of the inscriptions, runes from the Middle Ages can be quite difficult to interpret in the 21st century. Zilmer writes in an email to sciencenorway.no that preserved runes often are very short pieces of text. A few typical phrases and expressions are repeated in many such inscriptions.

“The object itself also gives us a few possible keys for interpretation,” she explains.

The inscribed bone is an example of this.

“Working on interpreting runes in today’s day and age isn’t automatically as impossible as it may sound,” according to Zilmer.

“The greatest problems occur where the inscriptions are damaged, where the runic letters are difficult to read or where the inscriptions simply appear as meaningless. But other than that we can get quite a bit of information from the inscriptions themselves, the object they appear on and the context of the find,” she writes.

No sure interpretation yet

Old objects are often tainted by time. The rune stick is damaged, and some of the inscriptions are likely lost.

Nonetheless, Zilmer has managed to interpret several words.

On one of the broadsides, there are two Latin words: manus and Domine or Domini.

Manus means hand, and Dominus means lord or God. The words are found in a known Latin prayer: ‘In Manus Tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum’, meaning ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’. These are words traditionally attributed to Jesus as he was crucified.

Difficult without a microscope

The short side of the stick may be a continuation of the prayer, Zilmer explains. The first rune is difficult to pin down without a microscope. So far it can be read in different ways.

“It will be easier to establish what the more or less likely interpretations are when I can study this in a microscope,” Zilmer writes.

It is possible that it says “it is true”. If so, then the prayer is similar to one found in the Urnes stave church: ‘Hold thy sacred Lord hand over Brynjolvs spirit. This is true”.

The female name Bryngjerd is also inscribed. Perhaps the rune stick is about Bryngjerd who has given her life to the service of God?

“Many runic inscriptions from the Middle Ages contain simple religious quotes that expressed important messages in a Christian society,” Zilmer explains.

Probably from a large animal

The runic bone is most likely from a large animal such as a horse or a cow, according to NIKU. It will however have to undergo more examinations before this can be determined for certain. Zilmer has also found the inscription of «basmarþærbæin», for which she believes there are two possible interpretations. The first is that this could be the name or the nickname of a person. The other is that the rune describes the bone itself, the object on which the runes are inscribed.

The four last runes, bæin, mean bone in Norse.

Below are3d animations of the two objects. Examine them by zooming and rotating them as you please.

https://skfb.ly/o8oRD

https://skfb.ly/o8oTH

Oslo-people from the Middle Ages

Kristel Zilmer believes that the runic finds in Oslo can teach us more about people who lived in Oslo during the Middle Ages. We know a bit about what people in the Middle Ages thought, felt and found interesting, thanks to the old sagas. The sagas, however, were written in monasteries by people who could write far better than the average person. Runes were on the other hand-carved into items by a much broader section of the population. The newly found runes are from the Middle Ages, according to Zilmer. Characteristics of the runic shapes reveal this.

The question remains whether the context of the finds can give us a more exact dating of the objects. As per the king on the knife handle which was found a few weeks ago, his hairstyle revealed the age.

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

India’s largest known burial site is 4,000 yrs old, confirms carbon dating

India’s largest known burial site is 4,000 yrs old, confirms carbon dating

One day in 2005, Shriram Sharma, a farmer from Sanauli village Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district, was carrying about his day, and ploughing his field. Little did he know that what was otherwise part of his daily routine would lead to an accidental discovery of skeletons and copper pots, which would one day raise questions on ancient global history. 

He alerted the local media about his discovery, and soon, a team from the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) had arrived at the scene, to begin digging deep into three bighas (0.40052356 acres) of Sharma’s land. The first round of excavations lasted for 13 months, during which they found chariots, coffins, pots, skeletons, what could arguably be the world’s oldest copper helmet, and more, tentatively dating back to 2000 BCE. 

Interestingly, most wooden artefacts were layered with copper sheaths, inlays, and wires,  which prevented them from decomposing for nearly 4,000 years. “In the area where we excavated furnaces, we suspect that the superstructure was made of wood. But the sediment is very difficult to work with and retrieving wood impression is particularly tricky. Thank God for the copper inlays and covering, which helped us identify the findings,” Disha Ahluwalia, who was appointed the site-in charge in February, tells The Better India.

India’s largest known burial site is 4,000 yrs old, confirms carbon dating

The carbon dating tests confirmed that the burial site — where 125 burials were discovered — is 4,000 years old.  

The most striking aspect of the excavation has been the discovery of three chariots, which bring up questions regarding the Aryan Invasion theory. The design and size of the chariot indicate they were horse-driven and were contemporary to the Mesopotamian and Sumerian culture. According to historians, the horses were brought from Central Asia by the invading Aryan army around 1500 BC. Besides, the Harappan civilisation had chariots driven by bulls. 

The ASI carried two more rounds (in 2018 and 2019) of meticulous digging thereafter, bringing forth several intriguing theories and discoveries about the Sanauli burial site.

Needless to say, Sanauli has caught everyone’s attention, as these discoveries could be a major chapter piecing together history in this century. Discovery Plus recently released a 55-minute documentary called ‘Secrets of Sanauli — Discovery of the Century, made by director Neeraj Pandey and compered by Manoj Bajpayee. It follows the archaeological findings and questions the western hegemonic narratives. The theories, history and language have been simplified by experts including Dr VN Prabhakar – IIT Gandhinagar, Dr BR Mani – National Museum, and so on. 

Did Sanuali coexist with the Harappan civilisation? 

The archaeologists found a slew of antiques such as chariots, a torch, an antenna sword, highly decorated coffins, and helmets. The astonishingly well-preserved remains are similar to those found in the late Harappan phase. However, the Orche-Coloured Pottery (OCP) and copper-coated items are reasons enough to dismiss that Sanauli was part of the late Harappan phase. Hence, it could be that Sanauli was another Chalcolithic culture that existed alongside Harappa.

“The 2005 excavations helped us discover pottery of different sizes, besides beads and other material that were similar to those used in the Harappan civilisation. However, a chariot near a coffin is not seen anywhere in the Harappan sites,” Dr Sanjay Kumar Manjul, director of the ASI’s Institute of Archaeology and in-charge of the excavation, told Outlook.

Further, the bricks found on the in-situ site are different as well, “The Harappan bricks are smaller than Sanauli, but excavators could not identify the alignment or make sense of the structure. This has left many questions unanswered,” says Disha.  

Explaining the process of identifying the bricks and discovering a new element with Dr Manjul, she says, “After days of strenuous work, we noticed one brick in the structure was perfectly horizontal, and others which were falling. This one brick gave the impression that it is supported by some sort of structure or more bricks underneath. I decided to undercut the section and we found the fourth side of the collapsed wall. We understood that there are two layers to this structure and that it’s not a platform, but instead a walled structure. What was interesting was that two sides of the structure had collapsed inwards, whereas the third wall that I found after undercutting the section was outwards. As the level of the base was the same as that of the burial pits, it suggested that this was a structure built in a pit, where the two sides that collapsed inwards were supported by the natural sediment and then the rest of the structure was above the ground with a wooden superstructure. We could see the heavy use of wood everywhere.”

Of royalty & warfare

In 2018’s digging, the ASI team unearthed other items that gave further insight into the culture of Sanauli including warfare and royal borough.

The fresh evidence, comprising eight burials, screams of evidence of an elite class. A decorated horn comb with a peacock motif, copper mirror, armlet made of agate beads, vases, and bowls are a few examples of this. One royal coffin had a decorated lid with eight anthropomorphic figures such as headgear, and pipal leaf. A copper armour shaped like a torso was another item. Besides, ceramic pots were found next to the coffins, suggesting the possibility of rituals that were performed before the person was buried. 

The burials also hinted that the tribe consisted of warriors who used technologically advanced weaponry. For example, the antenna sword was placed in an upright position next to the skeletons of both, males and females (yes, women also may have fought wars as per Dr Manjul). Additionally, the swords have copper-covered hilts and medial ridge, which are sturdy enough for war. 

The three chariots made of wood and covered with thick copper sheets also denote wars. Unlike the ones found in Harappan culture, these chariots were smaller in size with thinner carts. This means that they could accommodate a maximum of two people according to Dr Manjul. Hence, they weren’t used as carriers. The chariots are two-wheeled and are fixed on an axle. This was supposedly linked to the yoke of a pair of animals by a long rope. 

Helmets and shields further affirm the possibility. Interestingly, the ASI team believes that the helmet could be the world’s oldest. “If you see the documentary, the excavator says ‘helmet’ or ‘copper pot’. But earlier, the excavator suggested that it’s a copper helmet. We are yet to be sure. It could be the earliest, because if it is a helmet, then no other such object predates Sanauli. The ones in the West are of later dates. But in my opinion, we should conduct more analysis,” says Disha. 

Meanwhile, the shields had two gender-specific designs. The ones found next to women had steatite inlay work and men burials had ones with copper designs. 

According to Dr Manjul, the ASI team had used modern and scientific techniques such as X-Ray, Handheld XRF, 3D scanning, CT scan and drone and Magnetometer surveys to analyse the startling findings. Both Dr Manjul, as well as Disha, reiterate that more studies will be conducted to unearth specific historic events and significance in future. 

Watch Dr Manjul’s presentation on the artefacts here: