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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Long-Lost Kingdom Over 3,000 Years Old Stumbled on by Archeologists in Turkey
It was said that all he touched turned to gold. But destiny eventually caught up with the legendary King Midas, and a long-lost chronicle of his ancient downfall appears to have literally surfaced in Turkey.
The archaeological mound at Türkmen-Karahöyük.
In 2019, archaeologists were investigating an ancient mound site in central Turkey called Türkmen-Karahöyük. The greater region, the Konya Plain, abounds with lost metropolises, but even so, researchers couldn’t have been prepared for what they were about to find.
A local farmer told the group that a nearby canal, recently dredged, revealed the existence of a large strange stone, marked with some kind of unknown inscription.
“We could see it still sticking out of the water, so we jumped right down into the canal – up to our waists wading around,” said archaeologist James Osborne from the University of Chicago in early 2020.
“Right away it was clear it was ancient, and we recognised the script it was written in: Luwian, the language used in the Bronze and Iron Ages in the area.”
The half-submerged stone with inscriptions dating to the 8th century BCE.
With the aid of translators, the researchers found that the hieroglyphs on this ancient stone block – called a stele – boasted of a military victory. And not just any military victory, but the defeat of Phrygia, a kingdom of Anatolia that existed roughly 3,000 years ago.
The royal house of Phrygia was ruled by a few different men called Midas, but the dating of the stele, based on linguistic analysis, suggests the block’s hieroglyphics could be referring to the King Midas – he of the famous ‘golden touch’ myth.
The stone markings also contained a special hieroglyphic symbolising that the victory message came from another king, a man called Hartapu. The hieroglyphs suggest Midas was captured by Hartapu’s forces.
“The storm gods delivered the [opposing] kings to his majesty,” the stone reads.
What’s significant about this is that almost nothing is known about King Hartapu, nor about the kingdom he ruled. Nonetheless, the stele suggests the giant mound of Türkmen-Karahöyük may have been Hartapu’s capital city, spanning some 300 acres in its heyday, the heart of the ancient conquest of Midas and Phrygia.
“We had no idea about this kingdom,” Osborne said. “In a flash, we had profound new information on the Iron Age Middle East.”
Luwian inscriptions were uncovered on a stone from a nearby dig.
There’s a lot more digging to be done in this ongoing archaeological project, and the findings so far should be considered preliminary for now. The international team is eager to revisit the site this year, to find out whatever more we can about this kingdom seemingly lost in history.
“Inside this mound are going to be palaces, monuments, houses,” Osborne said. “This stele was a marvellous, incredibly lucky find – but it’s just the beginning.”
You can find out more about the research here and here.
The Incas used cutting-edge technology to power their empire
In the 15th and early 16th Centuries, a small island in Lake Titicaca was one of South America’s most important religious sites. Revered as the birthplace of the Sun, the Moon and the Inca dynasty, Isla del Sol (“Island of the Sun”) drew pilgrims from across the Andes.
A few years ago, I followed in their footsteps, catching a boat from the Bolivian town of Copacabana across the choppy, gunboat-grey lake, which sits at an altitude of 3,812m, making it the only place on the planet a traveller can “suffer from sea-sickness and mountain-sickness at the same time”, according to the British explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett, who visited in the early 1900s.
After docking on Isla del Sol’s north-east coast, I followed a centuries-old trail past a host of Inca and pre-Inca ruins – tambos (waystations), shrines, temples, plazas, altars and a ceremonial complex that includes Titikala, a slab of sandstone from which Andean creator god Viracocha is said to have brought forth the Sun and the Moon.
These deceptively simple feats of agricultural engineering helped the Inca to build the largest empire in South American history
Captivated by the ancient sites and the views of the snow-streaked Cordillera Real in the distance, I paid little attention to the terraced fields snaking along the hillsides of the island. Yet these deceptively simple feats of agricultural engineering helped the Inca to build the largest empire in South American history.
Known as Andenes (Spanish for “platforms”), these terraced fields are scattered across the central Andes. First constructed around 4,500 years ago by ancient cultures across the region, they were perfected by the Inca, who emerged in the 12th Century and were masters of adopting and adapting techniques, strategies and belief systems from other societies. Andenes, says Cecilia Pardo Grau, curator of the British Museum’s current Peru: a journey in time exhibition, was “a creative way of defying the terrain… that allows for an efficient way of growing [crops]”.
Choquequirao was built during the height of the Inca empire in the late 15th Century.
They allowed Andean communities to overcome challenging environments, including steep slopes, thin soils, extreme and sharply fluctuating temperatures, and scant or seasonal rainfall. Fed by artificial pools and elaborate irrigation systems, Andenes significantly expanded the area of cultivable land. They also conserved water, reduced soil erosion and – thanks to stone walls that absorbed heat during the day and then released it at night – protected plants from severe frosts.
This enabled farmers to grow dozens of different crops, from maize and potatoes to quinoa and coca, many of which would not otherwise have survived in the region. The upshot was a dramatic increase in the overall amount of food produced.
Beyond their ingenuity, Andenes also have an artistic quality, forming vast geometric patterns on the landscapes of the Andes. Some look like giant green staircases carved into the mountainside, while others are made up of sets of concentric circles, capturing the attention like an optical illusion.
One of the most impressive is the Peruvian archaeological site of Moray, which resembles a natural amphitheatre. Located around 50km north of the former Inca capital of Cuzco and 3,500m above sea level, it demonstrates how andenes were used to create a range of microclimates. Thanks to the varying designs, sizes, depths and orientations of the terraces, the temperature differential between the highest and lowest are around 15C. Moray has been described as an “agricultural research station”: soil samples from across the empire have been discovered here and researchers argue the Inca may have used the site to experiment with practices like crop rotation, domestication and hybridisation.
Sophisticated agricultural techniques such as Andenes played a vital role in the expansion of the Inca empire, which was known as Tawantinsuyu and spanned much of modern-day Peru, western Bolivia, southwest Ecuador, south-west Colombia, north-west Argentina and northern Chile at its height. One of the oldest surviving accounts of their use comes from Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), the son of an Inca noblewoman and a Spanish conquistador. After capturing new territory, the Inca started to expand the amount of agricultural land by bringing in skilled engineers, de la Vega noted in his book, Royal Commentaries of the Incas.
The terraced fields can be found scattered across the steep slopes of the central Andes.
“Having dug the [irrigation] channels, they levelled the fields and squared them so that the irrigation water could be adequately distributed,” he wrote. “They built terraces on the mountains and hillsides, wherever the soil was good… In this way the whole hill was gradually brought under cultivation, the platforms being flattened out like stairs in a staircase and all the cultivable and irrigable land being put to use.”
The newly expanded land was subsequently split into three parts: one for the Inca emperor; one for religious purposes; and one for the community, tranches of which were then distributed by local leaders. Although they were not taxed, farmers were required to spend time working on the emperor’s and the religious lands, as well as their own.
Techniques such as andenes were combined with policies such as mitma, where people were moved to recently conquered territories to help cement Inca control; and mit’a, a form of compulsory public service used to provide manpower to build infrastructure, including a road network tens of thousands of kilometres long.
This approach to agricultural, community and imperial organisation allowed the Inca to amass large surpluses of food for use during droughts, floods, conflicts and other lean periods. These stockpiles – which included chuño, freeze-dried potatoes produced by repeated exposure to frost and bright sunshine – were kept in huge storehouses called qullqas. In the absence of a written language, the Inca used a complex system of multicoloured knotted strings known as quipu (or khipu) to maintain inventories, as well as keep track of population and astronomical data. Some academics believe quipu may even have been used to record narratives such as stories, songs and poems.
Grau argues that quipu – examples of which are on display in the British Museum’s exhibition – were central to Inca society. “They inherited this knowledge from the Wari, a society that existed in the southern highlands, 400 years before the Inca,” she said. “The Inca used a decimal system: they had a different knot for every number from one to nine, and then for tens, hundreds and thousands… the quipu was key in the way the empire functioned and was organised.”
The dramatic Colca Canyon in southern Peru is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon
Ultimately, the andenes, stockpiles and quipus helped the Inca to steadily expand an empire that eventually dominated a great swath of South America, encompassed 12 million people and produced majestic citadels such as Machu Picchu.
But the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th Century triggered the overthrow of the Inca and the decline of the Andenes. Colonial violence, epidemics of European diseases and forced displacement devastated the indigenous populations of the central Andes. European crops and agriculture practices were introduced and quickly spread throughout the region.
Yet while many andenes were abandoned or fell into disrepair, they never disappeared completely. Drawing on knowledge passed down over the generations, many Andean farmers continue to use them today, and though often overlooked by travellers, they remain a common sight in places such as Isla del Sol and the wider Titicaca region, the Sacred Valley near Machu Picchu, and the Colca Canyon in southern Peru, a fissure twice the depth of the Grand Canyon.
In recent years, there has also been renewed academic interest in Andenes as a form of sustainable agriculture that could help the world cope with the climate crisis, water scarcity and soil erosion. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, for example, describes traditional Andean culture as “one of the best examples of the adaptation and knowledge of farmers to their environment”, and highlights its sustainable approach to land usage, water management, soil protection and crop biodiversity.
Four and a half thousand years after they first emerged, the terraced fields of the Andes appear to be ahead of their time.
Mysterious footprints suggest Neanderthals climbed a volcano right after it erupted
According to legend, the devil once took a walk down the side of a volcano in southern Italy, each step preserved forever in solid rock. The tracks are known as the “Ciampate del Diavolo“‘ or “Devil’s Trail” – but details published in 2020 reveal a less diabolical yet far more interesting story on how they came to be.
The mysterious footprints are well known to those living near Roccamonfina, an extinct volcano in southern Italy that hasn’t erupted in tens of thousands of years. Since 2001, researchers have sought to explain the dozens of impressions left by a small group of human ancestors and even a few animals snaking their way down the mountainside.
But a paper published in January 2020 suggested some individuals were actually heading back up. Over recent years numerous expeditions have provided detailed measurements on a total of 67 indentations left by the scuffle of feet, hands, and legs, all divided across three distinct tracks headed away from the mountain’s summit.
Thanks to the contributions by a team of scientists from institutes across Italy, we obtained details on a further 14 prints – these even larger than the others – some of which head up the mountain rather than down.
Radiometric and geological dating of the various rock strata has already established that the imprints were cast in the soft blanket of ash left in the wake of an eruption around 350,000 years ago, making them some of the oldest preserved human footprints on record.
But just who left these tracks? It’s impossible to say for certain based on an assortment of dull shapes pressed awkwardly in time-worn volcanic sediment.
There seemed to be at least five different bodies behind the marks. Further investigations could help whittle down ideas on the sex, body mass, and perhaps even heights of the trekkers.
Given our own Homo sapiens ancestors developed their characteristic traits only 315,000 years ago, we can be pretty confident they weren’t members of our own species.
But the researchers have some clues.
One of the clearer imprints provides clear evidence of a grown human male.
And the shapes of many of the footprints point to an interesting possibility. The broad nature of the hindfoot area, with the low rise of the arch, looks suspiciously like the feet of individuals buried in the Sima de Los Huesos “Pit of Bones”.
Footprints on the Ciampate del Diavolo.
The owners of those 430,000-year-old remains have been a topic of debate of the years, progressing from Homo heidelbergensis to Neanderthal, to Denisovan, back to Neanderthal.
Assuming they truly are Neanderthals, it’s reasonable – even if not solid – to bet that the footprints were left by a gang of young Neanderthal adults.
Still, the researchers were careful about jumping to conclusions.
“We have decided to keep the attribution to a specific species still pending,” lead researcher Adolfo Panarello told New Scientist’s Michael Marshall back in January 2020.
Just what inspired an ancient group of hominids to go trouncing through the cooling soot and debris after the mountain violently blew its lid is anybody’s guess, though it’s clear from the impressions that nobody was in a hurry.
Based on the leisurely pace of around 1 meter per second (3.2 feet per second), the handful of footsteps heading uphill, and a scattering of basalt artefacts found in the vicinity, we might imagine this was just another day in the life by an active volcano.
Slowly treading barefoot through material freshly deposited by a 300 degree Celsius (572 Fahrenheit) flow of billowing pyroclastic insanity isn’t exactly for the faint-hearted either, no matter how tough your soles might be.
Going on a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the researchers estimated the blanket would need to have cooled to at least 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), meaning at least several hours needed to have passed between an eruption and the trek.
We might well imagine members of a community living in the shadow of a mountain known to occasionally spew out hot clouds of poisonous gas and muddy ash, with a small band setting across a familiar path to check out the carnage.
Perhaps disaster tourism isn’t a recent thing, after all.
This research was published in the Journal of Quaternary Science.
