Category Archives: WORLD

ASIA, JORDAN, WORLD

Evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed the ancient city in the Jordan Valley

Evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed the ancient city in the Jordan Valley

The destruction of Tall el-Hammam, a Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley, by an exploding comet or meteor may have inspired the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a new study suggests. (“[N]otoriously sinful cities,” Sodom and Gomorrah’s devastation by sulfur and fire is recorded in the Book of Genesis, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.)

Evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed the ancient city in the Jordan Valley
“Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit,” writes study co-author Christopher Moore. “Clothing and wood immediately burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately, the entire city was on fire.”

At the time of the disaster, around 1650 B.C.E., Tall el-Hammam was the largest of three major cities in the valley. It likely acted as the region’s political centre, reports Ariella Marsden for the Jerusalem Post. Combined, the three metropolises boasted a population of around 50,000.

Tall el-Hammam’s mudbrick buildings stood up to five stories tall. Over the years, archaeologists examining the structures’ ruins have found evidence of a sudden high-temperature, destructive event—for instance, pottery pieces that were melted on the outside but untouched inside. 

Almost immediately, the entire city was on fire.

The new paper, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, examined possible causes of the devastation based on the archaeological record. The researchers concluded that warfare, a fire, a volcanic eruption or an earthquake were unlikely culprits, as these events couldn’t have produced heat intense enough to cause the melting recorded at the scene. That left a space rock as the most likely cause.

Because experts failed to find a crater at the site, they attributed the damage to an airburst created when a meteor or comet travelled through the atmosphere at high speed.

It would have exploded about 2.5 miles above the city in a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima, writes study co-author Christopher R. Moore, an archaeologist at the University of South Carolina, for The Conversation. 

“Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit,” Moore explains. “Clothing and wood immediately burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately, the entire city was on fire.”

Seconds after the blast, a shockwave ripped through the city at a speed of roughly 740 miles per hour—faster than the worst tornado ever recorded. The cities’ buildings were reduced to foundations and rubble.

“None of the 8,000 people or any animals within the city survived,” Moore adds. “Their bodies were torn apart and their bones blasted into small fragments.”

Corroborating the idea that an airburst caused the destruction, the researchers found melted metals and unusual mineral fragments among the city’s ruins.

A massive fire and shockwave caused by the exploding space rock levelled the city, according to the new study.

“[O]ne of the main discoveries is shocked quartz,” says James P. Kennett, an emeritus earth scientist at the University of California Santa Barbara, in a statement. “These are sand grains containing cracks that form only under very high pressure.”

The archaeologists also discovered high concentrations of salt in the “destruction layer” of the site, possibly from the blast’s impact on the Dead Sea or its shores.

The explosion could have distributed the salt across a wide area, possibly creating high-salinity soil that prevented crops from growing and resulted in the abandonment of cities along the lower Jordan Valley for centuries.

Moore writes that people may have passed down accounts of the spectacular disaster as oral history over generations, providing the basis for the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah—which, like Tall el-Hammam, were supposedly located near the Dead Sea.

In the Book of Genesis, God “rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven,” and “the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.” According to the Gospel of Luke, “on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them.”

Whether Tall el-Hammam and Sodom were actually the same cities is an ongoing debate. The researchers point out that the new study does not offer evidence one way or the other.

“All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst,” says Kennett in the statement, “but there’s no scientific proof that this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament.”

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Fossil footprints show humans in North America more than 21,000 years ago

Fossil footprints show humans in North America more than 21,000 years ago

The question of when humans first migrated to North America has long been a matter of hot debate among researchers who have continually uncovered evidence of ever-earlier dates. Now, analysis of ancient fossilized human footprints in New Mexico has pushed the date back once again — to at least 21,000 years ago.

Fossilized human footprints showed at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico. According to a report published in the journal Science, the impressions indicate that early humans were walking across North America around 23,000 years ago.

Writing in the journal Science, a team of researchers led by Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in England examined a set of human footprints preserved on an ancient lakeshore in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, a location now known for its expansive — and dry — chalk-coloured dunes.

They concluded that the footprints were made between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. The date would place human habitation in the Americas during the Last Glacial Maximum and at least 5,000 years earlier than widely accepted evidence has yet suggested.

The team has studied the footprints at White Sands National Park for years, excavating trenches and following the tracks with ground-penetrating radar.

The footprints were mostly made by children and teenagers

Bennett and his colleagues, whose paper was published Thursday, determined that the tracks belonged to numerous people, mostly children and teenagers. What’s more, the footprints spanned a significant time period, suggesting that humans frequented the area for at least a few thousand years.

“One of the beautiful things about footprints is that, unlike stone tools or bones, they can’t be moved up or down the stratigraphy,” Bennett says, according to Science News, referring to the layers where artefacts and fossils are found. “They’re fixed, and they’re very precise.”

Normally, rock layers are “a nightmare” to date, says Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences. But he says that two years ago, archaeologist David Bustos, a study co-author, discovered a site where human footprints were co-mingled with a layer of sediment containing seeds from the spiral ditch grass, an aquatic plant that could be carbon-dated. The results gave an estimate for the footprints.

Tom Higham, an archaeological scientist and radiocarbon-dating expert at the University of Vienna, who was not part of the study, called the latest findings “extremely exciting.”

“I am convinced that these footprints genuinely are of the age claimed,” he said, according to Nature.

The evidence for older dates for migration to the Americas is less solid

Although previous studies have suggested an even earlier migration of modern humans into North America — including a controversial 2017 paper suggesting that people lived in the Southern California region as long as 130,000 years ago — those claims have been largely discounted because of the “equivocality of the evidence,” Nature says. For instance, rocks were mistaken for tools, and marks on animal bones thought to be made by humans turned out to have a natural origin, the journal says.

“For decades, archaeologists have debated when people first arrived in the Americas,” says Vance Holliday, a University of Arizona archaeologist and co-author of the latest paper.

“Few archaeologists see reliable evidence for sites older than about 16,000 years. Some think the arrival was later, no more than 13,000 years ago by makers of artefacts called Clovis points.”

Last year, Nature published a paper by archaeologists who claimed to have found human artefacts in Mexico’s Chiquihuite Cave dating to at least 26,000 years ago.

But many fellow archaeologists were sceptical, pointing to the possibility that what the researchers had identified as stone tools were in fact naturally fractured rocks.

Ciprian Ardelean, who led the 2020 study at Chiquihuite, readily acknowledges that the discovery by Bennett and his colleagues “is very close to finding the Holy Grail.”

“I feel a healthy but profound envy — a good kind of jealousy — towards the team for finding such a thing,” Ardelean told National Geographic.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Ancient religious ritual tools unearthed by Egyptian archaeologists

Ancient religious ritual tools unearthed by Egyptian archaeologists

Waziri stated this discovery is considered to be a major find in Egypt as it has the instruments that were utilised in conducting the daily religious rituals.

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities released a statement on September 18, Saturday stating that the Egyptian archaeologists discovered some ancient ritual tools and equipment which were previously used in religious rites at a temple area in Kafr el-Sheikh governorate, north of Cairo, Egypt. 

As per Xinhua, Fragments of a limestone pillar which are built in the shape of the goddess Hathor, a bunch of faience incense burners, a pair of clay pots, a number of statuettes, a fully golden Udjat eye, and the remnants of golden scales were among the items which are unearthed. 

Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri stated that this is considered to be a major find since it comprises the instruments that were really utilised in conducting the daily religious rites for goddess Hathor.

As per the Daily News Egypt website, these ancient ritual tools were most likely stashed behind a mound of stone blocks which is situated to the south of the goddess Wajit’s shrine.  

Other artefacts unearthed in the Pharaonic site

As per Ayman Ashmawy, the head of the ministry’s Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector, they also discovered ivory reliefs portraying everyday life, which comprises women carrying services for rituals, there are carvings of plants, birds, and animals.

A large limestone horizontal structured lintel was even found in which hieroglyphic texts are inscribed and components of a painting of a king conducting religious practices in the temple.  

The archaeologists also unearthed and identified hieroglyphic writings with the names and titles of Ancient Egyptian rulers going back over 2,500 years.

Daily News Egypt further reports that the inscription of the names and titles consists of King Psamtik I‘s five titles, as well as the names of the two 26th dynasty rulers ‘Wah Ib Ra’ and ‘Ahmose II.’

A big limestone well for holy water which was used for the rituals and a mud-brick bathtub structure were also unearthed, according to Hossam Ghoneim, director-general of Kafr el-Sheikh antiquities and leader of the archaeological mission. 

Mostafa stated Saqqara necropolis as a magnificent tomb 

Meanwhile, Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled al-Anany reopened King Djoser’s south tomb for tourists on September 13, Monday, marking a stunning milestone for the Saqqara necropolis.

According to Mostafa Waziri, the “magnificent” tomb, situated in the southern corner of the 3rd-century pharaoh, is the earliest stone structure from the “ancient world.” It’s worth noting that King Djoser founded Egypt’s Third Dynasty and built the groundwork for the world’s first pyramid, the step pyramid of Saqqara. 

The lid of the mummy’s coffin sports characteristic ancient Egyptian stylized facial features and informative hieroglyphics

Waziri addressed reporters at the opening ceremony by saying that the beautiful structure is the ancient world’s oldest stone structure, and it was termed the ‘Southern Tomb’ after its excavation by English archaeologist Cecil Mallaby Firth in the year 1928.  

ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

DNA Analysis Identifies Japanese Ancestors

DNA Analysis Identifies Japanese Ancestors

Researchers have rewritten Japanese history after uncovering a third, and a previously unknown, group of ancestors that migrated to Japan around 2,000 years ago, of modern-day Japanese populations.

DNA Analysis Identifies Japanese Ancestors
A buried skeleton from the early Jomon period.

Ancient Japan can be split into three key time periods: the Jomon period (13,000 B.C. to 300 B.C.), a time when a small population of hunter-gatherers who were proficient in pottery lived exclusively on the island; the overlapping Yayoi period (900 B.C. to A.D. 300), when farmers migrated to Japan from East Asia and developed agriculture; and the Kofun period (A.D. 300 to 700) when modern-day Japan began to take shape.

Previous research had suggested the two main genetic origins of modern-day Japanese populations were the original hunter-gatherers who lived during the Jomon period and the farmers who migrated to Japan during the Yayoi period. Now, an analysis of the DNA found in ancient bones has revealed a third genetic origin during the Kofun period, when a group of previously unknown ancestors migrated to Japan, researchers reported in a new study. 

“We are very excited about our findings on the tripartite [three-part] structure of Japanese populations,” lead author Shigeki Nakagome, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, told Live Science. “We believe that our study clearly demonstrates the power of ancient genomics to uncover new ancestral components that could not be seen only from modern data.”

Uncertain origins

The Jomon hunter-gatherers may have first appeared in Japan as early as 20,000 years ago and maintained a small population of around 1,000 individuals for thousands of years, Nakagome said. There is evidence of people living in Japan as far back as 38,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic, the researchers said in a statement, but little is known about these people.

“A long-standing hypothesis is that they were ancestors of Jomon,” Nakagome said. This means that the Upper Paleolithic people may have transitioned into the Jomon people around 16,000 years ago, he added. 

Another possible explanation is that Jomon people originated in East Asia and crossed the Korea Strait when it became covered in ice during the Last Glacial Maximum — the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period when ice sheets were at their greatest extent — around 28,000 years ago, according to the statement.

“However, whether these hypotheses are true or not remains unknown due to a lack of Paleolithic genomes from Japan,” Nakagome said.

At the start of the Yayoi period, there was an influx of people from China or Korea with experience in agriculture. These people introduced farming to Japan, which led to the development of the first social classes and the concept of land ownership. The Yayoi period transitioned into the Kofun period, during which the first political leaders emerged and a single nation, which later became modern-day Japan, was formed. However, until now, it was unclear if the Kofun transition was the result of the third mass migration or just a natural continuation of the Yayoi period.

“Cultural transitions could have happened without involving genetic changes,” Nakagome said. “Even if cultures look very different between two periods, it does not mean that process involved gene flow.”

Previous research had suggested a third genetic input from immigrants at the time, but until now, nobody had been able to sequence DNA from any Kofun individuals to find out.

Missing link 

In the new study, Nakagome and his team analyzed the genomes of 12 individuals from across Japan. Nine dated to the Jomon period, and three were from the Kofun period, making it “the first study that generated whole-genome sequence data from Kofun individuals,” Nakagome said. 

A skull from the late Jomon period was used in the analysis.

The results revealed that, as predicted by others, a third genetically distinct group of Japanese ancestors migrated to the country during the Kofun period. These ancestors came from East Asia and were most likely Han people from ancient China, Nakagome said.

“Han is genetically close to ancient Chinese people from the Yellow River or West Liao River, as well as modern populations, including the Tujia, She and Miao,” Nakagome said. “We think these immigrants came from somewhere around these regions.”

The team’s findings are not unsurprising to other historians who had suspected that this third group of Japanese ancestors existed.

“Archaeological evidence has long suggested three stages of migration, but the last one has largely been ignored.” Mikael Adolphson, a professor of Japanese history at the University of Cambridge who was not involved with the study, told Live Science. “This new finding confirms what many of us knew, but it is good that we now get evidence also from the medical field.”

The findings also showed that a majority of genes among modern-day Japanese populations originated from East Asia, across the three main periods of genetic mixing. The team’s analysis determined that “approximately 13%, 16% and 71% of Jomon, Northeast and East Asian ancestry, respectively,” Nakagome said. “So, East Asian ancestry is dominant in modern populations.”

However, the study does not shed light on whether the migration of East Asian people contributed to the transition from farming to an imperial state during the Kofun period.

“The Kofun individuals sequenced were not buried in keyhole-shaped mounds [reserved for high-ranking individuals], which implies that they were lower-ranking people,” Nakagome said. “To see if this East Asian ancestry played a key role in the transition, we need to sequence people with a higher rank.”

Nakagome and his team are excited to have helped confirm a new piece of Japan’s history and hope the findings can open the door to further discoveries. It is important to know “where we came from and the unique history of our own ancestors,” he said.

The study was published online on Sept. 17 in the journal Science Advances.

ARGENTINA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Dinosaur fossils found in Argentina could belong to the largest creature ever to have walked the Earth

Dinosaur fossils found in Argentina could belong to the largest creature ever to have walked the Earth

A team of researchers with Naturales y Museo, Universidad de Zaragoza and Universidad Nacional del Comahue has found evidence that suggests the remains of a dinosaur discovered in Argentina in 2012 may represent a creature that was the largest ever to walk the Earth.

Dinosaur fossils found in Argentina could belong to the largest creature ever to have walked the Earth
Argentinosaurus huinculensis reconstruction at Museo Municipal Carmen Funes, Plaza Huincul, Neuquén, Argentina. Credit: William Irvin Sellers, Lee Margetts, Rodolfo Aníbal Coria, Phillip Lars Manning, PLoS ONE (2013)

In their paper published in the journal Cretaceous Research, the group describes the fossilized remains that have been found so far and what they have revealed.

The largest creature ever to live is believed to be the blue whale—the largest of which grow to 33.6 meters long.

The biggest land creatures are believed to have been the dinosaurs—of them, the titanosaur (as their name suggests) is believed to be the largest.

And of those, Argentinosaurus represents the largest that left enough evidence for it to be classified the heaviest—at approximately 36.5 meters in length and weighing in at a hundred tons, it would have dwarfed today’s land animals by a considerable amount.

Researchers studying Patagotitan fossils (another titanosaur found in Patagonia) have suggested some of them might have broken the record for the largest, but there was insufficient fossil evidence to prove it.

In either case, the researchers studying the new remains have begun to believe that they have found an even bigger titanosaur.

Thus far, the dinosaur has been dated back to 98 million years ago (putting it in the Late Jurassic to the early Cretaceous).

The fossils found include 24 vertebrae, all belonging to a giant tail, parts of a pelvis and a pectoral girdle.

The huge size of each suggests the dinosaur was a very large titanosaur—one that might be bigger than Argentinosaurus. That claim cannot be confirmed, however, until leg bones are found. Their size will allow the researchers to make estimates of the animals’ body weight.

A handout picture released on January 20, 2021, by the CTyS-UNLaM Science Outreach Agency showing a palaeontologist during an excavation in which 98 million-year-old fossils were found, at the Candeleros Formation in the Neuquen River Valley, Argentina.

Titanosaurs belong to the sauropod family, which means they were herbivores, had massive bodies and long necks and tails.

Such dinosaurs would have had few worries from meat-eating enemies if they managed to grow to full size.

Their fossils have been found on all continents except Antarctica. The researchers conclude by noting that more digging in the area will likely reveal more fossils from the same dinosaur and perhaps evidence of its true size.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Researchers discover four dinosaurs in Montana

Researchers discover four dinosaurs in Montana

A team of palaeontologists from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture excavated four dinosaurs in northeastern Montana this summer. All fossils will be brought back to the Burke Museum where the public can watch palaeontologists remove the surrounding rock in the fossil preparation laboratory.

A team of UW students, volunteers and staff excavate the Flyby Trike in northeastern Montana.

The four dinosaur fossils are the ilium—or hip bones—of an ostrich-sized theropod, the group of meat-eating, two-legged dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and raptors; the hips and legs of a duck-billed dinosaur; a pelvis, toe claw and limbs from another theropod that could be a rare ostrich-mimic Anzu, or possibly a new species; and a Triceratops specimen consisting of its skull and other fossilized bones.

Three of the four dinosaurs were all found in close proximity on Bureau of Land Management land that is currently leased to a rancher.

In July 2021, a team of volunteers, palaeontology staff, K-12 educators who were part of the DIG Field School program and students from UW and other universities worked together to excavate these dinosaurs.

The fossils were found in the Hell Creek Formation, a geologic formation that dates from the latest portion of the Cretaceous Period, 66 to 68 million years ago. Typical paleontological digs involve excavating one known fossil.

However, the Hell Creek Project is an ongoing research collaboration of palaeontologists from around the world studying life right before, during and after the K-Pg mass extinction event that killed off all dinosaurs except birds.

The Hell Creek Project is unique in that it is sampling all plant and animal life found throughout the rock formation in an unbiased manner.

The Hell Creek geologic formation.

“Each fossil that we collect helps us sharpen our views of the last dinosaur-dominated ecosystems and the first mammal-dominated ecosystems,” said Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Burke Museum. “With these, we can better understand the processes involved in the loss and origination of biodiversity and the fragility, collapse and assembly of ecosystems.”

All of the dinosaurs except the Triceratops will be prepared in the Burke Museum’s fossil preparation laboratory this fall and winter.

The Triceratops fossil remains on the site because the dig team continued to find more and more bones while excavating and needs an additional field season to excavate any further bones that may be connected to the surrounding rock. The team plans to finish excavation in the summer of 2022.

Called the “Flyby Trike” in honour of the rancher who first identified the dinosaur while he was flying his aeroplane over his ranch, the team has uncovered this dinosaur’s frill, horn bones, individual rib bones, lower jaw, teeth and occipital condyle bone—nicknamed the “trailer hitch,” which is the ball on the back of the skull that connects to the neck vertebrae.

The team estimates approximately 30% of this individual’s skull bones have been found to date, with more potential bones to be excavated next year.

Researchers discover four dinosaurs in Montana
A close-up view of the Flyby Trike’s occipital condyle bone—nicknamed the “trailer hitch”—the ball on the back of the skull that connects to neck vertebrae.

The Flyby Trike was found in hardened mud, with the bones scattered on top of each other in ways that are different from the way the bones would be laid out in a living animal.

These clues indicate the dinosaur likely died on a flood plain and then got mixed together after its death by being moved around by a flood or river system, or possibly moved around by a scavenger like a T. rex, before fossilizing. In addition, the Flyby Trike is one of the last Triceratops living before the K-Pg mass extinction. Burke palaeontologists estimate it lived less than 300,000 years before the event.

“Previous to this year’s excavations, a portion of the Flyby Trike frill and a brow horn were collected and subsequently prepared by volunteer preparators in the fossil preparation lab.

The frill was collected in many pieces and puzzled together fantastically by volunteers. Upon puzzling the frill portion together, it was discovered that the specimen is likely an older ‘grandparent’ triceratops,” said Kelsie Abrams, the Burke Museum’s palaeontology preparation laboratory manager who also led this summer’s fieldwork.

“The triangular bones along the frill, called ‘epi occipitals,’ are completely fused and almost unrecognizable on the specimen, as compared to the sharp, noticeable triangular shape seen in younger individuals. In addition, the brow horn curves downwards as opposed to upwards, and this feature has been reported to be seen in older animals as well.”

Amber and seed pods were also found with the Flyby Trike. These finds allow paleobotanists to determine what plants were living alongside Triceratops, what the dinosaurs may have eaten, and what the overall ecosystem was like in Hell Creek leading up to the mass extinction event.

Kelsie Abrams, the Burke Museum’s palaeontology preparation laboratory manager, opens the field jacket of a theropod ilium.

“Plant fossil remains from this time period are crucial for our understanding of the wider ecosystem. Not only can plant material tell us what these dinosaurs were perhaps eating, but plants can more broadly tell us what their environment looked like,” said Paige Wilson, a UW graduate student in Earth and space sciences. “Plants are the base of the food chain and a crucial part of the fossil record. It’s exciting to see this new material found so close to vertebrate fossils!”

Museum visitors can now see palaeontologists remove rock from the first of the four dinosaurs—the theropod hips—in Burke’s palaeontology preparation laboratory. Additional fossils will be prepared in the upcoming weeks. All four dinosaurs will be held in trust for the public on behalf of the Bureau of Land Management and become a part of the Burke Museum’s collections.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Possible Grave of Medieval Christian Hermit Excavated in Spain

Possible Grave of Medieval Christian Hermit Excavated in Spain

This summer, a tomb embedded in the rock by the main entrance to the San Tirso and San Bernabé Hermitage situated in the karst complex of Ojo Guareña (Merindad de Sotoscueva, Burgos) was excavated; its structure of slabs holds the skeleton of an adult individual in the supine position, with its head to the west, set between two small limestone blocks.

Possible Grave of Medieval Christian Hermit Excavated in Spain
Hispano-Visigothic tomb in Ojo Guareña.

This excavation was prompted by the new chronologies offered by the dating project for the Ojo Guareña Karst Complex Cultural Heritage (2017–2021).

One of the dates obtained in 2020 evinces a Hispano-Visigothic period chronology related to the transition between the end of the seventh century and the start of the eighth, while the human remains from the lower level are associated with a transition phase between the end of the eighth century and the start of the ninth, in the High Middle Ages.

“In both cases, these push the evidence known to date for the start of Christian worship at this emblematic site back several centuries,” says Ana Isabel Ortega, an archaeologist attached to the Fundación Atapuerca and the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH).

The anthropological studies, especially the analyses of stable isotopes of hydrogen, carbon and strontium, together with the dating for the remains, offer us a glimpse into the life of this person, who could have been associated with the first hermits who sought a retreat in this idyllic setting where they could live in isolation, during centuries of great turbulence linked to the arrival of the Moors, just as was the case elsewhere close to the upper course of the River Ebro and its tributaries in the south of the province of Cantabria, the north of Burgos, Álava and La Rioja.

Apart from Ortega, the excavation team was made up of Pilar Fernández, Sofía de León and Raquel Lorenzo, restorers at the CENIEH, and Miguel Ángel Martín.

The other collaborators were Aitor Fernández, an employee of the Ayuntamiento de Merindad de Sotoscueva, as well as Clara López, Alberto Gómez and Eduardo Sainz Maza, who are guides to the San Bernabé Cave. Josu Riezu and Txus Riezu also furnished their support.

Once the excavation has concluded and the human remains have been recovered, these will be consolidated and restored at the CENIEH.

They will subsequently be subjected to dating, morphometric and paleopathological studies, while Ana Belén Marín and Borja González, researchers from the EvoAdapta R+D+i Group at the Universidad de Cantabria, will participate in isotopic studies.

Hub of Christianity

San Bernabé Cave became a hub of Christianity during the High Middle Ages as a centre for religion and pilgrimage, with the foundation of a church devoted to San Tirso and San Bernabé in a process that appropriated the former pagan sanctuary in the Ojo Guareña karst enclave caves, intimately bound up with the process that gave rise to the Kingdom of Castile.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Burned Layer at Jamestown Linked to Bacon’s Rebellion

Burned Layer at Jamestown Linked to Bacon’s Rebellion

While placing lights at the front of Historic Jamestowne’s memorial church ahead of its 2019 reopening, Jamestown Rediscovery’s Senior Staff Archaeologist Sean Romo made an interesting discovery: burn deposits buried just below the surface.

The artefacts, including window leads, collected on top of the burn deposits, date to just after the 1676 fire.

With several recorded accounts of open fires at the settlement, Romo said there were three possible causes. It could be evidence of the January 1608 fort burning, the result of Confederate troops’ 1862 retreat or it could be evidence of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676.

But the team could not definitively decide until they opened up the ground. But Romo had his doubts. While Confederate forces occupied the site, several spots around the island were disturbed in order to fortify the wall.

But, what the team uncovered was something of wonder: a square, 15-by-15 feet, filled with intact burn deposits along with several artefacts on the surface.

“We expected this space to be disturbed in some way, but once we took off the modern deposits, we were shocked. The fact that this site is really intact is incredible,” Romo said.

While historians have well-documented accounts of Nathaniel Bacon’s 1676 siege of Jamestown, there had never been any evidence identified as the burning of the island’s parish church.

But, nearly 345 years after the recorded event, the Jamestown Rediscovery’s team has definitively confirmed evidence of “one of the most unusual and complicated chapters in Jamestown’s history,” according to the National Park Service’s article.

While the team had several causes to consider, Romo said the artefacts, including window leads, collected on top of the burn deposits, date to just after the 1676 fire, proving that what they were looking at were from a wooden structure predating the rebellion.

On Sept. 19, 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a siege on Jamestown, burning the site to the ground after several skirmishes with Gov. Sir William Berkeley over Native relations.

The rebellion is known as the first of its kind in the American colonies as Bacon, a wealthy landowner, gained the support of poor farmers.

Additionally, in a second dig site along the church’s eastern wall, there is definitive evidence of the construction of the existing brick church tower following its burning.

According to Director of Archaeology Dave Givens, this discovery is crucial in telling the complete story of Jamestown’s history and the team plans to continue their efforts to understand other artefacts at the site.

“We have positive evidence of Bacon’s Rebellion and the burning that took place,” Givens said. “The nice thing about this dig is that, as it evolves, it will help us understand more about the layers and what we’re seeing every day.”