Archaeologists stunned by 5,000-year-old ‘Scottish Pompeii’ settlement
Duncansby Head lighthouse marks the most northeasterly point of the British mainland. It’s almost 880 miles from Land’s End in the southwest of England. Just beyond here are the Orkney islands, over 70 of them, many of which hold ancient secrets.
While 20 of the islands are inhabited, most of the population of about 22,000, live on the largest one known as the Mainland.
Orkney’s history goes back thousands of years ago — around 6,000, it is believed.
It was here that the people of the Neolithic era — the New Stone Age — settled on Orkney.
The remnants of their vibrant culture remain scattered across the archipelago and were explored during the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary, ‘Aerial Britain: Scotland‘.
Archaeology: Skara Brae has stunned researchers, it is described as the ‘Scottish Pompeii’
Skara Brae on the Mainland’s west coast has attracted particular attraction, as the documentary’s narrator noted: “It’s a 5,000-year-old settlement that has been called the Scottish Pompeii.”
An incredible window into the lives of the ancient people who once lived there, it was only discovered in 1850 when a severe storm stripped the earth from the site.
Europe’s most complete Neolithic village, each house shares the same basic design — a single large room fitted with stone-built cupboards, dressers and beds, all laid out around a square hearth.
Here, the inhabitants would gather around the fire during Orkney’s long and dark winters.
The Broch of Gurness, also on the Mainland, is a later settlement dating from around 500 BC.
At its centre is a brooch or stone tower.
It would probably only originally have reached a height of around 30 feet and was most likely inhabited by the principal family or clan of the area.
The narrator said: “The entire settlement may have been home to as many as 40 families.”
Humans Didn’t Descend From A Pair Of Adults 200,000 Years Ago
Those headlines give the impression that science has produced evidence to support the story of Adam and Eve. But the study they rest on does not demonstrate anything of the kind, and other lines of evidence strongly suggest that past human populations were always much larger than two.
The idea that humanity started with a single couple has been around for a while.
The study in question was actually published in May and received coverage at the time but has been picked up again. Its authors were Mark Stoeckle of Rockefeller University in New York and David Thaler of the University of Basel in Switzerland. It appeared in the journal Human Evolution, and it is “open access” so anyone can read it.
The study is about DNA barcoding: the technique of reading a small chunk of an organism’s DNA and using that to identify its species. To identify an animal, geneticists usually look at a gene called cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1). This gene is not part of the “main” genome held in the nucleus of animal cells but instead is carried in the mitochondria: tiny sausage-shaped organelles that swarm inside animal cells and provide them with energy.
DNA barcoding is not a perfect method of identifying species, but it works pretty well. That’s because, as the study observes, animals belonging to one species tend to have near-identical CO1 genes, which reliably differ from animals of other species.
Because CO1 genes are so similar within species, regardless of how many individuals there are, Stoeckle and Thaler argue that something must have made them that way. Either evolution is somehow pushing each species to have its own version, which seems unlikely, or each species has had almost all its genetic diversity purged – which implies that its population was once very small.
What’s more, these population bottlenecks seemingly all occurred between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Much of the coverage has interpreted this as implying some sort of global event, an unspecified catastrophe that slashed the population of pretty much every animal species. However, Stoeckle and Thaler do not argue that, saying instead that species experience bottlenecks every few hundred thousand years due to the rough and tumble of life.
Thaler was quoted by Fox News saying that “all of animal life experiences pulses of growth and stasis or near extinction on similar time scales”. He listed possible explanations: “ice ages and other forms of environmental change, infections, predation, competition from other species and for limited resources, and interactions among these forces”.
The finding of a population bottleneck also applies to humans. The human genetic data, according to the study, is “consistent with the extreme bottleneck of a founding pair”.
The idea of humans being reduced to a population of two, who then had to repopulate the planet, has understandably drawn people’s attention. But this idea is almost certainly wrong, for a host of reasons.
First, we should always be hesitant about drawing big conclusions from mitochondrial DNA, and especially from a single gene – even if that gene has been examined in hundreds of species. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from one’s mother, so it necessarily only tells us about the female line. More importantly, because there is so little of it, it often misleads us. When the mitochondrial genome of Neanderthals was sequenced, it showed no sign that humans and Neanderthals had interbred. The interbreeding was only revealed when the Neanderthal nuclear genome was read.
Second, there is no trace in the geological record of any global event in the last 200,000 years. Any event that slashed populations that significantly would surely have led to a noticeable spike in the extinction rate, and there isn’t one. There are of course the extinctions linked to humans, but those occurred at separate times and locations, not simultaneously across the planet.
Indeed, the study’s finding that the event occurred between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago is too vague to imply a single event. It’s a bit like saying that the Napoleonic Wars happened after the fall of Mycenaean Greece but before 9/11. The suggested timespan is so vast, there is no reason to invoke a single event at all.
The whole pattern can be explained much more easily by saying that a lot of new species evolved over the last few hundred thousand years. That would not be surprising, because most species are indeed fairly young.
Stoeckle and Thaler’s findings would have us believe that 90 per cent of species are less than 200,000 years old. I don’t think their mitochondrial DNA data is enough to show that, and studies of whole genomes and fossils will give us more reliable dates that I would expect to be older. But they won’t be that much older. Given that the planet has been in and out of glacial periods over the last 2.5 million years, plus all the upheavals caused by humans and our extinct relatives, the finding that most species alive today are fairly young shouldn’t surprise us.
What about our own species? First, Stoeckle and Thaler only ever said that their data was “consistent” with the existence of a founding pair. That doesn’t mean much, and they immediately conceded that the same pattern could have arisen “within a founding population of thousands that was stable for tens of thousands of years”. The fact is, genomic data doesn’t do a great job of revealing the sizes of past populations except in broad-brush terms. The human population was probably pretty small for a long time, but there is no reason to think it was two.
Finally, the archaeological record tells a different story. It used to be thought that our species was about 200,000 years old, which would fit Stoeckle and Thaler’s data. However, in 2017 fossils uncovered at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco turned out to belong to our species, and they were around 300,000 years old. What’s more, our lineage split from that of the Neanderthals (our closest extinct relatives) roughly 500,000 years ago, so arguably our species is 500,000 years old. 200,000 years ago does not appear to have been a particularly special time in the history of our species.
In rare find, archaeologists discover 2000-year-old ‘slave room’ in Italian city
The room containing three beds and one window was excavated in a villa buried by the 79 A.D. volcanic eruption. Officials say it offers “a very rare insight into the daily life of slaves” in the ancient city.
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a “slave room” at a Roman villa in Pompeii, officials said Saturday.
They said the rare find in the ancient city, which was buried in ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., appeared to be in an excellent state of preservation.
A “slaves room” at a Roman villa, containing beds, amphorae, ceramic pitchers and a chamber pot is discovered in a dig near the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD in a volcanic eruption, Italy, 2021.
Earlier this year, a perfectly intact ceremonial chariot was also uncovered at the site in southern Italy. Archaeologists believe the room likely housed slaves who were charged with maintaining the chariot.
What was found in the room?
The 16-square-meter (170-square-foot) room had three wooden beds, ceramic pitchers and a chamber pot. Two beds were about 1.7 meters long (nearly 5 feet, 7 inches) and one just 1.4 meters. The room had only one small window.
In the corners of the room, there were amphorae — a type of container — that seemingly belonged to the master of the house. Officials believe slaves kept their belongings in two amphorae under the beds.
The archaeologists also found a wooden box in the middle of the room and a drawbar leaning against the bed.
Nearby, a wooden chest contained metallic objects and textiles that “appear to be parts of harnesses for horses,” according to the Pompeii archaeological park.
A ‘window’ on daily life of enslaved
Officials hailed the discovery as a rare insight into slavery and the daily life of the enslaved.
“This is a window into the precarious reality of people who rarely appear in historical sources, written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Pompeii’s director-general.
The “unique testimony” into how “the weakest in the ancient society lived … is certainly one of the most exciting discoveries in my life as an archaeologist,” Zuchtriegel said in a press release.
The room was discovered during a dig at a suburban villa. “We did not expect to find such a room. Yet we often walked past it,” said Zuchtriegel, who was born in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg.
“This new important discovery enriches our understanding of the everyday life of the ancient Pompeians, especially that class in society about which little is still known,” Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said.
Pompeii, which was rediscovered in the 18th century, is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy and repeatedly uncovers sensational finds.
Norfolk treasure newly declared as England’s biggest Anglo-Saxon coin hoard
131 gold coins unearthed sporadically over the past 30 years from a single field in west Norfolk have been declared the largest trove of such items from the Anglo-Saxon period discovered in England.
Some of the gold coins, discovered in west Norfolk and thought buried around 600AD. Most are Frankish tremisses.
The coins, as well as four other gold objects dating around 1,400 years ago, were largely discovered by one metal detectorist who reported each find to local authorities.
According to a report from the Guardian, 10 coins were discovered by a local police officer, who was jailed for 16 months in 2017 for attempting to illegally sell them.
The Norfolk trove is mostly Frankish tremisses, a small gold coin used in Late Antiquity (about 284 C.E.–700 C.E.). Also found were nine solidi (a large coin from the Byzantine empire worth about three tremisses), a small gold bar, and a gold bracteate (a flat medal commonly worn as jewellery).
Gold bracteate, gold bar and two further artefacts thought to be jewellery fragments, discovered in Norfolk, part of a hoard that Norwich Castle Museum hopes to acquire.
The Norfolk coroner is currently examining the gold objects to determine whether they constituted treasure as defined by the 1996 Treasure Act of Great Britain, which would make the coins the property of the crown. (In the U.K., coroners are charged with investigating treasure claims, as well as adjudging causes of death.)
The Treasure Act states that any two or more coins comprised of more than 10% precious metal and that are more than 300 years old are considered treasures. Finders are legally obligated to report suspected treasure to local authorities.
The crown will claim the find if an accredited museum wishes to acquire the objects and can pay a reward equivalent to its market value. Currently, the Norwich Castle Museum hopes to acquire the hoard with the support of the British Museum.
In a statement, Tim Pestell, senior curator of archaeology at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, called the Norfolk hoard an “internationally significant find,” adding that “study of the hoard and its findspot has the potential to unlock our understanding of early trade and exchange systems and the importance of west Norfolk to East Anglia’s ruling kings in the seventh century.”
Until now, the largest coin hoard dating from the Anglo-Saxon period consisted of 101 coins discovered at Crondall, Hampshire, in 1828.
The most famous of such finds were made at Sutton Hoo in 1939 by amateur archaeologist Basil Brown and popularized by the 2021 Netflix drama The Dig.
Brown and his team discovered beneath a mound an early medieval funerary monument filled with 37 gold coins, three blank coins and two small ingots, among silverware from Byzantium, military equipment, and other treasures.
The entire funeral chamber is housed at the British Museum in London.
Dig in Turkey finds theater commode in ancient city of Smyrna
An ancient latrine unearthed in western Turkey WHEN? would have let more than a dozen people drop trou and ‘socialize’ and they did their business. The remains of the convivial commode were discovered in the ruins of a 2,000-year-old theatre in the ancient city of Smyrna, now located inside Izmir, Turkey’s third most populous city.
‘It is a toilet with a U-shaped seating arrangement… that 12-13 people can use together,’ Akin Ersoy, an archaeologist at Izmir’s Katip Çelebi University and leader of the excavation, said in a statement.
‘The use of this toilet space by a large number of people also brought socialization.’
Such social bathroom arrangements were fairly common in ancient Anatolia, which overlaps with much of modern-day Turkey, but this is the first seemingly reserved for performers in a theatre.
‘We think it was used only by artists working in the stage building and performing in the theatre, as the stage building is closed to the audience,’ Ersoy said.
‘Since it is located in a closed area, it is possible to consider it an ‘artist toilet,’ he added, calling the find ‘a first among theatres in the Mediterranean region.’
A 1,600-year-old latrine was uncovered in the ruins of an ancient Roman theatre in western Turkey. Because the building would have been closed off to the public, archaeologists believe the toilet was reserved for actors. The performers would have sat on a U-shaped bench that could accommodate up to 13-people at once
‘There are latrines that serve the audience near the theatres we know, but it is a first for such a place to be used as a toilet in the stage building of the theatre,’ Ersoy said.
When nature called, the performers would have sat on a wooden U-shaped bench, which only rose about 16 inches off the ground and had holes spaced out about two feet apart, Daily Sabah reported, allowing them to sit side-by-side.
In front of the seating is a four-inch trough that would have had clean water flowing through it.
If you were using the latrine you would then dip a sponge on a stick into the trough to clean your backside.
The archaeologists constructed a replica of the wooden bench to confirm their theory about the structure’s use.
The theatre, which had a 20,000-spectator capacity, was built in the 2nd century B.C. when Smyrna and Anatolia would have been under Roman authority.
The latrines, though, were added during a major renovation about 400 years later. Both were in use until about the 5th century A.D. when the Roman empire evolved in the east into the Christianized Byzantine Empire.
The 20,000-seat theatre was built in the ancient city of Smyrna in the 2nd century BC
The theatre and latrine were unearthed at the site of the ancient city of Smyrna in modern-day Izmir, Turkey
Founded more than 2,400 years ago, Smyrna has been the site of numerous archaeological discoveries in recent years.
Ersoy’s team has been excavating the site for five years with support from the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality. In March, they reported finding a stone quarry used in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, according to the Municipality.
Block stones and columns were transported to Smyrna from the ancient quarry, named Tırazlı-Kesikkaya, Ersoy said.
The roughly processed blocks were launched by sledges on stream beds and transported by sea to the Smyrna’s port, Ersoy said, at great cost and with great difficulty.
Chaco Canyon Polydactyly: A Thousand-Year-Old Foot Fetish?
If you’re a 12-toed guy struggling to make it in this ten-toed world, you may want to find a time machine and travel back about a thousand years to the Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.
According to new research, a group of people once lived there who respected, honoured and exalted those among them with an extra piggy on a foot.
We found that people with six toes, especially, were common and seemed to be associated with important ritual structures and high-status objects like turquoise.
Anthropologist Patricia Crown of the University of New Mexico co-authored a study, published this week in American Antiquity, about a high preponderance of six-toed people – the condition is known as polydactyly – among a prehistoric Pueblo culture in the Chaco Canyon.
Of the 96 skeletons of Chacoan people found at the canyon’s sacred Pueblo Bonito site, 3 of them had an extra toe on the right side of their right foot. That’s 15.5 times the average occurrence of polydactyly among modern Native Americans.
Six-toed imprint on a Pueblo wall
What gave the Chacoans another toenail to trim with a flint? Previous research on polydactyly shows it’s a dominant, non-recessive, hereditary trait that is not caused by inbreeding nor a genetic disease.
Study co-author Kerriann Marden suspects prenatal exposure to something hazardous, either environmental or possibly a food the pregnant mother ate. With the way the extra-toed were treated, perhaps the mothers may have even tried to have polydactyly babies.
The Mayans were known to worship six-toed people (and others with body anomalies) as gods, but the Chacoans weren’t that extreme. Handprints and footprints with extra digits appear on walls in rooms used for rituals and ceremonies.
One skeleton was buried with jewellery on the six-toed foot but nothing on the other one. Special extra-wide sandals were found with space for the extra toe.
Another six-toed wall imprint
The sandals and artwork may be the key to why the extra toes got respect.
The Chacoans art seemed to be focused on hands and feet and they appear to have paid special attention to sandals and footwear in general. Perhaps that fixation made those with two pinkie toes special.
Perhaps it was just because they could step on more ants.
330,000 Year Old Man made wall Found in New Zealand
In 1996, the alternative historian Barry Brailsford drew the world’s attention to the Kaimanawa wall in New Zealand. The curious structure lies in the Kaimanawa State Forest, south of Lake Taupo on North Island. A tremendous amount of controversy erupted surrounding the wall after Brailsford and David Childress claimed that the wall is man-made and pre-dates Maori colonization of New Zealand by about 1200 years. Such information, if true, would have rewritten the history of New Zealand. Additionally, there would have been complex and far-reaching political and financial implications for the local Maori tribes.
The Kaimanawa wall is a strange outcropping of rocks on North Island, New Zealand.
Did Mysterious People Build the Kaimanawa Wall?
Brailsford is a native resident and history lecturer of Christchurch, New Zealand. David Hatcher Childress is an author on lost civilizations around the world and a regular commentator on Ancient Aliens. The two men worked together to study the Kaimanawa wall in 1996. To the investigators, the workmanship reminded them of similar megalithic structures found in the Pacific and South America.
The stones consist of ignimbrite, a type of rock that results when pyroclastic pumice solidifies after a volcanic blast. The structure seems to bear the hallmarks of a deliberate construction with neat rows of stacked blocks. Precision joints and surfaces appear carved or sculpted. The most heated area of contention about the wall is its age. If someone built the formation around 2000 years ago, then a mysterious group of people must have settled in New Zealand before the first Maori. According to Brailsford, the structure proves the claim of the Waitaha of South Island that their people reached New Zealand before the Maori.
Some people believe the Kaimanawa wall is a 2000-year-old man-made structure that predates the Maori.
Current Knowledge About Maori Settlement
The theory of pre-Maori civilization in New Zealand conflicts with the current understanding of the first settlements of the islands. Based on archaeological evidence, the first wave of Maori arrived sometime between 1250 and 1300 from Eastern Polynesia. Subsequently, other waves of Maori followed. The oldest official archaeological site and perhaps the very first settlement in the islands are located at the Wairao Bar on South Island. Scientists recorded about 2000 artefacts and 44 human skeletons and found that many of them originated directly from Eastern Polynesia.
Maori oral tradition indicates that their oldest ancestors who first arrived in New Zealand were the Waitaha (not to be confused with the Nation of Waitaha which will be explained later). The story indicates that subsequent Polynesian groups to arrive assimilated the Waitaha. Today, Waitaha descendants live on South Island.
To date, there is no official evidence of an earlier civilization, however, there are numerous unsubstantiated claims of sites and artefacts that pre-date the Maori. The first European to arrive was Abel Tasman in 1642. Because these islands are so remote, New Zealand was one of the last places that humans colonized – about 600-900 years after eastern Polynesians settled Hawai’i.
Three Theories About the Kaimanawa Outcropping
There are three general ideas about the wall, two of which have already been discussed. They are summarized here.
The first theory proposes that the wall was constructed 2000 years ago or earlier by a prior civilization that people only speculate about. Depending on the group making the claim, the identity of the first settlers may have been European Celts, fair-skinned Asians, or a pre-Maori group of Polynesians, perhaps the Waitahas.
A second suggestion is that the stones do not even date back a century and are nothing more than the remains of a disused sawmill.
The final proposal is that hot pumice from a pyroclastic eruption created the outcropping around 330,000 years ago. Based on this theory, the cracks formed during the cooling process of the ignimbrite. This resulted in blocks that are quite common to the area and that, n fact, are not megalithic human creations.
Much of the world heard about the wall only with the media frenzy that began in 1996. The magazine New Zealand Listener published an article, “Megalith Mystery: Are giant stones in the Kaimanawa Forest Park evidence of an ancient New Zealand culture?” The article provided Brailsford and his ideas with a huge amount of publicity. On the other hand, local tribes in the region had been aware of the rocky structure for a long time. As far as they were concerned, outcropping was a natural formation that weathering processes had shaped over the centuries.
Can a Rat Solve the Mystery?
Another discovery alludes to a group that arrived much earlier than once thought. Richard Holdaway dated the bones of a Kiore rat at 2000 years old. Indigenous mammals did not exist in New Zealand. Therefore, the rat found its way to the remote lands only with the assistance of human mariners. Interestingly, the DNA of the rats show a close link to those of the Society and the Cook Islands. Thus, experts generally believe that the Polynesians who came from that region of Eastern Polynesia to settle New Zealand transported the rats with them. If there were rats in New Zealand 2000 years ago, humans must have already found their way there. However, as with the stone wall, there is some controversy about Holdaway’s dating results which some scientists question. (Howe 2003).
Politics and the Kaimanawa Wall
In order to understand some of the political, social, and economic repercussions of the claims regarding the age of the Kaimanawa outcropping, a little backstory is necessary. In 1840 the British Crown and Maori chiefs signed an agreement called the Treaty of Waitangi. This document outlined the stipulations and arrangements for the future political and social relationship between the two parties. However, when the Maori realized that the Crown had not adhered to certain points of the agreement, the Waitangi Tribunal emerged in 1975 as an inquisitional board to hear grievances against the Crown.
One of the purposes of the board was to make recommendations to the government regarding the validity of the claims. Another organization reviewed the recommendations and made determinations about settlements (compensations) which could come in various forms: money, land, or usage rights, for instance. The basis of the treaty and any entitlements stem from the premise that the Maori have indigenous claims to the land.
As a result of the treaty and compensations, a number of oppositional groups surfaced. Geoffrey Clark explains one aspect of the political/social quagmire:
“Within Maoridom, there were schisms between groups and subgroups involving membership and affiliation, and uncertainty over the rights of urban Maori to access resources through the Waitangi Tribunal. Most of all, if Maori were enshrined as the indigenous people of the land then the non-Maori majority might be considered ‘non-indigenous, a term that carries the negative environmental connotations of being foreign, exotic and invasive to the land” (Clark).
Divisions Between Tribes
The very presence of the wall became a nightmare for both the New Zealand Government and local Maori tribes. The existence of pre-Maori settlers could, in theory, undermine the Maori status as “indigenous” and their claims against the Crown. In turn, this could complicate settlement compensations to which the Maori had previously been entitled. After the two-week media frenzy following Brailsford’s announcement that the wall proves the existence of a pre-Maori megalith culture, the heated reaction of the Maori resulted in a government ban to the site. This stopped all investigations, but not before an official geologist had a chance to assess the structure.
A Geologist’s Research
The New Zealand Department of Conservation hired Dr Peter Wood from the Institute of Geothermal and Nuclear Sciences in Wairakei to have a look at the wall to provide them with an objective opinion. Subsequently, Wood concluded that the rock formation was somewhere in the region of 330,000 years old and consisted of Rangitaiki Ignimbrite. What Brailsford had accepted as man-made cuts were a system of fractures that were a naturally occurring result of a cooling process of ignimbrite sheeting.
The following is an excerpted quote from Dr Woods’ report about the Kaimanawa wall, as taken from a forum post on AboveTopSecret.
“The regular block shapes are produced by natural fractures in the rock. These fractures (joints) were initially produced when the hot ignimbrite cooled. . . . Near vertical and horizontal joints are common in welded ignimbrites of this type. The forces of erosion, gravity, earthquakes and tree growth (roots) probably have all contributed to the movement and displacement of the blocks over time.
The apparent regularity and ‘artificial’ aspect of the jointing are spurious. Most of the joints are not cuboidal. The eye is deceived mainly by one prominent horizontal joint which can be traced almost continuously along the outcrop into an area (recently excavated) where it is but one of an interlocking series of irregular joints.”
Further Scholarly Opinion
Perry Fletcher, a Taupo historian from the New Zealand Archaeological Association, and Paul Adds, a Victoria University professor, were among the harshest critics of the supporters of the pre-Maori civilization. In Fletcher’s case, he had been aware of the existence of the wall for decades. However, he never gave it a second thought. On the other hand, Adds firmly believed that those who were in favour of a “white people settled New Zealand first” theory were adhering to racist ideas. Additionally, he believed that such ideas ignored evidence that indigenous people are quite creative and resourceful.
The New Zealand Archaeological Association refused to comment about the Kaimanawa wall in the press. The reason they provided was that they did not feel it was an archaeological matter at all.
Later Years
The controversy is ongoing to this day, and there are many sides to this story. The matter has only grown more politically complex. Since Brailsford and Childress first investigated the wall, both historians have written books and given pay-for seminars. In the late 1980s, Brailsford was instrumental in the formation of an additional tribe. They called it the Nation of Waitaha (an offshoot of the already-existing Waitaha, the first group of Maori arrivals). The Nation also has non-Maori individuals among its members.
“The Nation of Waitaha claimed to be the first people in New Zealand and culturally distinct from later Maori arrivals, especially Ngai Tahu, which was portrayed as a warrior culture more concerned with securing economic assets from the Crown than with matters spiritual or environmental” (Clark). To some, the creation of factions and claims of indigeneity boil down to the financial settlements obtainable through the Tribunal.
Is This the Smoking Gun?
Unfortunately, the financial and political issues surrounding the Kaimanawa wall have muddied the uncertain and inconclusive reality of the outcropping. The most credible non-biased study suggests that it is merely one of the many amazing geological formations in New Zealand, like the Moeraki boulders or the hexagonal basalt columns. However, this certainly does not preclude the possibility of a pre-Maori settlement. This only means that the smoking gun might not be the Kaimanawa wall in Taupo.
Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia excavate ‘forgotten kingdoms’
Amid the arid desert and mountains of Al Ula in northwest Saudi Arabia, archaeologists are working to excavate the remnants of the ancient and long-forgotten kingdoms of Dadan and Lihyan.
Spanning roughly 900 years until 100 CE, the ancient Saudi kingdoms controlled vital trade routes, but little is known about them.
Al Ula, a flagship tourist destination since it opened in 2019, is known chiefly for the majestic tombs of Madain Saleh, a 2,000-year-old city carved into rocks by the Nabateans, the pre-Islamic Arab people who also built Petra in neighbouring Jordan.
A team of French and Saudi archaeologists is now focused on excavating five nearby sites related to the Dadanite and Lihyanite civilisations, important regional powers that flourished 2,000 years ago.
“It’s a project that really tries to unlock the mysteries of (these) civilisations,” said Abdulrahman Al-Sohaibani, who is co-directing the Dadan archaeological mission.
A French archaeologist and his co-workers carefully clean the pottery to examine the findings known to be from Dadan and Lihyan civilisation.
Dadan is mentioned in the Old Testament and the Lihyanite kingdom was one of the largest of its time, stretching from Medina in the south to Aqaba in the north in modern-day Jordan, according to the Royal Commission for the project.
Spanning roughly 900 years until 100 CE, the kingdoms controlled vital trade routes but very little is known about them. The team is hoping to learn more about their worship rituals, social life and economy.
Previous excavations had been limited to the main sanctuary area, said Jerome Rohmer, a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research.
“We would just like have a comprehensive overview of the chronology of the site, the layout of the site, its material culture, its economy,” Rohmer added.
“It’s a comprehensive project where we’re basically trying to answer all of these questions.”
In Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s push to transform Saudi Arabia’s economy and society, Al-Ula has gained prominence. The kingdom is banking on tourism as it tries to open up to the world and diversify its economy away from oil.
Al-Ula’s development is part of a move to preserve pre-Islamic heritage sites in order to attract non-Muslim tourists and strengthen national identity.
