Category Archives: WORLD

Roman Weapons Unearthed at Punic Site in Spain

Roman Weapons Unearthed at Punic Site in Spain

Archaeologists digging near the ancient Talayotic settlement of Son Catlar in Menorca, Spain have unearthed a treasure trove of artefacts from Roman soldiers, dating back to around 100 B.C. 

The discovery, which happened in late July, includes an assortment of items found at the site, according to a statement from the University of Alicante. 

Included in the find were ‘weapons, knives, three arrowheads, spearheads, projectiles, surgical tools, a bronze spatula probe, and so on,’ the statement explained.

Son Catlar is the largest Talayotic settlement in the area, surrounded by a stone wall that measures 2,850 feet (870m) in length, according to Heritage Daily. 

Occupation in the area started between 2,000 and 1,200 B.C. and lasted until the late Roman period, which ended around 476 A.D. 

Archaeologists digging near the Talayotic settlement in Menorca, Spain have unearthed a treasure trove of artefacts from Roman soldiers
Other items include three arrowheads, spearheads, projectiles, surgical tools, a bronze spatula probe and more

It’s likely that the stone barrier was built several hundred years prior, between the 5th and 4th centuries, B.C., according to Spanish news outlet La Vanguardia.

It’s possible that the Roman soldiers, who conquered the area in the second century B.C., associated the stone barrier with Janus – the Roman god of doors, gates and transitions – given how superstitious they were, Heritage Daily added.   

‘This type of gate was characteristic of Punic culture, and it was used as a defence system to protect against possible sieges by the Romans,’ the statement from the university explained. 

‘Roman soldiers were very superstitious and used to perform these rites. At that time, the world of gates was charged with magic.

The Romans gave a sacred value to the gates of the cities, and sealing one definitively would entail certain actions of a magical nature.’    

The dig leader, Fernando Prados, suggested it was the Roman superstitions that may have led to the discoveries being in such good condition, as the soldiers believed they had a ‘magical protective character … against evil spirits when sealing doors.’ 

‘The conservation of the entire perimeter of the wall at Son Catlar makes the site a source of great value, as it provides a great deal of scope for studying the archaeology of conflict and war,’ Prados added in the statement.  

The wall also has sentry boxes and square towers known as Talayots, which gives the region its name, according to the World Heritage Convention. 

It was built using cyclonic masonry, which according to the WHC, meant it was constructed ‘without mortar,’ only using the blocks themselves.

The wall was later strengthened, possibly due to the Roman conquest of the territory or the Punic Wars, the university added. 

The Punic Wars took place from 264 to 146 B.C., and artefacts stemming from these times have been recovered in recent years. 

In 2013, archaeologists found a treasure trove of items, including helmets, weapons and ancient bronze battle rams found off the Sicilian coast from 2013, from the First Punic War. 

Anglo-Saxon Sword Pyramid Found in England

Anglo-Saxon Sword Pyramid Found in England

A gold and garnet sword pyramid lost by a Sutton Hoo-era lord “careening around the countryside” on his horse has been discovered by a metal detectorist. The Anglo-Saxon object was found in the Breckland area of Norfolk in April.

Anglo-Saxon Sword Pyramid Found in England
A metal detectorist discovered the mount on 11 April

Finds liaison officer Helen Geake said the garnets are Indian or Sri Lankan, revealing the far-flung nature of trade links in the 6th and 7th Centuries.

Sword pyramids come in pairs so its loss “was like losing one earring – very annoying”, she said.

The tiny 12mm by 11.9mm (0.4in by 0.4in) mount dates to about AD560 to 630, at a time when Norfolk was part of the Kingdom of East Anglia.

Dr Geake said: “It would have been owned by somebody in the entourage of a great lord or Anglo-Saxon king, and he would have been a lord or thegn [a medieval nobleman] who might have found his way into the history books.

“They or their lord had access to gold and garnets and to high craftsmanship.”

The extremely fine foil on its back is believed to have been created by techniques like a modern pantograph, used to reduce the size of the design.

The mounts were part of the system that bound a sword to its scabbard.

“It’s believed they made it a bit more of an effort to get the sword out of the scabbard, possibly acting as a check on an angry reaction,” Dr Geake said.

Norfolk finds liaison officer Helen Geake said it revealed the remarkable craft skills of the Anglo-Saxons

A more ornate pair were discovered at the early 7th Century ship burial at Sutton Hoo, which recently featured in the Netflix movie The Dig.

They are less commonly found in graves, but are “increasingly common” as stray finds, probably as accidental losses. Dr Geake said: “Lords would have been careening about the countryside on their horses and they’d lose them.”

The find has been reported to the Norfolk Coroner, as required by the Treasure Act.

German Museum Returns Native American Leader’s Shirt

German Museum Returns Native American Leader’s Shirt

With German institutions placing a renewed emphasis on the repatriation of various objects in their holdings, the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt said this week that it had given the leather shirt of Chief Daniel Hollow Horn Bear (Mato He Oklogeca), of the Teton Lakota, to his great-grandson Chief Duane Hollow Horn Bear. In a press release, the museum cited “moral and ethical reasons” for the return.

The leather shirt was handed over to Duane Hollow Horn Bear on June 12 in Rosebud, South Dakota. Duane Hollow Horn Bear had visited the Weltkulturen Museum in 2019 and submitted a request for the shirt’s return that included a historic portrait photograph, dated to 1900, by John Alvin Anderson.

The picture showed Chief Daniel Hollow Horn Bear, who died in 1913, wearing the shirt. Chief Daniel Hollow Horn Bear was a well-respected leader and politician who advocated for the rights of his people and was often a chief negotiator with the U.S. government.

Daniel Hollow Horn Bear, photographed in 1900, wearing the shirt formerly in the collection of the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt

In 2019, when he requested the shirt’s return, Chief Duane Hollow Horn Bear said in a video documenting the repatriation process, “It’s been a hard journey just to come here today. I’m humbled not just to see [his shirt] in a picture, but to hold it in my hand like I’m holding his hand. . . . Grandpa come home. We need you.”

In a statement, the Weltkulturen Museum said, “The Chief’s shirt is a culturally specific, identity-forming object of religious significance to the Teton Lakota Indigenous community.

German Museum Returns Native American Leader's Shirt
Chief Daniel Hollow Horn Bear (Mato He Oklogeca)’s a leather shirt.

It bears special patterns of brightly coloured glass beads and human hair, which are undoubtedly attributable to the Hollow Horn Bear family and prove personal possession prior to 1906.

For Chief Duane Hollow Horn Bear and his family, the return of the shirt is like the return of the great-grandfather himself.”

The Weltkulturen Museum came into possession of the shirt in 1908 through an exchange with the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

For the past 30 years, the shirt had been on permanent loan and display to the German Leather Museum in the nearby town of Offenbach.

The AMNH had received the shirt only two years earlier as part of a larger donation by James Graham Phelps Stokes, a New York millionaire and philanthropist whose family’s wealth came from the Phelps-Dodge Company.

In its release announcing the shirt’s repatriation, the Weltkulturen Museum said, “The circumstances under which the shirt previously came into the possession of J.G. Phelps could not be reconstructed.”

In a statement, Ina Hartwig, deputy mayor in charge of Culture and Science for the City of Frankfurt am Main, said “Provenance research is one of the great challenges facing museums in the 21st century.

The Frankfurt museum landscape has been taking this challenge very seriously for years and is subjecting its collections to a systematic revision.

Even if it represents a loss for the collection and the object was legally acquired by the Weltkulturen Museum: I see the return of the leather shirt to Chief Duane Hollow Horn Bear as an obligation that outweighs the formal legal situation.”

study confirms ancient Spanish cave art was made by Neanderthals

Study confirms ancient Spanish cave art was made by Neanderthals

A study of the pigments used in wall paintings in the Cueva Ardales caves in southern Spain originated from Neanderthals. The cave was discovered in 1821 when an earthquake exposed the cave entrance.

Pedro Cantalejo, director of the Andalusian cave of Ardales, looks at Neanderthal cave paintings inside the cavern on March 1, 2018.

In 1918, the famous prehistorian Henri Breuil visited the cave and discovered the first Palaeolithic paintings and engravings.

The research, “The symbolic role of the underground world among Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals” published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) was conducted by Àfrica Pitarch Martí and her colleagues from Collaborative Research Center 806 “Our Way to Europe”, where they performed a geoscientific analysis on red pigments from a massive stalagmitic pillar in the cave system.

Study confirms ancient Spanish cave art was made by Neanderthals
This combination of pictures obtained on July 29, 2021, shows a general view and close-up of a partly coloured stalagmite tower in the Spanish cave of Ardales, southern Spain Joao Zilhao UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA/AFP

The edges of the pillar show an entire series of narrow sinter plumes. In these sinter curtains alone, red paint spots, dots, and lines were applied in 45 places.

The objective was to characterise the composition and possible origin of the pigments.

The results showed that the composition and arrangement of the pigments cannot be attributed to natural processes, but that they were applied by spraying and in some places by blowing.

The researchers found that the nature of the pigments does not match natural samples taken from the floor and walls of the cave, suggesting that the pigments were brought into the cave from outside.

Dating of the pigment suggests that they were applied on two separate occasions, the first being more than 65,000 years ago, whilst the other has been dated to 45,300 and 48,700 years ago during the period of Neanderthal occupation.

The cave paintings found in three caves in Spain, one of them in Ardales, were created between 43,000 and 65,000 years ago.

According to the authors, these are not art in the strict sense, but rather markings of selected areas of the cave whose symbolic meaning is unknown.

Has the ‘Lost City of the Gospels Finally Been Found?

Has the ‘Lost City of the Gospels Finally Been Found?

Excavations this summer on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee have uncovered what may be evidence of the ancient city, Bethsaida-Julias, home to three of Jesus’ apostles: Peter, Andrew, and Philip (John 1:44; 12:21). It was also a location for Jesus’ ministry (Mark 8:22) and is near the land where Luke’s gospel reports the miracle of Jesus feeding five thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish (Luke 9:10-17).

The excavations were conducted under the auspices of the Kinneret Institute for Galilean Archaeology at Kinneret College (Israel) and directed by Dr. Mordechai Aviam together with Dr. R. Steven Notley from Nyack College (New York), who is the excavation’s academic director. Students and faculty from Nyack College joined volunteers from the U.S. and Hong Kong to excavate for two weeks in July.

Because of its importance in the Christian tradition, scholars have tried to identify the site. Historical sources suggest that it was located near the Jordan River, in the large valley between Galilee and the Golan Heights.

For the last 30 years, popular opinion identified Bethsaida with the site of et-Tel where archaeologists found a settlement in the late Hellenistic (2nd cent. BCE) and Roman periods (1st-2nd cent. CE), including two private houses. However, traces of the Greco-Roman developments reported by historical reports are lacking.

Now evidence has been discovered indicating that Bethsaida-Julias was located at another site, El Araj in the nature reserve of the Beteiha Valley on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Aerial of el-Araj showing the southern, western and northern walls of the Byzantine Church of the Apostles and inundated squares of previous seasons with Roman period remains.

Flavius Josephus, the first-century historian tells us that in 31 CE, Herod Philip, son of Herod the Great, transformed the Jewish fishing village of Bethsaida on the Kinneret Lake (Sea of Galilee) into a Greco-Roman polis (Ant. 18:28). As governor of the region, he renamed the city Julias, after Julia Augusta (née Livia Drusilla), mother of Roman Emperor Tiberius. Decades later, Josephus himself was responsible for fortifying the city’s defenses in preparation for the Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-70 CE). In 68 CE he was wounded in battle on the swampy marshlands near Julias (Life 399-403).

The Byzantine (4th-7th centuries CE) and Roman (1st-3rd centuries CE) period remains both point to el-Araj as the site of the city of Bethsaida-Julias. Under the Byzantine floor of a structure discovered during the first season were 30 coins that date to the 5th century CE.

It is possible that these walls are the remains of a monastery which was built around a church. Combined with the many gilded glass tesserae (stone or glass cubes that are used for mosaics) that were found in the first and second season, they indicate the existence of a wealthy and important church.

A Byzantine eyewitness, Willibald, the bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria, visited the Holy Land in 725 CE, and describes a visit to a church at Bethsaida that was built over the house of Peter and Andrew. It may be that the current excavations have unearthed remains from that church.

Roman pottery that dates between the 1st – 3rd centuries was uncovered under the Byzantine level. A bronze coin of the late 2nd century CE and a beautiful silver denarius of the emperor Nero from the year 65-66 CE that reads “Nero, Caesar Augustus” were also found.

This alone could disprove speculation that there was no human presence at el-Araj in the Roman period. Furthermore, a Roman wall was discovered at a depth nearly 693 feet (211.16m) below sea level.

Adjacent to this wall was a large portion of mosaic flooring with a white and black meander pattern still attached to its original plaster and similar to other mosaics known from first-century sites around the lake.

Along with the discovery of clay bricks and ceramic vents (tubuli), which are typical to Roman bathhouses, these finds are evidence of urbanization.

Another important contribution from this season is the elevation of the remains. Most scholars agree today, following the excavators of Magdala that the level of the lake was 209 meters below sea level, and so they assume that the site of el-Araj was underwater until the Byzantine period.

The current excavations have demonstrated that the level of the lake was much lower than previously thought, and el-Araj most certainly was not underwater in the first century CE. Two geologists, Professor Noam Greenbaum from Haifa University and Dr. Nati Bergman from the Yigal Alon Kinneret Limnological Laboratory studied the layers of the site and pointed out that there are layers of soil which indicate that the site was covered with mud and clay that were carried by the Jordan River in the late Roman period, and which corresponds to a gap in material remains from about 250 CE to 350 CE, but in the Byzantine period, the site was resettled.

The El-Araj Excavations Project was made possible through the generous support of the Center for the Study of Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins, Nyack College, the Assemblies of God, and HaDavar Yeshiva (Hong Kong).

The excavations will continue next year, June 17-July 12, 2018 with the expectation to uncover more evidence for the Roman period settlement and the lost city of Jesus’ apostles!

Doggerland: Lost ‘Atlantis’ of the North Sea gives up its ancient secrets | Neanderthals

Doggerland: Lost ‘Atlantis’ of the North Sea gives up its ancient secrets | Neanderthals

The idea of a “lost Atlantis” under the North Sea connecting Britain by land to continental Europe had been imagined by HG Wells in the late 19th century, with evidence of human inhabitation of the forgotten world following in 1931 when the trawler Colinda dredged up a lump of peat containing a spear point.

But it is only now, after a decade of pioneering research and the extraordinary finds of an army of amateur archaeologists scouring the Dutch coastline for artefacts and fossils, that a major exhibition is able to offer a window into Doggerland, a vast expanse of territory submerged following a tsunami 8,000 years ago, cutting the British Isles off from modern Belgium, the Netherlands and southern Scandinavia.

The exhibition, Doggerland: Lost World in the North Sea, at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden, southern Holland, includes more than 200 objects, ranging from a deer bone in which an arrowhead is embedded, and fossils such as petrified hyena droppings and mammoth molars, to a fragment of a skull of a young male Neanderthal.

Studies of the forehead bone, dredged up in 2001 off the coast of Zeeland, suggests he was a big meat eater. A small cavity behind the brow bone is believed to be a scar from a harmless subcutaneous tumour that would have been visible as a lump above his eye.

But while the last decade has seen a growing number of expensive scientific studies, including a recent survey of the drowned landscape by the universities of Bradford and Ghent offering further clues to the cause of its destruction, it is the work of “citizen scientists” that has produced some of the most exciting artefacts, allowing a full story now to be told, according to Dr Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof, assistant curator of the museum’s prehistory department.

Manmade beaches constructed from material dredged from the sea as part of efforts to protect the modern coastline from the impact of the climate crisis have provided a trove of once-inaccessible treasures from a world inhabited for a million years by modern humans, Neanderthals and even older hominids known as Homo antecessor.

“We have a wonderful community of amateur archaeologists who almost daily walk these beaches and look for the fossils and artefacts, and we work with them to analyse and study them,” said Van der Vaart-Verschoof. “It is open to everyone, and anyone could find a hand axe, for example. Pretty much the entire toolkit that would have been used has been found by amateur archaeologists.”

One such find is a 50,000-year-old flint tool that has a handle made from birch tar pitch. Discovered in 2016 by Willy van Wingerden, a nurse, it has helped update the understanding of Neanderthals – once thought to be brutish and simplistic – as capable of precise and complex multi-staged tasks.

A drawing in the exhibition imagines this sharp tool was used as a razor by one to shave another’s head.

Other finds include human skull fragments with cut marks possibly caused by defleshing, believed to have been part of the burial ritual, and remains such as a hyena’s jaw that simply washed up in front of Van Wingerden during a stroll on a beach near Rotterdam six years ago.

The wide-open grassy plains of Doggerland were the ideal grazing ground for large herds of animals such as reindeer who were prey for the cave lions, sabre-toothed cats, cave hyenas and wolves, among others.

Doggerland – named by University of Exeter archaeologist Bryony Coles in the 1990s after the Dogger Bank, a stretch of seabed in the North Sea in turn named after the 17th century “Dogger” fishing boats that sailed there – is believed to have been subsumed about 8,200 years ago following a massive tsunami.

An amateur archaeologist on De Zandmotor beach in the Netherlands

Sea levels during the last ice age were much lower than today but a catastrophic wave was generated by a sub-sea landslide off the coast of Norway.

“There was a period when Doggerland was dry and incredibly rich, a wonderful place for hunter-gatherers,” said Van der Vaart-Verschoof. “It was not some edge of the earth or land bridge to the UK. It was really the heart of Europe.

There are lessons to be learned. The story of Doggerland shows how destructive climate change can be. The climate change we see today is manmade but the effects could be just as devastating as the changes seen all those years ago.”

2,400-year-old fruit baskets from Thonis-Heracleion found off the coast of Egypt

2,400-year-old fruit baskets from Thonis-Heracleion found off the coast of Egypt

Wicker baskets filled with fruit that have survived from the 4th century BC and hundreds of ancient ceramic artefacts and bronze treasures have been discovered in the submerged ruins of the near-legendary city of Thonis-Heracleion off the coast of Egypt.

2,400-year-old fruit baskets from Thonis-Heracleion found off the coast of Egypt
A fragment of a basket was brought to the surface by the team.

They have lain untouched since the city disappeared beneath the waves in the second century BC, then sank further in the eighth century AD, following cataclysmic natural disasters, including an earthquake and tidal waves.

Thonis-Heracleion – the city’s Egyptian and Greek names – was for centuries Egypt’s largest port on the Mediterranean before Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331BC.

But the vast site in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria has been forgotten until its re-discovery by the French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio two decades ago, in one of the greatest archaeological finds of recent times.

Colossal statues were among treasures from an opulent civilisation frozen in time. Some of the discoveries were shown in a major exhibition at the British Museum in 2016.

Goddio has been taken aback by the latest discoveries. He told the Guardian that the fruit baskets were “incredible”, having been untouched for more than 2,000 years.

They were still filled with doum, the fruit of an African palm tree that was sacred for the ancient Egyptians, as well as grape-seeds.

“Nothing was disturbed,” he said. “It was very striking to see baskets of fruits.”

One explanation for their survival may be that they were placed within an underground room, Goddio said, noting a possible funerary connotation.

It is within an area where Goddio and his team of archaeologists have discovered a sizeable tumulus (a mound raised over graves) – about 60 metres long by 8 metres wide – and sumptuous Greek funerary offerings.

They date from the early fourth century BC when Greek merchants and mercenaries lived in Thonis-Heracleion. The city controlled the entrance to Egypt at the mouth of the Canopic branch of the Nile. The Greeks were allowed to settle there during the late Pharaonic period, constructing their own sanctuaries.

Goddio said of the tumulus: “It is a kind of island surrounded by channels. In those channels, we found an unbelievable amount of deposits made of bronze, including a lot of statuettes of Osiris.

“On that island, something totally different. We found hundreds of deposits made of ceramic. One above the other. These are imported ceramic, red on black figures from Attic.”

The finds are all the more intriguing because there were vast quantities of miniature ceramics – high-quality Ancient Greek examples, including amphorae– under the tumulus. Bronze artefacts were around the tumulus, including mirrors and statuettes.

Goddio also found extensive evidence of burning, suggesting a “spectacular” ceremony that led to people being barred from entering this site again. It appears to have been sealed for hundreds of years as none of the artefacts found was from later than the early fourth century, even though the city lived on for several hundred years.

“There’s something very strange here,” he said. “That site has been used maybe one time, never touched before, never touched after, for a reason that we cannot understand for the time being. It’s a big mystery.”

He hopes to find answers within some of the treasures, which include the well-preserved remains of a wooden sofa for banquets, a large Attic vase and a gold amulet of “exquisite quality”.

About 350 metres away, the archaeologists also found a unique Ptolemaic galley, 25 metres in length. While built in the classical tradition, with mortise-and-tenon joints, it also contains features of ancient Egyptian construction, with a flat-bottomed design that would have been perfect for navigation on the Nile and in the delta.

The European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, led by Goddio, works in close cooperation with Egypt’s ministry of tourism and antiquities and with the support of the Hilti Foundation. The finds will be studied and preserved before being put on display in museums.

The potential for further discoveries is tantalising. Even after conducting repeated excavations over the past two decades, Goddio estimates that only about 3% of the area has been explored so far.

Ljubljana Marshes Wheel: The Oldest Known Wheel in the World

Ljubljana Marshes Wheel: The Oldest Known Wheel in the World

According to history books, the wheel was ‘invented’ in ancient Mesopotamia, around 3500 BCE and possibly as early as 4000 BCE. However, the oldest and largest wheel on Earth was discovered in 2002 in Slovenia. The wheel dates back around 5,300 years, but could possibly be even older.

If we take a look at our history books, will find that the invention of the wheel has been credited to the Late Neolithic and may have arisen together with a number of other technological advances that kickstarted the Bronze age.

However, many civilizations, including the Incas and the Aztecs, did not have wheeled vehicles. The oldest graphic representations of the wheel come from ancient depictions in the city of Ur (which date back to around 3500 BC), in present-day Iraq, but no physical remains of the wheels have been found there.

From there, it is believed that the invention spread quickly across the rest of the world.

Ancient Sumeria, home place of the wheel?

It is believed that the ancient Sumerians introduced a number of technologies that had never before been seen in the world.

The wheel, say, experts, was one such technology.

According to historians, the ancient Halaf (Syria) culture of 6500–5100 BCE is sometimes credited with the earliest depiction of a wheeled vehicle, but this is doubtful as there is no evidence of Halafians using either wheeled vehicles or even pottery wheels.

But have you ever wondered about where the oldest discovered wheel is located?

Despite the fact that the Sumerians are credited with the ‘invention’ of the wheel, the oldest wheen on Earth was not found in Mesopotamia, but in Europe.

The Ljubljana Marshes Wheel, the oldest and largest wheel discovered on Earth

Ljubljana Marshes Wheel

In 2002, when archaeological excavations carried out in Slovenia revealed a wooden wheel whose radiocarbon dating revealed that it was between 5,100 and 5,350 years old, the scientific community was left awestruck.

This excavation performed near Ljubljana marked the discovery of what is now considered the oldest wheel in history. It is believed that the oldest inhabitants settled in the region as early as 9,000 years ago; in the Mesolithic, they built temporary residences on isolated rocks in the marsh and on the fringe and they lived by hunting and gathering.

The discovery of the Slovenian wheel kickstarted a debate among archaeologists who wondered whether it was possible that the wheel had not been invented by the Sumerians, but by an ancient culture in Europe, or whether the wheel appeared simultaneously, on two locations, separated perhaps by a few hundred years?

The wheel and its axis.

The Age of the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel was obtained by studies performed by the VERA laboratory (Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator) in Vienna, which used measurements of the strata in the ground and the rings of trees in the area where it was found, as well as the radiocarbon dating.

The ancient wheel was discovered by a team of Slovene archaeologists from the Ljubljana Institute of Archaeology, as part of the Research Center at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, lead by Anton Velušček.

According to experts, this ancient wheel, discovered in 2002 in a marshy area near the Slovenian capital, is at least a century older than its counterparts found in Switzerland and Germany, which were considered until the discovery of the Slovenian wheel the oldest existing examples.

But in addition to being the oldest example on Earth, experts say that the importance of the Slovenian wheel resides in the fact that “in addition to its exceptional antiquity, this wheel and axle are incredibly technologically advanced”.

The wheel has a radius of 72 centimetres (28 in) and was made of ash wood.

Its 124-c124-centimetre-long) axle is made of oak.

According to experts, the axle was attached to the wheels with oak wood wedges, which meant that the axle rotated together with the wheels. The wheel was made from a tree that grew in the vicinity of the pile dwellings and at the time of the wheel, construction was approximately 80 years old.

It is believed that this ancient wheel was most likely part of a prehistoric two-wheel cart – a pushcart and this technology shows that there was already a long tradition and experience in the development of wheels and axles in the region.