Category Archives: WORLD

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

Huge spiral found in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made

Huge spiral found in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made

A huge spiral covering 100,000 square metres discovered in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made, according to experts, who say it dwarfs the Nazca lines in South America.  

The spiral artwork is made up of a series of small geoglyphs covering an area of about a million square feet in the Thar desert in India, first spotted on Google Earth by Carlo and Yohann Oetheimer, a father and son research team from France. 

Nazca lines in Peru are a group of geoglyphs etched into a 380 sq mile area of desert sands dating back to at least 500 BCE, featuring figures of animals and plants. 

While the South American geoglyphs are more plentiful, with up to 300 characters, and cover a larger area, a line in India is significantly larger than anyone Nazca line. 

The lines make up four distinct symbols, created by scraping sand and silt near the village of Boha, with the largest single symbol 2,374ft long and 650ft wide, made of a single seven and a half mile line spiralling inwards. 

Study authors, not affiliated with any institution, say the lines may be at least 150 years old, but can’t say anything more specific, adding their meaning is lost to history and they need to visit to study determine any dating.

Huge spiral found in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made
Boha 3’s meandering lines.
Huge spirals discovered in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made, according to experts, who say they dwarf the Nazca lines in South America

The duo searched through images on Google Earth showing the desert for unusual features. In the images they found eight possible sites, eventually discounting seven of them as being natural features.

The pair took a drone to the region in 2016 and flew it over the site.

During the drone flight, they found seven of eight predicted sites were actually just furrows dug for failed tree plantations. They found that the eighth site, near the village of Boha, had four distinct symbols, made up of 20 inch wide lines of varying length and complexity. 

At the centre of the selection of geoglyphs is a symbol 2,374ft long and 650ft wide, made of a single seven and a half mile spiralling line. 

South-west of this mega-spiral is a second line that repeatedly bends back on itself to form a grid of parallel lines, the team explained. There are also a pair of smaller geoglyphs to the north and south-west, but they are both heavily eroded. 

Despite the work being carried out by independent, researchers, ‘the report is convincing,’ says Daniela Valenzuela from the University of Tarapaca in Chile. 

The Nazca lines in Peru cover a wider area than the Thar lines, but the individual figures and lines are smaller, with the longest labyrinth line 2.7 miles long. The lines can’t be seen from the ground, according to the researchers, with Valenzuela saying ‘this may be significant. 

Adding that it may imply that their significance came from the act of creation, not later viewing by future people. 

The study authors wrote in their paper: ‘Three memorial stones positioned at key points, give evidence that planimetric knowledge has been used to create this elaborate design.’ 

Planimetric elements in geography are features independent of elevation – roads, rivers, lakes and buildings.

The lines make up four distinct symbols, created by scraping sand and silt near the village of Boha, with the largest single symbol 2,374ft long and 650ft wide, made of a single seven and a half mile line spiralling inwards

‘These artefacts allow us to envisage hypothetical modalities of edification,’ the authors wrote. 

‘We collected indicators of antiquity suggesting that these lines may be at least 150 years old and possibly linked to the Hindu memorial stones surrounding them. 

‘The lack of visibility from the ground raises the question of their function and meaning. So far, these geoglyphs, the largest discovered worldwide and for the first time in the Indian subcontinent, are also unique as regards their enigmatic signs.’ 

In the case of the Nazca line geoglyphs, they were likely created by people removing the black topsoil to reveal light-coloured sand hidden underneath.  Geoglyphs span large land tracts located between the towns of Palpa and Nazca, and some depict animals, objects or compact shapes.

The spiral artwork is made up of a series of small geoglyphs covering an area of about a million square feet in the Thar desert in India, first spotted on Google Earth by Carlo and Yohann Oetheimer, a father and son research team from France
Aerial view of giant spiral (Boha 1) and Boha 2, including the serpent figure in lower-right corner.

Often, the composition of a geoglyph cannot be fully realised at ground level. Only when one is high enough in the air can they discern the shapes. For this reason, the intricacies of the designs were not fully realised until aeroplanes were invented and the artwork was seen from the sky.

‘We will need to go to India in the near future in order to complete our research and have a precise dating, in order to understand their function and meaning better. For now, the dating is hypothetical,’ Carlo Oetheimer told MailOnline. 

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Forensic Scientists Exhume 20th-Century Mass Grave in Spain

Forensic Scientists Exhume 20th-Century Mass Grave in Spain

CNN reports that forensic archaeologists and anthropologists from Cranfield University and the Complutense University of Madrid, and social anthropologists from Mapas de Memoria, are exhuming the remains of 26 people executed by local right-wing partisans during the rule of dictator General Francisco Franco at the end of the Spanish Civil War, between 1939 and 1940, and buried in a mass grave in a civil cemetery in central Spain.

Photographs of the victims are on display at the cemetery in Almagro.

Researchers from Cranfield are working with colleagues from the University Complutense of Madrid (UCM) and Mapas de Memoria (Maps of Memory) at the site in the Ciudad Real province.

Similar efforts around the country have recovered more than 7,000 victims of the Spanish Civil War since 2000, the press release said.
Experts are looking for 26 people in total, with carpenters, teachers and farmers among their number, excavation leader Nicholas Márquez-Grant, senior lecturer in forensic anthropology at Cranfield Forensic Institute, told CNN Tuesday.

The excavation will continue until the end of June.

Researchers know whose remains are in the cemetery because they are registered as being buried there, but their deaths are listed as natural, rather than executions, he added.

They have already recovered several bodies with gunshot wounds to the head, bits of clothing and other personal effects, such as buttons, a pencil, and a fountain pen added Márquez-Grant, who said the victims were executed by local right-wing partisans rather than Francoist soldiers.

Family members of the victims have been contacted and it is hoped that DNA analysis can match them and allow for a proper burial of the remains, although matching DNA is not a certainty, said Márquez-Grant.

Some family members have visited the cemetery, where photographs of the victims have been hung up by the researchers.

“It’s quite powerful,” added Márquez-Grant, who said two elderly sisters had visited the site. Their father was executed at the cemetery when they were small children.

Maria Benito Sanchez, director of the scientific team for the project from the School of Legal Medicine at UCM, added in the press release: “As forensic anthropology professionals we have the responsibility of putting our science to the service of the relatives who have been searching for their loved ones for a long time now.”

Forensic Scientists Exhume 20th-Century Mass Grave in Spain
The project involves cooperation between experts from various disciplines.

The team will carry out excavations at the site until the beginning of June, then anthropological and DNA analysis will be carried out until the end of the year to identify the remains.

Jorge Moreno, director of Maps of Memory, said 21 families of victims have been identified relevant to the excavation so far.

The Almagro cemetery site is the largest mass grave opened so far in the province, but there are other larger ones known to hold the remains of hundreds of people.

Franco emerged the winner from Spain’s 1936-39 civil war and ruled the country until his death in 1975. Thousands of executions were carried out by his nationalist regime during the civil war and in the following years.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has pledged to support efforts to exhume and identify victims of the civil war. Márquez-Grant said government officials have visited the site in Almagro.

“We’ve now been asked to open more mass graves in the region,” said Márquez-Grant, who hailed the success of a model which involves close cooperation between social anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, forensic archaeologists and geneticists.

Some people in Spain complain that the process has taken far too long and bemoan the fact that many relatives of civil war victims have died before they could recover their remains, but Márquez-Grant says that identifying the victims wouldn’t have been possible in the 1970s or 1980s. “It has come at the right time because we’ve got the science to do this,” he said.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Tennessee’s Tattooing Tools Dated to More Than 5,500 Years Ago

Tennessee’s Tattooing Tools Dated to More Than 5,500 Years Ago

According to a Science News report, a new study of turkey bones unearthed in 1985 in a burial pit at the Fernvale site in central Tennessee suggests that they may have been used by Native Americans to make tattoos between 5,520 and 3,620 years ago.

Tennessee’s Tattooing Tools Dated to More Than 5,500 Years Ago
Two previously unearthed turkey leg bones with sharpened tips (top) are the oldest known tattooing tools. Two other turkey bones from the same site (bottom) may also have been used for tattooing but lack tips for analysis.

These pigment-stained bones are the world’s oldest known tattooing tools, say archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf of the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville and his colleagues.

The find suggests that Native American tattoo traditions in eastern North America extend back more than a millennium earlier than previously thought (SN: 3/4/19).

Ötzi the Iceman, who lived around 5,250 years ago in Europe, displays the oldest known tattoos (SN: 1/13/16), but researchers haven’t found any of the tools used to make the Iceman’s tattoos.

Excavations in 1985 revealed these turkey bones and other elements of a probable tattoo kit in a man’s burial pit at Tennessee’s Fernvale site, the researchers report in the June Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Damage on and near the tips of the two turkey leg bones resembles distinctive wear previously observed on experimental tattooing tools made from deer bones, Deter-Wolf’s team says.

In that research, tattooed lines in fresh slabs of pigskin were produced by a series of punctures with tools that had tips coated in homemade ink.

Experimental tattooing left ink remnants several millimetres from tools’ tips, a pattern also seen with red and black pigment residues on the Fernvale tools.

Two turkey wing bones found in the same Fernvale grave display microscopic wear and pigment residues that likely resulted from applying pigment during tattooing, the scientists say.

Pigment-stained seashells in the grave may have held solutions into which tattooers dipped those tools.

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

Remains of ‘lost medieval village’ found next to the Scottish motorway

Remains of ‘lost medieval village’ found next to the Scottish motorway

The Scotsman reports that traces of four buildings dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries were uncovered during roadwork in southern Scotland at Netherton Cross near Bothwell, North Lanarkshire, next to the hard shoulder of the M74.

Possible Ancient Dagger Found in 17th-Century House in Scotland
An artist’s reconstruction of how the settlement at Netherton Cross would have looked. It disappeared in the 18th Century as the Duke of Hamilton embarked on turning part of his estate into a vast parkland.

Pottery – including sherds of cooking pots and bowls, a clay tobacco pipe, gaming pieces and evidence of metalworking were found on the site in a series of “remarkable” discoveries.

Under one building, an intriguing collection of artefacts was found in the foundations. Among the items were a spindle whorl for weaving, a whetstone for sharpening tools, two 17th Century coins – and an iron dagger.

Archaeologists at the site of the “remarkable” discovery of a lost village right next to the hard shoulder of the M74

It is thought the dagger, which could date from the Iron Age, may have been left as part of a ritual to protect the building and its inhabitants from ‘magical’ harm.

Dr Natasha Ferguson, of GUARD Archaeology, one of the co-authors of the report, said: “The special or talismanic qualities of this dagger as a protective object may have enhanced the ritual act to protect the household from worldly and magical harm.

“The deposition of these objects under the foundation level of one of the houses may have been intended to affirm this space as a place of safety for them and generations to come.”

Map showing the excavation site at Netherton Cross.

The practice of leaving special objects in medieval and post-medieval buildings is well documented and it was believed such a ritual would safeguard the building and its inhabitants.

The report found a “deliberate selection” of objects had been placed at the property.

It is believed the spindle whorl, gaming piece and the whetstone may have represented a personal connection to an individual, activity, or place that would make them special to the occupants.

The report added: “The dagger’s potential antiquity as a prehistoric object perhaps lent it a quality of otherness. Reuse of prehistoric objects as depositions in medieval settings has been recorded in excavations of medieval churches in England, and flint arrowheads were traditionally identified as ‘elf-bolts’ and long recognised for their malevolent magical properties.”

Dr Gemma Cruickshanks, of National Museums Scotland, said it appeared the dagger was covered in a sheath at the time it was buried.

She added: “It was probably intact and still useable at that time. The form of this dagger is indistinguishable from Iron Age examples, indicating this simple dagger form had a very long history.”

Evidence of iron smelting, bloom refining and probable blacksmithing was also recovered, along with a selection of nails.

The settlement was close to the 10th Century Netherton Cross, which now stands in Hamilton Old Parish Church. Netherton Cross is around 1km away from Bothwell Bridge, the scene of the 1679 battle which ended the Covenanter rebellion in Scotland.

“It is very possible the community was affected by the conflict, either suffering damage to property or as a witness to the route of the Covenanter forces,” the report said.

Netherton vanished in the 18th Century given improvements to the estate by the Duke of Hamilton, with a well-ordered and symmetrical parkland built in its place.

The motorway then subsumed most of the village with the four stone structures the last traces of the settlement.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Oldest Ever Fly With Stomach Full Of Food Found After 47 Million Years

Oldest Ever Fly With Stomach Full Of Food Found After 47 Million Years

When scientists investigated a 47-million-year-old fossilized fly found at the Messel Pit fossil site in Germany, they noticed it looked a bit chonky. So they took a closer look at its “bulging abdomen” and discovered it was stuffed with pollen from different plants.

Oldest Ever Fly With Stomach Full Of Food Found After 47 Million Years
This ancient fossilized fly had a belly full of pollen.

“The rich pollen content we discovered in the fly’s stomach suggests that flies were already feeding and transporting pollen 47 million years ago and shows it played an important role in the pollen dispersal of several plant taxa,” said paleobotanist Fridgeir Grimsson in a University of Vienna statement Thursday.

Grimsson is a co-author of a paper on the fly published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday. The researcher suggested that flies of the time period may have outshined bees as pollinators.

This series of images highlights the fossilized fly’s crop where the pollen was found. The fly on the far right shows this same part of the body in a modern-day fly.

The team was able to extract and study the fossil pollen grains and traced them mostly to water willow and virgin ivy plants. Electron microscope images helped to identify the origin of the pollen.

The plant types suggest the fly was feeding around an area of shallow water.

The Messel Pit in Germany is listed on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites as “the richest site in the world for understanding the living environment of the Eocene, between 57 million and 36 million years ago.”

The area was once home to an oil shale mine, but now it’s the subject of scientific study for the many well-preserved fossils of mammals and other animals.

Flies may be considered a modern-day nuisance, but this fossilized fly and its big appetite show they can also be useful emissaries from the deep past.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Pedro: The Mysterious mountain mummy

Pedro: The Mysterious Mountain Mummy

In June of 1934, two prospectors, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, were using explosives to mine for gold in the San Pedro Mountains of Wyoming.  After the dust of one of their blasts cleared, Main and Carr discovered a small room in a cave. 

There they found a tiny, mummified body with a deformed head, sitting in a flexed position.  The mummy was about 6 inches long and weighed about a pound.

From 1934-1950 the Pedro Mountain Mummy, as it was nicknamed, was sold a few times, as it made the rounds at sideshows and displayed in a drug store window in a glass jar.  

From Wikipedia, pictures and x-rays of the Pedro Mountain Mummy

Ivan Goodman, a Casper, Wyoming car salesman, purchased it and used it in car advertisements.  The Shoshone, a tribe indigenous to Wyoming, have many legends about “little people.”  Goodman believed these legends and displayed the mummy as a pygmy man who was 65 years old when he died.

Before the Pedro Mountain Mummy vanished around 1950, Goodman took the mummy to Dr Harry Shapiro, curator of biological anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where it was examined and x-rayed.  

Photo from the Casper College Western History Center, via WyoHistory.org. Casper historian holding the mummy.

Shortly after Goodman took the Pedro Mountain Mummy to the Big Apple it disappeared, and Goodman soon passed away.  There are differing stories about what happened to the Pedro Mountain Mummy.  Some people say Goodman lost it to a con man others say he sold it.

In 1971, physical anthropologist Dr. George Gill was hired by the University of Wyoming when heard about the mummy from one of his students.  He got the x-ray films from Shapiro and found that the mummy was not a hoax, a pygmy, or an old man.

These mummified remains belonged to an infant, maybe Native American, who suffered from anencephaly.  Anencephaly is a neural tube defect and one of the most common skull abnormalities, characterized by the absence of a major part of the skull, brain, and scalp. 

As the skull develops, the cranial vault may remain open.  If anencephalic births are alive, the infant generally dies within a week.  Studies show that these disorders may be hereditary, but taking folic acid greatly reduces the chances of the defect.

The Pedro Mountain Mummy was featured in an episode of the 90’s television show, Unsolved Mysteries, which included an interview with Dr. Gill, who asked for the public’s help in locating the lost remains.  

After the show aired, a Wyoming rancher brought Gill another mummy he found in 1929 in the San Pedro Mountain area.  This second mummy was about four inches long and had blonde hair.  

Dr. Gill had this mummy X-rayed and tested.  DNA and radiocarbon tests revealed that it was an infant who suffered from anencephaly and died in the eighteenth century.

These results, Gill said, “confirmed everything that I had ever thought” about the Pedro Mountain Mummy, including the diagnosis of anencephaly.

According to Atlas Obscura, Gill recently learned the mummy is somewhere safe but is saying little else.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

In Northern California, a park ranger discovers a treasure trove of several million-year-old fossils.

In Northern California, a park ranger discovers a treasure trove of several million-year-old fossils.

In California, a treasure trove of fossils was discovered, including the fully preserved skeleton of a mastodon and the bones of a 400-pound monster salmon.’ Last summer, while walking through the Mokelumne River’s drainage in the Sierra mountains, forest ranger Greg Francek came across the fossil woods.

Since then, researchers have unearthed the remains of some 600 petrified trees and dozens of animal species, including an elephant ancestor and a giraffe-sized camel.

Experts said that the site — which dates back some around 10 million years ago to the Miocene epoch — is one of the most significant ever found in California.

For now, its exact location is being kept under wraps in order to protect the artefacts until they can be safely extracted from the ground for proper analysis.

The mastodon skull, meanwhile, is scheduled to go on display at the California State University, Chico’s Gateway Science Museum in the autumn of this year.

In Northern California, a park ranger discovers a treasure trove of several million-year-old fossils.
A treasure trove of fossils including the perfectly preserved skull of a mastodon (whose teeth are pictured) and the remains of a 400-pound ‘monster salmon’ has been found in California

Mr Francek, who works for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which provides drinking water for the local area, found the site by accident after discovering something that looked like wood but was smooth like stone.

‘I happened upon a petrified tree,’ Mr Francek told LiveScience.

‘This tree was partially encased in the burial sediments, and because one end was exposed, I could actually see the tree rings inside.’

Looking around, the ranger went on to discover more fossilised tree trunks.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, however, when he returned to conduct an organised survey of the petrified forest that he first spotted the animal fossils among the plants.

‘I located the first vertebrate fossils,’ Mr Francek told SFGate.

‘What I didn’t comprehend at the time was the fact that I was looking at the bones of great beasts that had roamed this landscape millions of years ago.’ 

At this point, Mr Francek decided that he would reach out to specialist researchers, among whom were California State University, Chico palaeontologist and stratigrapher Russell Shapiro.

‘Few other fossil discoveries like this exist in California,’ Professor Shapiro told SFGate.

‘The discovery is highly significant because of both the sheer number and diversity of specimens found.

‘The bones paint a clearer picture of life 10 million years ago when animals evolved from living in forests to grassland as the landscape changed.’ 

According to the team, the site was once the location of an oak forest that was ringed by an ocean. Wood from the trees would have been buried in the fine-grained sediments of a delta, floodplain or volcanic ash bed, turning to stone (as pictured) over millions of years

According to the researchers, the site was once the location of an oak forest that was ringed by an ocean. Wood from the trees would have been buried in the fine-grained sediments of a delta, floodplain or volcanic ash bed, turning to stone over the course of millions of years.

The bones of the prehistoric creatures that the team found among the now-petrified forest would have been carried to the region by floods and volcanic debris flows coming from further inland, they explained. 

The mastodon tusks spanning almost six feet, were found upside down, each one crossing each other. To preserve the tusks, paleontologists coated them with a mixture of acetone and liquid plastic.

Professor Shapiro and his team reported being particularly surprised to have excavated the skull, teeth and tusks of an astonishingly well-preserved mastodon.

‘What you hope to find is a tip of a tusk,’ he told Chico State Today.

‘Not only do we have the tip, but we have the entire thing. And it’s just beautiful ivory. It’s mind-blowing.’ 

The mastodon skull (pictured here with the tusks on the left and the rest of the skull on the right), will go on display at the California State University, Chico’s Gateway Science Museum
NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Researchers Just Found The Deepest Shipwreck On Earth Four Miles Below The Pacific

Researchers Just Found The Deepest Shipwreck On Earth Four Miles Below The Pacific

A US-based team has thoroughly mapped and filmed the world’s deepest recorded shipwreck, a World War II US Navy destroyer. In the Philippine Sea, the USS Johnston is at a depth of 21,180 feet (about 6,500 meters). While its existence has long been established, this is the first time a crew has been able to map and film the entire wreckage.

The USS Johnson, pictured here in 1943.

Caladan Oceanic, a US-based private company that focuses on ocean expeditions, gets credit for reaching the shipwreck on March 31. Its research vessel, the DSV Limiting Factor, was able to survey the wreck, which was more than 100 feet deeper than previously believed, sitting in the darkness more than four miles below the surface of the Pacific.

Caladan Oceanic’s founder is Victor Vescovo, a former US Navy commander who has a long-established passion for visiting some of the world’s most hard-to-get-to places. He holds the record for being the first person in history to have been to the top of all the world’s continents, both poles, and the bottom of all its oceans.

With the survey of the USS Johnston, Vescovo reached another milestone — completing the deepest shipwreck dive in history. He was at the controls of the Limiting Factor for the whole process, which took place in two eight-hour segments over two days.

Sunk during the Battle off Samar.

The USS Johnston was sunk by the Japanese navy on October 25, 1944, during the Battle off Samar. It was one of four naval battles which comprised the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest battles in the history of naval warfare and engagement that sounded the death knell of the Japanese navy in World War II, according to the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).

Sam Cox, director of the NHHC, said the new images of the wreck of the Johnston help the Navy put the spotlight on the heroism and history of its crew.

Researchers Just Found The Deepest Shipwreck On Earth Four Miles Below The Pacific
The ship was named after Lieutenant John V. Johnston, a Civil War hero.

The Johnston was captained by Cmdr. Ernest Evans, a Native American from Oklahoma. Along with two other US destroyers and four smaller destroyer escorts, Evans led the Johnston in attacking a far superior Japanese force of four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and 11 destroyers, according to the NHHC account of the battle.

In an initial encounter, fire from the Johnston knocked out a Japanese cruiser, but the US destroyer was heavily damaged and its ammunition depleted. Evans himself was seriously wounded.

Undaunted, Evans regrouped his crew and the Johnston attacked the Japanese ships again, drawing their fire from a nearby US aircraft carrier.

After two-and-a-half hours of fighting, the Johnston was without power and surrounded by Japanese ships. Evans ordered the crew to abandon the ship, and it rolled over and sank.

Researchers believe they found the wreckage of the USS Johnston World War II era destroyer at a depth of 20,400 feet under the Philippine Sea.

Two of the three ships that followed the Johnston into the Japanese battle line were also sunk, said Carl Schuster, a former Navy captain and Hawaii Pacific University instructor.

“The discovery of the USS Johnston serves as yet another reminder of the heroism and sacrifice of that day in Leyte Gulf 77 years ago,” he said.

Of the Johnston’s crew of 327 men,186 died, including Evans. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first Native American in the US Navy to be awarded his country’s highest military honour, according to the NHHC.

For Vescovo, being able to reach the USS Johnston was a very personal mission.

“In some ways, we have come full circle,” he said in a statement. “The Johnston and our own ship were built in the same shipyard, and both served in the US Navy. As a US Navy officer, I’m proud to have helped bring clarity and closure to the Johnston, its crew, and the families of those who fell there.”