Remains of a 7,000-Year-Old Lost City Discovered in Egypt
Egypt has announced the discovery of the ruins of a long-lost city in the Upper Egypt province of Sohag, which are believed to be over 7,000 years old.
The 5,316 BC residential city, discovered alongside a nearby cemetery, is being hailed as a major archaeological find that predates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period, which lasted about 5 millennia.
During a dig 400 meters south of the mortuary temple of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled thousands of years later from 1290 to 1279 BC, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities discovered the remains of ancient huts and graves.
Seti I’s temple is located in Abydos – one of the oldest known cities of ancient Egypt and the historic capital of Upper Egypt – and the newly found dwellings and graves could be parts of the long-gone capital now resurfaced, or a separate village that was swallowed by it.
“This discovery can shed light on a lot of information on the history of Abydos,” antiquities minister Mahmoud Afifi said in a press statement.
The recently unearthed structures are thought to have been home to high-ranking officials and grave builders.
In addition to the foundations of ancient huts, the archaeologists found iron tools and pottery, plus 15 giant tombs – the capacious size of which means their intended inhabitants must have been well-established individuals.
“The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the first dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.
It’s possible that these officials oversaw the construction of royal tombs in nearby Abydos, but the size of their own resting places outside the capital suggests they didn’t want to slum it in eternity either.
“About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings,” Egyptologist Chris Eyre from the University of Liverpool in the UK, who wasn’t involved with the excavation, told the BBC.
“So, this appears to be the town, the capital at the very beginning of Egyptian history.”
According to the researchers, the ancient tools and pottery are the leftover traces of a once giant labour force that was engaged in the considerable feat of constructing these royal tombs – and if you’ve seen the kinds of structures we’re talking about, you’ll understand they had a pretty epic responsibility:
The nearby cemetery is made up of 15 mastabas, an ancient Egyptian tomb that takes a rectangular shape, made with sloping walls and a flat roof.
According to lead researcher Yasser Mahmoud Hussein, these mastabas are now the oldest such tombs we know about, pre-dating the previous record holders in Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for another ancient Egyptian city, Memphis.
We’ll have to wait for these new findings to be verified by other scientists, but we’re excited to see what new insights further excavations will bring.
Archaeologists uncover lost Indigenous NE Florida settlement of Sarabay
The University of North Florida archaeology team is now fairly confident they have located the lost Indigenous northeast Florida community of Sarabay, a settlement mentioned in both French and Spanish documents dating to the 1560s but had not been discovered until now.
The type and amounts of Indigenous pottery the team is finding combined with the type and dates for European artefacts as well as cartographic map evidence strongly supports this location as the late 16th/early 17th century Mocama settlement.
The researchers have opened large excavation blocks with many exciting new artefacts finds and are currently searching for evidence of houses and public architecture.
UNF Archaeology Lab at the dig site.
The students, led by Dr. Keith Ashley, UNF Archaeology Lab director and assistant professor, have recently recovered more than 50 pieces of early Spanish pottery as well as Indigenous pottery that dates to the late 1500s or early 1600s.
They have also recovered bone, stone and shell artefacts as well as burned corn cob fragments.
Expanding upon UNF excavations conducted at the southern end of Big Talbot Island in 1998, 1999, and 2020, the UNF research team has completed what is likely the most extensive excavations at a Mocama-Timucua site in northeastern Florida history.
This dig is part of the UNF Archaeology Lab’s ongoing Mocama Archaeological Project. This study focuses on the Mocama-speaking Timucua Indians who lived along the Atlantic coast of northern Florida at the time of European arrival in 1562.
The Mocama were among the first indigenous populations encountered by European explorers in the 1560s.
The team hopes to ultimately confirm the discovery of Sarabay by finding evidence of houses and public architecture.
They will continue to explore and learn about Sarabay’s physical layout during continuing fieldwork projects over the next three years.
13-foot-long ‘Book of the Dead’ scroll found in burial shaft in Egypt
Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a cache of treasures—including more than 50 wooden sarcophagi, a funerary temple dedicated to an Old Kingdom queen and a 13-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll—at the Saqqara necropolis, a vast burial ground south of Cairo, according to a statement from the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiques.
A 13-foot-long (4 meters) copy of chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead was found in the burial shafts. The name of the papyrus’s owner Pwkhaef is written on it. The Book of the Dead helped guide the deceased through the afterlife.
As first reported by Al-Ahram, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and his colleagues discovered the coffins, which appear to date back to the New Kingdom era (1570–1069 B.C.), in 52 burial shafts measuring 33 to 40 feet deep. Paintings of ancient gods and excerpts from the Book of the Dead, which was thought to help the deceased navigate the afterlife, adorn the sarcophagi.
Hawass tells CBS News’ Ahmed Shawkat that researchers first started excavating the site, which stands next to the pyramid of King Teti, first of the Sixth Dynasty rulers of the Old Kingdom (2680–2180 B.C.), in 2010.
“[B]ut we didn’t find a name inside the pyramid to tell us who the pyramid belonged to,” he adds.
Now, reports Agence France-Presse, experts have finally identified the complex—which boasts a stone temple and three mud-brick warehouses that housed offerings and tools—as the tomb of Teti’s wife, Queen Naert.
Around a month ago, the team found Naert’s name etched onto a wall in the temple and written on a felled obelisk near the entrance of the burial, per CBS News.
“I’d never heard of this queen before,” Hawass says to CBS News. “Therefore, we add an important piece to Egyptian history, about this queen.”
A mummy mask worn by the deceased is seen here.
Board games were also found in the burial shafts. This particular game appears to be Senet, a game that was popular in ancient Egypt.
Among the goods found in the burial shafts is this boat with rowers.
According to the statement, this is the first time archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old coffins at Saqqara—one of Egypt’s “richest archaeological sites,” as Jo Marchant wrote for Smithsonian magazine last year. In recent months, excavations at the necropolis have yielded an array of exciting, albeit newer, finds, from sealed sarcophagi to ancient statues.
“Actually, this morning we found another shaft,” Hawass told CBS News on Monday. “Inside the shaft, we found a large limestone sarcophagus. This is the first time we’ve discovered a limestone sarcophagus inside the shafts. We found another one that we’re going to open a week from now.”
The coffins found in the burial shafts probably hold the remains of followers of a Teti-worshipping cult formed after the pharaoh’s death writes Owen Jarus for Live Science.
Experts think that the cult operated for more than 1,000 years; members would have considered it an honour to be entombed near the king.
Other highlights of the discovery include a set of wooden masks; a shrine to the god Anubis; bird-shaped artefacts; games including Senet, which was believed to offer players a glimpse into the afterlife; a bronze axe; paintings; hieroglyphic writings; and fragments of a 13-foot-long, 3-foot-wide papyrus containing Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead.
The name of the scroll’s owner, Pwkhaef, is inscribed on the papyrus, as well as on one sarcophagus and four sculptures, according to Live Science.
These finds, notes the statement, as translated by CNN’s Amy Woodyatt, “will rewrite the history of this region, especially during the 18th and 19th dynasties of the New Kingdom, during which King Teti was worshipped, and the citizens at that time were buried around his pyramid.”
DNA shows Scythian warrior mummy was a 13-year-old girl
Remains of the young ancient Scythian warrior
The story of a clan of warrior women was formed in Greek mythology during a time when there were ancient gods, warriors, and rulers. These powerful female combatants from Asia Minor said to be daughters of the gods, have captured people’s imaginations for ages and continue to pervade popular culture today as mythical Amazon warriors.
For a long time, these warrior women were assumed to be figments of ancient imaginations, but archaeological evidence has since revealed that the warrior women, who may have inspired these myths, really did exist. Late last year, an archaeological discovery of two women thought to be nomadic Scythians from around 2,500 years ago (4th century BCE) was revealed. They were buried in what’s now the western Russian village of Devitsa, with parts of a horse-riding harness and weapons, including iron knives and 30 arrowheads.
“We can certainly say that these two women were horse warriors,” said archaeologist Valerii Guliaev of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology at the time.
The Scythian remains with the headdress.
They were found in a burial mound with two other women – one aged between 40-50 years old, who wore a golden headdress with decorative floral ornaments. The other, aged 30-35, was buried alongside two spears and positioned like she was riding a horse.
“During the last decade, our expedition has discovered approximately 11 burials of young armed women. Separate barrows were filled for them and all burial rites which were usually made for men were done for them,” explained Guliaev.
Plate from headdress made from an alloy of 65-70 percent gold.
Now, another team from Russia has mapped the genome of 2,600-year-old Scythian remains that had been discovered in a wooden sarcophagus with an array of weapons back in 1988.
“This child was initially considered to be male because with him were found characteristics [usually attributed to male] archaeological finds: an axe, a bow, arrows,” archaeologist Varvara Busova from the Russian Academy of Sciences told ScienceAlert.
But the child’s DNA revealed the remains were actually female. “That means we can say with some probability that [Scythian] girls have also participated in hunting or military campaigns,” Busova added.
The warrior girl was buried in Siberia’s modern-day Tuva republic, with an axe, a birch bow and a quiver with ten arrows – some wood, bone or bronze tipped. Due to the larch coffin sealing tightly against fresh air, her remains were partially mummified.
The Scythian girl’s battle axe.
“This young ‘Amazon’ had not yet reached the age of 14 years,” said lead author of the new research, archaeologist Marina Kilunovskaya from the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences.
The girl was clothed in a long fur coat, a shirt, and trousers or a skirt. Using a scanning electron microscope, the researchers found her coat was composed of a patchwork of skins from a rodent related to Jerboa. And carbon dating of other grave items placed the burial complex from 7th-5th centuries BCE, which is early Scythian times.
Busova said the research team would now like to get more accurate dating of the young warrior girl’s remains, investigate the composition of the metal grave objects, and work to restore and conserve what they have found. They’re also hoping CT scans of the remains may give them clues on how the young female warrior died.
The young warrior’s arrows.
The finding “unwittingly brings us back to the myth about the Amazons that have survived to this day thanks to Herodotus (Herod. IV: 110-118),” the team wrote in their paper.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus claimed Amazons fought the Scythians, but it seems they could actually be the Scythian women who trained, hunted and fought alongside their male counterparts.
“About one-third of all Scythian women are buried with weapons and have war injuries just like the men,” historian Adrienne Mayor told National Geographic in 2014.
“They lived in small tribes, so it makes sense that everyone in the tribe is a stakeholder. They all have to contribute to the defence and to war efforts and hunting.”
Through the centuries, myths of the Amazons have been embellished with outrageous claims, from cutting off their own breasts to improve their archery, to murdering their male children.
But we now have the opportunity to learn more about the true female warriors behind the myths thanks to modern archaeological studies and DNA techniques.
1,800-year-old Roman Chariot with horses found buried in Croatia
In Croatia, archaeologists discovered the fossilized remnants of a Roman chariot that had been buried with two horses as part of a burial ritual.
A large burial chamber for an ‘extremely wealthy family’ was found in which the carriage with what appears to be two horses had lain.
Archaeologists from the City Museum Vinkovci and Institute of Archaeology from Zagreb discovered the Roman carriage on two wheels (known in Latin as a cisium) with horses at the Jankovacka Dubrava site close to the village of Stari Jankovci, near the city of Vinkovci, in eastern Croatia.
The horses’ remains and the chariot were all buried together in what appears to have been a ritual reserved for very wealthy families.
The discovery is believed to be an example of how those with extreme wealth were sometimes buried along with their horses.
Curator Boris Kratofil explained to local media that the custom of burial under tumuli (an ancient burial mound) was an exceptional burial ritual during the Roman period in the south of the Pannoinan Basin.
He said: ‘The custom is associated with extremely wealthy families who have played a prominent role in the administrative, social and economic life of the province of Pannonia.’
The discovery is estimated to be from the third century AD but the team of scientists are working to confirm its age.
Archaeologists say the discovery will allow them to know a little more about the family whose members were buried in this area 1,800 years ago.
The director of the Institute of Archaeology Marko Dizdar said that it was a sensational discovery that is unique in Croatia.
He said: ‘After this comes a long process of restoration and conservation of the findings, but also a complete analysis of the findings.
‘In a few years, we will know a little more about the family whose members were buried in this area 1,800 years ago.
‘We are more interested in the horses themselves, that is, whether they were bred here or came from other parts of the empire, which will tell us more about the importance and wealth of this family.
‘We will achieve this through cooperation with domestic as well as numerous European institutions.’
9,000-Year-Old Obsidian Tools Found at Bottom of Lake Huron
A scuba diver near a submerged hunting structure at the bottom of Lake Huron.
Obsidian, or volcanic glass, is a prized raw material for knappers, both ancient and modern, with its lustrous appearance, predictable flaking, and resulting razor-sharp edges.
As such, it was used and traded widely throughout much of human history. Obsidian from the Rocky Mountains and the West was an exotic exchange commodity in Eastern North America.
“Obsidian from the far western United States is rarely found in the east,” said Dr Ashley Lemke, an anthropologist in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington.
The two ancient obsidian artefacts were recovered from a sample of sediment that was hand excavated at a depth of 32 m (105 feet) in an area between two submerged hunting structures at the bottom of Lake Huron.
“This particular find is really exciting because it shows how important underwater archaeology is,” Dr. Lemke said.
“The preservation of ancient underwater sites is unparalleled on land, and these places have given us a great opportunity to learn more about past peoples.”
Photomicrographs of the two obsidian flakes from Lake Huron. Scale is in millimetres.
The larger artifact is a mostly complete, roughly triangular, biface thinning flake made from black and translucent material with a sub-vitreous texture.
The second artefact is a small, very thin, translucent flake on a material visually similar to the larger specimen.
“These tiny obsidian artefacts reveal social connections across North America 9,000 years ago,” Dr. Lemke said.
“The artifacts found below the Great Lakes come from a geological source in Oregon, 4,000 km (2,485 miles) away — making it one of the longest distances recorded for obsidian artifacts anywhere in the world.”
The findings were published in the journal PLoS ONE.
British teacher finds long-lost relative: 9,000-year-old man
Adrian Targett visited the home of a close relative yesterday. He had to put on Wellington boots because the floor is muddy. The relative was not in. Hardly surprising: he died 9,000 years ago.
9,000-Year-Old Cheddar Man Has Living Descendant Still Living in The Same Area
But there is no doubt: Mr Targett, a 42-year-old history teacher in Cheddar, Somerset, has been shown by DNA tests to be a direct descendant, by his mother’s line, of “Cheddar Man“, the oldest complete skeleton ever found in Britain, and now also the world’s most distant confirmed relative.
Even the Royal Family can only trace its heritage back to King Ecgbert, who ruled from 829AD to 830AD. By contrast, Cheddar Man, a hunter-gatherer who pre-dated the arrival of farming, lived in 7150BC.
The news caught everyone by surprise. Mr Targett’s wife, Catherine, said: “This is all a bit of a surprise, but maybe this explains why he likes his steaks rare”.
The discovery came about during tests performed as part of a television series on archaeology in Somerset, Once Upon a Time in the West, to be shown later this year.
DNA found in the pulp cavity of one of Cheddar Man’s molar teeth was tested at Oxford University’s Institute of Molecular Medicine, and then compared with that of 20 people locally, whose families were known to have been living in the area for some generations.
To make up the numbers, Mr Targett, an only child who has no children, joined in. But the match was unequivocal: the two men have a common maternal ancestor. The mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the egg, confirmed it.
“I’m absolutely overwhelmed,” Mr Targett said on hearing of the match. “It is very strange news to receive – I’m not sure how I feel at the moment.”
His pupils were delighted (“He has never had a nickname … until now,” one 16-year-old said with relish) and so were scientists. The finding could provide a key to the debate about the process by which early humans settled down to agricultural life.
Cheddar Man was discovered in 1903, 20 metres inside Gough’s cave, which is the largest of 100 caverns in Cheddar Gorge – Britain’s prime site for Palaeolithic human remains. He had been buried alone in a chamber near the mouth of a deep cave, about 1,000 years before hunter-gathering began to give way to farming.
Visiting the site, Mr Targett said: “I’m glad I don’t live down here – it’s very dark, dank and dismal. I have been down here before but, of course, I never dreamed that I was standing in my ancestor’s home.”
Dr Larry Barham, an archaeology lecturer at Bristol University, said: “There is debate over whether farmers arrived from eastern Europe and ousted the hunter-gatherers – or whether the idea of farming spread through the population. This discovery strongly suggests an element of the second.”
In Cheddar Man’s time, the area would have been sparsely populated, with dense forests. He would have hunted deer, rabbits, waterfowl and perhaps fish, and gathered nuts, fruit and edible roots. “There were wild boar, bears and beavers.
There were packs of wild wolves, too, but apart from that life was probably pretty good. Cheddar Gorge would have looked similar then and must have been a good spot, with ready-made homes, a spring and forest nearby,” Dr Barham said.
Physically, Cheddar Man would have looked like a modern man. “You could put a suit on him and he wouldn’t look out of place in an office. In fact, he probably wore tailored clothes of leather or skins sewn together,” Dr Barham added.
“It is likely he was part of an extended group of families of 30 or so people. They lived too late to see a woolly mammoth, and too soon to see the earliest farming.”
The link between Cheddar Man and Adrian Targett easily outstrips the existing record for distant ancestors.
The oldest previously recorded relative was the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Confucius who lived in the eighth century BC. Two of Confucius’s 85th lineal male descendants today live in Taiwan.
In Italy, a giant water tank has been linked to prehistoric rituals.
The Noceto Vasca Votiva is a unique wood structure that was unearthed on a small hill in northern Italy in 2005. Built primarily of oak and slightly larger than a backyard swimming pool, the exact purpose of the in-ground structure has remained a mystery, as has the date of its construction. Italian researchers estimated its origins go back to the late Middle Bronze Age, sometime between 1600 and 1300 BCE.
The Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory received wood samples from the Noceto Vasca Votiva’s lower and upper tanks, then used dendrochronology and a form of radiocarbon dating called “wiggle-matching” to date their origins to 1444 and 1432 B.C., respectively.
While that gap might not seem huge, in archaeological terms it’s like comparing the culture that invented the steam engine with the one that produced the iPad.
A Cornell University team led by Sturt Manning, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Classics and director of the Tree-Ring Laboratory, used dendrochronology and a form of radiocarbon dating called ‘wiggle matching to pinpoint, with 95% probability, the years in which the structure’s two main components were created: a lower tank in 1444 BCE, and an upper tank in 1432 BCE Each date has a margin of error of four years.
The finding confirms that the Noceto Vasca Votiva was built at a pivotal moment of societal change, and bolsters the Italian researchers’ theory that the structure was used for a supernatural water ritual.
The team’s paper, “Dating the Noceto Vasca Votiva, a Unique Wooden Structure of the 15th Century BCE, and the Timing of a Major Societal Change in the Bronze Age of Northern Italy,” published June 9 in PLOS ONE.
Manning has led the Tree-Ring Laboratory since 2006, and his team has advanced a range of tools and techniques that have successfully challenged common assumptions about historical artefacts and timelines. Among the lab’s specialities is tree-ring sequenced radiocarbon “wiggle-matching,” in which ancient wooden objects are dated by matching the patterns of radiocarbon isotopes from their annual growth increments (i.e., tree rings) with patterns from datasets found elsewhere around the world. This enables ultra-precise dating even when a continuous tree-ring sequence for a particular species and geographic area is not yet available.
“Working at an archaeological site, you’re often trying to do dendrochronology with relatively few samples, sometimes in less than ideal condition, because they’ve been falling apart for the last 3,500 years before you get to see them. It’s not like a healthy tree that is growing out in the wild right now,” Manning said. “We often measure the samples a number of times to extract as much signal as we can.”
The Noceto Vasca Votiva is about 12 meters long, 7 meters across and roughly four meters deep—although the depth was a little ambiguous at first.
When the site was fully excavated, the researchers found that the structure had a second tank beneath it, which had been built first but collapsed before it was finished. It was initially unclear how much time elapsed between the creation of the two tanks, which shared some of the same materials.
Judging by the size of the structure and the extensive labour that would have been required to excavate the earth and drag timber to the uphill location, the Italian researchers recognized that the Noceto Vasca Votiva was a major undertaking for its era and theorized its purpose. But they were unable to determine the precise date of its origins, and so turned to the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory.
Manning’s team made multiple attempts with different samples. While the wood from the Noceto site was well-preserved—a rarity, given its age—there was an unexpected challenge when the samples did not seem to fit the international radiocarbon calibration curve that is used for matching tree-ring sequences. This suggested the curve needed revising for certain time periods, and in 2020 a new version was published. The Noceto data finally fit.
By combining radiocarbon dating calibrated via dendrochronology from southern Germany, Ireland and North America, along with computer-intensive statistics, the Cornell team was able to establish a tree-ring record that spanned several hundred years. They pegged the construction of the lower and upper tanks at 1444 and 1432 BCE, respectively; and they determined the finished structure was in use for several decades before it was abandoned, for reasons that may never be known.
The new timeline is particularly significant because it synchs up with a period of enormous change in Italian prehistory.
“You’ve had one way of life in operation for hundreds of years, and then you seem to have a switch to fewer, larger settlements, more international trade, more specialization, such as textile manufacture, and a change in burial practices,” Manning said. “There is something of a pattern all around the world. Nearly every time there’s a major change in social organization, there tends often to be an episode of building what might be described as unnecessary monuments. So when you get the first states forming in Egypt, you get the pyramids. Stonehenge marks a major change in southern England. Noceto is not the scale of Stonehenge, but it has some similarities—an act of major place-making.”
Because the structure was located atop a hill and not in the centre of a village, it wasn’t used as a reservoir or well. The smooth layers of sediment that filled in the structure, and the absence of channels, implying it wasn’t used for irrigation. In addition, the researchers discovered a large set of objects deliberately deposited inside the tank, including numerous ceramic vessels, figurines and a range of stone, wood and organic items. All of that evidence indicates the structure was used in some kind of supernatural water ritual.
“It’s tempting to think it was about creating a reflective surface that you can see into, and where you put some offerings, but you’re also looking at the sky above and the linking of land, sky and water (rain),” Manning said.
Given the fact that nearby settlements in this southern edge of the Po Plain were built with dikes and terraces, and the region was agriculturally productive with much water management, water was clearly important for all aspects of the builders’ lives. At least for a time.
“The collapse of the whole social and economic system in the area around 1200 BCE seems to occur because it becomes much drier,” Manning said.
