Category Archives: WORLD

BULGARIA, EUROPE, WORLD

Medieval Settlement Uncovered in Bulgaria

Medieval Settlement Uncovered in Bulgaria

Archaeology in Bulgaria reports that an unidentified medieval settlement has been discovered in northwestern Bulgaria by a team of researchers, led by Elena Vasileva of Bulgaria’s National Archaeological Institute with Museum, who were investigating the path of a road construction project.

Near the Danube city of Vidin in Northwest Bulgaria, a previously unknown settlement from the Second Bulgarian Empire in the High Middle Ages and a layer from an early Bronze Age settlement from the 3rd millennium BC were uncovered.

The ruins previously unknown medieval settlement from the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396/1422) and structures from an Early Bronze Age settlement have been found near the town of Tarnyane, 12 kilometres away from Vidin, on the banks of the Voynishka River, which forms two waterfalls before flowing into the Danube.

The discoveries have been during rescue excavations for the construction of the Vidin – Ruzhintsi – Montana road (E79 road) in Northwest Bulgaria, bTV reports citing lead archaeologist Assist. Prof. Elena Vasileva from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology in Sofia.

Vasileva, who points that construction project often provides invaluable opportunities to study otherwise neglected or unknown archaeological monuments, has been in charge of archaeological site No. 7 out of a total of eight archaeological sites slated for rescue excavations along the route of the road in question. The digs were carried out from September until November 2020.

The previously unknown medieval settlement near Vidin and Tarnyane existed in the 11th – 14th century on an area of a total of 54 decares (nearly 14 acres) on both banks of the Voynishka River.

The previously unknown medieval settlement has been discovered during the construction of a local road.
The previously unknown medieval settlement was inhabited at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, between the 11th and the 14th century.
The previously unknown medieval settlement was inhabited at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, between the 11th and the 14th century.
The restoration of a Bronze Age vessel found at the site by restorer Ekaterina Ilieva from the Vidin Regional Museum of History.

The archaeological team has excavated there a total of 47 structures from the 11th – 14th century AD.

These include 23 pits with an average depth of 2.5 meters; a moat which is 1 meter deep and 5 meters wide; eight kilns, six dwellings, including three dugouts, and one human grave.

According to the lead archaeologist, the newly discovered site is one of the few open-type settlements, i.e. with no fortifications, from the period of the Second Bulgarian Empire to have ever been researched in today’s Bulgaria.

“It contains all elements of a settlement, namely, dwellings, pits, production kilns, and a necropolis,” Vasileva says.

“Of structures, the most interesting ones are some of the pits that we’ve explored, which have a large diameter and depth, and contain animals remains – of houses and less so of smaller animals – sheep, goats, and poultry.

This practice is typical of such structures from earlier periods, i.e. the time of the First Bulgarian Empire (632/680 – 1018) but not of the later periods,” she explains.

During the medieval settlement’s excavations, the archaeological team has found a total of 350 artefacts, including coins, arrow tips, tools such as knives, chisels, awls, scrapers, loom weights, parts of copper vessels, pottery vessels such as pots and jugs, adornments such as rings, metal and glass bracelets, parts from earrings, buckles, crosses, and medallions.

Towards the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century, today’s Northwest Bulgaria and part of Eastern Serbia were part of the Vidin Tsardom, a rump state of the Second Bulgarian Empire, which was the last part of Bulgaria to be conquered by the invading Ottoman Turks.

A map of the Second Bulgarian Empire during its height in the first half of the 13th century.
A map of the Second Bulgarian Empire during its height in the first half of the 13th century. The city of Vidin is noted on the map.
A map showing the decline and breakup of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the second half of the 14th century, with some of the rump states, including the Vidin Tsardom.

In addition to the medieval settlement from the Second Bulgarian Empire in the High Middle Ages, the archaeological site near Tarnyane on the Voynishka River also yielded a layer from the Early Bronze Age, from the so-called Magura – Cotofeni Culture, from the 3rd millennium BC. From it, the researchers have excavated one dwelling and one grave.

“The drilling surveying shows that in the 3rd millennium BC the convenient tall bank of the Voynishka River had a settlement, and later, in the 2nd millennium BC, to the south of it there was a necropolis,” Vasileva is quoted as saying.

Both the Early Bronze Age layer and the medieval settlement from the High Middle Ages will be excavated further in 2021.

The rescue excavations in 2020 have included archaeologists and archaeology students from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology in Sofia, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Veliko Tarnovo University “St. Cyril and St. Methodius”, and experts from the National Institute of Morphology, Pathology, and Anthropology, and the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Mysterious message in a bottle found 126 years later hidden inside the wall of Boston building

Mysterious message in a bottle found 126 years later hidden inside the wall of Boston building

A bottle containing a mysterious 126-year-old note was recently found hidden away inside the wall of a building in Boston.

A person living in the Back Bay near Commonwealth Avenue found the bottle tucked into a space between their fireplace flue and an interior wall, according to the Boston Archaeology Program.

Photos shared on Facebook showed a rolled-up piece of paper stuffed inside an old “N. Simons” rye whiskey bottle. The label read, “Importer and Wholesale Liquor Dealer” and had the address “31 & 33 Castle St., Boston” printed on it.

The note inside the bottle had the name “Tom Ford” scrawled on it, along with the phrase “6 on Shea.”

It was dated Sept. 23, 1894.

“We have a mystery for the hive mind this week! A Boston resident found this amazing message in a bottle tucked into the space between their fireplace flue and an interior wall, presumably placed there by past builders,” the social media post read. “Anybody have any ideas about N. Simons, Tom Ford, or “6 on Shea?”

One Facebook user suggested that the note was evidence of secretive “drinking and gambling.”

Another user commented, “There was a (very short-lived) professional football/soccer league in 1894- one of the captains was Dennis Shea.”

As of Wednesday, the origin and meaning behind the note were unclear.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Women’s mass grave sheds light on female victims of the Spanish Civil War

Women’s mass grave sheds light on female victims of the Spanish Civil War

According to a Reuters report, a mass grave holding the remains of ten women from the village of Uncastillo has been uncovered in northeastern Spain. The women were taken from their homes and executed by a fascist firing squad on August 31, 1936, during the first year of the Spanish Civil War.

The mass grave of ten women executed by a fascist firing squad in the early days of the Spanish Civil War has been unearthed by archaeologists in northeastern Spain, bringing attention to the often ignored plight of women in the conflict.

Well, some of their spines are traced by preserved white buttons, the only traces of the clothes they wear the day they were executed on Aug. 31, 1936, after being abducted from their homes the night before in the village of Uncastillo.

The remains of a body with a bullet hole on it is seen during the exhumation of a mass grave with ten women from the town of Uncastillo that were shot in 1936 by the forces of former dictator Francisco Franco, in the cemetery of Farasdues, Spain, December 9, 2020.

Their bodies were dumped in a narrow pit in the local cemetery in neighbouring Farasdues, in the region of Aragon.

Mari Carmen Rios’ grandmother Inocencia Aznares was among them.

A tent covers the exhumation of two mass graves, including one with ten women from the town of Uncastillo that were shot in 1936 by the forces of former dictator Francisco Franco, in the cemetery of Farasdues, Spain, December 9, 2020.

“Why did they kill her?” Because they couldn’t find my uncle? Because she could read and write? Because she voted for the republic? … I don’t know … Nothing they did makes sense,” Rios said.

More than 500,000 people were killed during the 1936-1939 war. Historical foundations estimate over 100,000 bodies remain missing, many in unmarked mass graves.

The leftist coalition government approved a bill in September to finance exhumations from mass graves as part of efforts to “restore democratic memory”.

Academic research on the conflict, though extensive, has been overwhelmingly focused on the experience of men, said Cristina Sanchez, who investigates civil-war violence against women at Zaragoza University.

“Where are all the women? … Now we are finding that they were present as victims of violence and as perpetrators.”

Some were persecuted for their political leanings or activism but many more were killed as substitute victims for their male relatives, she said. Methods of execution were equally savage for both sexes.

“We have deaths by drowning, deaths by hanging, and the majority were killed by firing squad.”

Excavations in Farasdues began in November but the massacre had remained lodged in the area’s collective memory for decades, said archaeologist Javier Ruiz.

The remains of bodies are seen during the exhumation of a mass grave with ten women from the town of Uncastillo that were shot in 1936 by the forces of former dictator Francisco Franco, in the cemetery of Farasdues, Spain, December 9, 2020.

“Carrying off 10 women in one go didn’t happen in many places, at least not in Aragon … In Uncastillo these 10 women have never been forgotten.”

Next to their grave, archaeologists uncovered another site with the bodies of at least seven men, who are yet to be identified.

For Rios, the excavation triggered powerful feelings of outrage, which later gave way to a sense of closure: “When you say ‘We’ve found her, she’s there, we’re going to bury her with grandpa,’ honestly it makes me very happy.”

AFRICA, EUROPE, WORLD

7.2 million-year-old Pre-human fossil suggests mankind arose in Europe, not Africa

7.2 million-year-old Pre-human fossil suggests mankind arose in Europe, not Africa

The human lineage separated from that of apes about 7 million years ago in Africa, according to the widely agreed narrative of human evolution. Hominins (early humans) are thought to have lived in Africa until they first spread to Asia and then to Europe around 2 million years ago.

A mix of hominid (genus Homo) depictions; (from right to left) H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus; H. antecessor – male, female, H. heidelbergensis; H. neanderthalensis – girl, male, H. sapiens.

Today, the narrative is being updated by a team of scientists from the University of Tubingen in Germany and the University of Toronto in Canada. They claim that the oldest human ancestor originated in Europe, not Africa, about 7.2 million years ago, about 200,000 years older than previously believed, in two parallel research published in the journal PLOS One.

The researchers base their bold hypothesis largely on the analysis of two fossils: a mandible (lower jaw) found in Greece in 1944 and an upper premolar tooth found in Bulgaria in 2009.

7.2 million-year-old Pre-human fossil suggests mankind arose in Europe, not Africa

The fossils belonged to an ape-like creature known as Graecopithecus freybergi (“El Graeco,” for short), which roamed the Mediterranean region between 7.18 and 7.25 million years ago.

Though the fossilized jawbone from Greece has been around a while, most scientists had dismissed it as a source of good information due to its poor condition. “It’s not the best specimen in the world,” David Begun of the University of Toronto, who co-authored the new research, told HISTORY.

“It has a lot of damage to the surface of the jawbone itself and a lot of damage to the teeth, so they’re really hard to see, they’re difficult to measure, and it’s hard to say what they look like.” But when Begun’s colleague, Madelaine Böhme, had the idea of using computer tomography, or CT-scanning, to look inside the mandible, things got more interesting.

A 7.24 million-year-old upper premolar of Graecopithecus from Azmaka, Bulgaria.
Root morphology in P4 of cf. Graecopithecus sp. and O. macedoniensis.

“We saw that the roots of the teeth embedded in the mandible were perfectly preserved…and they gave us a lot of new information that we never had about this specimen,” Begun said. “The canine root is quite short and slender and indicates that the canine was small. That’s really important, because in apes—and male apes in particular—the canine is quite large.” This holds true for most male primates, Begun explained, but not all. “This root shows that the canine was already reduced, which is a characteristic that you only see in humans and our fossil relatives.”

In addition, analysis of the two fossils showed that some of the roots of the bicuspid teeth of Graecopithecus—what we call the premolars—had simplified, or fused to form fewer roots. “That is again something that you only see in humans and our fossil relatives. It is extremely rare to find it in living apes, and you don’t see it in any fossil apes from the same time period,” Begun noted.

In the second, complementary study based on sediment in Greece and Bulgaria from that time, Begun and his colleagues found that the climate during the period El Graeco lived there would have been similar to the dry savannahs known to have encouraged the shift to bipedalism that marked early hominin evolution. In fact, it would have been highly similar to the climate of eastern Africa.

Head sketch is by Assen Ignatov of the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History.

If Graecopithecus is in fact a hominin, it would slightly predate the earliest known human ancestor found in Africa, Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Discovered at a site in Chad, Sahelanthropus is believed to be between 6 and 7 million years old.

Begun emphasized that the new hypothesis doesn’t affect the later story of modern humans and their emergence from Africa. “That story is completely intact,” he told HISTORY. “This is about what happened millions and millions of years before that when the human lineage in its entirety arose.”

Some other experts in human evolution are skeptical of Graecopithecus’ newly anointed status as the earliest known hominin. In particular, they question the claim that the jawbone and tooth shape alone establish its pre-human status.

“We just don’t have enough evidence to come to that conclusion,” Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who was not involved with the new study, told HISTORY. “It’s perfectly possible that one or more fossil apes have roots like that.”

As he pointed out, it’s not uncommon for primates to evolve the same morphological traits or features independently from each other. “If you asked me, how much would I be prepared to bet that this is a hominin,” Wood continued, “you’d have to persuade me to put more than a quarter on [it].”

Begun acknowledges the possibility that El Graeco’s tooth shape and size may have occurred independently from early humans and admitted he would like to have more and better-preserved fossil evidence supporting the new hypothesis. Still, he stands behind his and his colleague’s conclusions about Graecopithecus, based on the fossil evidence they do have—and he believes there is likely more out there.

“I think there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll find new sites in the next few years. We might get lucky, and find some more, better-preserved teeth, and especially limb bones, that could help to answer this question more definitively.”

ASIA, KAZAKHSTAN, WORLD

Was Climate Change More Destructive Than Genghis Khan?

Was Climate Change More Destructive Than Genghis Khan?

According to a statement released by the University of Lincoln, dryer conditions may be to blame for the collapse of medieval civilizations along Central Asia’s rivers, rather than the Mongol invasions led by Genghis Khan in the early thirteenth century.

The Aral Sea basin in Central Asia and the major rivers flowing through the region was once home to advanced river civilizations which used floodwater irrigation to farm.

The region’s decline is often attributed to the devastating Mongol invasion of the early 13th century, but new research of long-term river dynamics and ancient irrigation networks shows the changing climate and dryer conditions may have been the real cause.

Research led by the University of Lincoln, UK, reconstructed the effects of climate change on floodwater farming in the region and found that decreasing river flow was equally, if not more, important for the abandonment of these previously flourishing city-states.

Mark Macklin, author and Distinguished Professor of River Systems and Global Change, and Director of the Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health at the University of Lincoln said: “Our research shows that it was climate change, not Genghis Khan, that was the ultimate cause for the demise of Central Asia’s forgotten river civilizations.

Researchers investigate an abandoned medieval canal, Otrar oasis, Kazakhstan.
Researchers investigate an abandoned medieval canal, Otrar oasis, Kazakhstan.

“We found that Central Asia recovered quickly following Arab invasions in the 7th and 8th centuries CE because of favourable wet conditions.

But prolonged drought during and following the later Mongol destruction reduced the resilience of local population and prevented the re-establishment of large-scale irrigation-based agriculture.”

The research focused on the archaeological sites and irrigation canals of the Otrar oasis, a UNESCO World Heritage site that was once a Silk Road trade hub located at the meeting point of the Syr Darya and Ary’s rivers in present southern Kazakhstan.

The researchers investigated the region to determine when the irrigation canals were abandoned and studied the past dynamics of the Arys river, whose waters fed the canals.

The abandonment of irrigation systems matches a phase of riverbed erosion between the 10th and 14th century CE, that coincided with a dry period with low river flows, rather than corresponding with the Mongol invasion.

The research was led by the University of Lincoln in collaboration with VU University Amsterdam, University College London, the University of Oxford and JSC Institute of Geography and Water Safety, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan.

It is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and highlights the critical role that rivers can have in shaping world history.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Late Roman Burial Analyzed in London

Archaeologists try to identify silk and gold-clad woman buried in London’s Spitalfields 1,600 years ago

The Independent reports that researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology have analyzed the 1,600-year-old burial of a woman discovered in a lead coffin placed inside a stone sarcophagus in northern London. Known as the “Spitalfields Lady,” her head had been placed on a pillow stuffed with bay leaves.

Archaeologists have succeeded in piecing together after 21 years of investigation, the remarkable tale of an ultra-high-status Roman aristocrat buried more than 16 centuries ago in London. The extraordinary facts, released today, implies that she might well have been a member of the senatorial elite that presided over Roman Britain’s final years.

‘It is possible that she was the wife of one of the last Roman kings of Britain,’ said Dr Roger Tomlin, a leading scholar of Roman Britain and author of Britannia Romana, a major study of its people and social history.

Her cemetery, on the northern outskirts of the city at Spitalfields, is arguably the largest late Roman grave ever found in Britain. Scientific analysis has shown that she was buried wearing an exquisite garment made of 97 per cent pure gold thread and Chinese-originating silk.

What’s more, her funerary apparel featured at least one band of woollen textile, which appears to have been dyed purple.  Purple was the colour normally associated with imperial or aristocratic status – and experts believe that the dye used to adorn her garment was probably the most expensive in the whole of the ancient world, most likely coming from an eastern Mediterranean species of sea snail, used to produce the dye for imperial and senatorial togas.

Additionally, isotopic research on her teeth shows that she was brought up in Rome itself. Buried in a pure lead coffin inside a large stone sarcophagus, she made her journey to the next world equipped with the very finest of grave goods.

They included at least two continental-made glass perfume vessels: a 41cm tall, 2.5 to 5.5cm diameter biconical container made of very thin 1mm thick colourless glass – and a roughly 25cm tall, 3cm diameter beautifully patterned cylindrical colourless glass vessel, the like of which has never been found before anywhere in the territories covered by the Roman Empire.

Conservators inspecting the skeleton of the Spitalfields Roman woman inside the lead coffin

Both vessels probably held perfumed oils – and the latter one was equipped with a unique 24cm long dipstick made of the semiprecious stone, jet (quarried in what is now the Whitby area of Yorkshire).

The investigation also revealed that, in her grave, her head rested on a pillow filled with bay leaves, almost certainly imported from the Mediterranean area. Scientific tests also showed that pine and pistachio tree resin had been used to freshen the air in her coffin.

“Her presence in the Spitalfields cemetery shows that, even towards the end of Roman Britain, London was fully integrated into high status economic and political networks,” said Michael Marshall, a specialist in Roman archaeology at Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), the organisation which investigated the Spitalfields discovery.

“Her grave goods demonstrate the ways in which a highly mobile social elite was capable of displaying their power and sophistication,” he said.

The 215-page full-colour report on the decades-long investigation into the cemetery, and the skeletons and grave goods found in it, is being published today by MOLA. However, one of the big remaining enigmas is the identity of the ultra-high status Spitalfields lady herself. There is no inscription on the sarcophagus or associated with the grave – and it’s likely that her gravestone was looted many centuries later to help construct medieval London or even to build the medieval metropolis’ city walls.

But the archaeological evidence may be sufficient to allow historians to explore a number of options as to who she was. The ultra-high status nature of her funerary clothing, the probable purple dye, her stone sarcophagus, her grave goods and the fact that she was brought up in Rome, all suggest that her family was probably of senatorial or equestrian rank.

Her grave is by far the highest status ever found in Roman Londinium. In late Roman London, there would have been only a very limited number of individuals of that sort of background.

It is therefore conceivable that she was either the wife of a governor of Flavia Caesariensis (the British province covering what is now the English Midlands, East Anglia, and southern England, north of the Thames) or, possibly, that she was the wife of one of the overall bosses of late Roman Britain (a so-called vicarious Britanniarum – Britain’s imperial “viceroy”).

The style of her grave goods and other evidence reveals that she almost certainly died in the four or five decades after around AD360. Of the dozen relevant vicarii, who ruled Britain in that period, the names of only four of them have survived. What’s more, hardly any names of the wives of mid-to-late fourth-century Roman rulers in Britain are known.

One, a lady called Namia Pudentilla, illustrates the sort of women Britain’s Roman governors and vicarii married. Namia”s husband, Flavius Sanctus, married a noblewoman from a senatorial family. He was a governor in Britain in the mid-fourth century. Archaeologists and historians are now able to piece together the life story of the Spitalfields lady.

She was probably born (and certainly brought up in) Rome in the mid-fourth century. When she was four or five years old, she suffered a brief (but potentially serious) illness which temporarily stopped her tooth enamel growing (a fact that has been spotted by the archaeological investigators).

It’s likely that her potentially very high-ranking fiance married her when she was in her mid-to-late teens and he would probably have been up to twice her age. She then appears to have accompanied him to London (probably because he had been appointed to a high government position there – potentially as a governor or as Britain’s vicarius).

However, probably within two or three years of arriving in the Romano-British capital, she died – most likely in childbirth (or from some then common disease like tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera or scarlet fever).

It’s possible that her death took place in the final quarter of the fourth century or conceivably even in the first decade of the fifth. That was a pivotal period in the history of Britain, as it represents the run-up to the end of Roman rule in Britain in AD410. The Roman government collapsed in Britain several generations before similar collapses occurred in continental western Europe and that chronological difference, in turn, helped to shape subsequent British and English history in ways that were very different to those that operated on the continent.

Among the governors and other political players who could conceivably have been the Spitalfields lady’s husband are:

– Alypius of Antioch, vicarius of Britain from around 361 to 363. He was involved in a temporary re-paganisation of the Empire

– Civilis, vicarius of Britain in around 369, who temporarily cleared Britain of barbarian invaders

– Chrysanthus a vicarius of Britain, who had been a Roman governor in Italy before being posted to London

– Victorinus, the vicarius of Britain who may well have been the very last conventionally appointed Roman ruler of Britain.

Another possible candidate for being the Spitalfields lady’s husband could conceivably be one of the four individuals in Britain who declared themselves Emperor during the chaotic years between AD383 and 407.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

30,000-Year-Old Sacsayhuamán Secret Writing Method Discovered

30,000-Year-Old Sacsayhuamán Secret Writing Method Discovered

A researcher has suggested a highly thought-provoking theory that the fabulous Sacsayhuamán temple in Peru might involve secret 30 000-year-old writing. A discovery of this magnitude could easily re-write not only our understanding of the Stone Age but also world history.

In our article “Sacsayhuamán – Was It Built By ‘Demons’ Or Viracocha The Bearded God?” we examined the walls built by stones that our gigantic modern machinery could hardly move and put in place. Sacsayhuamán, located on the outskirts of the ancient Inca capital city of Cuzco is one of the most impressive and mysterious fortresses of the Andes.

Sacsayhuamán is still shrouded in mystery. The question of how the Sacsayhuamán stones have been transported remains unanswered. Will the corners of the stones maybe throw more light on the enigma of Sacsayhuamán? Dr. Derek Cunningham, a researcher has put forward a controversial and highly intriguing theory.

30,000-Year-Old Sacsayhuamán Secret Writing Method Discovered
The Sacsayhuamán complex

Based on his studies of the Sacsayhuamán complex, he concluded that the curious angles formed by these stones reveal ancient Inca knowledge of astronomical alignments of the moon, sun, and the earth, as well as knowledge of lunar and solar eclipses.

This should perhaps not be so surprising because many ancient temples were astronomically aligned. However, what Dr. Cunningham is suggesting is unorthodox because his hypothesis revolves around the thought that our ancient ancestors developed ‘writing’ at least 30,000 years ago from a geometrical form of text that is based on the motion of the moon and the sun.

He asserts that such ancient astronomical text, identical to that seen at Sacsayhuamán, is also found in both Lascaux and Chauvet caves in Europe, the African carved Ishango tally bone, and a circa 30,000-year-old carved stone found at the Shuidonggou Paleolithic Site in China.

Dr. Cunningham became interested in Sacsayhuamán when he first noted a series of unusual ground patterns located close to some Scottish sites.

This discovery drove him on to look at other ancient sites hoping to find some similarities and he did. He discovered that the Sacsayhuamán stone angles reveal something extraordinary.

“Each astronomical value (there are 9 standard values in total) was chosen by ancient astronomers to aid the prediction of eclipses. These astronomical terms are a mixture of values astronomers use to measure time (the 27.32-day sidereal month) and values to determine when the moon, earth, and sun align at nodes.

This includes the use of the 18.6-year nodal cycle of the moon, the 6.511 draconic months period between eclipse seasons, and also the 5.1-degree angle of inclination of the moon’s orbit.

The remaining values typically are either half-values of various lunar terms or values connected to the 11-day difference between the lunar and solar years,” Dr. Cunningham says.

Dr. Cunningham believes that scientists should focus their attention on the hidden writing discovered at Sacsayhuamán. “Now, substantial evidence has also been discovered that this archaic writing was used, perhaps almost continuously, until 500 years ago,” states Cunningham.

“Recently the analysis of the Muisca Tunjo figurines from Columbia uncovered evidence that they were constructed to the exact same astronomical design as Bronze Age figurines uncovered in Cyprus.

This discovery of such possible “recent” use of a Stone Age text thus prompted me to take a new look at circa 15th to 16th century Inca architecture, which is famous for its fabulous over-complex interlocking walls.

The question I asked was could the massive polygonal walls of Sacsayhuamán align to the exact same astronomical values used in the Columbian Muiscan figurines and the Atacama Giant of Chile? The surprising result is yes.”

Right: Second Sacsayhuamán wall example; Left: One Sacsayhuamán wall example

“What is powerful about this new theory is that it is very simple and easy to test,” adds Cunningham.

“Further work is of course required. Satellite images cannot clearly take the place of direct fieldwork, and photographs placed online may have become distorted, but so far the data obtained appear highly consistent.” Dr. Cunningham is not afraid of criticism. “I honestly do not care whether I am right or wrong about this,” he concludes.

“All I have found so far is that the data is what it is. The potential of the idea to explain some things about so many sites from the pyramids of Egypt to the Atacama Giant in Chile is obviously very controversial, and it should be. But if correct, it could rewrite some aspects of our understanding of not only the Stone Age but also world history. If, on the other hand, scholars prove this specific astronomical theory wrong, then we can move on, knowing that it has been sufficiently tested.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

2 Ancient Villages Emerge in Arizona National Park

2 Ancient Villages Emerge in Arizona National Park

Archaeologists have uncovered a second ancient village in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park that is 1,300 years old. The latest basket-maker village dates between 200 A.D. and 700 A.D., based on the types of pottery found, according to Bill Reitze, the park’s archaeologist.

This is an undated file photo of the Petrified Forest National Park, Ariz.

It was discovered in summer, following the first discovery last year of similar slab-lined pit-houses.

These are dwelling structures dug into the ground unique to the Southern Colorado Plateau and found throughout the park, but not often in these high concentrations, Reitze said.

Both of the large basket-maker sites are in neighboring, stabilized sand dunes less than a kilometer apart, Reitze said.

The discoveries were made as part of an expansion project that has doubled the park’s size after Congress passed the Petrified Forest National Park Expansion Act of 2004.

“There are not a lot of national parks that have the opportunity to get bigger like this to protect sites and produce future research,” Reitze told ABC News.

Archaeologists surveying land acquired by Petrified Forest National Park have found traces of two ancient villages. The flags mark a site where pottery was found.

“A lot of archaeology happens in response to development. What makes this unique is new sites are discovered, research [is] being done and all these sites are being protected, all at once.”

The artifacts are primarily stone tools, including spear points, scrapers, and knives, made out of petrified wood, shells, and small early ceramics.

Last year, ruins of a multi-story house were discovered that may have been part of a trade network.

One “really neat artifact,” Reitze said, was a white pendant carved from soapstone or siltstone.

“It’s really interesting because it really allows us to see on a larger scale things we’ve noticed in other areas in the park,” Reitze said.

The park is split between Navajo and Apache counties.

2 Ancient Villages Emerge in Arizona National Park
A projectile stone point with serrated edge is among the artifacts found at the sites.

Reitze said he plans to record additional discoveries and date what they’ve found with radiocarbon.

One of Reitze’s colleagues will be conducting an ethnobotanical study to analyze prehistoric sites.

“Because the park is doubling in size, we are finding something every day — certainly not like these sites, but we are finding things every day,” he said.