Category Archives: WORLD

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Byzantine Amphora Found By Swimmer At Cretan Beach

Byzantine Amphora Found By Swimmer At Cretan Beach

An ancient amphora, which is a vase that was historically used to store and transport things such as wine, oil and grain was discovered by a man who was swimming at Arina beach in Heraklion, Crete.

Admittedly, this is more likely if your holiday is in Crete than Gran Canaria, but it’s what happened to one man who had been swimming from his hotel beach.

When he got back inside, he looked at his photos and noticed something round and bobbing in the water. At first, he thought it could be a floating human head.

In fact it was a 12th century Byzantine amphora found by a man out for a swim

That would clearly be of concern, so he alerted the beach lifeguard and took a surfboard out to investigate what it was on Thursday.

It was not a human head In fact it was a 12th century Byzantine amphora found by a man out for a swim In fact it was an amphora, a kind of vase used to store and transport things like wine, oil or grain.

Although it was covered in shells and other debris from the sea, it was intact and is believed to date from the Byzantine period in the 12th or 13th centuries. It will be handed over to the Directorate of Antiquities, local media reported.

The amphora was found at Arina beach by Heraklio in North Crete. Authorities warned that any historical artefacts like this had to be declared as they are property of the Greek state.

People should not move them, however, as this could damage them. Instead, they should give details of where they can be found.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Metal monolith found by a helicopter crew in Utah desert

Metal monolith found by a helicopter crew in Utah desert

In a remote part of Utah, after being spotted by state employees counting sheep from a helicopter, a mysterious monolith was found. The structure appeared to be planted in the soil, estimated to be between 10ft and 12ft tall (about 3 metres).

It was made from some sort of metal, its shine in sharp contrast to the enormous red rocks which surrounded it.

Utah’s highway patrol shared images of both the sheep and the monolith.

Big horn sheep are native to southern parts of Utah

The helicopter pilot, Bret Hutchings, told local news channel KSLTV: “That’s been about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying.”

Hutchings was flying for the Utah department of public safety, which was helping wildlife resource officers count bighorn sheep in the south of the state.

“One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it,” Hutchings said. “He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turns around!’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this thing back there – we’ve got to go look at it!’”

Hutchings said the object looked manmade and appeared to have been firmly planted in the ground, not dropped from the sky.

“I’m assuming it’s some new wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a big 2001: A Space Odyssey fan,” Hutchings said.

The monolith and its setting resembled a famous scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, in which a group of apes encounter a giant slab.

The somewhat monkey-like behaviour of two crew members, dressed in sci-fi costume-like overalls, who found themselves compelled to climbed onto each other’s shoulders in an apparent effort to see over the top of the rectangular cuboid, only added to the impression.

There was speculation that the monolith was installed by an artist

“We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it,” Hutchings said.

Bighorn sheep live in some of Utah’s most rugged and remote areas and survive in hostile climate conditions. Fearing amateur explorers might get stuck in the wilderness while seeking out the monolith, the flight crew have not revealed its exact location.

Some observers compared the monolith to the plank sculptures by artist John McCracken, who lived in New Mexico and New York until his death in 2011. McCracken’s gallerist, David Zwirner, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Artist Liam Sharp summed up the people’s fascination with the discovery in 270 characters or less, putting into the portal the words, “I love this. I imagine it’s an art piece, but what if it isn’t”.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

UK Archaeologist Claims To Have Found Jesus Christ’s Childhood Home In Israel

UK Archaeologist Claims To Have Found Jesus Christ’s Childhood Home In Israel

The stone altar 2,800 years old offers insights into the acquisition of Atroth in Jordan. An archaeologist from Britain sheds new light on a fascinating ancient site under a convent in Nazareth.

Ken Darke, a professor at the University of Reading, investigates the archaeological history of the area underneath the Nazareth Convent, which is said to be the site of the childhood home of Jesus, in his new book, Sisters of the Nazareth Convent.

Research states that a partially rock-cut Early Roman-period house was found at the historic site, as well as Roman-era excavations and burials, a well-preserved cave-church, and prominent surface-level Byzantine And evidence from the Crusader churches was found. .

Cave churches and later churches are believed to be associated with the ancient house.

Dark in 2015 Identified The first century AD house within the crypt or cellar of the Byzantine Church which was later built on top of it. The houses and relics of the Byzantine Church are preserved within the Sisters of the Nazareth Convent.

First century BC The entrance to the house and the only surviving section of the floor in front of it appeared.

“This is certainly a site that throws a lot of light on what was in Nazareth of the first century, and there is no reason to discount the possibility that the people who built the Byzantine Church were probably the first May have been right in identifying — the century home as the childhood home of Jesus, ”Pro Dark told Granthshala News via email.

In his research, Darke states that the first archaeological discovery at the site occurred in the 1880s, leading to a series of excavations by the nuns of the convent until the 1930s.

The site was then examined by Henry Senes, a Jesuit priest and former architect based at the Pontifical Bible Institute in Jerusalem. Senius worked there from 1936 and 1964, drawing detailed descriptions of the structures discovered by the nuns, but according to Dark did not publish any academic papers or research on the site. The site was then largely forgotten by experts.

In 2006, Dark established a new project to reorganize the site and investigate earlier research. The archaeologist found that a first-century house on the site later formed part of the quarry and then rock-cut tombs.

According to research sent to Granthshala News, “a burial on the site, probably in the fourth century, a cave-church was built in the hill adjacent to the first-century house.” “A large surface-built church was built in the fifth century, above the first-century house and the fourth-century cave church.”

The large and elaborate church complex may have been the Byzantine Nazareth church and survived to the fifth and seventh centuries, possibly described as the church’s nurture in the “de locis sanctis”, which was dated to the seventh century by the Irish monk Adomon Work.

“Their description exactly matches the archaeological features of the site,” Dark’s research says. “If so, the first-century house was recognized as the place where Jesus was brought, judging from the cave-church.”

According to research, the cave-church is probably described by the pilgrim Agaria in a fourth-century account of Nazareth.

“There is no archaeological reason that identification is impossible, although it is unable to prove it using any available archaeological or written evidence,” the research says.

Last year, in a separate project, the room was hailed as the Last Supper of Jesus revealed in stunning detail thanks to the stunning 3D laser scanning technology.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

More than 4,500 skeletons discovered in Islamic Necropolos in Spain

More than 4,500 Skeletons Discovered in Islamic Necropolos in Spain

CNN reports that more than 4,500 graves have been identified at a cemetery in northeastern Spain, in an area thought to have been largely untouched by the Arab invasion of the Iberian peninsula in the early eighth century A.D. 

More than 4,500 Skeletons Discovered in Islamic Necropolos in Spain
An ancient Islamic necropolis containing over 4,500 bodies has been uncovered in northeastern Spain, with archaeologists excavating more than 400 tombs in the five-acre site.

In an 8th-century burial ground in the town of Tauste, near Zaragoza in Aragon, the tombs were uncovered, Eva Gimenez, an archaeologist currently excavating the region with the archaeology firm Paleoymás, told CNN.

By 711, Arab forces had invaded and begun to conquer the Iberian peninsula. They remained for the next seven centuries until 1492, when the area was totally reconquered by the Christian kingdoms.

Muslim occupation of Tauste had been considered “incidental and even non-existent” by traditional and written sources, researchers from the University of the Basque Country have said — but the region’s cultural association had long suspected the area had been home to a large Islamic settlement because of architectural clues and human remains found in the town, Miriam Pina Pardos, director of the Anthropological Observatory of the Islamic Necropolis of Tauste with the El Patiaz cultural association, told CNN.

Earlier excavations revealed several skeletons at the site.

From 711 to 1492, the boundaries between the Christian north and the Islamic south shifted constantly with the changing sovereign authority, according to researchers from the University of the Basque Country.

A first dig of the site in 2010 revealed a five-acre necropolis, spread over at least two levels, Pina Pardos said.

DNA studies and carbon dating place remains in the necropolis between the 8th and 11th centuries, according to El Patiaz.

Archaeologists unearth ‘huge number’ of sealed Egyptian sarcophagi
Some 44 skeletons were uncovered during smaller excavations in the years following the initial dig, Pina Pardos said, and this year, more than 400 bodies have been found after local authorities ordered an extensive excavation of the area.

“It’s rare to do an excavation and to find 400 tombs. It’s amazing,” she said.

All of the skeletons had been buried according to Islamic customs, positioned to the right and facing southeast toward Mecca, Pina Pardos added.

Experts believe the discovery will challenge previous assumptions about Muslim settlements in the area.

“We can see that the Muslim culture and Islamic presence in this area is more important than we thought,” Gimenez said.

“We can see there was a big Muslim population here in Tauste from the beginning of the presence of Muslims in Spain,” she added.

“It is very important — the 400 Muslim tombs shows the people lived here for centuries,” she said.

The remains will be cataloged, stored for research and studied, Pina Pardos said.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

University of Cambridge: Remains of 1,300 scholars are found under a building

University of Cambridge: Remains of 1,300 scholars are found under a building

Some were sickly Cambridge University scholars, other homeless wayfarers or simply the infirm.

Having fallen on hard times, and being too poor to care for themselves, they all ended up receiving spiritual succour during their last days in the medieval Hospital of St John the Evangelist, set up in 1195.

After they died they were buried in the hospital’s own cemetery whose exact site and scale was a mystery for centuries – until a lecture hall belonging to a Cambridge college needed refurbishing.

To their amazement, archaeologists digging under the Old Divinity School – a Victorian building owned by St John’s College, which was founded in 1511 on the site of the hospital and which takes its name from it – unearthed the cemetery and the remains of 1,300 people.

Details and photographs of the eerie find are made public for the first time.

University of Cambridge: Remains of 1,300 scholars are found under a building
Creepy: Hundreds of complete skeletons were found in the ground

Experts said it is one of the largest medieval hospital cemeteries ever discovered in Britain and, with on-going DNA analysis of the remains, will help to cast fresh light on life and death in medieval times. 

The archaeologists broke out the floors of the Old Divinity School and the team of 20 dug down inside each room. 

In a six-month dig, they found some 400 almost perfectly preserved human skeletons and the partial remains of up to 900 more, all dating from the 13th to 15th centuries. 

Medieval mysteries: Archaeologists digging under a building owned by St John’s College, University of Cambridge has unearthed the cemetery of a medieval hospital and the remains of 1,300 people

Craig Cessford, of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, said: ‘It was known that the cemetery was in that area, but we didn’t know for definite it was where we were working. 

‘It was quite amazing to find.’ Most of the skeletons are of 25 to 45-year-old men. The hospital was run by Augustinian monks, and pregnant women were excluded.

Mr Cessford, 45, said the skeletons were buried in neat rows and once the cemetery was full, more were buried on top.

Boning up: The remains are thought to be form poor people who died while at the hospital

The names of the dead are a mystery, but the cemetery was found to have had gravel paths, suggesting that people visited their deceased loved ones.

The bodies did not exhibit many serious illnesses and conditions. 

The Archaeological Journal, which reports on the findings in its latest issue, says this reflects how medieval hospitals’ main role was ‘spiritual and physical care of the poor and infirm rather than medical treatment of the sick and injured’.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Holding hands for 5,000 years, a couple with mysterious jade rings and dagger

Holding hands for 5,000 years, a couple with mysterious jade rings and dagger

An elderly couple who have held hands for the last five thousand years were revealed by archaeologists in a Bronze Age grave. The skeletons, thought an ancient dignitary and his wife or lover, were uncovered at a burial site overlooking Baikal lake in Siberia.

The elderly couple have been holding hands for the past 5,000 years

They were found decorated with unusual rings made of rare white jade, one of which was placed above the man eye socket. It is thought that the couple is from the ancient Bronze Age ‘Glazkov Culture,’ the oldest and deepest lake in the world that lived around Baikal.

Intriguingly, Russian scientists have not yet revealed details of a ‘metal implement’ discovered inside a leather pouch placed between the man’s kneecaps.

The skeletons are believed to be an ancient dignitary and his wife or lover

Three jade rings were found placed on the male’s chest, while a 20-inch jade dagger, made from the same rare stone, was also unearthed inside the grave.

Archaeologist Dr Dmitry Kichigin, of Irkutsk National Research Technical University, said the rings were ‘somehow connected’ with the pair’s ‘ideas about the afterlife’.

They were found decorated with unusual rings made from rare white jade

“In the grave we found male and female skeletons, lying on their backs, heads to the west, hand in hand,” he said.

“It would be very interesting to find out the purposes of the massive jade knife, which we found near the woman, was used for.

“We also found some metal implement in a small leather bag between male’s kneecaps.”

Pendants of red deer and musk deer teeth were found on the man’s skull, and around the feet.

But while the male skeleton is complete, rodents have destroyed the upper part of the female.

While the male skeleton is complete, rodents have destroyed the upper part of the female

Dr Kichigin said he believed the couple could be ‘an owner and his concubine’.

The burial site near the lake is at a ‘sacred place for ancient people’, where Neolithic remains were also discovered.

The couple are thought to be from the ancient Bronze Age ‘Glazkov Culture’

The precise location is being kept secret to avoid it being ransacked by treasure hunters.

“We can expect a lot of interesting discoveries on this archaeological site, so we plan to continue our work next year,” Dr Kichigin told The Siberian Times.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Remains of Two Killed in Vesuvius Eruption Are Discovered at Pompeii

Remains of Two Killed in Vesuvius Eruption Are Discovered at Pompeii

Massimo Osanna, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, announced the discovery of the remains of two men lying close together in a villa corridor on the outskirts of the ancient city, according to a BBC News report. 

This month, excavations at a suburban villa outside ancient Pompeii recovered the bodies of two original dwellers frozen in time nearly 2,000 years ago by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius one fateful morning.

The discovery of the two victims, tentatively recognised by archaeologists as a wealthy Pompeian landowner and a younger enslaved person, gave fresh insight into the eruption that buried the ancient Roman city, which has been a subject of widespread fascination since its rediscovery in the 18th century.

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of two men who died in the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago.

“Massimo Osanna, the departing director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, said in a video released on Saturday by the Ministry of Culture that the finding is an “incredible source of information for us. “He noted that it was a touching discovery with considerable emotional impact as well.

For one thing, the two were dressed in woollen clothing, adding credence to the belief that the eruption occurred in October of 79 A.D. rather than in August of that year as had previously been thought, Mr Osanna said later in a telephone interview.

The Vesuvius eruption was described in an eyewitness account by the Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger as “an extraordinary and alarming scene.” Buried by ash, pumice and rocks, Pompeii and neighbouring cities lay mostly dormant, though intact, until 1748, when King Charles III of Bourbon commissioned the first official excavations of the site.

Since then, much of the ancient city has been unearthed, providing archaeologists and historians with a wealth of information about how its ancient dwellers lived, from their home décor to what they ate to the tools they used.

Using a method refined by the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863 and further honed with modern technology, archaeologists last week made plaster casts of the two newly discovered victims. That brings the ranks of Pompeii’s posthumous effigies to more than 100.

In addition to being the first time in half a century that archaeologists created such casts linked to Pompeii — an attempt using cement in the 1990s was not successful — the new casts are also remarkable in the surprising details they captured, including what Mr Osanna described as the “extraordinary drapery” of their woollen clothing.

“They really seem like statues,” he said.

Archaeologists posit that the two victims had sought refuge in an underground cryptoporticus, or corridor, before being engulfed by a shower of pumice stones, ash and lapilli.

“They very likely died by thermal shock, as the contracted limbs, hands and feet would suggest,” Mr. Osanna said in the video, adding that DNA testing was being carried out on the recovered bones. Pompeii officials believe the older man to have been 30 to 40 years old, and the younger between 18 and 23.

The villa where the discovery was made is in Civita Giuliana, an area about 750 yards northwest of Pompeii’s ancient walls, which has already yielded important finds, including a purebred horse with a bronze-plated saddle uncovered in 2018.

Although the archaeological park closed to visitors on Nov. 6 because of coronavirus restrictions, excavations at the site have continued.

The villa at Civita Giuliana was first excavated briefly in 1907 and 1908. But because it is on private property, the sort of government-commissioned excavations typically carried out on public land did not take place. That changed in 2017, when prosecutors in nearby Torre Annunziata charged a group of people with robbing tombs and looting the site using underground tunnels.

The culture ministry is in the process of buying the land where the villa is situated, and Mr. Osanna said he hoped it could eventually open to the public.

With more than 50 acres still to be excavated, Pompeii continues to be “an incredible site for research, study and training,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said in a statement on Saturday. It is, he said, a mission for the “archaeologists of today and the future.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

‘Oldest tattoo’ found on 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummies

‘Oldest tattoo’ found on 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummies

The village of Deir el-Medina in ancient Egypt, 3,000 years ago, housed a community of artisans, all of whom lived and worked together on tombs in the Kings’ Valley. But new evidence has emerged that tombs were not their only creative outlet.

A number of tattoos on the previously unstudied mummified bodies of seven women have been discovered by infrared imaging. The ink was scattered across their bodies, with a range of different motifs.

This is evidence that in ancient Egypt, the art of tattooing might have been more common than we understood, according to University of Missouri anthropologist Anne Austin. At the American Schools of Oriental Science annual meeting in November, she discussed her findings.

The work has been several years in the making. It started in 2014 when Austin and her colleague Cedric Gobeil noticed markings on the neck of a female Deir el-Medina mummy. Closer inspection revealed that the marks were not, as she first thought, painted on – they were tattoos.

But, as we saw with the 5,000-year-old mummies from Gebelein, which had been sitting in a museum for over 100 years before their tattoos were discovered, tattoos on mummies aren’t always easy to see.

Mummified skin becomes discoloured and darkened, especially with mummification resins added to the mix; and tattoos can lighten over time.

Such hidden tattoos can, however, be revealed with infrared photography, which works in wavelengths usually invisible to the human eye.

So, that’s what the researchers did. On that initial female mummy, they catalogued a whopping 30 tattoos, most of which would not have been hidden by clothing, and would have required a second person to perform the tattooing – placed on the neck, back, and behind the shoulders.

The subject of the tattoos included sacred motifs such as Wadjet eyes, baboons, cobras, cows, scarab beetles, and lotus flowers. This combination of motifs and visibility led the researchers to the conclusion that the woman could have been a healer or a priestess of some kind.

But that mummy was just the first. By 2016, Austin had identified three more tattooed mummies from Deir el-Medina. Now, as reported by Science News, she’s added another three to that count, bringing the total to seven.

“The distribution, display, and content of these tattoos reveal how they were used both in religious practice and to forge permanent, public identities,” Austin wrote in her abstract.

“The extensive tattoos on one female mummy demonstrates the use of tattoos for identifying and enabling this woman to act as a key religious practitioner to the Deir el-Medina community. Additional tattoos found and analysed during the 2016 and 2020 seasons using infrared photography indicate that many more individuals were likely tattooed at Deir el-Medina.”

This is pretty significant. Although evidence for tattooing exists in the archaeological record from ancient Egypt, it’s primarily in art and figurines. Actual mummies that have tattoos have been found rarely; in addition to the seven Deir el-Medina mummies, only six other tattooed Egyptian mummies have been identified.

What this research shows is that maybe we haven’t been looking with the right tools.

It also shows that – just like people who get tattooed today – maybe there’s no one single reason the ancient Egyptians tattooed themselves. In addition to the woman’s inferred religious role, some of the motifs on the other mummies suggest healing or protection. (And, well, maybe they just thought the ink looked badass.)

Tattoos have been found on other mummies around the world. The Siberian Ice Maiden and unnamed warrior who died 2,500 years ago on the Ukok Plateau, for instance, had tattoos that anthropologists think signified age and status.

And evidence suggests the 61 tattoos found on Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified man who lived in Europe between 3400 and 3100 BCE, could have been a form of prehistoric acupuncture.

We can learn more about the tattooing practices of ancient Egypt by uncovering more tattooed mummies. And who knows – maybe they’re already sitting in museums, waiting for someone with an infrared camera to find them.