Category Archives: WORLD

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

For the First Time in a Century, Norway Will Excavate Viking Ship Burial

For the First Time in a Century, Norway Will Excavate Viking Ship Burial

Researchers used georadar technology to locate the remains of the Viking ship

Smithsonian Mag reports that Sveinung Rotevatn, Norway’s Minister of Climate and Environment, announced that the 65-foot Gjellestad ship will be excavated in order to protect what is left of it from being destroyed by fungus.

Archaeologists are racing against the clock to save the remains of a buried Viking ship from a ruthless foe: fungus. 

If the project is successful, the 65-foot-long (20 meters) oak vessel — called the Gjellestad ship — will become the first Viking ship to be excavated in Norway in 115 years, said Sveinung Rotevatn, the Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment. 

“Norway has a very special responsibility safeguarding our Viking Age heritage,” Rotevatn told Live Science in an email. “Now, we are choosing to excavate in order to protect what remains of the find, and secure important knowledge about the Viking Age for future generations.”

The ship is buried at a well-known Viking archaeological site at Gjellestad, near Halden, a town in southeastern Norway. But scientists discovered the vessel only recently, in the fall of 2018, by using radar scans that can detect structures underground. The scans revealed not only the ship but also the Viking cemetery where it was ritually buried.

The team determined that the Gjellestad ship was built between the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the 10th century.

The vessel was likely made for traveling long distances at sea, said Sigrid Mannsåker Gundersen, an archaeologist with the Viken County Council. 

At the time, archaeologists were hesitant to excavate the ship, because buried wet wood can be damaged when exposed to the open air, Live Science previously reported. After a test excavation in 2019, however, archaeologists learned that they would have to dig up the ship soon or lose it to decay.

The narrow trench they excavated showed that the ship was very decomposed. “Only the imprints of the planks — or ‘strakes’ — were left, together with the iron nails,” Mannsåker Gundersen told Live Science in an email. “The only part that was still solid wood was the keel.”

But even the keel is in bad shape; an analysis showed it is infected with fungus and very brittle, likely from periods of drought.

“To rescue whatever wood is left before it is too late, and to gain as much information about the ship and the grave as possible, it is important to excavate now,” Mannsåker Gundersen said.

Archaeologists hope to find some preserved wood, “but even if there are only smaller amounts of organic material left, the excavation will provide valuable information about the ship and the grave,” Mannsåker Gundersen said. “A lot can be made out of imprints, objects, and different analyses of the soils and materials left.”

A radar device attached to this vehicle helped archaeologists discover the buried Viking ship.

The excavation is scheduled to start in June, barring any complications from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The process will begin with archaeologists stripping off the topsoil and then sieving that dirt, just in case it holds any archaeological treasures that were ploughed by farmers over the centuries.

Then, the team will set up a tent to protect the ship’s remains and begin removing the earth that filled the ship after its burial.

At the same time, the archaeologists will document every layer of the remaining wood and take 3D scans of it, said Christian Løchsen Rødsrud, an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History in Norway.

Some of the ship’s remains will be visible only as imprints in the ground; these will also be 3D-scanned, Løchsen Rødsrud told Live Science in an email.

“The wooden remains of the ship will have to be kept wet during excavation.” Later, the remaining wooden objects and ship parts will be preserved with polyethylene glycol — a substance that can give rotten wood solidity and strength, he added. 

It’s likely that the ship was made both for sailing and rowing, “although we still don’t know for certain if it had a mast,” Mannsåker Gundersen said. “This is one of the questions we hope will be answered during the excavation this year.”

AFRICA, WORLD

Ancient Hunter-Gatherers’ Footprints Preserved in Tanzania

Hundreds of fossilized human footprints found in Africa could reveal ancient traditions

CNN reports that Kevin Hatala of Chatham University and his colleagues have analyzed more than 400 footprints in 17 trackways at the site of Engare Sero in northern Tanzania. The footprints were found in volcanic mudflow that dried and hardened between 5,760 and 19,100 years ago before it was covered with layers of protective sediments. 

Hundreds of fossilized human footprints made between 5,760 and 19,100 years ago have been discovered in Africa

This is Africa’s largest collection of fossilized footprints. Researchers believed that 14 adult females, two adult males, and one juvenile male belonged to 408 footprints, which are 17 different tracks.

Kevin Hatala, the study author and Assistant Professor of Biology in Chatham University in Pennsylvania, an email to CNN, said “The footprints were made in a volcanic mudflow and when it dried up, it hardened almost as stone.”

The Engare Sero footprint site is in Tanzania, which preserves at least 408 human footprints. An eruption of Oldoinyo L’engai, the volcano in the background, produced the ash in which the footprints were preserved, according to the researchers.

“The composition of the footprint itself is therefore very durable. However, this soil was also buried by other layers of sediment which helped to create protective layers that for thousands of years shielded the surface from the elements.”

The footprints are located at the Engare Sero site, just south of Lake Natron, in northern Tanzania.

“It is notable that the site, which preserves the most abundant assemblage of hominin footprints currently known from Africa, is within roughly 100 km [62 miles] of the site of Laetoli, which preserves the earliest confidently attributed hominin footprints,” the authors wrote in the study.

The site was discovered by members of the local Maasai community, and they shared this information with conservationists in 2008. About 56 human footprints were visible at the site in 2009 when the research team arrived thanks to natural erosion. Excavations between 2009 and 2012 uncovered the rest. The 17 tracks were all made moving at the same walking speed in a southwesterly direction.

Clues to ancient human behaviors

Fossilized footprints are unique because they can preserve potential evidence of human behaviors and activities.

“Footprints preserve amazing windows to the past, through which we can directly observe snapshots of people moving across their landscapes at specific moments in time,” Hatala said. “They can inform us of how fast people were moving, in which direction they were heading, how large their feet were, and sometimes whether the people who made them may have been traveling in groups. With such rich details, we can directly observe behaviors in the fossil record, something that is very difficult to do with other forms of data.”

In order to get a sense of the information contained within the footprints, Hatala and his colleagues studied the sizes, spacings, and orientations of the footprints. Spacing and orientation can share the speed and direction of someone’s movement, while the size can be used to estimate who made the footprints.

They were able to compare this data with that of footprints made by living humans to determine which footprints likely belonged to adults, juveniles, males, and females, Hatala said.

“With these estimates, we were able to gain a detailed picture of who was traveling across this surface, how they were moving, and whether or not they may have been traveling together,” he said.

This data was also compared with patterns of modern hunter-gatherer societies to understand the potential scenarios associated with these grouped footprints. And they realized that it was rare for large groups of adult females to travel together without adult males or children.

“One scenario in which this kind of group structure is observed is during cooperative foraging activities, in which several adult females forage together, perhaps accompanied by one or two adult males for some portion of that time,” Hatala said. “Infants may be carried, but young children who are old enough to walk will often stay behind rather than participate in the foraging activities.”

They believed that was the case here, with multiple women walking at the same speed and in the same direction as the two men and the younger man. This suggests that labor was divided up based on gender in ancient human communities, with the women foraging while the men accompanied them. It’s similar to modern behavior by the Aché and Hadza hunter-gatherer societies in Paraguay and Tanzania, respectively.

Hatala and his colleagues regard the footprints as a “tantalizing snapshot,” offering windows into anatomy, locomotion, and group behavior, which acts as a supplement to fossil data. Skeletal fossil data is also rare in this area, which makes the footprints even more intriguing.

They also found evidence of zebra, antelope, and buffalo tracks 18 miles to the southwest.

“We know that these animals were living on the same landscape as the humans who produced footprints on the same surface,” he said.

There were an additional six tracks of footprints, moving at various walking and running speeds, in a northeasterly direction, but the researchers don’t believe they belonged to a single group traveling together.

“We hope that our study motivates future research that might help refine our abilities to use these amazing snapshots to reconstruct past behaviors,” Hatala said. “At Engare Sero, our focus has shifted to site conservation.  Before we excavate any further, we want to work with the Tanzanian government to develop a long-term conservation plan, such that the site is still accessible for many generations to come.”

ASIA, MYANMAR, WORLD

99 million years old dinosaur-era bird wings found trapped in amber

99 million years old dinosaur-era bird wings found trapped in amber

The new specimens come from a famous amber deposit in northeastern Myanmar, which has produced thousands of exquisite specimens of insects of all shapes and sizes

Beijing: In a first, scientists have discovered specimens of complete wings of tiny, prehistoric birds that were trapped in amber 100 million years ago and preserved in exquisite detail.

Thousands of fossil birds from the time of the dinosaurs have been uncovered in China. However, most of these fossils are flattened in the rock, even though they commonly preserve fossils.

The new specimens, discovered by researchers including Xing Lida from the China University of Geosciences, and Mike Benton from the University of Bristol in the UK, come from a famous amber deposit in northeastern Myanmar, which has produced thousands of exquisite specimens of insects of all shapes and sizes, as well as spiders, scorpions, lizards, and isolated feathers.

This is the first time that whole portions of birds have been noted.

The fossil wings are tiny, only two or three centimeters long, and they contain the bones of the wing, including three long fingers armed with sharp claws, for clambering about in trees, as well as the feathers, all preserved in exquisite detail.

The anatomy of the hand shows these come from enantiornithine birds, a major group in the Cretaceous, but which died out at the same time as the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.

Amber is a solidified tree sap, and the Burmese amber occurs in small blocks that are polished to unveil treasures within. “These fossil wings show amazing detail.

Feathers of 99 million-year-old bird wings preserved in amber.

The individual feathers show every filament and whisker, whether they are flight feathers or down feathers, and there are even traces of colour – spots and stripes,” said Benton.

“The fact that the tiny birds were clambering about in the trees suggests that they had advanced development, meaning they were ready for action as soon as they hatched,” said Lida.

“These birds did not hang about in the nest waiting to be fed but set off looking for food, and sadly died perhaps because of their small size and lack of experience,” he said.

“Isolated feathers in other amber samples show that adult birds might have avoided the sticky sap, or pulled themselves free,” he added.

The Burmese amber deposits are producing a treasure trove of remarkable early fossils, and they document a particularly active time in the evolution of life on land, the Cretaceous terrestrial revolution.

An illustration of a Enantiornithine partially ensnared by tree resin, based on one of the specimens discovered.

Flowering plants were flourishing and diversifying, and insects that fed on the leaves and nectar of the flowers were also diversifying fasts, as too were their predators, such as spiders, lizards, mammals, and birds.

CANADA, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

The Amazing Dinosaur Found (Accidentally) by Miners in Canada

The Amazing Dinosaur Found (Accidentally) by Miners in Canada

This armored plant-eater lumbered through what is now Western Canada about 110 million years ago until a flooded river swept it into the open sea. The dinosaur’s undersea burial preserved its armor in exquisite detail. Its skull still bears tile-like plates and a gray patina of fossilized skins.

A heavy equipment mechanic named Shawn Funk cut his way through the earth in the afternoon of March 21, 2011, without knowing that he would encounter a dragon soon.

That Monday had started like any other at the Millennium Mine, a vast pit some 17 miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, operated by energy company Suncor.

Hour after hour Funk’s towering excavator gobbled its way down to sands laced with bitumen—the transmogrified remains of marine plants and creatures that lived and died more than 110 million years ago. It was the only ancient life he regularly saw. In 12 years of digging he had stumbled across fossilized wood and the occasional petrified tree stump, but never the remains of an animal—and certainly no dinosaurs.

But around 1:30, Funk’s bucket clipped something much harder than the surrounding rock. Oddly colored lumps tumbled out of the till sliding down onto the bank below. Within minutes Funk and his supervisor, Mike Gratton, began puzzling over the walnut brown rocks. Were they strips of fossilized wood, or were they ribs? And then they turned over one of the lumps and revealed a bizarre pattern: row after row of sandy brown disks, each ringed in gunmetal gray stone.

“Right away, Mike was like, ‘We gotta get this checked out,’ ” Funk said in a 2011 interview. “It was definitely nothing we had ever seen before.”

Stretched 18 feet long and weighed nearly 3,000 pounds. Researchers suspect it initially fossilized whole, but when it was found in 2011, only the front half, from the snout to the hips, was intact enough to recover. The specimen is the best fossil of a nodosaur ever found.
A cluster of pebble-like masses may be remnants of the nodosaur’s last meal.
Royal Tyrrell Museum technician Mark Mitchell slowly frees the nodosaur’s foot and scaly footpad from the surrounding rock. Mitchell’s careful work will preserve for years to come the animal’s enigmatic features.

Nearly six years later, I’m visiting the fossil prep lab at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in the windswept badlands of Alberta. The cavernous warehouse swells with the hum of ventilation and the buzz of technicians scraping rock from the bone with needle-tipped tools resembling miniature jackhammers. But my focus rests on a 2,500-pound mass of stone in the corner.

At first glance, the reassembled gray blocks look like a nine-foot-long sculpture of a dinosaur. A bony mosaic of armor coats its neck and back, and gray circles outline individual scales. Its neck gracefully curves to the left, as if reaching toward some tasty plant. But this is no lifelike sculpture. It’s an actual dinosaur, petrified from the snout to the hips.

The more I look at it, the more mind-boggling it becomes. Fossilized remnants of skin still cover the bumpy armor plates dotting the animal’s skull. Its right forefoot lies by its side, its five digits splayed upward. I can count the scales on its sole. Caleb Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum, grins at my astonishment. “We don’t just have a skeleton,” he tells me later. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”

During its burial at sea, the nodosaur settled onto its back, pressing the dinosaur’s skeleton into the armor and embossing it with the outlines of some bones. One ripple in the armor traces the animal’s right shoulder blade.

Paleobiologist Jakob Vinther, an expert on animal coloration from the U.K.’s University of Bristol, has studied some of the world’s best fossils for signs of the pigment melanin. But after four days of working on this one—delicately scraping off samples smaller than flecks of grated Parmesan—even he is astounded. The dinosaur is so well preserved that it “might have been walking around a couple of weeks ago,” Vinther says. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Shielded from Decayarmored dinosaurs’ trademark plates usually scattered early in decay, a fate that didn’t befall this nodosaur. The remarkably preserved armor will deepen scientists’ understanding of what nodosaurs looked like and how they moved.

“That was a really exciting discovery,” says Victoria Arbour, an armoured-dinosaur palaeontologist at Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum. Arbour has seen the fossil at various stages of preparation, but she’s not involved in its study. “It represents such a different environment from today and such a different time, and it has great preservation.” (Arbour has begun studying a similarly well-preserved ankylosaur found in Montana in 2014, much of which remains hidden within a 35,000-pound block of stone.

Arbour and her colleague David Evans published a description of the Montana ankylosaur, naming it Zuul crurivastator—”Zuul, destroyer of shins”—after the monster in the film Ghostbusters.)

A lucky break in the nodosaur’s left shoulder spike reveals a cross-section of its bony core. The spike’s tip was sheathed in keratin, the same material that’s in human fingernails.

The afterword of the discovery raced up the ladder at Suncor, the company quickly notified the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Henderson and Darren Tanke, one of the museum’s veteran technicians, scrambled aboard a Suncor jet and flew to Fort McMurray. Suncor excavators and museum staff chipped away at the rock in 12-hour shifts, shrouded in dust and diesel fumes.

They eventually whittled it down to a 15,000-pound rock containing the dinosaur, ready to be hoisted out of the pit. But with cameras rolling, disaster struck: As it was lifted, the rock shattered, cleaving the dinosaur into several chunks. The fossil’s partially mineralized, cakelike interior simply couldn’t support its own weight.

Tanke spent the night devising a plan to save the fossil. The next morning Suncor personnel wrapped the fragments in plaster of Paris, while Tanke and Henderson scrounged for anything to stabilize the fossil on the long drive to the museum. In lieu of timbers, the crew used plaster-soaked burlap rolled up like logs.

The MacGyver-like plan worked. Some 420 miles later the team reached the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s prep lab, where the blocks were entrusted to fossil preparator Mark Mitchell. His work on the nodosaur has required a sculptor’s touch: For more than 7,000 hours over the past five years, Mitchell has slowly exposed the fossil’s skin and bone. The painstaking process is like freeing compressed talcum powder from concrete. “You almost have to fight for every millimeter,” he says.

Mitchells fight is nearly over, but it will take years, if not decades, to fully understand the fossil he uncovers. Its skeleton, for example, remains mostly obscured in skin and armor. In some ways it’s almost too well preserved; reaching the dinosaur’s bones would require destroying its outer layers. CT scans funded by the National Geographic Society have revealed little, as the rock remains stubbornly opaque.

In May the Royal Tyrrell Museum unveils the nodosaur as the centerpiece of a new exhibit of fossils recovered from Alberta’s industrial sites. Now the public is marveling at what has wowed scientists for the past six years: an ambassador from Canada’s distant past, found in a moonscape by a man with an excavator.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

The cache of Ancient coins and Jewelry From the time of Alexander the Great discovered

The cache of Ancient coins and Jewelry From the time of Alexander the Great discovered

he explorers of the grotto in Israel discovered a small cache of coins and jewellery from the time of Alexander the Great that archaeologists believe was hidden by refugees during an ancient war.

coins jewellery from alexander the great era found in Israel
The 2,300-year-old cache of jewelry and two Alexander the Great coins.

Eitan Klein of the Israeli Antiquities Authority said that the 2300-year-old cache was the first of its kind to be discovered from the period of the conqueror.

The Israel Antiquities Authority said that, in Israel, ancient coins and jewelry from the time of Alexander the Great were found in a cave.  In addition, several pieces of silver and bronze jewellery were found, including decorated earrings, bracelets, and rings, which were apparently concealed in the cave, inside a cloth pouch.

Silver coin of Alexander the Great, here depicted in the guise of the Greek hero Herakles wearing a lion-skin cloak, discovered in a cave in northern Israel.

“The valuables might have been hidden in the cave by local residents who fled there during the period of governmental unrest stemming from the death of Alexander, a time when the Wars of the Diadochi broke out in Israel between Alexander’s heirs,” Xinhua quoted the Israel Antiquities Authority as saying in a statement.

“Presumably the cache was hidden in the hope of better days, but today we know that whoever buried the treasure never returned to collect it,” the authority said.

Archaeologists with the authority believe this is one of the important discoveries to come to light in the north of the country in recent years.

The cache was discovered by chance, as three members of the Israeli Caving Club were touring the area, known as one of the largest and well-hidden stalactite caves in northern Israel.

They wandered and crawled between various parts of a stalactite cave for several hours, as a shinning object caught their eyes.

They reported the find to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which sent researchers that have examined the cave over the past two weeks.

The discovery comes a month after a hoard of at least 2,000 ancient gold coins was accidentally discovered by divers off the coast of Caesarea, north of Tel Aviv, in the largest gold trove ever discovered in Israel.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

An 18th-century ship under the world trade center new york

An 18th-century ship under the world trade center new york

In the midst of this tragic event and chaos, however, cleanups found something amazing in the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC), took place on 11 September 2001.

Archaeologists found the remains of a big boat’s hull underneath the ruins of the Twin Towers in 2010.  Now, scientists have revealed the secrets behind this mysterious vessel.

Underneath the excavation site, the ship was found in the wreckage, some 22 feet (6.7 m) underneath the ground. By gathering samples and testing the wood from the hull of the ship, scientists were able to determine that the hull came from the same era as the Declaration of Independence, in the late 1700s.

Scientists at Columbia’s Tree Ring Lab, who were led by Dr. Martin-Benito, made this determination after comparing the wood’s ring patterns, which were found on the timber of the hull, with those found in the historical record.

The researchers used dendrochronological dating and provenancing to uncover the date of the ships’ production. More specifically, it seems that the ship was built in a Philadelphia shipyard around 1773.

Image of the Hull in the wreckage.

It also seems that the oak timbers that were used to build the ship all originated from the same general region in Philadelphia. Since the timber all comes from the same vicinity, it is likely that the ship was produced by a small shipyard.

Most notably, the researchers found that the rings on the hull match other samples that were taken from Independence Hall, which is the building where the founding fathers signed both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. In the abstract, the authors of the findings report:

After developing a 280-year long floating chronology from 19 samples of the white oak group (Quercus section Leucobalanus), we used 21 oak chronologies from the eastern United States to evaluate absolute dating and provenance.

Our results showed the highest agreement between the WTC ship chronology and two chronologies from Philadelphia (r  =  0.36; t  =  6.4; p < 0.001; n  =  280) and eastern Pennsylvania (r  =  0.35; t  =  6.3; p < 0.001; n  =  280). The last ring dates of the seven best-preserved samples suggest trees for the ship were felled in 1773 CE or soon after.

This finding is notable, as very few ships have been discovered from the latter decades of the 18th Century, and there is very little historical documentation related to how the ships that were produced during this year were constructed.

Consequently, this ship offers us important insights into the history of American shipbuilding.

So, how did the ship get beneath the WTC? It’s actually not as strange as you might think. When Manhattan (where the WTC was located) was first settled, the site lay within the Hudson River.

To clarify, in the 18th century, the current location of the WTC would have been underwater—beneath the Hudson.

Maps and other archival documents clearly detail this data. Obviously, as the settlement became more populated, commercial waterfront space became increasingly desirable and (consequentially) more and more scarce.

As a result, from the mid-1700s until the mid-1800s, the area along the river was increasingly filled in to advance the Manhattan coastline farther into the Hudson.

Historians still aren’t certain whether or not the ship sank accidentally, because of some unintentional mishap, or if it was purposely submerged.

Oftentimes, city planners would use garbage and other debris (like an old ship) to build the foundations of new ground in Manhattan. Essentially, we would make landfills along the Hudson in order to create a buildup that would, ultimately, increase Manhattan’s coastline.

Oysters were also found fixed to the ship’s hull, which suggests that the ship languished in the waters of the Hudson for quite some time before being buried by layers of trash and dirt that (eventually) formed the land upon which the Twin Towers rested.

It is a little ironic that the World Trade Center attack—the historic moment that reshaped much of America’s future—also opened up a door into America’s past.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Over 6000 ancient tombs discovered by archaeologists in China

Over 6000 ancient tombs discovered by archaeologists in China

CHENGDU, May 14 (Xinhua) — More than 6,000 ancient tombs dating back between the Warring States Period (475 B.C.-221 B.C.) and the Ming Dynasty (1368―1644）have been discovered in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, local archaeological authorities said Thursday.

In China, archaeologists have found thousands of burials on a cliff. The burial ground was in use for over 2000 years. Many important historical artifacts have been uncovered in the tombs.

These graves could allow experts to trace the evolution of Chinese burial customs and indeed offer priceless insights into the culture’s religious beliefs over many centuries.

These tombs were found in the provincial capital of Sichuan, Chengdu, which is in the south-west of the People’s Republic.

The discoveries were made inside the Chuanxin Innovative Science and Technology Park during construction work in 2015.

Archaeologists from Chengdu Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, led by Zuo Zhiqiang, carried out a dig at the site and identified a large number of burials. Ecns.cn reports that the tombs cover an ‘area of 10.34 square meters’ (111 sq. ft.) The burials are cut into the face and on the top of a cliff.

The tombs have been cut into the red earth of the cliff. Heritage Daily reports that they are mostly ‘rock pit tombs or constructed from brick’. Some of the tombs have to be supported with wood so they do not collapse. So far, archaeologists have uncovered 6000 burial spaces of different sizes.

This burial site dates from the Warring States period (475 BC), the period before the unification of China to the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912 AD), the last Chinese dynasty.

The discovery can provide an insight into the history and burial customs of Sichuan. This region played a very important part in Chinese history and it was often the base for rebellious generals and independent empires, such as the Shu dynasty.

6000 tombs have been discovered cut into the cliffs.

The archaeologists discovered many artifacts that can provide them with clues to ancient Chinese burial customs. For example, they uncovered terracotta pottery and figurines. Ceramic figures of humans and also animals, such as ducks, were unearthed.

According to Heritage Daily, the excavators also uncovered ‘pieces of pottery, porcelain, copper, iron, glass, coins and stone artifacts’. Among the rarer finds are a bronze knife, statues of the Buddha, and some painted miniature ceramic houses and buildings.

Artifacts such as figurines can provide more insight into ancient Chinese burial customs

Xinhua. Net reports that in ancient China ‘people had the tradition of giving the deceased luxurious burials’. It seemed that the deceased family placed the grave goods in the tombs so that they could use them in the afterlife.

In Chinese burial customs, lavish offerings have been a sign of social status. This practice has taken place since the imperial period and continues today.

One of the rich burials found at the cliff site. 

What is unique about the burial site is that all of the graves were left intact and were undisturbed for centuries. Xinhua reports that burials ‘of that period were typically robbed by modern-day tomb raiders.’ What is more, the grave goods were still in their original positions and this can help the researchers to better understand the evolution of Chinese funerary customs.

One particularly important find was from the late or Eastern Han (25-220 AD) period or after, which has been called the M94 Cliff Tomb. Here researchers have found 86 burial goods and hundreds of coins from the period.

The tomb clearly belonged to a person of high social rank. Zuo Zhiqiang told Heritage Daily, “The tomb will help us to construct the archaeological cultural sequence and the funeral behaviors, rituals, and concepts of the Shudiya tombs in the late Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period .”

Aerial view of the M94 cliff tomb, including skeletons and grave goods.

Work is ongoing at the tomb cliffs and it is hoped that more treasures will be found at the site to reveal even more secrets of ancient Chinese burial customs. More findings from the research will be announced in the near future. The site at Chengdu can help us comprehend the worldview and funerary beliefs of people over an incredibly long period of time.

CAMBODIA, COLOMBIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Underwater robot finds shipwreck with treasure worth up to $17B

Underwater robot finds shipwreck with treasure worth up to $17B

Researchers have released new details about the discovery of a centuries-old shipwreck holding up to $17 billion worth of sunken treasure off the coast of Colombia. Just don’t ask them to mark the spot with an “X” on any map.

The Spanish galleon San Jose, often called the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks,” was found off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia in November 2015, using a specialized robot, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said.

WHOI scientists worked with the Colombian government and the Maritime Archeology Consultants group to find the wreck, although it took them some time to confirm that it was actually the San Jose.

MAC allowed the WHOI researchers to announce their role in the project this week, although Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos previously tweeted about the shipwreck discovery in 2015.

The famed 64-gun, the three-mast vessel was sunk by a British ship in 1708, sending it to the bottom of the ocean with its cargo hold loaded full of gold, silver, and emeralds.

Its location has long been a mystery and subject of fascination, but in the end, it was a submersible robot – not a treasure-hunter – that found it.

Researchers first detected the ship on sonar and used a remote submersible, dubbed the REMUS 6000, to investigate it further.

The REMUS 6000 captured a slew of images showing the San Jose to be mostly buried in sediment, at a spot some 600 meters below the surface.

Researchers say they knew it was the San Jose when they saw photos of its distinctive bronze cannons, which are engraved with dolphin designs.

“With the camera images from the lower altitude missions, we were able to see new details in the wreckage and the resolution was good enough to make out the decorative carving on the cannons,” expedition leader Mike Purcell, a WHOI engineer, said in a news release. “MAC’s lead archaeologist, Roger Dooley, interpreted the images and confirmed that San Jose had finally been found.”

Bronze cannons discovered the Remus 6000 at the bottom Caribbean Sea

The exact location of the wreck remains a Colombian state secret.

Colombia says it will set up a museum to display artifacts from the wreck. However, don’t expect to see a pile of sunken treasure in that museum anytime soon.

The fate of San Jose’s treasure remains unclear, as there have been several lawsuits in recent decades over who has a claim to it.

Every piece of that treasure will remain on the seafloor, at least until the legal battle is won.