Family discover ‘perfectly preserved’ Roman tomb hidden beneath a home in southern Spain
In Carmona, a city near Seville, Andalusia, a family made a remarkable discovery during building work on their houses.
They were stunned when they knocked a wall down the patio of their townhouse to find a small arched opening that led to an underground to a funerary chamber dating from the first century AD.
They found eight niches in the room, six of whom were occupied by funerary urns or chests containing what is thought to be human remains dating back more than 2,000 years.
An archaeological team dispatched by the town council to examine the site described it as “perfectly preserved” and said it was the most important discovery made in the area for decades.
Juan Manuel Román, an archaeologist employed by the council, emphasized “the outstanding importance of the discovery”.
“It’s been 35 years since a tomb was found in such a magnificent state of conservation,” he said, adding that it didn’t appear to have suffered any deterioration over the centuries since it was sealed.
“There is barely two fingers worth of sedimentation,” he added.
An initial study suggests the funerary urns are made of different limestones and glass and are sealed in protective lead casings.
Vessels associated with funerary rights, including unguentaria (small bottles used to contain perfume or oil) and glass dishes where offerings would have been made, were also undamaged within the tomb.
The walls of the chamber are decorated with a geometric grid and there are inscriptions on three of the niches, perhaps indicating the name of those interred within.
José Avilés, 39, the owner of the house, who is known by neighbours as Pepe, told local media that he was astounded by the discovery. “We never imagined when we were building an extension to the house that we should find such a thing,” he said.
“It’s all happened very quickly but our intention is to keep the chamber open, preserve it and protect it and somehow incorporate into the house,” he said.
“But we’ll have to see what the archaeological teams say,” he added.
Work immediately started by the council’s archaeology department who said the artifacts found in the tomb would be closely studied and then go on display in the town’s archaeological museum.
Carmona, known as Carmo in Roman times, was one of the most important cities in Roman Spain and today is home to one of the most interesting Roman-era archaeological sites; the Roman Necropolis, a collection of over 300 tombs
Rare 3.8-million-year-old skull recasts origins of iconic ‘Lucy’ fossil
The African skull aged 3.8 million years old is giving researchers a peek into humanity’s evolutionary history, a new study suggests.
The discovery explains what the face of a possible ancestor of the species famously represented by Lucy – the well-known Ethiopian skeleton discovered in the mid-1970s – may have looked like.
This thesis has been published in the British journal Nature, which was reviewed by superiors. The fossil cranium represents a specimen from a time interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago when early human ancestor fossils are extremely rare, researchers say.
“The preservation of the specimen really is exceptional,” study co-author Stephanie Melillo, a palaeoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Nature. The skull was found in just two large pieces, which she says is unfathomably unlikely for a specimen of this age. “We just got really lucky with this find.”
The study was led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
According to Nature, the scientists who discovered the skull say it was a male and belongs to a species called Australopithecus anamensis.
A reconstruction of the facial morphology of the 3.8 million-year-old ‘MRD’ specimen of Australopithecus anamensis.
That ancestral species is the oldest known member of Australopithecus, a grouping of creatures that preceded our own branch of the family tree, called Homo.
It was also thought to precede Lucy’s species, which is known as Australopithecus afarensis.
But features of the latest find now suggest that the new fossil’s species shared the prehistoric Ethiopian landscape with Lucy’s species, for at least 100,000 years, the study authors say. This hints that the early evolutionary tree was more complicated than scientists had thought, Nature said.
The species of the famous fossil Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, might have coexisted with another ancient hominin species.
This overlap challenges the widely-accepted idea of a linear transition between these two early human ancestors. “This is a game-changer in our understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene,” Haile-Selassie said.
“What we’ve known about Australopithecus anamensis so far was limited to isolated jaw fragments and teeth,” he said during a press conference. “We didn’t have any remains of the face or the cranium except for one small fragment near the ear region.”
The age of the fossil was determined to be 3.8 million years old and was done by dating minerals in layers of volcanic rocks nearby.
The fossil was found in 2016, in what was once sand deposited in a river delta on the shore of a lake in Woranso-Mille in Ethiopia. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spotted the rest of the cranium. It was a eureka moment and a dream come true,” said Haile-Selassie.
Experts unconnected to the new study praised the work. Eric Delson of Lehman College in New York called the fossil “beautiful” and said the researchers did an impressive job of reconstructing it digitally to help determine its place in the evolutionary tree.
3,000-year-old Canaanite temple discovered in southern Israel
In southern central Israel, Tel Lachish’s new discovery consists of very rare inscriptions showing early precursors of Hebrew alphabet
An aerial view of the newly found temple at Tel Lachish.
In Tel Lachish National Park, the 3,000-year-old temple of Canaanite has unearthed by a team of Israelis and American archeologists.
Under the guidance of Prof. Yosef Garfinkel from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Michael Hasel from the University of southern Advent at Tennessee, the team published their findings in the Levant journal last month following years of excavations.
Located in south-central Israel, Tel Lachish is the site of the biblical Lachish, a major Canaanite city during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages that was later conquered by the Israelites. It was one of the only Canaanite cities to survive into the 12th century BCE.
“We excavated a new temple in the northeast corner of the site that [dates] to the 12th century BCE,” Garfinkel told The Media Line. “It was extremely rich with objects and also [had] an inscription, which is very, very rare. The last time a Canaanite inscription was found was about 40 years ago.”
The aforementioned inscription was found on a pottery shard and features the oldest-known example of the letter “samekh.”
An extremely rare find found at Tel Lachish shows a Caananite inscription and the oldest-known example of the letter “samekh” (highlighted). (T. Rogovski)
“Our inscription is Semitic: It’s Canaanite and later the Hebrew script developed from the same type of writing,” Garfinkel explained, adding that the discovery was “of tremendous importance to the history of the [Hebrew alphabet].”
The new temple marks the first time in a long while that a new Canaanite temple has been found; in fact, the majority of such structures were already unearthed in the early 20th century.
In addition, the Lachish temple was built in a symmetrical style which has only been seen in a few other places in Israel, among them Tel Megiddo, Hazor and Nablus.
“This is the first time that we have a symmetrical temple at Lachish,” Garfinkel said. “There are fewer than 10 of these in Israel.”
Itamar Weissbein, the lead co-author of the study and one of the excavators, told The Media Line that this is the third Canaanite temple found at Lachish.
The first two temples were discovered by a British expedition in the 1930s and an Israeli team in the 1970s, respectively.
“In general, temples in the ancient Near East were not like churches or synagogues that you [could] enter,” Weissbein said. “It’s a different type of cultic activity. Only a few elites – priests or maybe kings – entered to do some rituals there because it was a house of gods, not a house of worship in a way.”
Weissbein emphasized that worshippers would likely have been standing outside the temple in the courtyard, an area that has not been well-preserved over the centuries. Researchers were, however, able to glean some ideas about the cultic activities that took place inside the temple based on artifacts that they dug up.
“We found two figurines of male deities,” Weissbein stated. “They probably represent Baal, [who was] one of the main deities of the Canaanites, like a storm god or a fertility god … and another deity called Resheph, [who was] more of a warlike deity.”
Two ancient figurines found at the temple in Tel Lachish likely represent Baal and Resheph, deities worshipped by the Canaanites.
In addition to the ruins, the figurines and the inscription, Garfinkel’s team also found bronze cauldrons, jewelry, daggers, scarabs and a gold-plated bottle bearing an inscription with the name of the powerful Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II.
Iron Age Temple Uncovered in Jerusalem Challenges Biblical Claim
Perhaps Solomon’s famous Temple was not the first or only Holy Temple in the world. Dating to around 900 BC, an Iron Age temple located near Jerusalem negates the long-held idea the ancient Kingdom of Judah (southern Israel) only had one temple, the First Temple, better known as Solomon’s Temple, which was operational between 10th century BC until it was destroyed in 586 BC.
The Iron Age site of Tel Motza, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) outside Jerusalem, has been known since the early 1990s and archaeologists found the remains of a settlement dated to the Neolithic period (about 6000 BC).
In 2012 a settlement from the First Temple period was discovered containing a cultic structure and 36 wheat granaries, indicating that Motza was part of an ancient economic center, and it is the presence of this one ancient religious complex that challenges the history of Judah presented in the Bible.
The Tel Motza Iron Age temple excavation site in Jerusalem.
A new study of the temple by co-researcher Shua Kisilevitz, a doctoral student of archaeology at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), and review co-author Oded Lipschits, the director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, was published in the January/February issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine.
In the article, the researchers say the temple had been built about 900 BC and that they think it operated until the early 6th century BC.
And where this discovery is controversial is that the existence of this temple means that people living close to Jerusalem had their own place of worship, a cultic temple, which in itself suggests the rule of the Jerusalem high priests was “not so strong”, and that the kingdom was “not so well established” as the Bible leads us to believe, Kisilevitz and Lipschits, told Live Science.
A report in the Daily Mail detailing the study says the ancient temple could have held about 150 congregants who worshiped the god Yahweh, but they also used idols to communicate with the divine in the same period as the First Temple.
This contradicts the Jewish Bible that details the religious reforms of King Hezekiah and King Josiah, who consolidated worship at Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and allegedly stopped ‘all’ cultic practices out of its walls.
Kisilevitz told Live Science that the temple was a rectangular building with an open courtyard at the front that would have been a focal point for cultic worship, and inside they found a stone-built a sacrificial altar near pits for dead animal bodies.
Two human-like and two horse-like clay figurines were discovered smashed and buried in the courtyard, which was thought to have been associated with rainfall, fertility and harvest ritual of some kind. The researchers added that the horse-like figurines may be the “oldest known depictions of horses from the Iron Age of Judah.”
Figurine of a horse found in Tel Motza Iron Age temple in the excavation site.
The teams of archaeologists at Tel Motza unearthed dozens of grain storage silos (granaries) and associated administrative and religious buildings. This informs us that Tel Motza sold grain to the nearby Jerusalem.
Over time, the settlement is believed to have become an agricultural and economic “powerhouse,” the researchers wrote in the magazine piece. They also speculate that perhaps the temple was permitted to exist by the high priests at Solomon’s Temple because it was part of the granary and didn’t threaten centralized control of the kingdom.
During the time this temple was functional, new political groups and alliances emerged in the Levant, and it is believed that in the face of these changes people maintained traditional religious practices.
The researchers said this was evident in the temple’s artifacts and architecture, which they say are reminiscent of religious traditions from the ancient Near East that had been practiced since the third millennium BC.
Figurine of a ram found in Tel Motza Iron Age temple excavation site.
The discovery and analysis of this ancient Iron Age temple not only enlightens historians on the state formation of Judah during this period. It also determines that the state was nowhere near as centralized as it would later become and that in its formative days it depended not solely on the administrative elite at Solomon’s Temple, but on trading relationships with nearby settlements like Tel Motza, and maybe others yet to be discovered.
Untouched and Unlooted 4,400-yr-old Tomb of Egyptian High Priest Discovered
Egyptian archaeologists discovered the tomb of a priest dating back more than 4,400 years in the pyramid complex of Saqqara south of the capital Cairo.
Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Enany told an audience of invited guests, including AFP reporters: “It is exceptionally well preserved, coloured, with sculpture inside. It belongs to a high official priest…and is more than 4,400 years old,” he said.
Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Enani at a news conference at the site of discovery
The tomb was found in a buried ridge at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara. It was untouched and unlooted, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters at the site, according to Reuters. Saqqara served as the necropolis for Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt for more than two millennia.
The tomb belongs to “Wahtye,” a high priest who served during the fifth dynasty reign of King Neferirkare, the antiquities ministry said.
The tomb is 10 metres (33 feet) long, three metres wide and just under three metres high, Waziri said.
View of newly discovered Egyptian tomb belonging to high priest ‘Wahtye’
The walls are decorated with hieroglyphs and statues of pharaohs. Waziri said the tomb was unique because of the statues and its near perfect condition.
“The colour is almost intact even though the tomb is almost 4,400 years old,” he said.
Archaeologists removed a last layer of debris from the tomb on Thursday and found five shafts inside, Waziri said.
One of the shafts was unsealed with nothing inside, but the other four were sealed. They are expecting to make discoveries when they excavate those shafts starting on Sunday, he said. He was hopeful about one shaft in particular.
“I can imagine that all of the objects can be found in this area,” he said, pointing at one of the sealed shafts. “This shaft should lead to a coffin or a sarcophagus of the owner of the tomb.”
The frieze on the wall of the Egyptian tomb depicting livestock
In November, archaeology officials announced the discovery in Saqqara of seven sarcophagi, some dating back more than 6,000 years, during excavation work started in April by the same archaeological mission.
Three of those tombs contained mummified cats and scarabs.
Ancient Egyptians mummified humans to preserve their bodies for the afterlife, while animal mummies were used as religious offerings. The Saqqara necropolis is also home to the famous Djoser pyramid, a 4,600-year-old construction that dominates the site and was Egypt’s first stone monument.
The tomb, built by the master architect Imhotep for the Pharoah Djoser, stood 62 metres tall originally and is considered the oldest building in the world built entirely of stone.
Egypt has revealed over a dozen ancient discoveries this year.
The country hopes the finds will brighten its image abroad and revive interest among travellers who once flocked to its iconic pharaonic temples and pyramids but who fled after the 2011 political uprising.
Human Remains Unearthed At Site Of Early Roman Military Base In Kent
Archeologists working on a building site have discovered two skeletons dating back to the Bronze and Iron Ages.
The skeletons were found during the construction of the Aylesham Garden Village near Canterbury and now researchers at the University of Kent are studying them and discovering why they were hidden in the building
These are some of the most recent archeological discoveries on the site, including smaller pieces of pottery and glass dating back 2,000 years to the Roman period.
One of the skeletons found at Aylesham
The dig is being undertaken for developers Barratt Homes and Persimmon Homes by a team from the Faversham-based Swale and Thames Archaeology (SWAT).
SWAT’s Dr. Paul Wilkinson said: “It will be some time before we know much more about the skeletons and their graves. However, the other items we have found have helped to fill in some big gaps in our knowledge of post-invasion Roman life.
One of the skeletons found at Aylesham
“We are quite certain we have discovered what was a military supply depot on the Aylesham site. This would have been set up a year or two after the Romans invaded Britain and we believe would have been manned by soldiers of a Roman legion.
“Not all of them would have been fighting men but specialists in a range of support roles – similar to the British Army of the Victorian era – and would have been posted around an area to concentrate on infrastructure tasks.
“At the center of the Aylesham site were three kilns for firing pottery which was bordered by trenches and ditches.
Local clay would have been used to make the army’s pots, plates, and urns. We have found glass items from Gaul, now France, and other pottery from Germany in Aylesham as well.
“We have discovered some of the urns found in Aylesham were made in the Medway area and these, with local-made items found, suggest the Romans were mass-producing everyday items quickly and efficiently.
Archaeologist Phillipa Foulds examines Roman pottery found at the site
“The site sits on the high ground offering sweeping views of the countryside in a triangle with Canterbury and the Roman ports of Richborough and Dover. It isn’t far from the strategically important Roman Watling Street connecting Dover and Richborough to Canterbury and beyond to Roman London.”
Future plans for the archaeological team center around digging on a site to the east of Aylesham railway station, a short distance from the development.
It is hoped a selection of the Aylesham finds can be eventually put on display.
Over 1,000 skeletons discovered during the renovation of Kutná Hora “bone church” in the Czech Republic
The Ossuary of Sedlec is not a common Catholic chapel in the Czech Republic. This is one of the most unique chapels that you can visit, situated at Sedlec, in the suburbs of Kutna Hora.
Its nicknamed Church of Bones, or sometimes Bone Church visitors may not notice anything extraordinary on the outside but once you enter the chapel you should be prepared to cope with a gruesome sight.
The Sedlec Ossuary is adorned with more than 40,000 human skeletons, and many more are still found. Some think there could be as many as 70,000 or human skeletons arranged into all sorts of formations inside the Sedlec Ossuary.
Inside the Sedlec Ossuary.
During the renovation works of the 14th-century church archaeologists accidentally stumbled upon 34 mass graves with 1,200 skeletons, most of which belong to the victims of the Black Death and famine. Experts say it is the biggest find of its kind in Europe and the finding gives provides researchers with valuable historical information about people who lived in this community.
These bones belong to people who died during the mid-14th-century plague and in the subsequent Hussite Wars. Extensive renovation of the Sedlec Ossuary started in 2014 and two years later archaeologists were granted permission to launch a survey.
“We have been digging around the ossuary. The most significant discovery we have made are mass graves of the victims of a famine in 1318 and the plague in 1348.
“It could be compared to the burial ground in East Smithfield in London, which has some 500 skeletons. We have discovered around 600 plague victims and 600 victims of famine, so altogether 1,200 skeletons.
Archaeologists discovered over 1,200 skeletons and five mass graves.
This year we also started research in the interior. Below the first pyramid, we found five mass graves, which are even older. So when the ossuary was built, they had no idea that the graves were there,” archaeologist Jan Frolík, who is one of the members of the research team said.
Frolik said the skeletal remains have already unveiled a lot about the population of Kutná Hora at the time:
“They could be characterized as a mining population because there is a significant prevalence of men over women.
The ratio of adults and children is around fifty-fifty, which is a common population make up. But the 30-percent prevalence of men shows that there were new miners constantly flowing into the town and that it was apparently a very dangerous trade.
Otherwise, I would say it was a typical medieval society, judging by the injuries and illnesses reflected in the bones. So there were common fractures of limbs, some of them badly grown together. As for the illnesses that can be detected this way, we have recorded tuberculosis and meningitis,” he explained.
The Church of Bones is a popular tourist attraction but also a place of worship.
The story of the Church of Bones goes back to 1278 when the King of Bohemia sent the abbot of the Sedlec Cistercian Monastery to Jerusalem. The returning abbot returned with a jar of soil from the Golgotha. This “Holy Soil” attracted many people from different places and many wanted to be buried in Sedlec. In time there was no more room for skeletons and, thus the cemetery had to be expanded.
The Church of Bones in the Czech Republic is famous but certainly not the only place where we find walls decorated with bones and skulls of long-deceased people.
Under the city of Rome, Italy there is the Capuchin Crypt also known as the ‘Bone Chapel’. Inside the Capuchin Crypt, there are remains of 4,000 Capuchin monks buried by their order. They ‘decorate’ the underground crypt with vertebrae chandeliers, skulls of real size and cross-bones.
Capuchin Crypt in Rome, Italy.
The skeletons are standing and are dressed in robes. These people who passed away a long time ago are staring from the walls and in the background, there are hundreds of anonymous skulls of those who died.
Even more bizarre are the bodies discovered by art historian Paul Koudounaris who hunted them down in secret Catholic vaults in Rome and churches across Europe.
In his book, Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, Paul Koudounaris offers an intriguing visual history of veneration in European churches and monasteries of bejeweled and decorated skeletons.
The bodies were discovered by art historian Paul Koudounaris who hunted them down in secret Catholic vaults in Rome and churches across Europe.
The bodies were discovered by art historian Paul Koudounaris who hunted them down in secret Catholic vaults in Rome and churches across Europe.
Beneath the streets of Paris, France there is a huge underground labyrinth with dark galleries and narrow passages. The Paris catacombs contain skeletal remains of some 6 to 7 million former Parisians. The bones were deliberately arranged in a macabre display of high Romantic taste.
Paris catacombs.
While visiting these particular chapels and catacombs it may be wise to remember that regardless of how macabre these piles of skulls and skeletons are, these are still places of worship and we should pay respect to those who rest there.
Remnants of Medieval Wall Dating Back to 1041 Unearthed in Breclav, Czech Republic
A remarkable archeological discovery – remains of a medieval wall at the beginning of the 11th century – was uncovered in the planning for restoring the Břeclav castle.
Archeologists claim the fortification was designed by the Duke of Bohemia, Břetislav, who controlled the area and gave its name to the town of Břeclav.
The city of Břeclav in southern Moravia has a rich past. Just a few months ago archaeologists discovered the remains of a boat that is estimated to be thousands of years old and now archaeological research in the bowels of Břeclav Castle, prior to its planned reconstruction, has revealed the remains of a medieval wall that is believed to have been built in 1041.
Archaeologist Miroslav Dejmal of the Archaia Brno organization, who is conducting the research emphasized the importance of the find, saying that walls dating back to the 11th century are extremely rare.
“What you see here are the remnants of a wall made of clay and wood. These are the foundations because the upper part was obviously destroyed by a fire, as you can see from this soft charcoal.”
The original wall, which was hidden for centuries under a thick layer of clay, is estimated to have been around 8 meters high and parts of it are now being analyzed.
Preliminary results suggest that the wall is nearly a thousand years old and dates back to the first mention of the town in written records. Archaeologist Miroslav Dejmal says it is another part of the jigsaw puzzle falling into place.
“The date that we have now from the result of preliminary tests is 1041. This leads us to conclude that it was most likely built by Břetislav, Duke of Bohemia.
When Moravia came under Břetislav’s administration, he invested in its castles and forts, pacified the country and eventually Moravia was incorporated into the Bohemian duchy.
If the date 1041 is a correct estimate, we can say with certainty that Břetislav built a fortified settlement here, which we already suspected, because the name Břeclav itself is derived from the name Břetislav.”
The local authorities are delighted with the extraordinary find, even if it will inevitably delay work on the reconstruction of Břeclav Castle.
The spokesman for Břeclav City Hall, Jiří Holobrádek, says the find has generated great interest among the locals, but it is early days yet to say how and in what way the remnants of this medieval wall will be preserved.
“It is too soon to say how we will proceed. Much depends on the outcome of the expert analysis that has only just started and we will obviously heed the advice of historians and archaeologists. However, given the importance of the discovery, it would be good to find a way to present it to the public.”
The first means of doing that is already clear – archaeologists are working on a 3D model of the wall that looks to be as old as the town itself.
