A vast tunnel found beneath an ancient Egyptian temple
The tunnel is about 6.6 feet (2 meters) high and is similar to another ancient tunnel built at Samos in Greece.
Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a vast tunnel beneath a temple in the ancient city of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria.
The 4,281-foot-long (1,305 meters) tunnel, which brought water to thousands of people in its heyday, was discovered by an Egyptian-Dominican Republic archaeological team, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement.
Ancient Egyptian builders constructed the 6.6-foot-high (2 m) tunnel at a depth of about 65 feet (20 m) beneath the ground, Kathleen Martínez, a Dominican archaeologist and director of the team that discovered the tunnel, told Live Science in an email. “
It is an exact replica of the Eupalinos Tunnel in Greece, which is considered one of the most important engineering achievements of antiquity,” Martinez said.
The Eupalinos tunnel, in Samos, a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, also carried water.
Archaeologists found two alabaster heads in the tunnel.
The archaeology of the Taposiris Magna temple is complex. Parts of it are submerged under water and the temple has been hit by numerous earthquakes over the history of its existence, causing extensive damage. The tunnel at Taposiris Magna dates to the Ptolemaic period (304 B.C. to 30 B.C.), a time when Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of kings descended from one of Alexander the Great’s generals.
Finds within the tunnel included two alabaster heads: one of which likely depicts a king, and the other represents another high-ranking person, Martinez said.
Their exact identities are unknown. Coins and the remains of statues of Egyptian deities were also found in the tunnel, Martinez said.
At the time the tunnel was built, Taposiris Magna had a population of between 15,000 and 20,000 people, Martinez said.
The tunnel was built beneath a temple that honored Osiris, an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, and Isis, an Egyptian goddess who was Osiris’s wife.
Previous work in the temple uncovered a hoard of coins minted with the face of Cleopatra VII. Excavations at Taposiris Magna and analysis of artifacts from the site are ongoing.
During the ongoing archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Aizanoi in the Çavdarhisar district of the western province of Kütahya, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, the heads of the Greek mythology gods Eros and Dionysus and the demigod Herakles have come to light.
Another find was the statue of a man with a height of 2 meters and 10 centimeters.
The statues date back 2,000 years ago, stated Gökhan Coşkun, a professor from Kütahya Dumlupınar University and also the excavation director. “Only half of its pedestal and one foot is missing in the male statue, while other parts are completely preserved.”
Excavations in the ancient city of Aizanoi have been carried out particularly in the Penkalas Stream, with a team of 80 workers and 20 technical staff.
The ancient city, which dates back to 3,000 B.C., is believed to be one of the metropolises of the period with its historical structures, such as theater, stadium, agora and Zeus Temple.
Noting that the restoration of the Roman-era marble bridge, called No: 2, was completed during the excavations in Penkalas Stream, Coşkun said that works have been continuing on the completely ruined bridge, called No: 3.
Stating that new artifacts are found every day, Coşkun said, “This year, we found surprising finds that made us very excited during our work in the area where the bridge is located.
Since the previous season, we have been finding many large and small pieces of marble sculptures in this area, some of which, if complete, would reach 3 to 3.5 meters in height. This season, we uncovered many blocks of bridge No: 3. Also, we found a sundial and many marble statue pieces.”
Expressing that they were very excited about the statue they found in the recent excavations, Coşkun said, “This statue is almost the only intact statue we have found so far.
It is a statue of a man with a height of 2 meters and 10 centimeters, missing only half of its pedestal and one foot. Other parts are completely preserved. I hope that we will find this missing piece in 2023.”
As for the other statue heads belonging to Greek mythology, Coskun said, “Among these is a Dionysus head with a height of approximately 40 centimeters. We also found a Herakles head.
In 2020, we found the body of a Herakles statue. But this head does not belong to this body.
Apart from this, there are also statue heads of various gods and goddesses of the Ancient Greek pantheon. One of the prominent examples is the Eros head, which is about 20 centimeters high.
The artifacts we found in this area are from different periods, but we can say that the statue pieces date back 1,800-2,000 years ago.”
Study Suggests Europe’s Hunter-Gatherers Produced Pottery
Researchers conducted experiments to see how hunter-gatherers might have used early pottery to cook food.
Broken, charred and still crusted with nearly 8000-year-old food, the remnants of ancient pottery found across northern Eurasia wouldn’t be mistaken for fine china.
But the advent of this durable technology—used to cook and store abundant plant and animal resources—was a huge step forward for hunter-gatherers in this part of the globe. It was also home-grown, new research suggests.
For decades, researchers believed pottery arrived in Europe along with agriculture and domesticated animals, as part of a “package” of technologies that spread northward from Anatolia beginning about 9000 years ago.
Pots found in Northern Europe dating around the same time were thought to be mere knockoffs by hunter-gatherers copying their more sophisticated farmer neighbors, says Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the University of Göttingen who was not involved with the new research. “A generation ago, nobody looked to the East.”
But a study published today in Nature Human Behaviour tells a different story. Beginning about 20,000 years ago, the know-how needed to make and use pottery spread among groups of hunter-gatherers in the Far East.
This containers replaced less durable vessels made of hide and skin, and were better able to withstand fire than wood bowls. Starting about 7900 years ago, clay pots became common from the Ural Mountains to southern Scandinavia within just a few centuries.
To map pottery’s spread, Rowan McLaughlin, an archaeologist at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and colleagues analyzed broken shards collected from 156 sites around the Baltic Sea and across the European part of the former Soviet Union—many stored in museums in modern-day Russia and Ukraine.
By sampling burned crusts of food stuck to the broken pots—remnants of bygone meals—they were able to get hundreds of new radiocarbon dates.
Fat residues revealed whether meat from ruminants like deer or cattle was on the menu, or whether people were boiling fish soup, pork, or plants instead. And comparing decorations and pot shapes helped the team map how pottery trends spread from community to community.
Though the raw material to make clay pots was widely available, the technical knowledge needed to shape and fire them must have been passed from person to person. New cooking and food preparation techniques had to be learned as well.
Put together, the data suggest pottery spread across parts of northern Eurasia rapidly, the team reports. Within a few hundred years, the technology swept north and west from the Caspian Sea, all the way to the eastern shore of the Baltic and southern Scandinavia.
The speed of the spread suggests potterymaking knowledge passed from group to group, rather than being introduced by new people migrating into the region. “There’s no way a population could grow that fast,” McLaughlin says.
Burned crusts of food on a pot used by early hunter-gatherers in northeastern Europe about 7500 years ago
Lucy Kubiak-Martens, an archaeobotanist at BIAX Consult, a commercial archaeology company in the Netherlands who was not involved with the paper, agrees with that interpretation. “It seems the knowledge traveled, not people,” she says.
If so, that would contrast with how similar technology spread out from Anatolia: Recent genetic evidence suggests that around the same time, farmers from Anatolia brought their own pottery styles and traditions with them as they expanded into southern Europe.
More research could help unravel exactly how it spread. For example, if hunter-gatherer societies were patrilocal—with women leaving home to marry men from other communities—“pottery could be a female craft that spread from village to village through marriage,” McLaughlin says.
The study provides evidence that hunter-gatherers were far more sophisticated than archaeologists once assumed, argues co-author Henny Piezonka, an archaeologist at Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel. In fact, she says, mobile hunter-gatherer societies from prehistoric Japan to the shores of the Baltic adopted new technologies without abandoning their roving lifestyles: Rather than being a step behind farmers, they were simply on a different path altogether.
“Hunter-gatherer societies are not backwards or simple, but were innovators in their own right,” Piezonka says.
The Iron Curtain, meanwhile, may have further obscured the narrative of prehistoric pottery’s spread west across Asia. “Hunter-gatherer pottery existed all along northern Eurasia for 10,000 years,” Piezonka says, “but the evidence was mostly published in Russian, and European archaeologists just didn’t know about it.” The result was a Euro-centric tale of triumphant farmers and pastoralists introducing important technologies to Europe, she says.
That began to change in the late 1990s, when researchers from Western Europe joined forces with colleagues in Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics. The new study reflects this more recent legacy of collaboration. Submitted before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, it includes co-authors from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, although the authors say several Ukrainian scholars withdrew their names from the final publication to avoid copublishing with Russian academics.
“It’s a very nice example of how cooperation between colleagues in Eastern and Western Europe emerged in the last 20 years,” Terberger says. “It’s extremely sad all these contacts have been so damaged by the Russian war in Ukraine.”
Humans have been using bear skins to protect themselves from cold weather for at least 300,000 years. This is suggested by cut marks on the metatarsal and phalanx of a cave bear discovered at the Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, Germany.
This makes it one of the oldest examples of this type in the world.
The research was conducted by an archaeological team from the University of Tübingen, the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP) in Tübingen, together with a colleague from Leiden University.
This study was published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
“Cut marks on bones are often interpreted in archaeology as an indication of the utilization of meat,” explains Tübingen researcher Ivo Verheijen. “But there is hardly any meat to be re-covered from hand and foot bones. In this case, we can attribute such fine and precise cut marks to the careful stripping of the skin.”
A bear’s winter coat consists of both long outer hairs that form an airy protective layer and short, dense hairs that provide particularly good insulation. Bears, including extinct cave bears, needed a highly insulating coat for hibernation.
“These newly discovered cut marks are an indication that about 300,000 years ago, people in northern Europe were able to survive in winter thanks in part to warm bear skins,” says the researcher, a doctoral student in the Schöningen research project and employee of the State Heritage Office of Lower Saxony.
Strong indication for hunting
But how were the bear skins obtained? “Schöningen plays a crucial role in the discussion about the origin of hunting, because the world’s oldest spears were discovered here,” Ivo Verheijen continues. Did the people of that time also hunt bears? “There are some indications for this,” says the researcher.
“If only adult animals are found at an archaeological site, this is usually considered an indication of hunting—at Schöningen, all the bear bones and teeth belonged to adult individuals.” In addition, he said, bear skin must be removed shortly after the animal’s death, otherwise the hair is lost and the skin becomes unusable. “Since the animal was skinned, it couldn’t have been dead for long at that point,” Verheijen explains.
The find opens up a new perspective, says Tübingen Professor Nicholas Conard, head of the Schöningen research project. The location of the cut marks indicates that the cave bears were also exploited for their skins.
“So animals were not only used for food, but their pelts were also essential for survival in the cold,” Conard says. The use of bear skins is likely a key adaptation of early humans to the climate in the north.
2,000-Year-Old Maya Civilization Spotted in Guatemala
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., working with a colleague from France and another from Guatemala, has discovered a very large 2,000-year-old Mayan civilization in northern Guatemala.
Triadic structures in El Mirador: (a) LiDAR image showing triadic structures in the civic center of El Mirador (Tigre pyramid is the largest in this section of the city); (b) LiDAR 3D view showing the pyramidal complex of La Danta, located on the east side of the civic center at El Mirador.
In their paper published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, the group describes using LiDAR to conduct a survey of the area.
LiDAR is a detection system similar to radar but is based on laser light rather than radio waves. In recent years, it has been used to scan parts of dense tropical rain forests for signs of ancient civilizations.
Lasers used in such systems are able to penetrate vegetative canopies over rain forests, revealing what is on the ground beneath them.
In this new effort, the researchers flew over parts of Guatemala as part of a mapping effort, when they came across what they describe as a vast ancient Maya civilization.
In studying their maps, they were able to see that the ancient civilization was made up of more than 1,000 settlements covering approximately 650 square miles, most of which were linked by multiple causeways.
The researchers were also able to see that the people who once lived in the settlements had been densely packed—a finding that goes against theories suggesting early Mesoamerican settlements tended to be sparsely populated.
The causeways (cleared, raised beds used as roads) added up to 110 miles of traversable pathways, making it relatively easy for the people in the civilization to visit other settlements.
The researchers note that the road network would have allowed for collective labor efforts.
The researchers also found evidence of large platforms and pyramids in some settlements, which, they note, suggests some of them served as centralized hubs for work, recreation and politics. They note also that some of the settlements had ball courts that prior research has shown were used for playing a variety of sports native to the region.
The researchers also found that the people of the civilization had built canals for moving water and reservoirs for holding it to allow for use during dry periods.
Skull found in Turkey with neat hole may have been the work of mystics
Trepanated skull of a woman-Tumb 3 Corseaux-En Seyton-on display 6, Cantonal Museum of Archeology and History.
A 3,200-year-old skull was recently uncovered in Turkey’s eastern Van province. This find was made even more intriguing by the skull’s clearly man-made triangle-shaped hole, indicating that the deceased owner had undergone an ancient medical procedure now called trepanation.
Trepanation, a procedure that involves drilling a hole into the patient’s skull, is one of the oldest known surgical procedures in human history and a practice used by ancient humans all over the world. Archaeologists have found trepanned skulls in Europe, the Americas, Africa and China.
Skull-drilling in the 21st century
The practice is still used today to treat subdural hematomas, but surgeons have refined the process and now refer to it as a craniotomy or a burr hole.
Burr holes tend to be used in emergency situations after a traumatic head injury to relieve pressure due to fluid buildup in the skull which puts undue pressure on brain tissue. Craniotomies, per the National Cancer Institute, resemble ancient trepanation more so than burr holes; the surgeon removes a small piece of the skull in order to gain access to the brain.
This is sometimes used to relieve pressure, but can also be used to remove a tumor or a tissue sample, as well as to repair a skull fracture or brain aneurysm (a bulge in a blood vessel wall).
Unlike in ancient trepanation practices, modern surgeons nearly always replace the removed piece of the skull once they have finished their procedure.
Detail from The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicting trepanation (c.1488–1516).
What was the practice used for in ancient times?
According to the science news website Live Science, trepanation was used in ancient times to treat head injuries and pain, and some scientists believe it was used to ritually remove evil spirits from the body.
A 2013 article published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology concluded that often, patients did survive the procedure and would heal after surgery. Researchers found scarring from trepanation, but the injury to the skull had healed.
Researchers have not yet determined whether the skull found recently in Turkey belonged to a survivor or a victim of trepanation. They also do not yet know – and perhaps never will find out – whether the procedure was performed in order to treat a medical issue or exorcise demons.
Archaeology: A 2,700-year-old inscription in Jerusalem proves Bible RIGHT, expert claims
The Siloam Tunnel, also known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, is an ancient waterway carved under Jerusalem some 2,700 years ago.
The tunnel ran under the City of David, funnelling freshwater into Jerusalem from Gihon Spring, outside of the city’s walls. Mention of the tunnel is found in the Old Testament’s 2 Kings 20, where the Bible says the tunnel was constructed on the order of King Hezekiah.
According to scripture, the tunnel was carved into Jerusalem’s bedrock to ensure a supply of water during an impending siege by invading Assyrian forces.
2 Kings 20:20 reads: “Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool, and the conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?”
Tom Meyer, a professor in Bible and theology at Shasta Bible College and Graduate School in California, believes the tunnel is an incredible testament of the Bible’s historicity.
Professor Meyer told Express.co.uk there is ample archaeological evidence that validates the account in 2 Kings 2020.
Archaeology news: An expert believes an inscription in Siloam Tunnel proves the Bible right
Archaeology news: Siloam Tunnel is also known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel
In particular, an ancient Hebrew inscription found inside the tunnel sheds light on its construction.
Professor Meyer said: “Though the American historical geographer, Edward Robinson, was the first person to explore the tunnel in modern times – 1873 – it was a local boy named Jacob Spafford – the adopted son of the famous hymnist Horatio Spafford – who, while playing in the tunnel, stumbled upon one of the most important ancient Hebrew inscriptions ever found – 1880.
“The inscription is significant not only because it validates the Biblical account, but because it is the only inscription from ancient Israel that commemorates a public works program and is one of the oldest examples of Hebrew writing.”
The inscription was brought to the attention of local authorities but was irreparably damaged during its removal.
Hezekiah’s tunnel demonstrates once again the historical reliability of the Biblical account
Professor Tom Meyer, Shasta Bible College
However, Professor Meyer said the inscription contained a description of workers tunnelling under Jerusalem from two opposite ends.
Where the two groups finally connected, they left an inscription on the wall to commemorate their achievement.
The connection to King Hezekiah would place the tunnel’s construction at around the seventh century BC.
Professor Meyer said: “This amazing feat is mentioned numerous times in the Bible in connection with Hezekiah’s fortification preparations against Sennacherib of Assyria attacking Jerusalem.
Archaeology news: The inscription describes workers carving out the tunnel
Archaeology news: Water is still carried into the the Pool of Siloam from Gihon Spring
“The Siloam Inscription is stored at the Istanbul Archeology Museum because it was discovered when Israel was under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire.
“Hezekiah’s tunnel, which still brings water into Jerusalem to this day, was an incredible feat of engineering; along with the epigraphical evidence – the accompanying Siloam Inscription – Hezekiah’s tunnel demonstrates once again the historical reliability of the Biblical account.”
Mention of the tunnel is also found in 2 Chronicles 32:1-4: “After these things, and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the fenced cities, and thought to win them for himself.
“And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem,
“He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city: and they did help him.
“So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?”
The tunnel is also mentioned in 2 Chronicles 32:30: “This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works
Another mention is found in Isaiah 22:11: “You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool.
“But you did not look to him who did it, or have regard for him who planned it long ago.”
A large hall from the time of Viking Harald Bluetooth discovered
A large hall from the reign of King Harald Bluetooth of Norway was unearthed during housing construction work near Hune, a village in the Jammerbugt Municipality of North Jutland, Denmark.
The hall was up to 40 meters long and 8-10 meters wide, with 10-12 oak posts supporting the roof. They are rectangular in cross-section and measure up to 90×50 cm.
The hall probably served as a crucial location for political gatherings, for hosting visitors, and as the hub of social activity in the community’s social life.
Preliminary dating places the hall in the last half of the ninth century or the very first part of the eleventh century, but it was probably in use during the reign of Harald Bluetooth.
A rune stone near the excavation site has a date that fits this time frame. The stone, which dates from between 970 and 1020, is located in Hune Kirke and is inscribed with the words “Hove, Thorkild, and Thorbjrn set their father Runulv den Rdnilde’s stone.”
A rune stone near the excavation site.
The hall’s design is reminiscent of structures found at Harald Bluetooth’s ring castles, including Fyrkat at Hobro and Aggersborg at Aggersund.
The researchers have only excavated a portion of the hall, but they believe that additional buildings and features lie beneath the surface to the east of the hall, as buildings of this type rarely stand alone.
Thomas Rune Knudsen, from North Jutland Museums said: “This is the largest Viking Age find of this nature in more than ten years, and we have not seen anything like it before here in North Jutland.”
Excavations will resume in the New Year, with a Carbon-14 analysis on organic remains for more accurate dating, the results of which are expected to be published by the end of 2023.
King Harald Bluetooth, a Viking-born king who turned his back on old Norse religion and converting to Christianity. He is noted for bringing Christianity to Denmark and earned the nickname Blåtand (meaning blue tooth) because of a dead tooth that is said to have been dark blue.
