Category Archives: WORLD

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

In Turkey’s Gedikkaya Cave, a stone figurine was discovered inside a 16,500-year-old votive pit

In Turkey’s Gedikkaya Cave, a stone figurine was discovered inside a 16,500-year-old votive pit

A stone figurine was discovered in a 16500-year-old votive pit belonging to the Epi-paleolithic period, the transition phase from the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age, during the archaeological excavation carried out in the Gedikkaya Cave in the İnhisar district of Bilecik in northwest Turkey.

With the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, the rescue excavation started by the Bilecik Museum Directorate in the cave 1 kilometer away from İnhisar continues.

Traces of life were found in the cave at a depth of 180 meters, a height of about 20 meters, and a width of 30 meters, in two sections, the lower and the upper.

Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University (BŞEU) Faculty of Arts and Sciences Archeology Department Lecturer Assoc. Dr. Deniz Sarı, an ongoing study under the scientific consultancy of sheds light on the archeology of the region.

In the excavation, a flat ax made of diorite (rock type), grinding and hand stones, blades (stone chips), scraper, arrow and spearhead, ocher, spindle whorls, perforated ceramics (pottery), awl, a malachite ingot, and beads were unearthed.

In addition, important information was obtained about the craft branches such as stone and woodworking, mining and weaving carried out in the cave.

Finally, a votive pit dated to the Epipalaeolithic Period, 14500 BC was found in the cave.

The stone figurine found in the votive pit is a stone and stylized example of the Anatolian mother goddess figurines.

Bilecik Museum Director Harun Küçükaydın told Anadolu Agency (AA) that the earliest human traces known in the cave date back to 16,500 years ago, and that a large number of finds dating from 7000 to 5000 BC were found in the radiocarbon analysis.

Küçükaydın continued as follows: ” A partially worked stalagmite was unearthed in this votive pit. We can associate the stalagmite with the Neolithic cultures of the Near East.”

“The seated human figurine carved from this stone can be considered a link between Venus figurines from the European Upper Paleolithic period and mother goddess figurines from Anatolian Neolithic cultures.”

Explaining that they determined that the earliest of the finds obtained during the studies in Gedikkaya Cave dates back to 16,500 years ago, Associate Professor Deniz Sarı said: “This period, of which we know very little, is a process by which European Upper Paleolithic cultures spread to the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Mediterranean.

Excavations in the larger area will provide more concrete data about the location of Gedikkaya in this extension and the pre-human activity at the end of the Ice Ages. However, in 2022, we uncovered a votive pit in the cave in relation to the process in question.”

“We unearthed a naturally formed stalagmite inside the pit surrounded by rows of crescent-shaped stones. The stalagmite is partially embroidered, giving the appearance of a stele.

The pit was probably closed later. The finds inside the pit are extremely important and contain very new and extraordinary data in terms of prehistoric archeology.

One of them is this a stone figurine. The stylized figurine in a sitting position is depicted with its legs spread out to the sides. It is a stone and stylized example of a mother goddess figurine characteristic of the Neolithic cultures of the Near East. In this context, the studies in the cave will make new contributions to the literature in the context of Anatolian prehistoric archeology.”

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

1.5 tons of bronze coins were found in east China

1.5 tons of bronze coins were found in east China

An ancient coin hoard containing 1.5 tonnes of coins from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties has been discovered in Jiangsu Province, east China.

The coins were strong together with straw ropes and arranged in tidy stacks.

The underground remains were unearthed in Shuangdun Village, Jianhu County of Yancheng City. The pit mouth of the hoard was square, 1.63 meters long, 1.58 meters wide, and 0.5 meters deep.

Bronze coins connected in series with straw ropes were neatly layered and paved inside. Most were from the Song Dynasty.

The coins that were discovered were well-preserved, and the majority of them had legible inscriptions, indicating a significant value for further study.

In ancient China, such hoards were often buried in the ground so as to preserve precious porcelain, coins, metal tools, and other valuables, said the researchers.

Seventy wells were also found around the coin hoard, which was near the battle frontline of the Song and Jin troops, making the researchers wonder whether the excavation site belonged to a hutted camp.

The majority of the coins in the hoard are Song dynasty wens.

Bronze wens were the common currency until a severe copper shortage forced the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) to issue lower-quality and lower-value coins. Iron was difficult to mint and rusted quickly once in circulation.

Due to a lack of bronze coinage, the government was forced to cut military wages in half in 1161, resulting in the invention of paper money.

In 1170, the state began to require that half of all taxes be paid with Huizi paper currency stepped into the breach.

EUROPE, SWEDEN, WORLD

See a stunning, life-like reconstruction of a Stone Age woman

See a stunning, life-like reconstruction of a Stone Age woman

Oscar Nilsson, a forensic artist based in Sweden, spent 350 hours reconstructing the Stone Age woman’s likeness.

A Stone Age woman who lived 4,000 years ago is leaning on her walking stick and looking ahead as a spirited young boy bursts into a run, in a stunning life-size reconstruction now on display in Sweden.

Although her likeness is new — it debuted last month in an exhibit about ancient people at Västernorrlands Museum — researchers have known about this woman’s existence for nearly a century.

During the construction of a road in the hamlet of Lagmansören in 1923, workers found her skeletal remains buried next to the remains of a child, likely a 7-year-old boy.

“With our eyes and perhaps in all times, you tend to think that this is a mother and son,” said Oscar Nilsson, the Sweden-based forensic artist who spent 350 hours creating the lifelike model.

“They could be. Or they could be siblings: sister and brother. They could be relatives, or they could just be tribe friends. We don’t know, because the DNA was not that well preserved to establish this relationship.”

But as Nilsson molded the woman’s posture and sculpted her face, he pretended that she was near her son who was scampering ahead of her. “She’s looking with the mother’s eyes — both with love and a bit of discipline,” Nilsson told Live Science. This stern but tender gaze looks as if she’s on the cusp of calling out to the boy, telling him to be careful.

This reconstruction is based on the remains of a Neolithic woman who lived about 4,000 years ago in what is now Sweden.

The Neolithic woman and youngster were interred in a cist grave, a burial built with long, flat stones in the shape of a coffin. The woman died in her late 20s or early 30s, and at 4 feet, 11 inches (150 centimeters) in height, “she was not a very tall person,” even for the Neolithic period, Nilsson said.

The woman’s remains didn’t show any signs of malnutrition, injury or diseases, although it’s possible that she died of an illness that didn’t leave a mark on her remains, Nilsson said.

“She seems to have had a good life,” he said. She ate land-based food, an examination of the isotopes (different versions of elements) in her teeth revealed, which was odd given that her grave was found near a fish-filled river near the coast, he said.

When Nilsson received the commission to reconstruct the woman two years ago, he scanned her skull and made a copy of it with a plastic 3D printer. As with other reconstructions he’s created, including those of an ancient Wari queen from what is now Peru and a Stone Age man whose head was found on a spike, Nilsson had to take into account the ancient individual’s sex, age, weight and ethnicity — factors that can influence the person’s facial tissue thickness and general appearance. But because the woman’s DNA was too degraded, he wasn’t sure about her genetic background, hair or eye color.

So Nilsson took an educated guess about her appearance. There were three large migration waves into ancient Scandinavia: During the first, hunter-gatherers with dark skin who tended to have blue eyes arrived between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago; the second wave included pale-skinned, dark-haired and brown-eyed farmers from further south who moved north about 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, when this woman was alive; and the third wave included the Yamnaya (also spelled Yamna) culture from modern-day Ukraine, who were a bit darker-skinned than the farmers and brought the art of metal making with them when they arrived about 3,500 years ago, making them the first Bronze Age culture in the region, Nilsson said.

Based on this information, Nilsson gave the woman brown hair and eyes, and light skin like the farmers’. Even so, the woman wasn’t necessarily a full-time farmer; she likely participated in a mix of hunting and gathering as well as agricultural practices, he said.

“We can’t say for sure whether she was living a nomadic life, if she was living the life of the early farmers; it’s impossible to say,” Nilsson said.

“But we have chosen to make the safest interpretation, which is she was both because, of course, there was a transition period of many hundreds of years when they left the old way of living.”

The Neolithic’s woman’s reconstructed clothes were made from moose and elk, boots from reindeer and beaver, and backpack from fox.
Archaeologists didn’t find any artifacts buried with the woman, but modern artists gave her reconstruction a bird claw necklace.
The skull of the Neolithic woman. It was scanned and 3D printed for the reconstruction project.
The Neolithic woman’s clothing was inspired by those from Indigenous Americans, Indigenous Siberians and Ötzi the Iceman mummy.

Fancy furs, Stone Age style

In the reconstruction, the woman from Lagmansören is dressed head to toe in fur and leather. This is the work of Helena Gjaerum, a Sweden-based independent archaeologist who uses Stone Age techniques for tanning leather. 

Before dressing the model, Gjaerum studied the ancient climate, landscape, vegetation, and animal life of Neolithic Lagmansören. Based on what she uncovered, she designed the woman’s clothes out of moose and elk, the shoes out of reindeer, beaver, and the backpack out of fox.

The woman likely stuffed hay inside the shoes for padding, noted Gjaerum, who took inspiration from clothing worn by Indigenous Americans and Indigenous Siberians, as well as the leather clothing of Özti the Iceman mummy, who lived about 5,300 years ago in the Italian Alps.

Preparing the clothes entailed hours of labor. Gjaerum, who acquired real animal remains, scraped the flesh off the skins and then put them in a river — a method that helps loosen the fur from the skin.

Next, she scraped off the fur and slathered on a solution made of moose brain, a fatty mixture that bonds with skin fibers. Without this mixture, the skin would stiffen and could easily rot if it got wet, she said.

The next several steps involved massaging, stretching and smoking the skins and then finally designing the clothing. Gjaerum’s young son, who was about the same height as the Stone Age woman, served as a helpful model, Gjaerum said.

She made the clothing as comfortable and practical as possible — for instance, by not putting a seam at the top of the shoulder, where water might seep in during rainy weather.

Often, modern people think of Stone Age humans as primitive, dressed in ugly, toga-like furs as in “The Far Side” comics. But Gjaerum challenged that perception. “I think it would be crazy to think she’d have primitive clothes,” Gjaerum told Live Science. “I wanted to make her dress like you could dress today” because you are both Homo sapiens.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Vatican Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece

Vatican Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece

Pope Francis will send back to Greece the three fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for two centuries, in the latest case of a Western museum bowing to demands for restitution of artifacts to their countries of origin.

Pope Francis meets Archbishop of Athens and leader of Greece’s Orthodox Church, Ieronymos II at the Orthodox archbishopric in Athens, Greece, on Dec. 4, 2021. Pope Francis has decided to send back to Greece the three fragments of Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for centuries, the Vatican announced Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. The Vatican termed the gesture a “donation” from the pope to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and all Greece, “as a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth.”
Vatican Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece
The marble head of a young man, a tiny fragment from the 2,500-year-old sculptured decoration of the Parthenon Temple on the ancient Acropolis, is displayed during a presentation to the press at the new Acropolis Museum in Athens on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. The Vatican announced, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008 that Pope Francis has decided to send back to Greece this and other two fragments of Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for two centuries.

In announcing the decision Friday, the Vatican termed the gesture a “donation” from Francis to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and all Greece, and said it was “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth.”

The return, which is expected to still take some time to execute, is likely to add further pressure on the British Museums, which has refused decades of appeals from Greece to return its much larger collection of Parthenon sculptures, which has been a centerpiece of the museum since 1816.

The 5th century B.C. sculptures are mostly remnants of a 160-meter-long (520-foot) frieze that ran around the outer walls of the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis, dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom. Much of the frieze and the temple’s other sculptural decoration was lost in a 17th-century bombardment, and about half the remaining works were removed in the early 19th century by a British diplomat, Lord Elgin.

Aside from the British Museums, fragments have ended up in museums around Europe, and recently a small museum in Sicily decided to return its lone fragment to Greece in a loan that Greek authorities hope will be extended indefinitely.

The Vatican’s three fragments include a head of a horse, a head of a boy and a bearded male head. The head of the boy had been loaned to Greece for a year in 2008.

Greece’s Culture Ministry said it welcomed the pope’s donation, which it said followed a request by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians.

The decision helps Greek efforts for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British Museum “and their reunification with those on display in the Acropolis Museum,” a ministry statement said. The Acropolis Museum, for its part, also welcomed Francis’ gesture.

The Vatican statement suggested the Holy See wanted to make clear that it’s donation was not a bilateral state-to-state return, but rather a religiously inspired donation from a pope to a primate.

The intent may be to avoid a precedent that could affect other priceless holdings in the Vatican Museums, amid broader demands from Indigenous groups and colonized countries for Western museums to return looted artifacts, and artworks and material culture obtained under questionable circumstances during colonial times.

In the case of the Vatican Museums, Indigenous groups from Canada have made clear they want the Holy See to return artifacts sent by Catholic missionaries to the Vatican for a 1925 exhibition and are now part of its ethnographic collection.

Jos van Beurden, who administers the “Restitution Matters” Facebook group that tracks the global restitution debate, suggested the use of the term “donation” for specifically religious purposes and “not a government to government affair” was deliberate and could inspire other groups to seek the return of items on similar grounds.

“Does this offer a chance to a claim of an Ethiopian diaspora group in the USA for the return of hundreds of ancient manuscripts looted from the Debre Libanos Monastery by the Italian fascist Enrico Ceruli during Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia?” he asked. “Or to the Ethiopian claim for eleven Tabots in the British Museums?”

He was referring to the 11 plaques that are a foundational part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and have been the subject of repeated appeals from Ethiopian patriarchs and others to the British Museum for restitution.

According to the Museum Association, the plaques were looted by the British in an 1868 battle but have never been displayed or photographed in recognition of their sanctity.

The British Museum recently pledged not to dismantle its Parthenon collection, following a report that the institution’s chairman had held secret talks with Greece’s prime minister over the return of the sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles.

The Parthenon was built between 447-432 B.C. and is considered the crowning work of classical architecture. The frieze depicted a procession in honor of Athena.

Francis last met with Ieronymos in 2021 in Athens where he issued an appeal for greater unity between Catholics and Orthodox. At the time, Francis “shamefully” acknowledged the “mistakes” that the Catholic Church had inflicted on others over the centuries, actions which he said “were marked by a thirst for advantage and power.”

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

The earliest known depiction of biblical heroines Jael and Deborah was discovered at a Jewish synagogue in Israel

The earliest known depiction of biblical heroines Jael and Deborah was discovered at a Jewish synagogue in Israel

The earliest known depiction of biblical heroines Jael and Deborah was discovered at a Jewish synagogue in Israel

The earliest known depiction of biblical heroines Jael and Deborah was discovered at a Jewish synagogue at Huqoq in Israel,

A team of specialists and students led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Jodi Magness recently returned to Israel’s Lower Galilee to continue unearthing nearly 1,600-year-old mosaics.

The team continues its 10th season of excavation this summer at a synagogue in the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq in Lower Galilee. Discoveries made this year include the first known depiction of the biblical heroines Deborah and Jael as described in the book of Judges.

This season, project director Magness, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of religious studies in Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences, and assistant director Dennis Mizzi of the University of Malta focused on the southwest section of the synagogue, which was built in the late fourth-early fifth century C.E.

The newly discovered mosaic panels depicting the heroines are made of local cut stone from Galilee and were found on the floor on the south end of the synagogue’s west aisle.

Fox eating grapes depicted in the Huqoq synagogue mosaic.

The story of Deborah, a judge, and prophet who helped Israelite general Barak defeat the Canaanite army, is found in the fourth chapter of the Book of Judges.

After the victory, the passage says, the Canaanite commander Sisera fled to the tent of Jael (Yael-a Kenite woman), where she drove a tent peg into his temple and killed him.

The uppermost register of the newly-discovered Huqoq mosaic shows Deborah under a palm tree, gazing at Barak, who is equipped with a shield. Only a small part of the middle register is preserved, which appears to show Sisera seated. The lowest register depicts Sisera lying deceased on the ground, bleeding from the head as Jael hammers a tent stake through his temple.

A fragmented Hebrew dedicatory inscription inside a wreath is also among the newly unearthed mosaics, which are flanked by panels measuring 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide and depicting two vases with budding vines. The vines form medallions that frame four animals eating clusters of grapes: a hare, a fox, a leopard, and a wild boar.

Mosaic depicting the construction of the Tower of Babel.

Sponsors of the project are UNC-Chapel Hill, Austin College, Baylor University, Brigham Young University, and the University of Toronto.

Students and staff from Carolina and the consortium schools participated in the dig. Financial support for the 2022 season was also provided by the National Geographic Society, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Kenan Charitable Trust, and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The mosaics have been removed from the site for conservation, and the excavated areas have been backfilled. Excavations are scheduled to continue in the summer of 2023.

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

Rishi Rajpopat, the Indian Ph.D. student at Cambridge, cracks 2,500-year-old ‘father of linguistics’ Panini code

Rishi Rajpopat, the Indian Ph.D. student at Cambridge, cracks 2,500-year-old ‘father of linguistics’ Panini code

A grammatical problem which has defeated Sanskrit scholars since the 5th Century BC has finally been solved by an Indian PhD student at the University of Cambridge, it emerged as his thesis was published on Thursday.

Rishi Rajpopat made the breakthrough by decoding a rule taught by Panini, known as the father of linguistics, and is now encapsulated in his thesis entitled ‘In Panini, We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Astadhyayi.’

According to the university, leading Sanskrit experts have described Rajpopat’s discovery as “revolutionary”.

Dr Rishi Rajpopat, whose PhD thesis cracks the remaining code of Pāṇini’s language machine (Rahil Rajpopat/ Cambridge University )

The 2,500-year-old algorithm decoded by him makes it possible, for the first time, to accurately use Panini’s so-called “language machine”.

Panini’s grammar, known as the Astadhyayi, relied on a system that functioned like an algorithm. Feed in the base and suffix of a word and it should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences through a step-by-step process.

However, two or more of Panini’s rules often apply simultaneously, resulting in conflicts. Panini taught a “metarule”, which is traditionally interpreted by scholars as meaning “in the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar’s serial order wins”. However, this often led to grammatically incorrect results.

Rajpopat rejected the traditional interpretation of the metarule. Instead, he argued that Panini meant that between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word respectively, Panini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side. Employing this interpretation, he found the Panini’s “language machine” produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.

Panini’s system is thought to have been written around 500 BC.

“I had a eureka moment in Cambridge,” recalls Rajpopat. “After nine months trying to crack this problem, I was almost ready to quit, I was getting nowhere.

So, I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer…. Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns started emerging, and it all started to make sense…,” said the 27-year-old scholar. It would take him another two and half years before he would get to the finish line.

“My student Rishi has cracked it – he has found an extraordinarily elegant solution to a problem which has perplexed scholars for centuries.

This discovery will revolutionise the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in the language is on the rise,” said professor Vincenzo Vergiani, Sanskrit professor and Rajpopat’s PhD supervisor. Sanskrit is an ancient and classical Indo-European language. It is spoken in India by an estimated 25,000 people today.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

4,000-Year-Old Toolkit Found Near Stonehenge Was Used for Goldwork, New Study Finds

4,000-Year-Old Toolkit Found Near Stonehenge Was Used for Goldwork, New Study Finds

Archaeologists determined that an ancient toolkit found near Stonehenge was used to make a variety of gold objects.

4,000-Year-Old Toolkit Found Near Stonehenge Was Used for Goldwork, New Study Finds
Microwear analysis showing gold traces on the surface of one of the goldworking tools.

According to new research published in the journal Antiquity, microscopic residue on the surface of the tools is ancient gold, revealing these stone-and-copper-alloy items were used as hammers and anvils, and to smooth the objects being crafted.

“This is a really exciting finding for our project,” said Rachel Crellin, lead author and archaeologist at the University of Leicester, in a statement. “What our work has revealed is the humble stone toolkit that was used to make gold objects thousands of years ago.”

Originally excavated in 1801, the toolkit was found in the Upton Lovell G2a burial which is thought to date to the Bronze Age, around 1850–1700 BCE. Marked by an earthen mound near Stonehenge, initial investigations revealed two individuals and a wide assortment of grave goods.

Grave goods from the Upton Lovell burial site are are on display at the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes.

One figure was placed sitting upright, with her head close to the top of the barrow, and buried with a fine shale arm ring and a necklace of polished shale beads. The other figure was wearing a ceremonial cloak, with pierced bone points as a necklace, thought to be a specialized costume.

Early speculation referred to the cloaked figure as a ‘Shaman’ who had special ritual significance, or an important and skilled craftsman. Now, researchers have discovered that the toolkit was used to make objects in which a core material—like jet, shale, amber, wood, or copper—was covered and decorated with a layer of gold sheet.

Processes in which the objects are thought to have been used involve making rib-and-furrow decorations, producing perforations, fitting the core object with the sheet-gold, and smoothing and polishing the finished objects.

Some of the tools were already ancient, making them thousands of years old by the time they were reused. There was even a complete battle axe, which was repurposed for metalworking.

“Such battle axes were far from the only smooth stones that could have been selected for these purposes,” the paper explains. “In intentionally repurposing these objects, their histories rubbed off on the materials they worked.”

Flint axes from Upton Lovell at different stages of use.

Researchers used a scanning electron microscope as well as an energy dispersive spectrometer to confirm their findings. The gold residue is present on five artifacts, where they found gold flecks on the surface as well as characteristic wear traces from the goldworking process.

The team additionally suggest that the bone points from the ‘shaman’s costume’ could have been used for goldworking.

“By exploring the use of materials through a technique called microwear analysis, that determines microscopic marks on objects, [we can] better understand how they were made and used,” said Oliver Harris, coauthor and University of Leicester archaeologist, in an email to ARTnews. “We have shown how the central stone is to the process of making gold, and how stones with certain properties and histories were preferentially selected to be part of this practice.”

According to the paper, “there is far more complexity here, in relations, histories, gestures and processes, than could ever be captured under the label ‘shaman’, ‘metalworker’ or ‘goldsmith’ … [our] analysis suggests that goldworking may be different from other forms of metal production and may not, from a Bronze Age perspective, have been considered to be a metal at all, but rather something with its own relational properties that were quite different from those that entwined copper and tin.”

The toolkit and associated finds are currently on view at the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

A 5,000-year-old large house has been discovered in China’s Yangshao Village

A 5,000-year-old large house has been discovered in China’s Yangshao Village

A 5,000-year-old large house has been discovered in China’s Yangshao Village

Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology archaeologists have excavated the ruins of house foundations dating back more than 5,000 years in the Yangshao Village site in Central China.

The country’s China.org.tr reports that the remains of a large building with rammed earth have been discovered, though to date back to the neolithic Yangshao Culture – which was active in the Yellow River basin as far back as 3000 BC.

It is the first time archaeologists have discovered house ruins at the Yangshao Village site in Mianchi county, which was first excavated in 1921. The fourth archaeological excavation at Yangshao Village started on August 22, 2020, and is still ongoing.

In addition to the foundations, which are estimated to cover over 130 square meters, archaeologists discovered trenches and various artifacts, including a jade axe, that provide information about the community that once inhabited the site.

Excavation is still ongoing, which means that more information about the prehistoric Yangshao people may be discovered in the future.

According to speculation, it dates from the late Yangshao Culture period, according to Li Shiwei, director of the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, who is in charge of the excavation site.

“This is the first time that large house ruins have been discovered since the excavation of the Yangshao Village site in 1921. The findings can provide new materials for studying the types, shapes and building techniques of houses during the Yangshao Culture period,” said Li Shiwei.

The findings show that the settlement in the Yangshao period had a large population, prosperous development, and complete defense facilities.

The Yangshao culture (Chinese: ; pinyin: Yngsháo wénhuà) was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively in northern China along the valleys of the Wei River and the middle Yellow River (Huanghe). The Yangshao culture, which dates from around 5000 BCE to 3000 BCE, is one of China’s earliest settled cultures.

Yangshao, the first excavated representative village of this culture, was discovered in Henan Province in 1921. The culture thrived primarily in Henan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi provinces. There are over a thousand Yangshao Culture sites, including the Banpo Site in Xian and Jiangzhai in Lintong County, Shanxi Province. Shanxi is considered the center of this culture because it has the most Yangshao sites.

While little is known about the Yangshao culture, information gleaned from archaeological excavations of tombs and tribal villages has provided a rudimentary picture of prehistoric life in China. Furthermore, the geometric paintings that adorn Neolithic vessels are some of the earliest evidence of the origins and evolution of Chinese calligraphic writing.

While these designs are purely abstract and do not constitute a written language, the patterns, motifs, and use of paint all contribute to our understanding of the intellectual and aesthetic environment that would eventually foster the creation of Chinese symbols.