1,700-Year-Old Roman Villa Complex Identified By Archaeologists Using Google Earth Images in England
Using Google Earth images, archaeologists identified a Roman villa complex—complete with a bathhouse and central heating system—in Kent, England last month.
Excavation of the Roman villa complex in Kent, England, 2022.
Crop markings captured by Google outlined the linear features of the site.
The wall foundations of the main villa, in addition to a pillar from the partially intact hypocaust, or Roman central heating system, were excavated by the Kent Archaeological Society with volunteers from the local community.
The hypocaust system would have been used to circulate heat through the walls and floors of an adjacent bathhouse.
“There are many villas spread across Kent, but the fact there’s a hypocaust system remaining is rare.
Operating a hypocaust was expensive, requiring a constant supply of fuels – firewood – and a workforce to operate it,” site director Richard Taylor told local publication KentOnline.
The presence of this kind of system suggests that the inhabitants would have been high-status farmers, as a hypocaust is typically limited to wealthy villas and public villas.
Additionally uncovered were several artefacts such as an amphora-shaped belt adornment dating to ca. 375 C.E., a small Roman-British key, two 4th-century C.E. coins, pottery, and wall plaster from the main villa.
After dating these objects, the team estimates that the villa dates to the 3rd or 4th century C.E.; these Roman-British farmers, however, would not have been the first residents in the area.
The nearby site Coldrum Long Barrow dates to roughly 3900 B.C.E., indicating that the land was likely being farmed for thousands of years prior to the villa’s construction.
“This suggests a continuity of settlement in the area that goes back c.5000 years, which is not surprising given its idyllic location and agricultural potential,” Taylor continued. “The villa is like just one episode in a much greater time frame.”
The stela was found in Uxmal, a Maya city founded around A.D. 700.
In the archaeological site of Uxmal in the Yucatán peninsula, a Maya stela depicting a god and a goddess has been discovered by a technical team headed by the archaeologist José Huchim Herrera. The monument could represent the duality between life and death.
The director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History INAH, Diego Prieto, announced during AMLO’s Thursday press conference the finding of the Maya stela, which he said “is a commemorative dual stela because it is carved on both sides.”
The north-facing side of the monument features the figure of a goddess with big eyes, a bare chest, and barbels at the corner of the mouth, Prieto said.
The imagery likely represents death, as such depictions were common in the Puuc and Chenes cultural regions in the southern Yucatán peninsula.
The woman depicted is also holding a quetzal bird in her left hand and wears a pectoral decoration with three rows of pearls, bracelets with pearl details and a long skirt.
An INAH graphic highlighting features found on the north-facing side of the stela.
On the south-facing side, Prieto continued, the stela shows the image of a god with a wide-brimmed headdress adorned with feathers and an owl’s head, as well as bracelets, loincloth, and leg bandages.
The man wears a cape and holds a cane in his left hand and a bundle of some kind in his right hand.
The stela was discovered as part of the Program for the Improvement of Archeological Sites (Promeza), which undertakes archaeological projects along the route of the Maya Train.
The director of INAH said that “the importance of the discovery lies in the fact that it was found ‘in situ,’” meaning in the same place the Maya left it: the sunken patio of the ancient city of Uxmal.
Located 62 kilometers south of Mérida, the city of Uxmal is part of the Puuc Route (a collection of five ancient Maya sites in Yucatán) and was founded in A.D. 700.
Uxmal was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Denmark and Greenland, working with another colleague from Australia, has found that early humans living in Greenland ate a much more varied diet than previously believed. The study is published in Nature Human Behavior.
Scientists studying the history of Greenland have often wondered how early humans could have survived in such a cold climate. Prior research has shown that there have been four major migrations to Greenland: The Saqqaq, the Dorset, the Norse and the Thule—only the Thule became permanent residents.
The first group, the Saqqaq people, arrived approximately 4,500 years ago and remained in Greenland until a strong cooling period drove them away after 1,700 years.
Prior research efforts have suggested they ate fish, seals and perhaps even some types of whales, despite their limited toolset.
In this new effort, the researchers took a closer look at the diet of the Saqqaq and the diets of the other groups that followed them—their work involved conducting a DNA analysis of bone fragments collected from “kitchen middens,” a term used in Greenland to describe mounds of bones left behind by humans as they were discarded after meals.
In studying approximately 2,500 bone shards, the researchers found they were able to identify 42 species of creatures eaten by early humans, many of which came as a surprise.
The team found, for example, DNA from an extinct species of reindeer—one that was much smaller than those that live in Greenland today. They also found evidence of multiple types of whales: fin, sperm, narwhal and bowhead.
Bowheads were the most prevalent, which, the researchers note, makes sense because they are relatively easy to kill. In all, the researchers found evidence of 20 mammal species, nine kinds of fish (including a surprising number that was quite small, suggesting the use of nets) and 13 types of birds.
The DNA evidence reveals not just the types of creatures that were captured and eaten by early people, the researchers note, but also sheds light on the technical know-how of those who succeeded in hunting them.
An 11,100-year-old trap proves people lived in Alaska 1,000 years earlier than believed
The weir was found as part of a project organized by the Sealaska Heritage Institute and SUNFISH Inc. to explore submerged caves in southeastern Alaska “to seek evidence of early human occupation.” A SUNFISH autonomous underwater vehicle was used in the project. Photo Jill Heinerth, Stone Aerospace
Remains of an elaborate stone fish trap have been discovered on the seafloor off Southeast Alaska, and scientists say it proves Indigenous people occupied the region 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.
Known as a fish weir, the ancient trap dates back about 11,100 years, the Sealaska Heritage Institute reported in a news release. That makes it likely “the oldest stone fish weir ever found in the world … and it is the first one ever confirmed underwater in North America,” scientists said.
It was discovered over the summer as part of a project funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration to search seafloor caves for evidence of early human occupation, according to the release.
The trap sits about 170 feet below the surface of Shakan Bay, on the west side of Prince of Wales Island, officials told McClatchy News. It takes the shape of five to six “semi-circular structures” that are up to 6 feet wide. Time has worn the walls down to about 1 foot in height, the institute said.
“Likely the rocks were piled much higher 11,100 years ago. … People would have maintained the weir seasonally by restacking rocks and adding more rocks and possibly wooden stakes,” the institute said.
Such traps were typically built close to shore, in spots that would have been covered at high tide. However, the change in seafloor levels has left the weir “over 2 km (1.2 miles) from the closest modern shoreline.”
“It further substantiates the great antiquity of Native people in Southeast Alaska,” said anthropologist Rosita Worl of the Sealaska Heritage Institute. “It also demonstrates that Native people had acquired knowledge about salmon behaviour and migrations, then developed the technology to harvest a significant number of salmon.”
[Image: Image from a remotely operated vehicle of semi-circular stacked stones on the seafloor, part of a larger weir (fish trap) complex. Image courtesy of Dr. Kelly Monteleone, Our Submerged Past.]
Sonar evidence of a structure at the site was first recorded in 2010, but “funding constraints” prevented experts from confirming their theories until this year, the institute said. A robotic underwater craft was used to investigate the structure, piloted by archaeologist Kelly Monteleone at the University of Calgary.
She reports “the entire vessel was bouncing with excitement” when it was confirmed to be a weir in May. “It wasn’t just me that was convinced (in 2010), but the burden of proof was on me,” Menteleone told McClatchy News.
“Other archaeologists and locals were extremely supportive based on the sonar. But, as my dissertation advisor taught me, I had to be sure before it became an archaeological site, i.e. before we were ‘sure’ it was actually there. So for the last 12 years, this location has been a ‘potential’ weir.”
Examples of ancient fish weirs have been found around the world, and often employed the use of pile stones, reeds and/or wooden posts, experts say. They were often built as “low arced walls” across coastal gullies. “During high tide, the fish would swim over the stone walls, and as the tide ebbed, the fish would be trapped behind them, allowing fishers to catch them with nets, spears and other means,” the institute says. Other weirs have been found in Southeast Alaska, but the oldest dated to only around 5,740 years ago, the institute reports.
The age of the weir in Shakan Bay was established “based on sea level reconstruction,” officials said. The world believes it is the work of people who had been in the region long enough to develop sophisticated skills. “It would have taken time for our people to learn enough about the environment and fish behaviour to develop the technology to make the weir and to fish it successfully,” she said in the release.
NOAA Ocean Exploration was a primary financial backer of the project, and it reports the team will return to Southeast Alaska next summer to continue exploring submerged caves and rock shelters using a SUNFISH autonomous underwater vehicle.
Black Death immunity came at a cost to modern-day health
Using DNA from the excavated remains of plague victims, including those buried in a London cemetery from 1348–1349, and from people who died earlier and later, researchers searched for evidence of how the Black Death pushed the immune system to evolve.
A genetic variant that appears to have boosted medieval Europeans’ ability to survive the Black Death centuries ago may contribute — albeit in a small way — to an inflammatory disease afflicting people today.
Researchers used DNA collected from centuries-old remains to discern the fingerprints that the bubonic plague during the Black Death left on Europeans’ immune systems.
This devastating wave of disease tended to spare those who possessed a variant of a gene known as ERAP2, causing it to become more common, researchers report on October 19 in Nature. That variant is already known to scientists for slightly increasing the odds of developing Crohn’s disease, in which errant inflammation harms the digestive system.
The results show “how these studies on ancient DNA can help actually understand diseases even now,” says Mihai Netea, an infectious diseases specialist at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Netherlands, who was not involved with the study. “And the trade-off is also very clear.”
Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, bubonic plague once killed 60 per cent of those infected (SN: 6/15/22). In the ancient world, it caused successive waves of misery, the most devastating of which was the Black Death, often dated from 1346 to 1350, an episode thought to have wiped out at least 25 million people — about a third or more of the European population.
By sparing individuals whose immune systems bear certain traits, pathogens such as Y. pestis have shaped the evolution of the human immune system. Studies are teasing out the ways the massive winnowing of the plague altered Europeans’ immune-related genetics.
In this most recent study, population geneticist Luis Barreiro of the University of Chicago and colleagues collected samples containing DNA from the remains of 516 people in London and Denmark who died between 1000 and 1800, including those buried during the Black Death. The researchers examined stretches of DNA for immune-related genes and areas associated with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
Researchers collected DNA samples from burial sites in London, including the East Smithfield plague pits (shown here), and in Denmark.
Within those regions, the researchers identified four locations on chromosomes where they saw strong evidence of genetic changes that appeared to have been driven by the Black Death. In follow-up work, one change stood out: an increase in the frequency of a variant of ERAP2.
When infected with Y. pestis, immune cells from people with this version of ERAP2 more effectively killed the bacteria than cells lacking the variant. Studies of modern populations have linked that same variant to Crohn’s disease.
While the researchers calculate that the ERAP2 variant improved the odds of surviving the Black Death by as much as 40 per cent, it only slightly increases the risk for Crohn’s disease.
For complex disorders like Crohn’s, “you require probably hundreds, sometimes thousands of genetic variants to actually increase your risk in a significant manner,” Barreiro says.
For some time now, researchers in the field have theorized that adaptations that helped our ancestors fortify their immune systems against infectious diseases can contribute to excessive, damaging immune activity.
Likewise, this latest discovery suggests that genetic changes that have amped up the human immune response in the past, empowering it to better fight off ancient infections, can come at a cost. “If you turn the heat too much, that leads to disease,” Barreiro says.
Wreckage of 17th-Century Swedish Warship Identified
A diver approaches Äpplet’s wreck. Hansson said: ‘With Äpplet, we can add another key piece of the puzzle in the development of Swedish shipbuilding.’
Swedish maritime archaeologists have discovered the long-lost sister ship of the 17th-century warship Vasa, which sank on its maiden voyage, the Swedish Museum of Wrecks has said.
Launched in 1629, Äpplet (the Apple) was built by the same shipbuilder as the famed 69-metre Vasa, which was carrying 64 cannons when it sank on its maiden voyage outside Beckholmen, in the capital, Stockholm.
“Our pulses raced when we saw how similar the wreck was to Vasa,” said Jim Hansson, a maritime archaeologist at the museum.
Hansson said the construction and the dimensions seemed “very familiar”, raising hopes it could be one of Vasa’s sister ships. While parts of the vessel’s sides had fallen off, the hull was preserved up to the lower gundeck, and the parts that had dropped showed gunports on two levels.
A diver approaches the wreck. While parts of the ship’s sides had fallen off, the hull was preserved up to the lower gundeck.
The huge shipwreck was discovered in December 2021 in a strait off the island of Vaxholm, just outside Stockholm, according to the museum. A more thorough survey was carried out in the spring of 2022, which revealed details that had previously been seen only on Vasa.
The museum said technical details as well as measurements and wood samples confirmed that it was indeed Äpplet.
In 2019, the museum reported the discovery of two other warships in the same area.
Archaeologists at the time believed that one of them could have been Äpplet, but further investigations showed that those vessels were in fact two medium-sized warships from 1648 named Apollo and Maria.
“With Äpplet, we can add another key piece of the puzzle in the development of Swedish shipbuilding,” Hansson said, adding that this enabled researchers to study the differences between Äpplet and Vasa.
Named after the house of Vasa, the royal dynasty at the time, Vasa was meant to serve as a symbol of Sweden’s military might but capsized after sailing just over 1,000 metres.
It was salvaged in 1961 and is on display at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, one of Sweden’s most popular tourist spots.
Three other ships were ordered from the same shipwright: Äpplet, Kronan (the Crown) and Scepter, and unlike their predecessor, they served in the Swedish navy and participated in naval battles.
The ships are believed to have been sunk on purpose after they were decommissioned, serving as underwater spike strips to snag enemy vessels.
Rare 2,700-Year-Old Stone Carvings Discovered in Iraq
An Iraqi worker excavates a rock-carving relief recently found at the Mashki Gate, one of the monumental gates to the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, on the outskirts of what is today the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Archaeologists in Iraq have unearthed 2,700-year-old stone carvings that were chiselled into a previously undiscovered section of the Mashki Gate, an iconic structure in what was once the ancient Assyrian capital city of Nineveh.
The eight intricately carved marble bas-reliefs, which depict war scenes, grapevines, palm trees and other motifs, were found in what is now Mosul, during a project to restore the gate after Islamic State group militants destroyed it.
Experts believe that the decorative gate dates back to King Sennacherib, who ruled the Assyrian empire from 705 B.C. to 681 B.C., according to a statement from the Iraqi Council of Antiquities and Heritage.
During his reign, King Sennacherib moved the Assyrian capital to Nineveh where he became well known for his vast military campaigns, according to BBC News.
“We believe that these carvings were moved from the palace of Sennacherib and reused by the grandson of the king to renovate the gate of Mashki and to enlarge the guard room,” Fadel Mohammed Khodr, head of the Iraqi archaeological team, told Al Jazeera.
Because much of the gate was buried underground due to the way it was oriented during its original construction, the only portions that archaeologists could salvage were under the soil.
“Only the part buried underground has retained its carvings,” Khodr said.
In 2016, militants from IS (also called ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) destroyed the iconic gate with a bulldozer.
The Swiss-based International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas is working with Iraqi authorities as well as archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania and Mosul University on the restoration of the gate.
Archaeologists Just Unearthed 10,500-Year-Old Human Remains In A German Bog
Archaeologists think this was a temporary campsite on the shore of an ancient lake that has now silted up; it was used for roasting hazelnuts and for spearing fish, and the bones were probably from someone who died nearby.
Archaeologists in northern Germany have unearthed 10,000-year-old cremated bones at a Stone Age lakeside campsite that was once used for spearing fish and roasting hazelnuts, major food sources for groups of hunter-gatherers at that time.
The site is the earliest known burial in northern Germany, and the discovery marks the first time human remains have been found at Duvensee bog in the Schleswig-Holstein region, where dozens of campsites from the Mesolithic era or Middle Stone Age (roughly between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago) have been found.
Hazelnuts were a big attraction in the area because Mesolithic people could gather and roast them, Harald Lübke, an archaeologist at the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, an agency of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation, told Live Science.
The campsites changed over time, the research shows. “In the beginning, we have only small hazelnut roasting hearths, and in the later sites, they become much bigger” — possibly a consequence of hazel trees becoming more widespread as the environment changed.
Archaeologists think Duvensee was a lake at that time, and that Mesolithic campsites on islands and the shore were used by hunter-gatherers who visited there in the fall to harvest hazelnuts.
The burial was found during excavations earlier this month at a site first identified in the late 1980s by archaeologist Klaus Bokelmann and his students, who found worked flints there not during a formal excavation, but during a barbecue at a house on the edge of a nearby village, Lübke said.
“Because the sausages were not ready, Bokelmann told his students that if they found anything [in the bog nearby], then he would give them a bottle of Champagne,” he said. “And when they came back, they had a lot of flint artefacts.”
The cremated bones date from about 10,500 years ago, during the Mesolithic era. They are the first human remains found at any of the Mesolithic sites at the Duvensee bog.
Ancient lake
The burial site is near at least six Mesolithic campsites, which would have been on the shores of the ancient lake at Duvensee, Lübke said.
The first sites investigated by Bokelmann in the 1980s were on islands that would have been near the western shore of the lake, which has completely silted up over the last 8,000 years or so, and formed a peat bog, called a “moor” in Germany.
Archaeologists have discovered mats made of bark for sitting on the damp soil, pieces of worked flint, and the remains of many Mesolithic fireplaces for roasting hazelnuts, but they haven’t unearthed any burials at the island sites.
“Maybe they didn’t bury people on the islands but only at the sites on the lake border, which seem to have had a different kind of function,” Lübke said.
Unlike during the later Mesolithic era, when specific areas were set aside for the burial of the dead, at this time it seemed the dead were buried near where they died, he said. Significantly, the body was cremated before its burial at the Duvensee site, like other burials of approximately the same age near Hammelev in southern Denmark, which is about 120 miles (195 kilometres) to the north.
Only pieces of the largest bones were left after the cremation, and it’s not clear if they were wrapped in hiding or bark before they were buried. In any case, “burning the body seems to be a central part of burial rituals at this time,” Lübke said.
The site where the cremated bones were found was identified in the 1980s when fragments of worked flints were found there, but it wasn’t excavated until this summer.
Changing landscape
As well as roasting hazelnuts and burning bodies — both of which are activities utilizing fire — Mesolithic people used the lakeside campgrounds for spearing fish, according to the discovery of several bone points crafted for that purpose that were found at the site.
Flint fragments also have been found throughout the area, although flint doesn’t occur naturally there, suggesting that Mesolithic people repaired their tools and hunting weapons in this place during the annual hazelnut harvest in the fall, Lübke said.
The Duvensee bog is among the most important archaeological regions in northern Europe; dozens of Mesolithic sites have been found there since 1923, and most of them since the 1980s.
The Mesolithic sites at Duvensee are about the same age as the Mesolithic site at Star Carr in North Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, and some of the artifacts found there are very similar, Lübke said.
From that time until about 8,000 years ago, the Schleswig-Holstein region and Britain were connected by a now-submerged region called Doggerland, and it’s likely that Mesolithic groups would have shared technologies, he said.
The researchers now plan to carry out further excavations at the site of the Mesolithic burial, to determine what other activities took place there. Ulf Ickerodt, head of Schleswig-Holstein’s State Archaeology Department, said the latest find at Duvensee is of global significance.
“It speaks to the long tradition of archaeological research in Schleswig-Holstein in the expiration of moors and wetlands,” he told Live Science in an email. “The present find advances itself and the landscape around it to something spectacular.”
But he noted that the preservation of organic finds in the Duvensee region is threatened by climatic changes that could result in heavy rain and flooding or dry periods.
Both types of changes could threaten archaeological features in the area, so archaeologists are working to recover any finds and to develop strategies for better managing the area in the face of a changing climate, Ickerodt said.
