New Thoughts on Fish Consumption in Iron Age Britain
A woman who lived in Orkney 1,800 years ago had a diet that was unusually rich in seafood, say archaeologists. Very little evidence has been found of fish being consumed in Iron Age Britain, despite the abundance of marine life, according to the UHI Archaeology Institute.
Possible reasons for this may have included social restrictions or taboos around eating seafood.
The bone appeared to have been carefully placed inside a container made from a whale vertebra, and studies of the tooth have revealed the woman had eaten “fish suppers” all through her life.
Archaeologists suggest she may have had a special role or status and have nicknamed her The Elder.
The jawbone was found inside a vessel made from a whale vertebra
A tooth from the woman’s jawbone was analysed
The UHI Archaeology Institute has been working with the University of York and the British Geological Survey’s National Environmental Isotope Facility in analysing the tooth.
The studies have involved looking at layers of dentine laid down over time as the tooth grew, and of dietary isotopes – evidence of foods – embedded in those layers.
Archaeologists said the tooth was sampled multiple times when the woman was estimated to have been three, seven, nine, 11, 13 and 15 years old.
The results showed seafood had been a fairly consistent part of her diet during her childhood.
Earlier analysis had already shown she was eating fish towards the end of her life.
Martin Carruthers, site director of The Cairns excavations and a lecturer in archaeology at the UHI Archaeology Institute, said: “It’s remarkable to be able to reach back and solve a problem like the question over her diet, which was previously unclear.
“Now we can see that the marine foodstuffs that she ate were after all a normal part of life for her, and this allows us to move on with the further investigation of the mystery over the apparent lack of seafood in Iron Age society at this time.”
76 child sacrifice victims with their hearts ripped out found in Peru excavation
The remains of dozens of child sacrifice victims have been unearthed in Peru, and many more are likely waiting to be found, archaeologists say.
Seventy-six child sacrifices were found recently as part of ongoing excavations near Huanchaco, Peru.
The skeletons show evidence that the children’s hearts were removed, said Gabriel Prieto, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida who directs the excavations at Pampa La Cruz, the site near Huanchaco where the remains were found.
All 76 skeletons had a “transversal clean cut across the sternum,” Prieto said, which suggests that “they possibly opened up the rib cage and then they possibly extracted the heart.”
“They were buried on an extended position, with the feet toward the east,” Prieto told Live Science in an email. “They were buried on top of an artificial mound.” It’s not clear why the sacrifices were located in this position in this place. “We thought that the area, and particularly the mound, was free of Chimu child sacrifices, but we found the opposite,” Prieto said.
Excavations have been underway at Pampa La Cruz for several years. So far, 323 child sacrifice victims have been found at the site, and another 137 child and three adult sacrifice victims were found at a nearby site called Las Llamas. These remains also show that the children’s hearts had been removed.
The child sacrifices were buried on top of this artificial mound seen here.
Based on the archaeological finds found so far, there are likely many more child sacrifices waiting to be discovered near Huanchaco, Prieto said. “It could be more [than] 1,000 victims, as crazy as it sounds,” he said.
Radiocarbon dating needs to be done on the 76 newly uncovered skeletons, but previously found victims at Pampa La Cruz dated to between A.D. 1100 and 1200, Prieto said. Around this time, the Chimu people, known for their fine metalwork and the city Chan Chan, flourished in the area.
Why the Chimu would have engaged in child sacrifice in this area on such a large scale is unclear, Prieto said, but the Chimu also built an artificial irrigation system and new agricultural fields nearby, and some of the sacrifices may have been done to “sanctify” this agricultural system.
People who lived in Huanchaco during the first millennium A.D. also practiced human sacrifice in the area, said Richard Sutter, an anthropology professor at Purdue University Fort Wayne, who is part of the team working at Huanchaco. This means that the Chimu may have been carrying on a long-running practice in the area, Sutter said in an email.
There are likely many more child sacrifices waiting to be found in the area.
Why were children sacrificed?
Scholars who were not involved with the excavations told Live Science that the finds at Huanchaco are important. While other cases of child sacrifices are known from the Andean area, “what is striking here is the scale, of course,” Peter Eeckhout, a professor of pre-Columbian art and archaeology at the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, told Live Science in an email.
Why the child sacrifices were carried out is difficult to tell, Eeckhout said, noting that writing was not used in Peru at this time and thus there are no written records detailing the youngsters’ deaths. Problems with climate or environmental changes that may have disrupted agriculture in the area could have played a role in the sacrifice, Eeckhout said.
“It’s an amazing site with the potential to help us understand much better what was going on at this time in prehistory,” Catherine Gaither, an independent bioarchaeologist, told Live Science in an email. “I think the reason for the sacrifices was likely related in some way to a cultural response to environmental changes that brought about significant cultural upheaval. There may have been associations with environmental events like an El Niño, for example,” a climate cycle in which warm water in the Pacific Ocean shifts closer to South America causing changes in the weather, she said.
The team is requesting permission from Peru’s Ministry of Culture to transport some samples abroad so that the specimens can undergo testing to determine more exact dates.
Archaeologists unearth 1,300-year-old statue of Mayan God in Mexico
Archaeologists have unearthed an approximately 1,300-year-old statue representing the head of the Mayan god in southeast Mexico.
Archaeologists were excavating in the Mayan city-state of Palenque, near Mexico’s Chiapas Usumacinta River. The artefact found symbolizes the birth of the maize plant with the first rays of the sun. The work was placed in an east-west direction.
Originally thought to be just a head, the statue was placed on a tripod by the Mayans and placed in an east-west position to symbolize the rise of the corn plant with the first rays of the Sun.
Similar iconography has been found at sites in the Tikal region of the Late Period (600-850 AD) and Early Classical Period (150-600 AD), and in manuscripts in which the god appears with the head severed in Dresden and Madrid.
Also known as Lakamha (“Flat-Earth-River”) in Itza, Palenque is mostly known for having some of the best architecture, sculpture, roof scallops and bas-reliefs in the world of Maya civilization.
While removing the fill in a corridor connecting House B and House F in the palace complex, researchers uncovered a vessel with a severed plaster head in a small pond.
The teams believe that this setting was to mimic the entrance to the Maya underworld. Crews believe that this setting was to mimic the entrance to the Mayan civilization’s underworld.
The Mayan civilization believed that the universe was divided into the sky, earth, and the underworld. Venerated places such as caves and sinkholes served as a portal or gateway to Xibalba, an underground kingdom ruled by the Mayan death gods and their helpers.
“The statue was part of an offering placed over a pond in an aquatic environment that mimicked the god’s entrance to the underworld,” says the National Institute of Anthropology and History in a statement.
“This discovery allows us to better understand how the ancient Palenque Mayas relived the legendary transition of the birth, death, and resurrection of the Mayan god,” said Arnoldo Gonzaalez Cruz, INAH Chiapas Center researcher says.
Because the sculpture was found in damp conditions, it was put through a slow drying process before being restored.
An 8,500-year-old human skeleton and musical instrument were found in the garden of the apartment
An approximately 8,500-year-old human skeleton and a three-hole musical instrument were found during an excavation in the garden of an apartment in the Bahçelievler District of Bilecik.
This place, which is likely to be one of the first points of human settlements in Western Anatolia, was discovered for the first time when a resident of Bilecik reported some ceramic pieces found here to the Archeology Museum.
As a result of two years of work, 11 human skeletons estimated to be 8,500 years old and musical instruments with three holes from the same period were found in the garden of the apartment.
Archaeologists also found grains such as lentils, barley and vetch, as well as varieties of wheat used to make bread and pasta.
Stating that this year’s most important find is a three-hole wind instrument, Fidan added: “We also found religious objects such as ornamented boxes made of terracotta, human-shaped amulets and animal figures during the excavations. In addition, a skull we found in the courtyard gives us information about the religious life of that period.”
8,500 years old 3-hole musical instruments found in Bilecik
Fidan said, “We think that this musical instrument, which has 3 holes, is a part of a musical instrument that makes sounds and changes sound notes. He also stated that the tool can be used thanks to an appliqué mouthpiece attached to this piece.
The head of the excavation, Assoc. ErkanFidan said, “The human skeletons found in the excavation area belong to the oldest adolescent people in the Neolithic Age in Western Anatolia.”
Fidan stated that “the human communities that came here 9 thousand years ago and stayed here for about a thousand years, unearthed the first villages.” In addition, Fidan said that people living in the region who know how to do agriculture also domesticated animals.
8,500 years old 3-hole musical instruments found in Bilecik
Fidan also noted that they found other human skeletons in the excavation area and that these skeletons were examined in detail at the Hacettepe University Anthropology Department Laboratory.
He also stated that they aim to learn a lot about these people in the near future, about their age, gender, illness and the food they eat.
The finds found in the excavation will be exhibited in the Bilecik Archeology Museum after the restoration and research works are completed.
An almost one-metre-long sword estimated to be around a thousand years old has been found in southern Poland. Historians say it is one of the most valuable discoveries in the region in a long time.
The sword was found only 30 centimetres below ground level near the village of Lewin Klodzki, close to the border with the Czech Republic, by Konrad Oczkowski who is exploring the area with the permission of archaeologists.
No remains were found alongside the sword to indicate who its owner was, and neither were any other metal objects.
Mr. Konrad Oczkowski explored the site with our permission and with all the permits – said archaeologist Marek Kowalski from the Wałbrzych branch of the Lower Silesian Monuments Conservation Department. – On Monday morning, he informed us about the possible discovery of an archaeological monument.
Mr Konrad was very professional. Since he was not an archaeologist, after removing the layer of soil and realizing it was a sword head, he covered and masked the monument with earth, marked the find’s location in a familiar way, and notified the conservation services. On Tuesday, July 19, archaeological services emerged at the site and picked up medieval weapons from the ground.
The sword is in good condition. However, it was deposited directly in the ground, so it was partially corroded due to oxygen ingress. The shaft is separated from the rest, and the blade is cracked at the blade.
The sword was found in a place that restorers do not want to disclose yet. The fact is that there was a settlement in the area before 1945, but its origins date back only to the 17th century.
“Such a sword is priceless,” said archaeologist Marek Kowalski, quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
“It had the value of one or even several villages. So it undoubtedly belonged to some knight. Such things were not simply abandoned.”
It is not yet known whether the sword ended up underground in the 11th century or later. However, the expert who inspected the weapon, Dr Lech Marek from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Wrocław, has no doubts regarding the sword’s age, said Kowalski.
“Identical swords have been excavated at Ostrów Lednicki, where one of the most important castles of the Piast state was,” Kowalski added, referring to the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland, which ruled Poland until the 14th century.
The first Piasts, probably of West Slavic and Lechitic tribe descent, appeared around 940 in the territory of Greater Poland (Wielkopolska).
The archaeologists speculate that there may have been a fortress near the site where the sword was found. In the 11th century, Bolesław the Brave, the first king of Poland, who was in conflict with the Czechs, ordered his son, Mieszko II, to invade Bohemia, today the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic.
The sword will now be subjected to a historical analysis, examined for metallography using CT scans in an attempt to find inscriptions despite the corroded surface, Kowalski told Gazeta Wyborcza.
This might help the researchers to determine where the sword was made and who was its potential owner.
Species found to have existed since the Paleozoic era was found in the depths of the ocean near Japan. It has been understood that life forms that have lived on the ocean floor for millions of years existed much longer than human history, according to the fossil record, and that they managed to survive by living out of sight.
The discovery of 273-million-year-old ‘living fossils’ was made by the discovery of two sea creatures that were found to have symbiotic life between them, 100 meters below the sea surface, near Japan’s Honshu and Shikoku islands.
According to the fossil record, it was determined that the skeletons have not been changed at all.
The researchers completed their non-invasive research using a DNA barcode to identify the species.
The researchers, who discovered that these newly discovered specimens did not change the structure of the shellfish skeletons, said that this provides a possible clue as to why they have disappeared from the fossil record for so long.
They discovered that fossils of soft-structured organisms were so rare that they could be overlooked.
“These specimens represent the first detailed records and examinations of a recent in vivo relationship between a crinoid (host) and an epibiont,” the researchers said.
Crinoids and corals shared a long, symbiotic relationship millions of years ago; Here, corals used crinoids to climb higher than the seafloor, gaining access to more food found in ocean currents.
Giant 66-Million-Year-Old Marine Reptile Found in Morocco
Researchers in Morocco have discovered a huge new mosasaur fossil called Thalassotitan aatrox that fills the super-hunter niche. With huge jaws and teeth like those of killer whales, the Thalassotitan preyed on other marine reptiles, plesiosaurs, sea turtles, and other mosasaurs.
It is known that at the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago, sea monsters really existed. While dinosaurs grew up on land, the seas were dominated by mosasaurs, giant marine reptiles.
A researcher with a mosasaur fossil.
Mosasaurs weren’t dinosaurs, they were huge marine reptiles that grew up to 12 meters long. They are known as distant relatives of modern iguanas and monitor lizards.
Mosasaurs looked like a Komodo dragons, with fins instead of legs and a shark-like tail fin. Mosasaurs became larger and more specialized during the last 25 million years of the Cretaceous, taking up niches once populated by marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs.
Some have evolved to eat tiny prey such as fish and squid. Others ate ammonites and oysters. The newly discovered mosasaur, named Thalassotitan atrox, evolved to prey on all other marine reptiles.
The remains of the new species were excavated in Morocco, about an hour from Casablanca. Here, towards the end of the Cretaceous, the Atlantic had flooded northern Africa.
The nutrient-rich waters rising from the depths feed the plankton. They feed the small fish, they feed the bigger fish. These large fish preyed upon mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. These marine reptiles become food for the giant, carnivorous Thalassotitan.
Thalassotitan had a gigantic 1.4-metre-long skull, reaching nearly 9 meters in length, the size of a killer whale. While most mosasaurs had long jaws and fine teeth for catching fish, Thalassotitan had short, broad, and large, conical teeth like an orca. These allowed it to catch and shred large prey.
These adaptations suggest that Thalassotitan was a super predator that stood at the top of the food chain. The giant mosasaur occupied the same ecological niche as modern-day killer whales and great white sharks.
Thalassotitan’s teeth were often broken and worn, but eating fish does not cause this type of tooth wear. Thus, the giant mosasaur appears to have attacked other marine reptiles, breaking its teeth while biting and smashing their bones. Some teeth were so badly damaged that they were crushed almost to the root.
Size comparison of Thalassotitan atrox.
Possible remains of Thalassotitan’s victims have been discovered. Fossils from the same deposits bear acid-induced damage. Among these, strangely damaged fossils were found large predatory fish, a sea turtle, a half-metre-long plesiosaur head, and the jaws and skulls of at least three different mosasaur species. They must have been digested in Thalassotitan’s stomach before spitting out his bones.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Nick Longrich says, “This is circumstantial evidence. It is unlikely that we can say with certainty which animal species ate all these other mosasaurs. However, we have the bones of marine reptiles killed and eaten by a large predators. And in the same place, we find Thalassotitan, a species that fits the profile of the killer – a mosasaur specialized for preying on other marine reptiles. This is probably not a coincidence.”
Thalassotitan poses a threat to everything in the oceans, including other Thalassotitans. The huge mosasaurs have wounds inflicted in fierce combat with other mosasaurs. Other mosasaurs bore similar injuries, but these wounds were extremely common on Thalassotitan, suggesting frequent, intense fights over feeding grounds or mates.
Dr. Nick Longrich says, “The Thalassotitan is known to be an incredible, frightening animal.” Imagine a mix of killer whale, T. rex, great white shark and Komodo Dragon.”
Distribution map of Thalassotitan.
The newly discovered mosasaur lived in the last million years of the Age of Dinosaurs, a contemporary of animals like T. rex and Triceratops. Recent discoveries of mosasaurs in Morocco show that mosasaurs were not in decline before the asteroid impact that triggered the Cretaceous mass extinction.
Professor Nour-Eddine Jalil, one of the authors of the article, from the Paris Museum of Natural History, said: “The phosphate fossils from Morocco provide a unique example of paleobiodiversity at the end of the Cretaceous.” They describe how life was rich and diverse just before the end of the ‘dinosaur age’, when animals had to specialize in order to gain a foothold in their ecosystems. Thalassotitan completes the picture by taking on the role of mega-hunter at the top of the food chain.”
Longrich said, “There is still much to be done. Morocco has one of the most diverse marine fauna known from the Cretaceous. We are beginning to understand the diversity and biology of mosasaurs today.”
Ancient Glaciers on Mars Flowed So Slowly, We Can Barely Tell They Flowed at All
A range of ice features exists on the Red Planet today.
On Earth, shifts in our climate have caused glaciers to advance and recede throughout our geological history (known as glacial and inter-glacial periods).
The movement of these glaciers has carved features on the surface, including U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, and fjords. These features are missing on Mars, leading scientists to conclude that any glaciers on its surface in the distant past were stationary.
However, new research by a team of the US and French planetary scientists suggests that Martian glaciers did move more slowly than those on Earth. The research was conducted by a team of geologists and planetary scientists from the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) at Arizona State University (ASU) and the Laboratorie du Planétologie et Géosciences (LPG) at Nantes Université in France.
The study was led by Anna Grau Galofre, a 2018 Exploration Fellow with the SESE (currently at the LPG), who was a postdoc at ASU when it was conducted.
The study, titled “Valley Networks and the Record of Glaciation on Ancient Mars,” recently appeared in the Geophysical Research Letters.
According to the USGS definition, a glacier is “a large, perennial accumulation of crystalline ice, snow, rock, sediment, and often liquid water that originates on land and moves downslope under the influence of its own weight and gravity.”
The key word here is moves, resulting from meltwater gathering below the ice sheet and lubricating its passage downwards across the landscape. On Earth, glaciers have advanced and regularly retreated for eons, leaving boulders and debris in their wake and carving features into the surface.
For the sake of their study, Grau Galofre and her colleagues modelled how Martian gravity would affect the feedback between how fast an ice sheet moves and how water drains below it. Faster water drainage would increase friction between the rock and ice, leaving under-ice channels that would likely persist over time.
The absence of these U-shaped valleys means that ice sheets on Mars likely moved and eroded the ground under them at extremely slow rates compared to what occurs on Earth.
However, scientists have found other geologic traces that suggest that there was glacial activity on Mars in the past. These include long, narrow, winding ridges composed of stratified sand and gravel (eskers) and other features that could be the result of subglacial channels.
Said Grau Galofre in a recent AGUNews press release:
“Ice is incredibly non-linear. The feedback relating to glacial motion, glacial drainage, and glacial erosion would result in fundamentally different landscapes related to the presence of water under former ice sheets on Earth and Mars.
Whereas on Earth you would get drumlins, lineations, scouring marks and moraines, on Mars you would tend to get channels and esker ridges under an ice sheet of exactly the same characteristics.”
To determine if Mars experienced glacial activity in the past, Grau Galofre and her colleagues modelled the dynamics of two ice sheets on Earth and Mars that had the same thickness, temperature, and subglacial water availability.
They then adapted the physical framework and ice flow dynamics that describe water drainage under Earth’s sheets to Martian conditions. From this, they learned how subglacial drainage would evolve on Mars, what effects this would have on the velocity at which glaciers slid across the landscape, and the erosion this would cause.
These findings demonstrate how glacial ice on Mars would drain meltwater much more efficiently than glaciers on Earth. This would largely prevent lubrication at the base of the ice sheets, which would lead to faster sliding rates and enhanced glacial-driven erosion.
In short, their study demonstrated that lineated landforms on Earth associated with glacial activity would not have had time to develop on Mars.
Said Grau Galofre:
“Going from an early Mars with presence of surface liquid water, extensive ice sheets and volcanism into the global cryosphere that Mars currently is, the interaction between ice masses and basal water must have occurred at some point.
It is just very hard to believe that throughout 4 billion years of planetary history, Mars never developed the conditions to grow ice sheets with presence of subglacial water, since it is a planet with extensive water inventory, large topographic variations, presence of both liquid and frozen water, volcanism, [and is] situated further from the Sun than Earth.”
In addition to explaining why Mars lacks certain glacial features, the work also has implications for the possibility of life on Mars and whether that life could survive the transition to the global cryosphere we see today.
According to the authors, an ice sheet could provide a steady water supply, protection, and stability to any subglacial bodies of water where life could have emerged. They would also protect against solar and cosmic radiation (in the absence of a magnetic field) and insulation against extreme variations in temperature.
These findings are part of a growing body of evidence that life existed on Mars and survived long enough to leave evidence of its existence behind. It also indicates that missions like Curiosity and Perseverance, which will be joined by the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover and other robotic explorers in the near future, are searching in the right places.
Where water once flowed in the presence of slowly-retreating glaciers, microbial life forms that emerged when Mars was warm and wet (ca. 4 billion years ago) might have persisted as the planet became colder and desiccated. These findings may also bolster speculation that as this transition progressed and much of Mars’ surface water retreated underground, potential life on the surface followed.
As such, future missions investigating Mars’ extensive deposits of aqueous minerals (recently mapped out by the ESA) could be the ones that finally find evidence of present-day life on Mars!
