ESTONIA, EUROPE, WORLD

A medieval cargo ship unexpectedly found during construction work in Estonia

A medieval cargo ship unexpectedly found during construction work in Estonia

Construction workers have found the battered remains of a 700-year-old ship under the streets of the Estonian capital of Tallinn. Buried approximately 5 feet (1.5 meters) underground, the remnants of the ship are made of oak and are just over 78 feet (24 m) long with a beam, the ship’s widest point, measuring about 29 feet (9 m) across.

A view of the medieval ship, from the bow, in the excavation pit.

“The original length of the ship was bigger since the stempost [the vertical timber at the bow] is missing and the bow of the ship is damaged,” Priit Lätti, a researcher at the Estonian Maritime Museum, told Live Science in an email.

“The ship was probably built at the beginning of the 14th century,” according to dendrochronological analysis, an examination of the tree rings found in the ship’s wooden remains, he said. The ship is, at first glance, very similar to other ships found in Europe from the same time period, he added.

Unearthed near Tallinn’s Old Harbor three weeks ago, the ship was a significant find for archaeologist Mihkel Tammet, who had been observing a construction project.

According to Lätti, when areas under heritage protection are being excavated, an archaeologist must be present. The Estonian Maritime Museum was notified of the ship’s discovery to help provide more information and record the find.

The ship’s sternpost

The ship was not buried very deep, and as Lätti told Live Science, it was filled with sand. It’s likely the sea gradually filled the boat over the centuries, as different layers of sand were visible, he said.

Since the discovery of the ship, there has been speculation that it is a Hanseatic cog(opens in new tab), a cargo ship used for trade by the Hanseatic League.

The league, a group of trade guilds from across Europe, dominated the seas between the 13th and 15th centuries. However, Lätti said it is too early in the excavation process to be able to accurately determine the origins of the ship.

“Very probably, it is a cargo ship,” he said. “Since we do not yet know the origin of the timbers (the dendrochronological analyses are still preliminary, so I do not want to mention exact dates or first ideas about the origin of the timber) it is hard to tell the origin of the vessel.” 

Researchers are also working to determine whether further artefacts found buried with the ship can be of use when determining the age of the boat. “Additional analyses have been taken; also the artefacts found aboard must be analysed to give more exact answers, Lätti added.

“At the moment, only the bow area of the ship is excavated; the cargo hold was relatively empty. Now the excavations move to the aft area of the ship, which may contain more finds.”

Other artefacts uncovered with the ship so far include a couple of wooden barrels, pottery, animal bones, some leather objects and textiles. The number of finds is expected to increase in the coming days as the aft part of the ship is excavated.

The ship’s cargo holds in the excavation pit.

The discovery of the ship in such a well-preserved condition is significant, as it will help historians and archaeologists learn more about shipbuilding and trade in the Middle Ages, as well as what life was like onboard these ships.

“For Tallinn as an old merchant town, finding something like this is an archaeological jackpot,” said Lätti, who specializes in studying harbours and shipwrecks. “The development of Tallinn is closely related to maritime trade, and while we know quite a lot about the merchants and merchandise, we still know relatively little about the ships they used.”

Ships similar to this one have been discovered in the past. For example, the Bremen cog(opens in new tab) was found in Germany in 1962, and a medieval cargo ship was uncovered in Tallinn in 2015 and is now housed in the Estonian Maritime Museum.

The future of this ship, after it has been excavated, is still under discussion. But the aim is to remove it from the construction site where it was found and house it in a controlled environment and preserve it. Lätti described this as a “huge task.” 

“The methods of transporting, preserving and conserving the ship are still discussed,” he said, “because it is a very complex operation, and we are dealing with a very valuable archaeological object.”

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Twin ‘grumpy mouth’ reliefs of Olmec contortionists discovered in Mexico

Twin ‘grumpy mouth’ reliefs of Olmec contortionists discovered in Mexico

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered two Olmec reliefs chiselled into large, circular stones that are thought to depict local rulers performing ritual contortion.

Twin 'grumpy mouth' reliefs of Olmec contortionists discovered in Mexico
Carved into limestone, the two reliefs depict rulers from the ancient Olmec civilization in what is now Mexico.

The twin pieces were found in Tenosique, a town located in the state of Tabasco, near Mexico’s southern tip, and are believed to feature rulers from the ancient Olmec civilization, whose name comes from the Aztec (Nahuatl) word “Ōlmēcatl,” which means “rubber people.”

The Olmec reigned between 1200 B.C. to 400 B.C. and are considered the first elaborate pre-Hispanic civilization in Mesoamerica(opens in new tab). Today, they’re best known for their sculptures of colossal heads.

Constructed of limestone, the massive 3D sculptures measure approximately 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) in diameter and weigh 1,543 pounds (700 kilograms) each.

The two carved monuments portray the faces of local rulers with their “grumpy mouth[s]” agape and their arms crossed, according to a translated statement. Each piece is punctuated by footprints, a diadem, corncobs, an Olmec cross and glyphs of jaguars, with the leaders’ open mouths alluding to the “roar of the jaguar.”

Researchers from the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico, part of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) Tabasco Center, the organization that recovered the pieces, noted that what’s most striking about the reliefs is the positioning of the figures’ mouths, since they’re carved as though they’re “ajaw.” This signals to archaeologists that the portraits, which date to between 900 B.C and 400 B.C., were that of important figureheads within the Olmec community. 

It’s possible that this style of Olmec carving evolved into the later Maya ajaw altars, according to the INAH statement. “The word ‘ajaw’ means ‘he who shouts,’ ‘he who sends’ [and] ‘the one who orders,’ and in these [later] Maya monuments the mouth stands out, a feature that must come from Olmec times, especially from these reliefs circulars of ‘contortionists’ that are portraits of local chiefs,” Carlos Arturo Giordano Sánchez, the director of the INAH Tabasco Center, said in the statement. Some of the Maya ajaw altars are found at the Caracol Maya archaeological site in Belize, “which tells us about the permanence of this theme for more than three centuries,” Giordano Sánchez said.

The newfound carvings look strikingly similar to five different reliefs of contortionists attributed to the Olmec that were found elsewhere in the region, including in Balancán and Villahermosa, two other cities in Tabasco; Ejido Emiliano Zapata, a town in the Mexican state of Jalisco; and in Tenosique.

Based on those similarities, the researchers believe that the portraits depict rulers performing ritual contortion. This practice involves “adopting a stance that reduces the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain to achieve a trance-like state,” Heritage Daily(opens in new tab) reported.

Doing so allegedly “gave them powers,” Tomás Pérez Suárez, an archaeologist at the Center for Mayan Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), said in the translated statement. 

He also said that he believes that the newfound reliefs originated from the Middle Usumacinta region bordered by the Chacamax River to the north and the mouth of the San Pedro River to the south.

The INAH first learned about the reliefs in 2019 after an anonymous tip reported their discovery on a property in Tabasco’s capital.

The sculptures will be housed at the Pomoná Site Museum in Tenosique, which counts the aforementioned Ejido Emiliano Zapata piece as part of its collection. 

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

A rare 400-year-old ship found in the German river is a stunningly preserved ‘time capsule’

A rare 400-year-old ship found in the German river is a stunningly preserved ‘time capsule’

Maritime archaeologists in northern Germany have discovered the wreckage of a 400-year-old cargo ship that “sank almost standing,” escaped decay from ravenous shipworms and still has the barrels of lime it was carrying for the stone-building industry centuries ago. 

A rare 400-year-old ship found in the German river is a stunningly preserved 'time capsule'
Divers have made 13 dives to the sunken vessel, totalling 464 minutes, to make a first report about the 400-year-old shipwreck.

The ship, a rare discovery, is from the Hanseatic period when a group of northern European trade guilds dominated the Baltic and North seas from the 13th to 17th centuries, Live Science previously reported. Wood quickly rots away underwater in this region, and few shipwrecks of this age have ever been found. But maritime archaeologists think the wreck survived beneath the waves because it was quickly engulfed and protected by a layer of fine mud carried there by the river Trave, which leads to the city of Lübeck about 5 miles (8 kilometres) inland.

The remains of the ship were first found in 2020 during a routine sonar survey by authorities of the navigable channel in the Trave. The vessel lies at a depth of about 36 feet (11 meters) in the predominantly saltwater outer stretch of the river, between Lübeck and the port of Travemünde at its mouth to the Baltic Sea.

The wrecked ship was between 66 to 82 feet (20 to 25 m) long and may have been a galliot, a single-masted cargo ship common during the Hanseatic period, Fritz Jürgens, the lead maritime archaeologist on the project and assistant chair of protohistory, medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Kiel University in Germany, told Live Science. At that time, the towns and guilds of northern Germany and elsewhere in Europe made up a successful bloc — the Hansa — that dominated trade throughout the Baltic and the North Sea.

The layer of river mud over the wreck may have prevented it from being colonized by Teredo navalis, a type of saltwater clam called “shipworm” that rapidly eats submerged wood, Jürgens said. The bivalve quickly destroys wooden wrecks in the western Baltic region, but it doesn’t live in the colder waters of the eastern Baltic; as a result, centuries-old wooden wrecks like the one in the Trave are almost never found in the west, he said.

Quicklime cargo

Maritime archaeologists think the wooden hull and cargo barrels of the ship were protected by a layer of mud from the Trave river against a destructive infestation of shipworm.

About 150 wooden barrels found almost intact on or near the wreck indicate that the ship was carrying a cargo of quicklime when it sank in the late 17th century. Quicklime is made by burning limestone and is a crucial ingredient for the mortar used in stonework. 

“The source for this would have been Scandinavia — in the middle of Sweden or in the north of Denmark,” Jürgens said. “We know that this cargo was coming from there, most likely to Lübeck, because northern Germany has no big sources of limestone.” 

Historical research may have pinpointed the date of the shipwreck as December 1680. A letter from that date in the Lübeck historical archives shows that the voight, or bailiff, of Travemünde asked an unknown recipient to recover the cargo of a galliot that had run aground in the river. That fits with what is known of the Trave shipwreck, Jürgens said, including the results of a dating technique called dendrochronology, which revealed that patterns of tree rings visible in its timbers were from trees felled in the 1650s.

It’s likely that the ship had been turning before its entry into Lübeck, when it ran aground on a shoal in the river — a shallow area that still exists today and still threatens ships that don’t know about it. It’s possible that 17th-century workers recovered some of the ships’ cargo, causing the ship to refloat; but the vessel soon sank due to leaks caused when it struck the shoal, he said.

The submerged wreck and its cargo have now been photographed in place by Christian Howe, a scientific diver based in Kiel, and the entire ship is expected to be raised from the riverbed over the next few years so that it doesn’t move again and present a danger to modern shipping in the region, Jürgens said.

Historic wreck

The ship may be a galliot, a single-masted cargo ship that was common in the Baltic Sea at the time it sank in about the second half of the 17th century.

Lübeck was famous for shipbuilding in the Hanseatic period, so it’s possible the ship was built there. But such vessels were common throughout the region at the time the ship sank in the Trave, so perhaps it was constructed elsewhere in Europe, said Manfred Schneider, the head of Lübeck’s archaeology department and a leader in the project to salvage the ship.

The wreck is notable for its remarkable state of preservation, not only due to the lack of infestation by shipworms and other marine organisms but also because of its weighty cargo.

“There are still about 70 barrels in their original location on the ship, and another 80 barrels in the immediate vicinity,” Schneider told Live Science in an email. “The ship, therefore, sank almost standing and did not capsize.” He added that archaeologists may uncover further archaeological finds in the sediment that fills the ship’s interior.

Raising the ship from the riverbed will give archaeologists a chance to fully investigate the hull and its construction, and perhaps identify its origin.

“The salvage will probably also uncover previously unknown parts of the wreck that are still hidden in the sediment,” Schneider said, such as rooms for the ship’s crew in the stern that may still hold everyday objects from the 17th century.

Although Lübeck was a centre for Baltic trade during the Hanseatic period, very few authentic maritime objects from that time had survived, Schneider said, so the discovery of almost an entire ship from this era is remarkable.

“We have something like a time capsule that transmits everything that was on board at that moment,” he said. “It throws a spotlight on the trade routes and transport options at the end of the Hanseatic period.”

ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

Freckled Woman with High Alcohol Tolerance Lived in Japan 3,800 Years Ago

Freckled Woman with High Alcohol Tolerance Lived in Japan 3,800 Years Ago

More than two decades after researchers discovered the 3,800-year-old remains of “Jomon woman” in Hokkaido, Japan, they’ve finally deciphered her genetic secrets.

Freckled Woman with High Alcohol Tolerance Lived in Japan 3,800 Years Ago
A facial reconstruction of the Jomon woman, who lived about 3,800 years ago in what is now northern Japan.

And it turns out, from that perspective, she looks very different from modern-day inhabitants of Japan.

The woman, who was elderly when she died, had a high tolerance for alcohol, unlike some modern Japanese people, a genetic analysis revealed. She also had moderately dark skin and eyes and an elevated chance of developing freckles.

Surprisingly, the ancient woman shared a gene variant with people who live in the Arctic, one that helps people digest high-fat foods. This variant is found in more than 70% of the Arctic population, but it’s absent elsewhere, said study first author Hideaki Kanzawa, a curator of anthropology at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. 

This variant provides further evidence that the Jomon people fished and hunted fatty sea and land animals, Kanzawa said.

“Hokkaido Jomon people engaged in [not only] hunting of … land animals, such as deer and boar, but also marine fishing and hunting of fur seal, Steller’s sea lions, sea lions, dolphins, salmon and trout,” Kanzawa told Live Science.

“In particular, many relics related to hunting of ocean animals have been excavated from the Funadomari site,” where the Jomon woman was found.

Who is Jomon woman?

Jomon women lived during the Joman period, also known as Japan’s Neolithic period, which lasted from about 10,500 B.C. to 300 B.C. Though she died more than three millennia ago — between 3,550 and 3,960 years ago, according to recent radiocarbon dating — researchers found her remains only in 1998, at the Funadomari shell mound on Rebun Island, off the northern coast of Hokkaido.

But Jomon woman’s genetics have remained a mystery all these years, prompting researchers to study her DNA, which they extracted from one of her molars.

Last year, the researchers released their preliminary results, which helped a forensic artist create a facial reconstruction of the woman, showing that she had dark, frizzy hair; brown eyes; and a smattering of freckles.

Her genes also showed that she was at high risk of developing solar lentigo, or darkened patches of skin if she spent too much time in the sun, so the artist included several dark spots on her face.

“These findings provided insights into the history and reconstructions of the ancient human-population structures in east Eurasia,” said Kanzawa, who was part of a larger team that included Naruya Saitou, a professor of population genetics at the National Institute of Genetics in Japan.

Now, with their study slated to be published in the next few weeks in The Anthropological Society of Nippon’s English-language journal, Kanzawa and his colleagues are sharing more of their results. Jomon woman’s DNA shows, for example, that the Jomon people split with Asian populations that lived on the Asian mainland between 38,000 and 18,000 years ago, he said.

It’s likely that the Jomon people lived in small hunter-gatherer groups, likely for about 50,000 years, Kanzawa noted. Moreover, the Jomon woman had wet earwax. That’s an interesting fact because the gene variant for dry earwax originated in northeastern Asia and today up to 95% of East Asians have dry earwax. (People with the dry earwax variant also lack a chemical that produces smelly armpits.)

Despite her differences from the modern Japanese population, Jomon woman is actually more closely related to today’s Japanese, Ulchi (the indigenous culture of eastern Russian), Korean, aboriginal Taiwanese and Philippine people than these populations are to the Han Chinese, Kanzawa said.

WORLD

Strange ‘alien’ holes were discovered on the ocean floor

Strange ‘alien’ holes were discovered on the ocean floor

Explorers have discovered a series of mysterious, “perfectly aligned” holes punched into the seafloor roughly 1.6 miles (2.6 kilometres) beneath the ocean surface, and they have no idea who or what made them.

Strange 'alien' holes were discovered on the ocean floor
The holes appear as a closely aligned, regularly repeating pattern. Tiny piles of sediment are piled around them.

The strange holes were spotted by the crew of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Okeanos Explorer vessel as they investigated the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — a mostly unexplored region of the seafloor that is part of the world’s largest mountain range. 

The holes form a straight line and appear at regularly repeating distances, and they are surrounded by tiny mounds of sediment.

This isn’t the first time that holes have been spotted in the area; two marine scientists from the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service also spotted mysterious hollows in the ocean floor during a dive in 2004.

“These holes have been previously reported from the region, but their origin remains a mystery,” the NOAA researchers wrote on Facebook.

“While they look almost human-made, the little piles of sediment around the holes make them seem like they were excavated by… something.”

In 2004, scientists proposed that an organism living in or sifting through the seafloor’s sediment made the holes, but because no one has seen such creatures make them, their exact origins are unknown.

Public speculation under the NOAA post’s Facebook page ranged widely — from cracks in the floor’s surface made by escaping gas to underwater human craft digging for treasure, to ants, aliens and even starfish doing cartwheels.

The unresolved mystery is reminiscent of an underwater “yellow brick road” to Atlantis that ocean explorers discovered on top of an underwater mountain near Hawaii in May.

Scientists explained that discovery — they suspected that heating and cooling of the seafloor across multiple volcanic eruptions created a strange path.

What is creating the holes, on the other hand, may take a little longer to figure out.

The researchers will continue to explore the region until September as part of the Voyage to the Ridge 2022 expedition, which aims to map out the region’s coral reefs and sponge habitats alongside studying the region’s hydrothermal vents and its fracture and rift zones. Maybe if they’re lucky, they might just catch the hole-maker in the act.

ASIA, JORDAN, WORLD

Metal books found in Jordan cave could change the view of Biblical history

Metal books found in Jordan cave could change the view of Biblical history

The discovery of seventy ancient metal books in a cave in Jordan is said to have the possibility of unlocking some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity.

Metal books found in Jordan cave could change the view of Biblical history

The tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, have left academics divided over their authenticity, but they say that if they are verified, they could prove as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.

The pages are not much bigger than a credit card, and on them are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Adding to the intrigue, many of the books are sealed, prompting academics to speculate they are actually the lost collection of codices mentioned in the Bible’s Book Of Revelation.

The books were discovered five years ago in a cave in a remote part of Jordan to which Christian refugees are known to have fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD.

Important documents from the same period have previously been found there, and initial metallurgical tests indicate that some of the books could date from the first century AD.

This estimate is based on the form of corrosion, which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially. If the dating were verified, the books would be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St Paul.

David Elkington, a British scholar of ancient religious history and archaeology, and one of the few to have examined the books says they could be “the major discovery of Christian history”. “It is a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early saints of the Church,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

“It is vital that the collection can be recovered intact and secured in the best possible circumstances, both for the benefit of its owners and for a potentially fascinated international audience,” he said. The books’ whereabouts are also a mystery, as after a Jordanian Bedouin discovered them, an Israeli Bedouin, who is said to have illegally smuggled them across the border into Israel, where they remain, acquired the lot.

The Jordanian Government is now working at the highest levels to repatriate and safeguard the collection. Philip Davies, emeritus professor of biblical studies at Sheffield University, said there was powerful evidence that the books have a Christian origin in plates cast into a picture map of the holy city of Jerusalem.

“As soon as I saw that, I was dumbstruck. That struck me as so obviously a Christian image,” he said. “There is a cross in the foreground, and behind it is what has to be the tomb of Jesus, a small building with an opening, and behind that the walls of the city.

“There are walls depicted on other pages of these books too and they almost certainly refer to Jerusalem. It is a Christian crucifixion taking place outside the city walls.

“The possibility of a Hebrew-Christian origin is certainly suggested by the imagery and, if so, these codices are likely to bring dramatic new light to our understanding of a very significant but so far little understood period of history,” he stated.

The British team leading the work on the discovery fears that the present Israeli “keeper” may be looking to sell some of the books onto the black market, or worse – destroy them. But the man who holds the books denies the charge and claims they have been in his family for 100 years.

“The Book of Revelation tells of a sealed book that was opened only by the Messiah,” Dr Margaret Barker, a former president of the Society for Old Testament Study, said. “Other texts from the period tell of sealed books of wisdom and of a secret tradition passed on by Jesus to his closest disciples. That is the context for this discovery,” she stated.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

7,800-year-old female figurine discovered in Ulucak Höyük in western Turkey

7,800-year-old female figurine discovered in Ulucak Höyük in western Turkey

7,800-year-old female figurine discovered in Ulucak Höyük in western Turkey
The 7,800-year-old female figurine found in Ulucak Mound, Izmir, Türkiye.

A clay statuette of a female figure dating back 7,800 years were unearthed during the Ulucak Mound excavation in the Kemalpaşa district of the western province of Izmir.

Professor Özlem Çevik from the Department of Protohistory and Pre-Asian Archeology at Trakya University’s Faculty of Letters, who is leading the excavations in Ulucak, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that the mound is the site of the first farmer village settlement of Izmir.

“It is among the oldest settlements in Western Anatolia, and we have unearthed findings dating back 8,850 years in the mound,” Çevik said.

Archaeologists work in Ulucak Mound, Izmir, Türkiye, Aug. 8, 2022. (AA)

Noting that the team discovered that the Ulucak Mound had been inhabited continuously for 45 generations with villages established one on top of the other, Çevik added: “During the excavations of a house this year, we found a whole female figurine made of clay.

We have previously found similar statuettes but they were usually broken.

The latest figurine is important for us as it is the third figurine found in an intact form here.”

According to Çevik, these kinds of statuettes were previously thought to depict gods and goddesses, however, they were also found in the dumpsite of the ancient mound which leads researchers to believe that they were not sacred pieces.

Archaeologists think that the figurines may be related to important events like births, deaths or the harvest and may be used to increase abundance and fertility or for witchcraft.

7,800-year-old female figurine discovered in Ulucak Höyük in western Turkey
The 7,800-year-old female figurine found in Ulucak Mound, Izmir, Türkiye.

The Ulucak Mound, located 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Izmir, features cultural artifacts from the early Neolithic period to the late Roman-early Byzantine era.

The site was discovered by British archaeologist David French in the 1960s but it remained unexplored until excavations began in the middle of 1990s.

The very first excavation period between 1995 and 2008 was headed by archaeologist Altan Çilingiroğlu and the Izmir Archaeological Museum.

Since 2009, Çevik of Trakya University has been directing the studies at the archaeological site.

The excavations in Ulucak have already produced valuable insights into the emergence and development of prehistoric cultures in western Türkiye.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A sleeve button set from the 1780s discovered at Colonial Michilimackinac

A sleeve button set from the 1780s discovered at Colonial Michilimackinac

A set of joined sleeve buttons, believed to be from the 1780s, was recently discovered on Colonial Michilimackinac.

Sleeve button

According to a press release from Mackinac State Historic Parks, archaeologists continue to uncover incredible artefacts late into the 2022 archaeological field season.

“We are still finding interesting artifacts,” said Dr. Lynn Evans, Mackinac State Historic Parks Curator of Archaeology, in a press release.

“This set of joined sleeve buttons, like a modern cufflink, was found in the 1781 demolition rubble layer.

The green glass paste ‘stones’ are set in brass.”

The current excavation site is House E of the Southeast Rowhouse at Colonial Michilimackinac.

The house, according to Mackinac State Historic Parks, was first occupied by Charles Henri Desjardins de Rupallay de Gonneville.

Other finds this season have included a red earthenware bowl, a one-ounce brass weight marked with a crown over GR, for the king, a second brass weight from a set of nesting apothecary weights, stamped with a fleur-de-lis, and a King’s 8th button.

The dig at Michilimackinac began back in 1959; it’s reportedly one of the longest-running archaeology programs in North America.

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