‘Cursed’ Mummies From El-Mezawaa Necropolis Restored
A team from Egypt’s Mummies Conservation Project has finished restoring a group of seven mummies in the El-Muzawaa necropolis in Dakhla oasis, completing the first phase of the project, Gharib Sonbol, head of Ancient Egyptian restoration projects at the Ministry of Antiquities, told Ahram Online.
The restoration of Al-Muzawaa necropolis mummies came within the framework of the project, which was launched three years ago by the ministry to preserve and maintain all mummies stored in Egyptian storehouses.
Aymen Ashmawi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the ministry, explains that the project started with the conservation of mummies in the Mostafa Kamel gallery storehouses in Alexandria and at the Alexandria National Museum, as well as those in the Kom Ushim stores in Fayum.
According to Sonbol, the second phase of the project will begin shortly and will involve the restoration of several more mummies.
He explained that during the recently completed work, the team noted that two mummies have “screaming” faces, a term used to describe mummies with open mouths.
The hands of a third mummy were bound with rope.
“This is not the typical form of mummification, but it indicates that those people were cursed by the god or the priests during their lifetime,” Sonbol said.
He continued that the project offers a great opportunity for restorers to learn more about the death and life of those mummified people.
The ancient Egyptian mummy of a young girl is first with a bandaged wound
Scientists found the first recorded example of a bandaged wound on a mummified body, which could offer more insight into ancient medical practices. The finding was published in the International Journal of Paleopathology, a peer-reviewed journal.
Scientists have found the first example of a bandaged wound on a mummified body from Ancient Egypt, pictured here next to a scan showing the bandage.
The researchers said they discovered the bandages on the remains of a young girl, aged no more than four years, who died about 2,000 years ago. The dressing wrapped a wound that showed signs of infection, the study said.
“It gives us clues about how they [ancient Egyptians] treated such infections or abscesses during their lifetime,” Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzona, Italy, and an author of the study, told Insider.
The mummy was thought to be taken from the “Tomb of Aline” in the Faiyum Oasis, located southwest of Cairo, the study said.
Location of the Faiyum Oasis, Egypt.
The finding had come as a surprise to the scientists, who didn’t set out looking for the bandages.
“It was really exciting because we didn’t expect it,” Zink said. “It was never described before.”
A rare glimpse into medical history
Ancient Egyptians are thought to have had an adept understanding of medical practices.
They wouldn’t have known things we would now take for granted, like how a heart functions, how microbes cause infection, or how rogue cells cause cancer — but they did have a fairly good idea of how to treat symptoms of disease, Zink said.
“We know from other evidence, like papyrus, that they had a good experience of treating wounds and injuries,” said Zink.
So it’s surprising that these types of bandages have never been seen in a mummy before, he said.
In this case, Zink said, the bandages were spotted while the scientists carried out routine CT scans of mummies, as can be seen in the scans below and annotated with the full-lined arrow.
The wound appeared to have been infected when she died, as the scans showed signs of “pus,” Zink said. These signs of infection are marked by the dotted arrows in the scans below.
A side view of the mummy’s foot is seen in a CT scan.
A cross-section of the mummy’s legs is shown.
“It’s very likely that they applied some specific herbs or ointment to treat the inflammation of this area,” which further analysis could identify, Zink said.
Zink said he wanted to get samples from the area to understand what caused the infection and how people at the time treated it.
But that could entail unwrapping the mummy, which Zink said he was reluctant to do. Another option would be to collect a sample using a biopsy needle, he said.
The mummy of the child, seen with a portrait of the girl on its front and gilded buttons decorating the wrappings.
The mystery of the missing bandages unfurls
Zink says there was no clear explanation why, in this particular case, the bandages were left in place.
“The question is whether it was just left in place and it remained despite the embalming process or whether they placed it,” he said, referring to the embalmers.
Wound dressings typically did not survive the mummification process. But it’s possible the embalmers added the bandage on the body after the girl’s death.
Ancient Egyptians believed that the mummified body should be as perfect as possible for life after death, Zink said: “Maybe they tried somehow to continue the healing process for the afterlife.”
As to why other such examples of bandaging had not been spotted before, it is plausible that scientists had simply failed to spot them until now, or mistaken them for other mummy wrappings. Zink now hopes that more examples of mummy wrappings can be uncovered.
“There are always some surprises when we study mummies. I have now studied, I don’t know how many mummies in my scientific career, but there’s always something new,” he said.
16th-Century E. coli Sample Extracted from Italian Mummy
Researchers studied the mummified remains of an Italian nobleman. He died in 1586, from what is thought to be chronic gallbladder inflammation from gallstones. Division of Paleopathology of the University of Pisa
E. coli, short for Escherichia coli, has been among the most thoroughly studied bacteria since it was discovered in the 19th century, but researchers are only starting to understand its evolutionary history.
Now, for the first time, scientists have extracted the genetic code of a 400-year-old version of the pathogen from an Italian mummy.
In a study published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, an international team of researchers analyzed the mummified remains of an Italian nobleman from the Renaissance period, whose well-preserved body was recovered along with other nobles in Naples, Italy, in 1983.
Giovani d’Avalos — the individual studied — was 48 when he died in 1586, from what is thought to be chronic gallbladder inflammation from gallstones.
“It was so stirring to be able to type this ancient E. coli,” Erick Denamur, who led the French research team that collaborated on the study, said in a statement.
While the genome was unique, Denamur said it was evolutionarily similar to bacteria that still cause gallstones today.
George Long, who co-authored the new study, identified and extracted the genetic code of E. coli from mummified remains.
While most strains of E. coli are harmless, some result in serious infections and make humans sick. But unlike smallpox, an infection with outward signs on the human body, like red spots on the skin, and E. coli infection is characterized by stomach problems and is not visible to the human eye.
“When we were examining these remains, there was no evidence to say this man had E. coli,” George Long, a graduate student at McMaster University and lead author of the new study, said in a press release. “No one knew what it was.”
Colorized 2006 scanning electron microscope image of E. coli bacteria.
“We were able to identify what was an opportunistic pathogen, dig down to the functions of the genome, and provide guidelines to aid researchers who may be exploring other, hidden pathogens,” Long said.
Long and the rest of the team hope understanding the genome of an ancestor to the modern version of E. coli will help future scientists unravel how the bacteria evolved over time.
The Guadeloupe Woman: A Human Skeleton Dating Back 28 Million Years
In 1810 the British seized the French Island of Guadeloupe and sent a large stone slab back to England containing a skeleton of a headless and footless woman. This particular skeleton has become the object of controversy regarding the age of the skeleton and the Creation debate. We will discuss this skeleton and add to this debate.
We came across this oddity when reading the website Bad Archaelogy.wordpress.com written by Keith Fitzpatrick Matthews, an English archaeologist. Frankly, his precision and attention to specific detail regarding the skeleton were refreshing even though they demonstrated a traditional and narrow perspective. We understand that science must be rigorous.
We also understand that it is necessary for science to disprove various theories in order to get to an accurate and truthful assessment of any object, artefact, or skeleton. However, narrowness and rigid adherence to traditional methodologies do not guarantee correctness. Since science, itself, is an exercise in probabilistic truth; it can’t guarantee certainty.
So, what do we have? Well, we have a skeleton found in a slab of rock one mile long with an unknown date of origin. Matthews states that the original investigator declared the stone to be a kind of sandstone made up of a concretion of calcareous sand. Well, so far so good. Additionally, Matthews tells us that there is a graveyard near the site of the skeleton’s excavation began at the time of Columbus’ discovery of the island in the Caribbean in 1493.
Therefore, he believes this skeleton is not of Miocene age, 28 million to 5 million years old, but of a recent date, possibly in the 15th century.
Now, this skeleton may indeed be a 15th-century skeleton. However, it is not proven to be so. It still could be of a much older age even 28 million years old.
This skeleton’s age may not be “discredited” at all because of the probabilistic nature of science and the fact that a modern age has not been proven either. To properly determine its age one would have to examine the geology of the matrix surrounding the skeleton, examine the skeleton, itself, and properly study the geology of the island of Guadeloupe. To the best of my knowledge, none of these things has been done. So, there is a real lack of evidence on the side of traditional “mainline” archaeology to support a claim of a recent, 15th century, the age for this skeleton.
Now, can we find any other evidence to support a claim of an older age? Yes! First, the skeleton was embedded in rock. This is a process that takes some time. Second, we can consider a new technique, one that I have pioneered, that is the use of plate tectonics – the movement of the continental plates.
If we do this we arrive at an unexpected surprise. Guadeloupe, as with all the islands of the West Indies rests on the Caribbean plate and neither on North America nor South American plates.
This means if we extend the location of Guadeloupe backward in time we find that at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 66 million years ago, it was located south to southwest of the Yucatan.
With the meteorite impact that killed the dinosaurs, a huge tidal wave of 1100 feet in height flooded all of Mexico and the surrounding area and could have carried the bodies of individuals to Guadeloupe.
A closer look at the eastern side of the island shows an indentation that could have been caused by this tidal wave. Of course, additional geological research is needed to confirm this.
So, we claim that the skeleton has not been discredited until further research is done. Furthermore, the fact of the Caribbean plate movements due to place Guadeloupe much closer to the Yucatan opens the door to the possibility that the skeleton maybe not be 28 million years old but 66 million years old. The question is still open.
Author’s Note: There is an impact crater in the Chesapeake Bay in the state of Virginia that is 35 million years old. The crater is 53 miles wide and fractured the Earth to a depth of between 6 to 12 miles. This impact could have resulted in a massive tidal wave that carried the Guadeloupe Woman to her present resting place.
44,000-Year-Old Cave Painting Could Be the Earliest Known Depiction of Hunting
A 44,000-year-old cave painting of a hunting scene that involves humans and animals might be the oldest recorded story. It was discovered, by a group of archaeologists from Griffith University, Australia, in a cave on the Indonesian island Sulawesi.
Researchers think this mural might be the oldest rock art ever painted — the first sign of the ability of human being’s to paint, but also the earliest proof of our relationship with the spiritual or supernatural.
The painting in the cave depicts a scene where a group of part-human, part animal-like figures are hunting large animals that look a lot like pigs found in Sulawesi, along with a species of small-bodied buffalo called the ‘anoa’. Human beings with heads of animals seem to be carrying spears or ropes to help in their hunt.
The animals in the rock art that is being hunted by the half-human, half-animals beings.
Half-animal, half-human figures
The “human” figures in rock art, dubbed “therianthropes” are human figures with animal characteristics. These types of figures have shown up in cultures all around the world — from 17,000-year-old paintings of bird-headed human beings being charged by a bison in France’s Lascaux caves to a 40,000-year-old carved figure called “the Lion Man” in Germany.
“The hunters represented in the ancient rock art panel at Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 are simple figures with human-like bodies, but they have been depicted with heads or other body parts like those from birds, reptiles, and other faunal species endemic to Sulawesi,” Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a rock art expert and PhD student in Griffith University, said in a statement.
This depiction of therianthropes may be the oldest evidence of the human ability to “imagine the existence of supernatural beings, a cornerstone of religious experience,” which means that they might have begun to have a semblance of understanding of religion or spiritual ideas.
“The images of therianthropes at Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 may also represent the earliest evidence for our capacity to conceive of things that do not exist in the natural world, a basic concept that underpins modern religion,” Adam Brumm, an archaeologist who was part of the study said.
“Early Indonesians were creating art that may have expressed spiritual thinking about the special bond between humans and animals long before the first art was made in Europe, where it has often been assumed the roots of modern religious culture can be traced.”
There is a handprint in red, at the left end of the mural that acts as a signature of the artist.
Cave art at a possible sacred site
The cave itself, researchers think, might have been a sacred site. It is not easily accessible, what with it being perched on a clifftop 20 meters above the valley floor — it would have required some climbing.
“Accessing it requires climbing, and this is not an occupation site. So people were going in there for another reason,” Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist part of this study told Ars Technica in an interview.
There was no evidence of the cave being used as a living place. There was no trace of the usual debris of human life—stone tools, discarded bones, and cooking fires—anywhere in the cave or in the much larger chamber beneath it.
The entrance of the cave is 20 meters above the valley.
The cave, which was given the name “Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4” when it was unearthed in 2017, is one of the hundreds of caves in the Maros-Pangkep limestone-rich region of South Sulawesi in Indonesia. In an interview with Nature, Brumm said, “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I mean, we’ve seen hundreds of rock art sites in this region, but we’ve never seen anything like a hunting scene.”
To confirm the art was the oldest, the group of archaeologists carried out dating tests by calcite build-up on the painting. The researchers were able to determine that calcite build-up on one pig began forming at least 43,900 years ago. The build-up on the two buffaloes is older than 40,900 years. The rock art previously considered to be the oldest was found in sites in Europe, and dated back to between 14,000 to 21,000 years ago.
A wide view of the entire painting, with annotations.
Archaeological findings like these are growing important in our understanding of humankind’s roots and evolution. There’s a fear this rock art might soon be lost altogether because of deterioration. The art is peeling and they do not know what is causing it.
“It would be a tragedy if these exceptionally old artworks should disappear in our own lifetime, but it is happening,” Oktaviana said.
“We need to understand why this globally significant rock art is deteriorating – now.”
‘Rare and significant’ brooch found at site linked to KING ARTHUR
A 1,500-year-old brooch has been found at the site linked to King Arthur
Archaeologists stumbled across the “rare and significant” piece of jewellery and hailed it as the first evidence that the area was home to the rich and powerful during the time. The Romano-British brooch was discovered in a field at St Mabyn, Cornwall, less than a mile from Castle Killibury hill fort, previously identified as the origin of Arthur’s Camelot.
The discovery has now raised the prospect that the brooch might once have belonged to his queen, Guinevere.
The hill fort is today known as Castle Killibury and has not previously yielded much interest after being ploughed for centuries.
The brooch was found in a meadow known as Chapelfield, where developers are now seeking planning permission to build 14 houses.
The piece of jewellery is made of a copper alloy and archaeologists think it dates from the 5th or 6th century – around the time a real King Arthur might have lived.
The trench where the brooch was found in St Mabyn
Although many sites claim to be associated with Arthur, what makes the Castle Killibury hill fort of potential significance is that the connection was first suggested by Welsh writers.
Usually, claims are made to serve more parochial interests.
Romano-British copper alloy brooches signify that the people who lived here had some importance
The artefact is currently undergoing recording and conservation at the Royal Cornwall Museum.
The owners of the brooch, who also own the field where it was found, live in Malaysia.
But the publicly-available archaeological report attached to Cornwall Council’s planning documents says: “The brooch is a rare and significant find, suggestive of a reasonably ‘well-healed’ Romano-British farmstead settlement.”
The trench is located less than a mile from Castle Killibury hill fort
The discovery gives weight to the argument that the area was home to the rich and powerful
The archaeologists were surprised by the discovery, as they had been expecting only medieval finds.
Some Arthurian scholars claim that the 11th-century Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen – thought to be the very first literary reference to a legendary King Arthur – placed his headquarters at “Celliwig in Cornwall”.
They suggest that the similarity of the name, and the fact that it is a hill fort from the right period in history, place the site at Castle Killibury.
Other scholars dispute this and say the Culhwch and Olwen story places Arthur’s headquarters in Wales.
The St Mabyn brooch was found in May and is described in a report written last month.
It comes just weeks after archaeologists, commissioned by English Heritage found evidence of an important Romano-British castle at Tintagel, long celebrated by poets as King Arthur’s birthplace.
The “Pompeii” Of Bronze Age Houses Was Just Uncovered In Britain
In the marshy fens of Cambridgeshire, archaeologists have uncovered what is being described as the “best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found” in Britain.
The dwellings are preserved exactly as they were when they collapsed into a river.
The incredible find provides a snapshot into the everyday life of those living in the marshes around 3,000 years ago. Following a fire, the circular houses and their contents collapsed into an underlying river and became enveloped in a thick layer of silt, perfectly frozen in time.
The houses show an astonishing level of preservation. Not only have the posts that supported the floors and beams of the roof survived in situ but an array of objects from everyday life have also been spectacularly preserved.
From textiles and tools to cooking pots that still contain their last meal, the incredible conditions have led some to compare it to a Bronze Age Pompeii.
The extent of domestic objects found sandwiched between the roof and the floor when the house collapsed is unprecedented from any British site.
“It feels almost rude to be intruding,” explained Mark Knight, director of the site that is being excavated by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, to The Guardian.
“It doesn’t feel like archaeology anymore, it feels like somebody’s house has burned down and we’re going in and picking over their goods.” These goods were not just everyday objects either, many were precious and expensive at the time.
A bronze sickle has been found, for example, as have glass beads that may once have formed a necklace.
The dwellings were originally discovered in 1999 when a series of poles were noticed sticking out of the edge of the fen. But it wasn’t until 2006 when extensive excavations revealed the true extent of what had been preserved in the waterlogged ground, that the significance of the site really became apparent.
The settlement was built on a series of poles sunk deep into the river channel over which they sat. At the time they were standing, the region would have been a watery network of rivers winding their way through the marshes before emptying out into the Northern Sea.
And yet despite residing in the marshes, it seems that the people were not living off them. The researchers were surprised to find that they were not eating fish, eels or clams, nor were they using reeds to make things with. Instead, it seems they were eating domestic animals such as pigs and sheep.
The spine of a cow was even found in one of the smaller buildings, leaving some to suggest that the meat may have been left to hang before the fire destroyed everything.
Considering the closest dry land where grazing could have occurred at the time was around half a kilometre (0.3 miles) away, this completely changes how archaeologists thought Bronze Age people utilized the landscape and resources surrounding them.
This could imply that the location of the settlement had less to do with food, and more to do with control.
During this time, the rivers would have been the main transport links, so perhaps by controlling these, the inhabitants could have gained wealth, power, and status, an idea supported by the variety of food found buried in the buildings.
Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigación Sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) form part of a team of Chinese, Spanish, and French scientists that has just published a study of what may prove to be China’s most ancient human fossil, in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Remains of jawbone and teeth of Gongwangling skull/Xing Song
The researchers employed microCT, geometric morphometry, and classical morphology techniques to investigate the remains of the maxillary and five teeth from the skull unearthed at the Chinese site of Gongwangling.
This site is on the vast plains on the northern slopes of the Quinling Mountains (province of Shaanxi, in central China) and was discovered by the scientist Woo Ju-Kang in 1963.
The age of the site was reevaluated in 2015 through regional palaeomagnetism studies.
Those data suggest that the Gongwangling remains date from something over 1.6 million years ago, and so they could belong to one of the first human beings to colonize what is now China.
According to the new study, there exist similarities between the Gongwangling teeth and those from rather more recent Chinese sites: Meipu and Quyuan River Mouth; but some variability is also presented, suggesting a certain diversity among the populations of H. Erectus that colonized Asia during the Pleistocene.
The importance of this new work lies in the scarcity of information about the early colonisation of Asia.
The Dmanisi site (Republic of Georgia) has furnished very significant evidence of the earliest inhabitants of Asia, who arrived from Africa around two million years ago. But much more information is needed to connect Dmanisi with the classic H. erectus populations of China (Hexian, Yiyuan, Xichuan, or Zhoukoudian), who lived in this great continental mass between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago.
“The Gongwangling site helps to plug this enormous lapse of time and it suggests that Asia might have been settled by successive populations of the species H. Erectus at different moments of the Pleistocene”, comments José María Bermúdez de Castro, coordinator of the Paleobiology Program at the CENIEH.
Characteristics of Homo erectus
The Gongwangling skull presents all the characteristics described for H. Erectus: low and very long cranium, with very thick bones that protected a brain of some 780 cubic centimetres; steeply inclined frontal, with pronounced superciliary arches that form a sort of twin visor above the eyes; flattened parietals which rise at the top to produce a sagittal keel; maximum parietal thickness at the skull base.
The Gongwangling occipital is incomplete, but the reconstruction shows how this bone turns abruptly to comprise the skull base.
Close collaboration between Chinese scientists, led by Liu Wu, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), and the Spanish scientists at the CENIEH who, in alphabetical order, were Bermúdez de Castro, Laura Martín-Francés, and María Martinón-Torres, has been essential to this new study of the fossil teeth from China.
