Colonial-Period Burials Found on Ancient Temple in Peru
A team of Peruvian archaeologists uncovered three burials from the Spanish colonial period on top of a pre-Hispanic temple, which may be up to 500 years old, a researcher said Thursday.
A team of Peruvian archaeologists uncovered three burials from the Spanish colonial period on top of a pre-Hispanic temple
Peru was under Spanish rule for nearly 300 years, from 1532 when they invaded and defeated the Inca empire until 1821 when popular uprisings led to independence.
“We are working with the hypothesis that the remains belong to a colonial cemetery,” Lucenida Carrion, head of the Archaeology Directorate of the Park of Legends in the Peruvian capital, told AFP.
The park’s 54 archaeological monuments and sanctuaries have been the subject of study for decades.
“In this summit, we have discovered the burials of two adults and a child who were wrapped in cotton cloth,” the archaeologist added.
The temple, or pre-Hispanic sanctuary known as “Tres Palos” where the burial site is located, is more than 1,000 years old and is located on land adjacent to the park.
After the pre-Hispanic era, the site was inhabited by settlers from colonial Lima.
“We are considering whether the remains are from the colonial era,” Carrion said, pointing to the clothes, hair and a Christian crucifix found on one of the remains.
“This finding is important because it will help us determine if there has been a continuous occupation at this site since pre-Hispanic times.”
During the 15th and 16th centuries, the “Tres Palos” sanctuary was used by the Incas as a Tambo (food deposit) and during the colonial era, adobe (mud and straw) houses were built.
– Wooden cross –
“What stands out is the cross carried on the chest of one character. This cross indicates the moment of transformation to Christianity of the natives or inhabitants that populated this place,” Carrion said.
Other than the brown wooden cross, sandals, textile fragments, bracelets, funeral mantles and the remains of ceramic vessels were also discovered.
The archaeological team’s findings are among the most important in recent years and add to the study of numerous material testimonies uncovered inside the archaeological complex of Maranga, located near the coast of Lima.
“The works carried out in the place allow us to establish that its history dates back approximately 2,000 years and that they were occupied by the Lima culture, the Ychsma and finally the Incas,” Carrion said.
The Park of Legends, built in 1964, is named after the pre-Hispanic legends illustrated at the entrance of the enclosure.
In 2018, a team of archaeologists found a 1,300-year-old cemetery from the pre-Hispanic Lima culture near the park.
New Pompeii finds highlight middle-class life in the doomed city
A trunk with its lid left open. A wooden dishware closet, its shelves caved in. Three-legged accent tables topped by decorative bowls. These latest discoveries by archaeologists are enriching knowledge about middle-class lives in Pompeii before Mount Vesuvius’ furious eruption buried the ancient Roman city in volcanic debris.
In this image provide by the Pompeii Archeological site press office, an archaeologist works on the site of a new discovery. The latest discoveries in the ancient city of Pompeii are enriching knowledge about the everyday lives of middle-class households. The director of the archaeological site, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022, that excavations of rooms in a home first unearthed in 2018, revealed the environment of ordinary citizens of the city, which was flourishing before being destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
Pompeii’s archaeological park, one of Italy’s top tourist attractions, announced the recent finds on Saturday. Its director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said the excavation of rooms in a “Domus,” or home, first unearthed in 2018 had revealed precious details about the domestic environment of ordinary citizens of the city, which was destroyed in 79 A.D.
In past decades, excavation largely concentrated on sumptuous, elaborately frescoed villas of Pompeii’s upper-class residents. But archaeology activity in the sprawling site, near modern-day Naples, has increasingly focused on the lives of the middle class as well as of servants and other enslaved people.
“In the Roman empire, there was an ample chunk of the population that struggled with their social status and for whom ‘daily bread,’ was anything but a given,″ Zuchtriegel said. ”
A vulnerable class during political crises and food shortages, but also ambitious about climbing the social ladder.”
The finds unveiled on Saturday include furnishings and household objects in the Domus, which was dubbed the House of the Larario for an area of a home devoted to domestic spirits known as lares. The home unearthed in 2018 has one in the courtyard.
Zuchtriegel noted that while the courtyard also had an exceptionally well-adorned cistern, “evidently, the (financial) resources weren’t enough to decorate the five rooms of the home.″ One room had unpainted walls and an earthen floor apparently used for storage.
In a bedroom, archeologists found the remains of a bed frame with a trace of fabric from the pillow.
The kind of bed is identical to three, cot-like beds unearthed last year in a tiny room in another residence that archaeologists believe doubled as a storeroom and sleeping quarters for a family of enslaved inhabitants of Pompeii.
The bedroom findings announced Saturday also included the remains of a wooden trunk with an open lid.
Although the weight of beams and ceiling panels that crashed down in the wake of the volcanic explosion heavily damaged the trunk, among the objects found inside was an oil lamp decorated with a bas relief depicting the ancient Greek deity Zeus being transformed into an eagle.
Nearby was a small, three-legged round table, similar to the accent tables in vogue today.
Exposing the storeroom revealed a wooden closet, its backboard still intact but the shelves caved in.
Archaeologists believe the closet had at least four-panel doors and held cookware and dishes for the nearby kitchen. The excavators found a hinge from the enclosure.
Other objects found in the house include a large fragment of what had been a translucent, rimmed plate in brilliant hues of cobalt blue and emerald, and a well-preserved incense burner, shaped like a cradle.
1,000-year-old bison skeleton unearthed in Mitchell
What a completely unusual find. Two students found the bones of an ancient bison while digging last week at the Prehistoric Indian Village. The estimated 1,000-year-old bones discovered by the University of Exeter students help reveal how the Ame…
Two students from the University of Exeter discovered the pelvis, spine and tail of a bison. The rib slabs were removed, but the portions of the pelvis, spine and tail the students found were intact. They did not find the head, but they hope, as they continue digging, that they will find it.
What a completely unusual find.
Two students found the bones of an ancient bison while digging last week at the Prehistoric Indian Village.
The estimated 1,000-year-old bones discovered by the University of Exeter students help reveal how the American Indians butchered the animals they hunted.
Amy Chamberlain-Webber, 18, and Megan Stealey, 20, thought finding the bison bones was exciting. The women found the bones in a cache pit where American Indians stored food, weapons and other valuables.The cache pit later became a trash pit that the bones were thrown into.
Chamberlain-Webber and Stealey uncovered the pelvis of the bison, and they found other bones as they continued digging. The group found portions of the bison since its arrival in mid-June, but Friday realized the magnitude of the find.
It is unusual to find large portions of the animals still in tact, said Alan Outram, professor of archaeological science at the University of Exeter, located in South West England, United Kingdom. The pelvis, spine and tail were intact, as were the feet bones.
“It revealed itself slowly to us,” Outram said. “There were hints of it, and we sort of slowly discovered it.”
In total, the group found the pelvis, spine, articulations of the ribs, some ribs, portion of the tail, in-tact foot bones and the leg bones. The group did not find all of the ribs or the skull while they were excavating the trash pit.
According to Outram, the way a group butchers an animal reveals a lot about the group’s culture.
“That sort of food culture is really a part of their identity,” he said.
Outram believes the bison was killed in the summer and the bones were thrown into the pit after it was butchered. The meat of the bison was likely cooked using hot rocks.
This discovery, Outram said, brings understanding into the “daily activities” of the past. He notes that it is common to find remains mixed in with other objects, but this particular bison, found in the pit, is from “one day’s activities.”
“It’s a day frozen in time,” said Cindy Gregg, executive director of the Prehistoric Indian Village. “… It’s pretty exciting stuff.”
Stealey hopes the next part of the bison to be found is the skull, but Outram is unsure if it will be found. Many times, American Indians would cut off the head of the animal because it was heavy.
The group will continue searching the trash pit in hopes of finding the skull until its final day at the Prehistoric Indian Village on Aug15.
(Left) Amy Chamberlain-Webber and Megan Stealey (right) discovered the bison pelvis during their time at the Prehistoric Indian Village. Both women are studying archaeology and forensics at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
Construction in Rome Reveals Well-Preserved, 2,000-Year-Old Dog Statue
Archaeologists in Rome recently unearthed an ancient terracotta statue with a dog’s head that was buried below an urban road.
The canine figurine may have been a decorative structure for a tomb’s rooftop.
The statue, which is palm-size, shows a pointy-eared pup with long, wavy fur flowing over its head and neck. It appears to be wearing a collar dangling a small emblem over its chest, and a circular object rests between its carved paws.
Experts with the archaeology branch of the Italian Ministry of Culture were inspecting a site at Via Luigi Tosti in the city’s Appio Latino district, in preparation for a waterway replacement project.
They discovered the dog-headed statue about 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) below street level, among other funerary artefacts dating from the first century B.C. to the first century A.D., Roma Today reported on Jan. 1.
Officials identified three mausoleums that were part of a larger burial complex on the Via Latina, an important ancient Roman road that is more than 2,000 years old.
“Once again, Rome shows important traces of the past in all its urban fabric,” representatives of the Special Superintendency of Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Rome wrote on Instagram.
In addition to the dog-headed statue, archaeologists at the site also discovered an intact ceramic funerary urn containing bones and the remains of a young man who was buried “in the bare earth,” according to the post.
Charred marks in one of the tombs hinted that there had been a fire, which may have led Roman citizens to abandon the burial complex, ArtNews reported.
While the dog statue superficially resembles carved objects that were added to sloping rooftops as part of drainage systems, it lacks any kind of opening for draining water and its purpose was likely ornamental, according to Roma Today.
The Via Latina, which was built during the fourth century B.C., ran from Rome’s Porta Latina to the southeast for approximately 124 miles (200 kilometres), and it likely served as an important military highway, according to a study published in 2013 in the journal Papers of the British School at Rome.
Other funerary buildings and catacombs that have been excavated along this once-major thoroughfare are open to the public as part of the Archaeological Park of the Tombs of the Via Latina in Rome.
Visitors can inspect underground tombs decorated with mosaic and frescoed scenes from ancient myths and legends, according to the park website.
The study used novel computational approaches and linguistic data from more than 400 Bantu languages to reconstruct the historic migration routes. The project was a collaboration between scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Bantu men and women working the fields near Kismayo in Somalia.
The Bantu Expansion transformed sub-Saharan Africa’s linguistic, economic, and cultural composition. Today, more than 240 million people speak one of the more than 500 Bantu languages. It is generally accepted that the ancestors of current Bantu speakers lived around 5,000 to 6,000 years before present in a region by the current border of Nigeria and Cameroon. However, until recently, it was not known how and when they succeeded in crossing southward through or around the dense Central African Rainforest to finally settle in their current locations, covering about half of the African continent.
In their current study, researchers analyzed linguistic data from more than 400 Bantu and other closely related languages. From this data, using novel methods, they built a dated language family tree and reconstructed the geographic spread of Bantu speakers.
In contrast to previous claims, the southwards expansion happened approximately 4,000 years ago – a long time before the savanna corridor through the dense rainforest opened. It had previously been thought that agriculturalist populations, such as the early Bantu speakers, would not have been able to maintain their agricultural traditions in a dense rainforest environment.
Linguistic data tells us a story of migrations
Bantu migrations were reconstructed from linguistic data. The homeland is marked with a star, the main nodes are numbered (1-3), and the origins of the main clades (0-23) are marked with their respective colours.
The authors used a novel method, borrowed from genetics, to account for possible geographic biases in the reconstruction: “It turns out that there are actually more than 600 Bantu and other related documented languages, but there is not enough lexical data available for about one-third of them.
Therefore, we implemented a so-called sequence-free sampling – a way to overcome this bias and build a more robust geographic reconstruction, including all documented Bantu languages”, comments Ezequiel Koile, lead author of this research. “It’s really exciting to be able to use these methods to provide the most comprehensive analysis of the Bantu languages to date. These methods give us real power to resolve these long-standing debates about major human population expansions”, adds Simon Greenhill, co-author of the study.
Besides the sequence-free sampling approach, an important methodological improvement in the reconstruction of past migration routes was the use of a “break-away” model.
“According to this model, at every split in the language tree, one of the populations stays in the same place, while the other migrates. This seems more realistic than other diffusion-based methods, where both populations are forced to migrate,” explains Remco Bouckaert, developer of this geographic model.
Agriculturalists can adapt to a dense rainforest
It was previously thought that for a human group characterized by its agricultural practices, such as the early Bantu populations, it would have been hard, if not impossible, to cross the Central African rainforest.
“The idea was that the dense rainforest made it very difficult to transport and maintain the crops and cattle that characterized the Bantu expansion. While changes in the type of subsistence are attested in history, they tend to be relatively rare,” comments Damián Blasi, one of the article’s co-authors.
This is why it had generally been accepted that these populations migrated through the Sangha River Interval – a savanna corridor that opened as a north-south strip along the rainforest around 2,500 years ago – and not directly through the rainforest. This study’s findings fit with recent anthropological results demonstrating the adaptability of humans to tropical forests.
“Our results highlight the importance of niche construction in human population expansions. Of course ecology matters, but it isn’t destiny,” concludes Russell Gray, senior author of the publication.
Temple Dedicated to the Sun God Unearthed in Egypt
Part of the uncovered sun temple is seen in this image.
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 4,500-year-old temple dedicated to the Egyptian sun god Ra at the site of Abu Ghurab, about 12 miles (20 kilometres) south of Cairo.
The temple was built sometime during ancient Egypt’s fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.) — a “period in which the cult of the sun reached its apex with the construction of a new type of monument specifically devoted to the sun god, commonly known as ‘Sun Temple,'” said Massimiliano Nuzzolo, co-director of the archaeological dig and a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He co-directs it with Rosanna Pirelli of the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in Italy.
The sun cult was a powerful cult in ancient Egyptian religion. In later times, Ra merged with Amun — the chief god of Thebes (Luxor) — to form Amun-Ra who was regarded, at least by some Egyptians, as being the most powerful of the Egyptian gods.
He was worshipped until around 1,500 years ago when Egyptian polytheism became extinct.
Here we see the excavated Sun Temple from ancient Egypt.
The newly uncovered sun temple was made from mud bricks and measured at least 197 feet long and 66 feet wide (60 meters by 20 m). It contained an L-shaped entrance portico, a courtyard, storage rooms and rooms that may have been used for cultic purposes, Nuzzolo told Live Science in an email.
“The walls of this building were all plastered in black and white and often also show traces of painting in red and blue,” Nuzzolo said.
The entrance portico was partially made of white limestone and had two limestone columns.
The temple was ritually demolished, possibly before it was even finished, so a new sun temple could be made from stone at the site for a pharaoh named Niuserre (reign circa. 2420 B.C. to 2389 B.C.). Niuserre “reused part of the structure as a platform or sub-foundation for his new temple,” Nuzzolo said.
The archaeologists found two deposits of artefacts, one of which has dozens of intact beer jars and a few finely made and red-slipped vessels, while the other contains seal impressions, including the seals of pharaohs who ruled during the fifth and sixth dynasties.
One of the earliest seals belongs to Shepseskare, an “enigmatic” pharaoh who ruled Egypt before Niuserre, Nuzzolo said.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art(opens in new tab) in New York City lists Shepseskare as reigning from circa 2438 B.C to 2431 B.C., and Raneferef (also known as Neferefre) ruling from circa 2431 B.C. to 2420 B.C.
These artifacts were found in the same deposit and include jars used to store beer.
This artefact contains the seal of Shepseskare, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt in the fifth dynasty.
Archaeologists aren’t sure which pharaoh began construction of the mud brick sun temple, but it was likely either Shepseskare or Raneferef, Nuzzolo said.
9,000-Year-Old Underground Settlement With Megalithic Stone Circle, Discovered Beneath The Mediterranean Sea
Not far off the coast of the village of Atlit in the Mediterranean Sea, near Haifa in Israel, lies the submerged ruins of the ancient Neolithic site of Atlit Yam.
The prehistoric settlement, which dates back to the 7th millennium BC, has been so well preserved by the sandy seabed that a mysterious stone circle still stands as it was first erected, and dozens of human skeletons lay undisturbed in their graves.
Atlit Yam is one of the oldest and largest sunken settlements ever found and sheds new light on the daily lives of its ancient inhabitants.
Today, Atlit Yam lies between 8 – 12 metres beneath sea level and covered an area of 40,000 square metres.
The site was first discovered in 1984 by marine archaeologist Ehud Galili, and since then underwater excavations have unearthed numerous houses, stone-built water wells, a series of long unconnected walls, ritual installations, stone-paved areas, a megalithic structure, thousands of flora and faunal remains, dozens of human remains, and numerous artefacts made of stone, bone, wood and flint.
At the centre of the settlement, seven megaliths (1.0 to 2.1 metres high) weighing up to 600 kilograms are arranged in a stone semicircle. The stones have cup marks carved into them and were once arranged around a freshwater spring, which suggests that they may have been used for a water ritual.
Another installation consists of three oval stones (1.6 – 1.8 metres), two of which are circumscribed by grooves forming schematic anthropomorphic figures.
Top: A diver examines megaliths at Atlit Yam. Bottom: Artist’s reconstruction of stone formation.
Another significant structural feature of the site is the stone-built well, which was excavated down to a depth of 5.5. metres. At the base of the well, archaeologists found sediment fill containing animal bones, stone, flint, wood, and bone artefacts. This suggests that in its final stage, it ceased to function as a water-well and was used instead as a disposal pit.
The change in function was probably related to the salinization of the water due to a rise in sea level. The wells from Atlit-Yam had probably been dug and constructed in the earliest stages of occupation (the end of the 9th millennium BC) and were essential for the maintenance of a permanent settlement in the area.
The ancient artefacts unearthed at Atlit Yam offer clues into how the prehistoric inhabitants once lived. Researchers have found traces of more than 100 species of plants that grew at the site or were collected from the wild, and animal remains consisted of bones of both wild and domesticated animals, including sheep, goats, pigs, dogs, and cattle, suggesting that the residents raised and hunted animals for subsistence.
In addition, more than 6,000 fish bones were found. Combined with other clues, such as an ear condition found in some of the human remains caused by regular exposure to cold water, it seems that fishing also played a big role in their society.
The archaeological material indicates that Atlit-Yam provides the earliest known evidence for an agro-pastoral-marine subsistence system on the Levantine coast. The inhabitants were some of the first to make the transition from being hunter-gatherers to being more settled farmers, and the settlement is one of the earliest with evidence of domesticated cattle.
Human remains reveal the oldest known case of Tuberculosis
Ten flexed burials encased in clay and covered by thick layers of sand were discovered, both inside the houses and in the vicinity of Atlit Yam, and in total archaeologists have uncovered 65 sets of human remains. One of the most significant discoveries of this ancient site is the presence of tuberculosis (TB) within the village.
The skeletons of a woman and child, found in 2008, have revealed the earliest known cases of tuberculosis in the world. The size of the infant’s bones, and the extent of TB damage, suggest the mother passed the disease to her baby shortly after birth.
What caused Atlit Yam to sink?
One of the greatest archaeological mysteries of Atlit Yam is how it came to be submerged, a question that has led to heated debate in academic circles.
An Italian study led by Maria Pareschi of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Pisa indicates that a volcanic collapse of the Eastern flank of Mount Etna 8,500 years ago would likely have caused a 40-metre-high tsunami to engulf some Mediterranean coastal cities within hours.
Some scientists point to the apparent abandonment of Atlit Yam around the same time, and the thousands of fish remains, as further evidence that such a tsunami did indeed occur.
However, other researchers have suggested that there is no solid evidence to suggest a tsunami wiped out the settlement. After all, the megalithic stone circle still remained standing in the place in which it had been constructed.
One alternative is that climate change caused glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise and the settlement became flooded by a slow rise in the level of the Mediterranean that led to a gradual abandonment of the village.
Whatever the cause of the submerging of the settlement, it was the unique conditions of clay and sandy sediment under salty water that enabled this ancient village to remain so well preserved over thousands of years.
10,000-Year-Old Rock Paintings Depict UFOs And Aliens
The State Department of Archaeology and Culture in Chhattisgarh, India, is seeking assistance from the Indian Space Research Organisation to research a set of ancient rock paintings found inside caves near the town of Charama in Kanker district, in the tribal Bastar region, according to a news report in the Times of India.
According to one archaeologist, the art reflects the belief among ancient humans that we are not alone in the universe.
The Indian state of Chhattisgarh has an abundance of ancient rock paintings, according to their website. Many sites have paintings of humans and animals in everyday scenes.
However, some researchers have referred to more unusual paintings, such as those depicting what appear to be kangaroos and giraffes, which are not native to the country, as well as human-fish hybrid creatures. Now, it is claimed that aliens and UFOs can be added to this collection.
“The paintings are done in natural colours that have hardly faded despite the years. The strangely carved figures are seen holding weapon-like objects and do not have clear features. Especially, the nose and mouth are missing. In a few pictures, they are even shown wearing space suits,” said archaeologist JR Bhagat.
Bhagat, who has studied rock art, claims that the newly-discovered depictions date back some 10,000 years, although the dating method has not been clarified.
Bhagat suggests that the images may depict extra-terrestrials and UFOs as the paintings include large, humanoid beings descending from the sky, some wearing what looks like a helmet or antennae, as well as a disc-shaped craft with three rays (or legs) coming from its base.
“The findings suggest that humans in prehistoric times may have seen or imagined beings from other planets which still creates curiosity among people and researchers.
“Extensive research is needed for further findings. Chhattisgarh presently doesn’t have any such expert who could give clarity on the subject,” Bhagat told the Times of India.
One of the ancient rock paintings
Bhagat explained that there are several beliefs among locals from the area.
While few worship the paintings, others narrate stories they have heard from ancestors about “rohela people”, which translates to “the small sized ones”.
According to legend, the rohela people used to land in the sky in a round-shaped flying object and take away one or two persons of the village who never returned. However, Bhagat does concede,
“We can’t refute the possibility of imagination by prehistoric men.”
Bhagat has not made reference to the fact that the paintings in question depict what, in other contexts, archaeologists typically identify as shamanic images of humans, human-animal hybrids, and geometric forms. Images of figures with antlers, antennae, or spirit rays are familiar, and in fact quite common, in shamanic art.
The research on the rock paintings is ongoing, and Bhagat says more archaeologists will be consulted to help identify the mysterious creatures and objects in the ancient artwork.
