The first fossil of a daytime active owl found at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau

The first fossil of a daytime active owl found at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau

An amazingly well-preserved fossil skeleton of an extinct owl that lived more than six million years ago has been unearthed in China. The fossil was discovered nearly 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) up, in the Linxia Basin of China’s Gansu province, at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.  

The first fossil of a daytime active owl found at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau
Fossil skeleton of the daytime active owl Miosurnia diurna from China (below) with an expanded view of the skull (top left). The eye bones or scleral ossicles are false-coloured blue and set in comparison with an intact ring in the skull of a pygmy owl Glaucidium (top right).

It dates back to the late Miocene Epoch, around six million years ago.

Detailed analysis of the skeleton’s fossilised eye bones by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences reveals that, unlike most modern owls, this species was active in the daytime, not the night. 

The fossil comprises nearly the entire skeleton from the tip of the skull through the wings and legs to the tail bone, along with body parts that are rarely seen as fossils.

These include the bones of the tongue apparatus called the hyoid, the trachea, the kneecap, tendons for wing and leg muscles, and even the remnants of the last meal of a small mammal.

‘It is the amazing preservation of the bones of the eye in this fossil skull that allows us to see that this owl preferred the day and not the night,’ said Dr. LI, first author of the study.  

Reconstruction of the extinct owl Miosurnia diurna perched in a tree with its last meal of a small rodent, overlooking extinct three-toed horses and rhinos with the rising Tibetan Plateau on the horizon.

The researchers named the species Miosurnia diurna in reference to its close living relative, the diurnal Northern Hawk Owl (Surnia ulula). 

The features of the skull and skeleton, including a large bump on part of the cheekbone just behind the eye, show that Miosurnia is a part of the global owl group Surniini. 

Their research shows that the Surniini, which includes Miosurnia, the Northern Hawk Owl, and pygmy owls, rejected the night millions of years ago.

This extinct species is the first record of an ancient owl being ‘diurnal’, or active during the day.  Scleral ossicles are small bones that form a ring around the pupil and iris in the outer region of the eye.  Nocturnal animals require overall larger eyes and bigger pupils to see in low-light conditions, but diurnal animals have smaller eyes and pupils.

In the Miosurnia diurna fossil, the soft parts of the eye had decayed long ago, leaving the small trapezoidal scleral ossicles randomly collapsed into the owl’s eye socket. 

The palaeontologists, therefore, had to measure these individual small bones and do some basic geometry to rebuild the size and shape of the ring around the eye.

‘It was a bit like playing with Lego blocks, just digitally,’ said Dr. Stidham, describing how the 16 little similar bones overlap each other to form a ring around the iris and pupil. 

He said that putting them back together correctly allowed the scientists to determine the overall diameter of the ring and the opening for light in the middle.

The IVPP scientists then compared the fossil owl’s scleral ossicles with the eyes of 55 species of reptiles and more than 360 species of birds including many owls. 

Looking at the size and shape of the fossil’s eye and its relatively smaller opening for light, the scientists determined that it most resembles the eyes of living owls in the Surniini group. Furthermore, they studied behavioural data from over 360 species across a diversity of birds to determine which were likely nocturnal or diurnal.

Their results show that the ancestor of all living owls was almost certainly nocturnal, but the ancestor of the Surniini group was instead diurnal.

‘This fossil skeleton turns what we thought we knew about the evolution of owls on its head,’ said Dr. LI.

Dr. Stidham adds that Miosurnia diurnia is the first record of an evolutionary process spanning millions of years and stretching across the globe whereby owls evolved to ‘reject the night for some fun in the sun.’

The team’s findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on March 28.

Palaeolithic People in Mongolia May Have Consumed Giant Camel

Palaeolithic People in Mongolia May Have Consumed Giant Camel

A species of giant two-humped camel, Camelus knoblochi, is known to have lived for approximately a quarter of a million years in Central Asia. A new study in Frontiers in Earth Science shows that C. knoblochi’s last refuge was in Mongolia until approximately 27,000 years ago.

Palaeolithic People in Mongolia May Have Consumed Giant Camel

In Mongolia, the last of the species coexisted with anatomically modern humans and maybe the extinct Neanderthals or Denisovans. While the main cause of C. knoblochi’s extinction seems to have been climate change, hunting by archaic humans may also have played a role.

“Here we show that the extinct camel, Camelus knoblochi, persisted in Mongolia until climatic and environmental changes nudged it into extinction about 27,000 years ago,” said Dr. John W Olsen, Regents’ professor emeritus at the School of Anthropology of the University of Arizona, Tucson, US.

Paradoxically, today, southwestern Mongolia hosts one of the last two wild populations of the critically endangered wild Bactrian camel, C. ferus.

The new results suggest that C. knoblochi coexisted with C. ferus during the late Pleistocene in Mongolia, so that between-species competition may have been the third cause of C. knoblochi’s extinction. Standing nearly three meters tall and weighing more than a ton, C. knoblochi would have dwarfed C. ferus.

The precise taxonomic relationships between these two species, other extinct Camelus, and the ancient Paracamelus aren’t yet resolved.

Olsen said, “C. knoblochi fossil remains from Tsagaan Agui Cave [in the Gobi Altai Mountains of southwestern Mongolia], which also contains a rich, stratified sequence of human Paleolithic cultural material, suggest that archaic people coexisted and interacted there with C. knoblochi and elsewhere, contemporaneously, with the wild Bactrian camel.”

Steppe specialists are driven into extinction by desertification

The new study describes five C. knoblochi leg and foot bones found in Tsagaan Agui Cave in 2021, and one from Tugrug Shireet in today’s Gobi Desert of southern Mongolia. They were found in association with bones of wolves, cave hyenas, rhinoceroses, horses, wild donkeys, ibexes, wild sheep, and Mongolian gazelles. This assemblage indicates that C. knoblochi lived in montane and lowland steppe environments, less dry habitats than those of its modern relatives.

The authors conclude that C. knoblochi finally went extinct primarily because it was less tolerant of desertification than today’s camels, C. ferus, the domestic Bactrian camel C. bactrianus, and the domestic Arabian camel C. dromedarius.

In the late Pleistocene, much of Mongolia’s environment became drier and changed from steppe to dry steppe and finally desert.

“Apparently, C. knoblochi was poorly adapted to desert biomes, primarily because such landscapes could not support such large animals, but perhaps there were other reasons as well, related to the availability of fresh water and the ability of camels to store water within the body, poorly adapted mechanisms of thermoregulation, and competition from other members of the faunal community occupying the same trophic niche,” wrote the authors.

Towards the end, the last of the species may have lingered, at least seasonally, in the milder forest-steppe—grassland interspersed with woodland—further north in neighbouring Siberia. But this habitat probably wasn’t ideal either, which could have sounded the death knell for C. knoblochi. The world would not see giant camels again.

Preyed upon or scavenged by humans

What were the relations between archaic humans and C. knoblochi?

Corresponding author Dr. Arina M Khatsenovich, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, Russia, said, “A C. knoblochi metacarpal bone from Tsagaan Agui Cave, dated to between 59,000 and 44,000 years ago, exhibits traces of both butchery by humans and hyenas gnawing on it. This suggests that C. knoblochi was a species that Late Pleistocene humans in Mongolia could hunt or scavenge.”

“We don’t yet have sufficient material evidence regarding the interaction between humans and C. ferus in the Late Pleistocene, but it likely did not differ from human relationships with C. knoblochi—as prey, but not a target for domestication.”

First author Dr. Alexey Klementiev, a paleobiologist with the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch, said, “We conclude that C. knoblochi became extinct in Mongolia and in Asia, generally, by the end of Marine Isotope Stage 3 (roughly 27,000 years ago) as a result of climate changes that provoked degradation of the steppe ecosystem and intensified the process of aridification.”

Neolithic Weapons Unearthed in Central China

Neolithic Weapons Unearthed in Central China

A dozen stone weapons have been unearthed from a site dating back between 3,800 to 4,200 years in central China’s Hunan Province, the provincial cultural relics and archaeology research institute said.

Neolithic Weapons Unearthed in Central China
An undated photo shows a large-scale platform foundation found at the Sunjiagang site in Lixian County, central China’s Hunan Province.

The Sunjiagang site, located northwest of Dongting Lake Plain, dates back to the late Neolithic Age to the early Xia Dynasty (around 2070-1600 BC). 

The stone weapons found at the Sunjiagang site in Lixian County include spears and arrows.

The relics indicate that the relationship between different communities in the area might have been relatively tense, and violent conflicts or wars occurred, said Zhao Yafeng, associate researcher with the institute.

Recent archaeological excavations also revealed a new form of residence at the Sunjiagang site, which is a simpler form of residential architecture. 

Zhao said the archaeological excavation and research at the site has greatly enriched the understanding of the prehistoric culture of the Liyang Plain and Dongting Lake area and provided new archaeological data for understanding the social life in the whole Dongting Lake area from the late Neolithic Age to the early Xia Dynasty.

A 3,700-year-old burial site suggests female rule in Bronze Age Spain

A 3,700-year-old burial site suggests female rule in Bronze Age Spain

Archaeologists in Spain have determined that the 3,700-year-old remains of a woman found beneath a Bronze Age era ruin may well be the first case of an ancient female ruling elite in Western Europe.

3,700 Year Old Burial Chamber Of Canaanite Kings Discovered In Megiddo
View of the interior of La Almoloya grave 38.

The discovery at the La Almoloya site in Murcia, Spain, dates to around 1,700 B.C., according to newly published research in the British journal Antiquity.

The woman’s potential status as a ruler also means that the ruin her body was buried beneath is likely the first palace found in Western Europe dating from the Bronze Age, which lasted from about 3,200 -1,200 B.C.

The Almoloya site was first discovered in 1944 and is believed to be the cradle of the El Argar society, which flourished between 2,200 and 1,550 B.C. in the southeast part of what is now Spain.

They were one of the first societies in the region to use bronze, build cities, and erect monuments. El Argar is also considered to be an early example of a class-based state, with divisions in wealth and labour.

The woman’s remains, discovered in 2014, were buried with a man and several valuable objects, most notably a rare silver crown-like diadem on her head.

Further analysis of the remains and artefacts over the last few years led researchers to their conclusions about the significance of the find.

“These grave goods has allowed us to grasp the economic and political power of this individual and the dominant class to which they belonged,” researchers said in a press release.

The remains of the woman and man were found in a large jar located beneath the floor of a room. Researchers believe the woman was 25-30 years old and the man was 35-40 when they died around the same time in the mid-17th century B.C.

Genetic analysis indicates they had children together, including a daughter buried elsewhere on the site.

But it was the valuable objects, and the diadem, in particular, that suggested the political importance of the woman.

Also significant was the location of the remains beneath a room in a large building complex that seems to have had both residential and political functions, including a room with benches that could hold up to 50 people that researchers nicknamed the ‘parliament’.

This combination of residential and political use means the building meets the definition of a palace and would make it the first discovered that dates from the Bronze Age in Western Europe.

“The La Almoloya discoveries have revealed unexpected political dimensions of the highly stratified El Argar society,” the researchers said.

The building was destroyed by fire not long after the woman was interred, they said.

An English Teacher of History and a 9000-year-old cheddar man have the same DNA

An English Teacher of History and a 9000-year-old cheddar man have the same DNA

Separated by 10,000 years but linked by DNA! A 9,000 year old skeleton’s DNA was tested and it was concluded that a living relative was teaching history about a half mile away, tracing back nearly 300 generations!

Four years before, when Adrian Targett, a retired history teacher from Somerset, walked into his local news-agent’s, he was startled to see a familiar face staring up at him. That face, appearing on the front page of several newspapers, belonged to a distant relative of his — around 10,000 years distant, actually — known as Cheddar Man.

Ancient DNA from Cheddar Man, a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 at Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, has helped Museum scientists paint a portrait of one of the oldest modern humans in Britain.

This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe. Cheddar Man is the oldest complete skeleton to be discovered in the UK and has long been hailed as the first modern Briton who lived around 7,150 BC. His remains are kept by London’s Natural History Museum, in the Human Evolution gallery.

The Cheddar Man earned his name, not because of his fondness for cheese, which likely wasn’t cultivated until around 3,000 years later, but because he was found in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England (which is, incidentally, where cheddar cheese originates).

Some 25 years ago, in an amazing piece of DNA detective work, using genetic material taken from the cavity of one of Cheddar Man’s molar teeth, scientists were able to identify Mr Targett, 62, as a direct descendant.

Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the Western European hunter-gatherer population at the time, with lactose intolerance, probably with light-coloured eyes (most likely green but possibly blue or hazel), dark brown or black hair, and dark/dark-to-black skin, although an intermediate skin colour cannot be ruled out.

There are a handful of genetic variants linked to reduced pigmentation, including some that are very widespread in European populations today. However, Cheddar Man had “ancestral” versions of all these genes, strongly suggesting he would have had a “dark to black” skin tone.

Now Cheddar Man is back in the headlines because a new study of his DNA, using cutting edge technology, has enabled researchers to create a forensic reconstruction of his facial features, skin and eye colouring, and hair texture. And the biggest surprise is the finding that this ancient Brit had ‘dark to black skin — and bright blue eyes. (A previous reconstruction, before detailed genetic sequencing tests were available, assumed a white face, brown eyes and a ‘cartoon’ caveman appearance.)

No one had thought to tell Mr Targett any of this or invite him to the unveiling of the new reconstruction of his ancestor at the Natural History Museum on Monday.

‘I do feel a bit more multicultural now,’ he laughs. ‘And I can definitely see that there is a family resemblance. That nose is similar to mine. And we have both got those blue eyes.’

The initial scientific analysis in 1997, carried out for a TV series on archaeological findings in Somerset, revealed Mr Targett’s family line had persisted in the Cheddar Gorge area for around nine millennia, their genes being passed from mother to daughter through what is known as mitochondrial DNA which is inherited from the egg.

To put it simply, Adrian Targett and Cheddar Man have a common maternal ancestor.

Cheddar Man’s remains were found inside Gough’s Cave in Somerset in 1903

It is only Cheddar Man’s skin colouring that marks the difference across this vast space of time. It was previously assumed that human skin tones lightened some 40,000 years ago as populations migrated north out of the harsh African sunlight where darker skin had a protective function.

At less sunny latitudes, lighter skin would have conferred an evolutionary advantage because it absorbs more sunlight which is required to produce vitamin D, a nutrient vital for preventing disabling illnesses such as bone disease rickets. Later, when farming crops began to replace hunter-gatherer lifestyles and communities ate less meat, offal and oily fish — a dietary source of vitamin D — paler skins would have conferred an even greater advantage and accelerated the spread of relevant genes.

Earlier research suggested Cheddar Man looked like the impression, right, but now scientists are convinced he was dark-skinned and had blue eyes and dark hair

However, Cheddar Man’s complexion chimes with more recent research suggesting genes linked to lighter skin only began to spread about 8,500 years ago, according to population geneticists at Harvard University.

They report that over a period of 3,000 years, dark-skinned hunter-gatherers such as Mr Targett’s ancestors interbred with early farmers who migrated from the Middle East and who carried two genes for light skin (known as SLC24A5 and SLC45A2).

It is no surprise Cheddar Gorge remains Britain’s prime site for Palaeolithic human remains. Cheddar Man was buried alone in a chamber near a cave mouth. But it’s not just Adrian Targett who has links with him. Indeed for many modern Britons, Cheddar Man’s true face offers a uniquely close DNA encounter with their past. Modern Britons draw about 10 per cent of their genetic ancestry from the West European hunter-gatherer population from which Cheddar Man sprang.

Archaeologists in Mexico find 1,000-year-old Mayan canoe

Archaeologists in Mexico find 1,000-year-old Mayan canoe

Archaeologists in southern Mexico have discovered a well-preserved wooden canoe that may be more than 1,000 years old. Used by the Maya, the vessel was submerged in a cenote, or freshwater sinkhole, near the ruins of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán state, Reuters reports.

Archaeologists in Mexico find 1,000-year-old Mayan canoe
Researchers have tentatively dated the canoe to between 830 and 950 C.E.

The canoe is just over five feet long and two and a half feet wide.

Ancient Maya people may have used it to gather water from the cenote or deposit offerings there, notes Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in a statement. The team made the discovery during the construction of the Maya Train, a controversial railway set to connect tourist sites in the region.

Researchers have tentatively dated the canoe to between 830 and 950 C.E., BBC News reports. Experts from Sorbonne University in Paris are using dendrochronology, a dating method based on tree rings found in wood, to pinpoint the boat’s exact age.

Per a translation by Reuters, INAH describes the find as “the first complete canoe like this in the Maya area.”

Underwater archaeologists found the canoe in a cenote near the ruins of Chichén Itzá.

Archaeologists have previously found fragments of similar boats in Guatemala, Belize and the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

The experts made the discovery while surveying a site known as San Andrés, located in a buffer area near the planned train route. A team from INAH’s Sub-Directorate of Underwater Archaeology (SAS) investigated three bodies of water at the site. 

While diving in the cenote, the researchers found a cave about 15 feet below the current water level, at a spot that marked the pool’s surface centuries ago. Inside the cave was the canoe.

As Ian Randall reports for the Daily Mail, the researchers also found mural paintings, a ceremonial knife and fragments of 40 pottery vessels that were likely intentionally broken as part of ritual events.

“It is evident that this is an area where ceremonies were held,” says SAS archaeologist Helena Barba Meinecke in the statement, per a translation by the Daily Mail, “… not only because of the intentionally fragmented pottery, but also because of the remains of charcoal that indicate their exposure to fire and the way [the Maya] placed stones on top of them to cover them.”

If the archaeologists are right about the age of the canoe, then it was made around the end of the Maya Classic Period, which is widely dubbed the culture’s golden age. During that era (250 to 900 C.E.), the civilization comprised about 40 cities and was home to between two and ten million people, according to History.com.

Archaeologists explored three bodies of water at the San Andrés site.

Chichén Itzá itself was home to around 35,000 people at its peak, notes Encyclopedia Britannica. The people who founded the city in the sixth century C.E. may have chosen the site because of its cenotes and other limestone formations, which provided easy access to water in a dry region.

Most of Chichén Itzá’s iconic buildings appear to have been constructed by a group of Mayan language speakers who invaded the city in the tenth century, following the collapse of other Maya cities.

Among these is El Castillo, a 79-foot-tall pyramid with a design reflecting Maya astronomical principles.

During the Post-Classic Period (900 to 1540 C.E.), Chichén Itzá joined the cities of Uxmal and Mayapán in a confederacy called the League of Mayapán.

By the time Spanish forces arrived in the region in the 16th century, however, Chichén Itzá and the rest of the Maya’s major cities had been mostly abandoned for reasons that remain unclear. 

INAH has put the San Andrés site under protection in response to evidence of looting at the cenote.

The team transferred ceramic and bone items found at the site to the Archaeological Zone of Chichén Itzá; it also plans to make a 3-D model of the boat for research purposes and to facilitate the production of replicas for display in museums.

Archaeologists believe they found the oldest Hebrew text in Israel – including the name of God

Archaeologists believe they found the oldest Hebrew text in Israel – including the name of God

Archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling and a team of international scholars held a press conference on Thursday in Houston, Texas, unveiling what he claims is the earliest proto-alphabetic Hebrew text — including the name of God, “YHWH” — ever discovered in ancient Israel. It was found at Mount Ebal, known from Deuteronomy 11:29 as a place of curses.

If the Late Bronze Age (circa 1200 BCE) date is verified, this tiny, 2-centimeter x 2 centimeter folded-lead “curse tablet” may be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries ever. It would be the first attested use of the name of God in the Land of Israel and would set the clock back on proven Israelite literacy by several centuries — showing that the Israelites were literate when they entered the Holy Land, and therefore could have written the Bible as some of the events it documents took place.

“This is a text you find only every 1,000 years,” Haifa University Prof. Gershon Galil told The Times of Israel on Thursday. Galil helped decipher the hidden internal text of the folded lead tablet based on high-tech scans carried out in Prague at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Based on epigraphical analysis of the scans and lead analysis of the artifact, Stripling and his team date the curse tablet (or defixio) to the late Bronze Age, before or around 1200 BCE. If this dating is verified, it would make the text centuries older than the previous recordholder for oldest Hebrew text in Israel and 500 years older than the previously attested use of the tetragrammaton YHWH, according to Galil. Writing in a similar alphabet was discovered in the Sinai Peninsula dating to the beginning of the 16th century BCE.

However, the researchers have not yet published the find in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Likewise, they are not yet releasing clear images and scans of the inscription for other academics to weigh in on.

Also challenging the secure dating of the object is the fact that the tablet was not discovered during a carefully excavated stratified context. Rather, it was found during a 2019 re-examination of earth from a dump pile formed during 1980s excavations at Mount Ebal that were held under Prof. Adam Zertal. The earth had been dry-sifted then, and in 2019 Stripling’s team resifted it using a wet sifting technique that was developed at the Temple Mount Sifting Project, where Stripling once worked. Stripling current heads ongoing excavations at biblical Shiloh.

Archaeologists approached by The Times of Israel were unwilling to comment on the record until they viewed the hopefully forthcoming academic paper and scans.

“The fact that they are publishing it in the news before being published scientifically is a bit off,” said one established academic. Another cautioned that since he hasn’t been able to view the inscription himself, it was impossible to know whether the claims were factual or a case of “overdeveloped imagination.”

However, both skeptics said that “everything is possible” and that “it may be valid,” even though the images were not yet being made available. While it is irregular to promote an unpublished work in the lay press before an academic journal, Galil noted that the team felt obligated to share news of the tablet’s existence and their initial findings because of its history-changing potential.

Dr. Scott Stripling, head of the current excavation at biblical Shiloh, exhibits a find. May 22, 2017.

A curse tablet from the mount of curses

The curse tablet was discovered in earth originally taken from a cultic site at Mount Ebal, near biblical Shechem and today’s Nablus. Mount Ebal appears in Deuteronomy 11:29 as a place of “curses” and is revered by some Christians and Jews as the place where the biblical Joshua built an altar as commanded in Deuteronomy 27. It is described in Joshua 8:31 as “an altar of unhewn stones, upon which no man had lifted up any iron.”

The site known is known by locals as “Al-Burnat,” or “top hat” in Arabic, and is regarded by archaeologists as an exceedingly rare and significant illustration of early Israelite settlement. It is the only one of its type in the area. A consensus of archaeologists date the clearly cultic site to the early Iron Age, somewhere around the 11th century BCE, or when the Israelites evidently began to settle the land of Canaan. Other archaeologists push that date back to the 12th century or Late Bronze Age.

‘Joshua’s Altar’ at the Mount Ebal archaeological site, February 15, 2021.

“This is an important site, belonging to the wave of settlement in the highlands in the early phase of the Iron Age,” said Prof. Israel Finkelstein, one of the world’s leading researchers on Iron Age settlement in the region. Finkelstein spoke with The Times of Israel in February 2021 when Mount Ebal was in the news after allegations were made that it was being destroyed by local Arab towns in the course of construction of a road.

“As far as I can judge, it dates to the 11th century BCE. As such, it can be understood as representing the groups which established the kingdom of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) in the 10th century BCE. In other words, it is an early Israelite site,” he told The Times of Israel.

The late University of Haifa professor Zertal excavated the site in the 1980s, including a large rectangular altar that was apparently constructed over an earlier round altar. Stripling said the tablet came from earth originally excavated from this round altar.

Artist’s rendering of the Mt. Ebal archaeological site and the dump piles sifted by Dr. Scott Stripling and his team in 2019.

“As soon as I saw it [the tablet], I knew what it was because these curse tablets are known. My heart almost jumped out of my chest,” said Stripling.

In addition to the fact of an early — if not the earliest — Hebrew inscription found in the Land of Israel, Galil told The Times of Israel that this find sets to rest the ongoing academic discussion of whether the Israelites were literate.

“We know that from the moment they came to Israel, the Israelites knew how to write, including the name of God, clearly,” said Galil. “It’s not too surprising; people already knew how to write in other places,” he added.

Arguably the earliest written evidence of the name of God, YHWH, according to epigrapher Haifa University Prof. Gershon Galil.

The scans were read by Galil and Pieter Gert van der Veen of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Speaking with The Times of Israel, Stripling said the reading includes the words “arur” (cursed) and “YHWH” (including the three main letters of the tetragrammaton).

“We recovered 40 letters, 40 on the inside and outside of the tablet. And they were all in this proto-alphabetic script which dates to the Late Bronze Age,” said Stripling.

Galil told The Times of Israel that the text is largely written in an archaic proto-Canaanite script, with some letters coming from hieroglyphs. The latest date of the epigraphic analysis would put it circa the 12th century, while some elements are dated to even earlier.

The majority Hebrew-language text, he posited, was written by Israelites as an internal legal document, a form of social contract, warning the person under contract what would happen if he did not fulfill his obligations.

An English translation of Prof. Gershon Galil’s reading of the arguably 13th century BCE lead curse tablet found on Mt. Ebal.

According to the researchers, it reads: “Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW./ You will die cursed./ Cursed you will surely die./ Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.”

Galil said the structure is a parallel chiastic, which is found elsewhere in the Bible, as well as in other Near Eastern texts of the period and even earlier. But until now, researchers have held that the Bible was only written down — if not composed — hundreds of years after the posited dating of this text.

“Now we see that someone could write a chiastic” in the 12th century BCE. No longer should the conversation be about whether the Israelites were literate during the time of King David, he said.

“The person who wrote this text had the ability to write every text in the Bible,” Galil stated.

Discovery of “unique” burial containing 140 pieces of amber jewellery

Discovery of “unique” burial containing 140 pieces of amber jewellery

An archaeologist at the burial site.

A team of archaeologists from Petrozavodsk State University in Russia have unearthed the burial site of a Copper Age “amber man” who was painted with ocher upon his death and laid to rest with more than 100 pieces of jewellery.

The expedition took place on the western shore of Lake Onega, the second-largest lake in Europe, where archaeologist Alexander Zhulnikov led a team of students on the dig, according to a press release issued by the university.

Amber buttons were discovered at the burial site.

The students discovered what a research paper describes as a “unique burial” surrounded by amber jewellery and flint objects.

Inside the narrow chamber, the man was painted with ocher, a red pigment often used to mark a grave so it wouldn’t be disturbed, and surrounded by about 140 pieces of amber jewellery from the Baltic region.

The man buried in the chamber was almost certainly of high social standing and may have been a trader himself from the Eastern Baltic States.

The objects included pendants, discs, and amber buttons “arranged in rows face down” and sewn onto a covering made of leather and placed over the body.

Another two tiers of amber buttons were found along the edges of the small grave.

Discovery of “unique” burial containing 140 pieces of amber jewellery
Amber buttons were discovered at the burial site.

The flint chips found are likely from tools placed over the body and “are clearly so-called votive items—offerings apparently symbolizing whole knives and arrowheads,” researchers said in their paper.

The unique aspect of this particular burial, they said, is that it is an individual grave.

Other burials dating to the Mesolithic era and found in the forest belt of Europe are large cemeteries.

Burials with such a large number of jewels were previously unheard of in this area of Karelia, nor have they been uncovered in nearby northwestern regions.

The burial site.

Flint deposits are also unknown in the region, indicating that ancient people must have obtained them through the exchange.

In a statement, Zhulnikov said the discovery “testifies to the strong ties of the ancient population of Karelia with the tribes that lived on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea” and to the “formation of the so-called ‘prestigious’ primitive economy” among those living in Northern Europe, where high-value objects like jewellery and tools helped create and maintain social hierarchies.

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