GREENLAND, WORLD

Why Did the Vikings Leave Greenland?

Why Did the Vikings Leave Greenland?

One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why did the Norse, who had established successful settlements in southern Greenland in 985, abandon them in the early 15th century?

Raymond Bradley takes a photo of the sediment samples acquired from Lake Igaliku, southern Greenland. 
The settlement, Igaliku, nearby the team’s research site.

The consensus view has long been that colder temperatures, associated with the Little Ice Age, helped make the colonies unsustainable.

However, new research, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published recently in Science Advances, upends that old theory. It wasn’t dropping temperatures that helped drive the Norse from Greenland, but drought.

The field group acquired a short lake sediment core from Lake SI-102, southern Greenland. From left to right: Isla Castañeda, Tobias Schneider, Boyang Zhao, Raymond Bradley. Not pictured: William Daniels.

When the Norse settled in Greenland on what they called the Eastern Settlement in 985, they thrived by clearing the land of shrubs and planting grass as pasture for their livestock. The population of the Eastern Settlement peaked at around 2,000 inhabitants but collapsed fairly quickly about 400 years later.

For decades, anthropologists, historians and scientists have thought the Eastern Settlement’s demise was due to the onset of the Little Ice Age, a period of exceptionally cold weather, particularly in the North Atlantic, that made agricultural life in Greenland untenable.

Why Did the Vikings Leave Greenland?
A fjord view from southern Greenland.

However, as Raymond Bradley, University Distinguished Professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst and one of the paper’s co-author, points out,

Before this study, there was no data from the actual site of the Viking settlements. And that’s a problem.

Raymond Bradley

Instead, the ice core data that previous studies had used to reconstruct historical temperatures in Greenland was taken from a location that was over 1,000 kilometres to the north and over 2,000 meters higher in elevation.

“We wanted to study how climate had varied close to the Norse farms themselves,” says Bradley. And when they did, the results were surprising.

Bradley and his colleagues travelled to a lake called Lake 578, which is adjacent to a former Norse farm and close to one of the largest groups of farms in the Eastern Settlement. There, they spent three years gathering sediment samples from the lake, which represented a continuous record for the past 2,000 years.

“Nobody has actually studied this location before,” says Boyang Zhao, the study’s lead author who conducted this research for his PhD in geosciences at UMass Amherst and is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University.

Lead author Boyang Zhao of UMass Amherst in the field with some sediment samples he recovered from sediment traps left over the winter months.

They then analyzed that 2,000-year sample for two different markers: the first, a lipid, known as BrGDGT, can be used to reconstruct temperature.

“If you have a complete enough record, you can directly link the changing structures of the lipids to changing temperature,” says Isla Castañeda, professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst and one of the paper’s co-authors.

A second marker, derived from the waxy coating on plant leaves, can be used to determine the rates at which the grasses and other livestock-sustaining plants lost water due to evaporation. It is therefore an indicator of how dry conditions were.

What we discovered is that, while the temperature barely changed over the course of the Norse settlement of southern Greenland, it became steadily drier over time.

says Zhao.

Norse farmers had to overwinter their livestock on stored fodder, and even in a good year, the animals were often so weak that they had to be carried to the fields once the snow finally melted in the spring.

Under conditions like that, the consequences of drought would have been severe. An extended drought, on top of other economic and social pressures, may have tipped the balance just enough to make the Eastern Settlement unsustainable.

Scientists at Smith College and the University at Buffalo also contributed to the research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, UMass Amherst, the Geological Society of America, and the Swiss National Science Foundation, changes our understanding of early European history, and highlights the importance of continuing to explore how environmental factors influence human society. 

The new findings change our understanding of early European history and highlight the importance of continuing to explore how environmental factors influence human society.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

French cave tells a new story about Neanderthals, early humans

French cave tells a new story about Neanderthals, early humans

A hillside dwelling overlooking the picturesque Rhone Valley in southern France proved irresistible for our ancestors, attracting both Neanderthals and modern humans long before the latter was thought to have reached that part of Europe, a new study suggests.

French cave tells a new story about Neanderthals, early humans
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.

In a paper published Wednesday by the journal Science Advances, researchers from Europe and the United States described finding fossilized homo sapiens remains and tools sandwiched between those of Neanderthals in the Mandrin Grotto, named after an 18th-century French folk hero.

“The findings provide archaeological evidence that these hominin cousins may have coexisted in the same region of Europe during the same time period,” the team said.

Using new techniques, the authors dated some of the human remains to about 54,000 years ago—almost 10,000 years earlier than previous finds in Europe, with one exception in Greece.

“This significantly deepens the known age of the colonization of Europe by modern humans,” said Michael Petraglia, an expert on prehistory at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Petraglia, who was not involved in the study, said it had major implications for understanding the spread of modern humans and our interactions with the Neanderthals.

The researchers said they spent more than 30 years carefully sifting through layers of dirt inside the cave, which is 140 kilometres (87 miles) north of the French Mediterranean city of Marseille.

They discovered hundreds of thousands of artefacts that they were able to attribute to either Neanderthals or modern humans. These included advanced stone tools known as “points” that were used by homo sapiens—our closest ancestors—to cut or scrape and as spear tips.

This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows Neronian nano points found in the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.

Similar tools from almost the exact same period have been found some 3,000 kilometres (nearly 1,900 miles) away, in present-day Lebanon, indicating that modern humans with a common culture may have travelled across the Mediterranean Sea, said Ludovic Slimak, one of the lead authors of the new study.

While the researchers found no evidence of cultural exchanges between the Neanderthals and modern humans who alternated in the cave, the rapid succession of occupants is in itself significant, they said. In one case, the cave changed hands in the space of about a year, said Slimak.

Katerina Harvati, a professor of paleoanthropology at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, who was not involved in the study, said the findings upend the idea that most of the European continent was the exclusive domain of Neanderthals until 45,000 years ago.

This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows scientists working at the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows nano points of the Modern Neronian technologies found in the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows excavations at the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.

However homo sapiens’ first venture into the region wasn’t particularly successful, she noted.

“Mandrin modern humans seem to have only survived for a very brief period of time and were replaced again by Neanderthals for several millennia,” she said.

Slimak, an archaeologist at the University of Toulouse, said the findings at Mandrin suggest the Rhone River may have been a key link between the Mediterranean coast and continental Europe.

“We are dealing with one of the most important natural migration corridors of all the ancient world,” he said.

This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows the excavation on the Neronian layer dated to 54.000 years old and recording the first Home sapiens in the European continent, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak showq a long blade of the Neronian of Grotte Mandrin, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.

He and his colleagues expect to publish several further significant findings based on the mountain of data collected from the cave. Slimak said a steady supply of sand carried in by the local Mistral winds has helped preserve a rich trove of treasures that rivals other famous archaeological sites.

“Mandrin is like a kind of Neanderthalian Pompeii,” he said.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Archaeologists discover innovative 40,000-year-old culture in China

Archaeologists discover innovative 40,000-year-old culture in China

Archaeologists discover innovative 40,000-year-old culture in China
Archaeologists excavating the well-preserved surface at the Xiamabei site, northern China, showing stone tools, fossils, ochre and red pigments.

When did populations of Homo sapiens first arrive in China and what happened when they encountered the Denisovans or Neanderthals who lived there? A new study in Nature by an international team of researchers opens a window into hunter-gatherer lifestyles 40,000 years ago.

Archaeological excavations at the site of Xiamabei in the Nihewan Basin of northern China have revealed the presence of innovative behaviours and unique toolkits.

The discovery of a new culture suggests processes of innovation and cultural diversification occurring in Eastern Asia during a period of genetic and cultural hybridization. Although previous studies have established that Homo sapiens arrived in northern Asia about 40,000 years ago, much about the lives and cultural adaptations of these early peoples, and their possible interactions with archaic groups, remains unknown.

In the search for answers, the Nihewan Basin in northern China, with a wealth of archaeological sites ranging in age from 2 million to 10,000 years ago, provides one of the best opportunities for understanding the evolution of cultural behaviour in northeastern Asia.

The article published in Nature describes a unique 40,000-year-old culture at the site of Xiamabei in the Nihewan Basin. With the earliest known evidence of ochre processing in Eastern Asia and a set of distinct blade-like stone tools, Xiamabei contains cultural expressions and features that are unique or exceedingly rare in northeastern Asia.

Through the collaboration of an international team of scholars, analysis of the finds offers important new insights into cultural innovation during the expansion of Homo sapiens populations.

“Xiamabei stands apart from any other known archaeological site in China, as it possesses a novel set of cultural characteristics at an early date,” says Dr. Fa-Gang Wang of the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, whose team first excavated the site.

Cultural adaptations at Xiamabei

“The ability of hominins to live in northern latitudes, with cold and highly seasonal environments, was likely facilitated by the evolution of culture in the form of economic, social and symbolic adaptations,” says Dr. Shixia Yang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in Jena, Germany.

“The finds at Xiamabei are helping us to understand these adaptations and their potential role in human migration.”

Ochre pieces and stone processing equipment laying on a red-stained pigment patch.

One of the significant cultural features found at Xiamabei is the extensive use of ochre, as shown by artefacts used to process large quantities of pigment. The artefacts include two pieces of ochre with different mineral compositions and an elongated limestone slab with smoothed areas bearing ochre stains, all on a surface of red-stained sediment.

Analysis by researchers from the University of Bordeaux, led by Prof. Francesco d’Errico, indicates that different types of ochre were brought to Xiamabei and processed through pounding and abrasion to produce powders of different colours and consistency, the use of which stained the habitation floor. Ochre production at Xiamabei represents the earliest known example of this practice in Eastern Asia.

The stone tools at Xiamabei represent a novel cultural adaptation for northern China 40,000 years ago. Because little is known about stone tool industries in Eastern Asia until micro blades became the dominant technology about 29,000 years ago, the Xiamabei finds provide important insights into toolmaking industries during a key transition period.

The blade-like stone tools at Xiamabei were unique for the region, with the large majority of tools being miniaturized, more than half measuring less than 20 millimetres.

Seven of the stone tools showed clear evidence of hafting to a handle, and functional and residue analysis suggests tools were used for boring, hide scraping, whittling plant material and cutting soft animal matter.

The site inhabitants made hafted and multipurpose tools, demonstrative of a complex technical system for transforming raw materials not seen at older or slightly younger sites.

A complex history of innovation

The record emerging from Eastern Asia shows that a variety of adaptations were taking place as modern humans entered the region roughly 40,000 years ago. Although no hominin remains were found at Xiamabei, the presence of modern human fossils at the contemporary site of Tianyuandong and the slightly younger sites of Salkhit and Zhoukoudian Upper Cave suggests that the visitors to Xiamabei were Homo sapiens. A varied lithic technology and the presence of some innovations—such as hafted tools and ochre processing, but not other innovations, such as formal bone tools or ornaments—may reflect an early colonization attempt by modern humans. This colonization period may have included genetic and cultural exchanges with archaic groups, such as the Denisovans, before ultimately being replaced by later waves of Homo sapiens using microblade technologies.

Extraordinarily well-preserved bladelet showing microscopic evidence of a bone handle, plant fibres used for binding, and plant polish produced by whittling action.

Given the unique nature of Xiamabei, the authors of the new paper argue that the archaeological record does not fit with the idea of continuous cultural innovation, or of a fully formed set of adaptations that enabled early humans to expand out of Africa and around the world.

Instead, the authors argue that we should expect to find a mosaic of innovation patterns, with the spread of earlier innovations, the persistence of local traditions, and the local invention of new practices all taking place in a transitional phase.

“Our findings show that current evolutionary scenarios are too simple,” says Professor Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute in Jena, “and that modern human, and our culture, emerged through repeated but differing episodes of genetic and social exchanges over large geographic areas, rather than as a single, rapid dispersal wave across Asia.”

WORLD

Experiments show why early humans began adding handles to tools

Experiments show why early humans began adding handles to tools

A team of researchers at the University of Liverpool has tested the assumption that hafted tools (those with handles) provided early humans with enough benefit to warrant their construction and use.

Experiments show why early humans began adding handles to tools
Figure 1. Hafted (a) and hand-held (b) chopping tools and hafted (c) and hand-held (d) scraping tools used in experimental conditions.

In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the group describes how they enlisted the assistance of several volunteers to help them learn more about the types of benefits to be gained from hafted tools.

For many years, the wheel has been named as the most important invention humans have ever come up with due to the major impact it had on the development of so many early activities such as industry, transport and agriculture.

In this new effort, the researchers suggest the invention of hafted tools might have been equally important.

By adding a handle to tools, humans stabilized their existence—handled tools made cutting down trees much easier, which led to the development of wooden structures.

They also made hunting more efficient by making it a lot easier to sharpen spears.

In this new effort, the researchers noted that little work has been done to learn more about the advantages given to early humans by hafted tools. And that led them to conduct tests of their own.

The work by the researchers entailed enlisting the assistance of 24 male and 16 female adult volunteers to conduct early human type activities using both hafted and unhafted tools—each was fitted with a suit holding sensors that measured motion, muscle contractions, oxygen consumption and the speed at which tools were moving through the air.

The volunteers were asked to attempt to chop down a simulated tree using axes with and without handles and to try to scrape away fibres on a carpet that simulated an animal hide using scrapers with and without handles.

In looking at the data from the tests, the researchers found that the hafted tools allowed for a greater range of motion, the use of more muscle and a greater impact speed, which resulted in more force.

And while the use of the hafted tools required much more exertion, the payoff more than outweighed the cost.

The researchers conclude by suggesting that their tests showed that the benefits obtained from hafted tools almost certainly contributed to their invention and spread in early civilizations.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Remains of man who was ‘vaporized’ by Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago discovered

Remains of man who was ‘vaporized’ by Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago discovered

The skeletal remains of a man whose flesh disintegrated in the heat from Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago have offered a new glimpse into one of history’s most famous volcanic eruptions.

Remains of man who was 'vaporized' by Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago discovered
The man was between 40 and 45 years old when he died. Archaeologists think he may have been a Roman citizen from the seaside town, which was popular with the wealthy.

Archaeologists released pictures of the skeleton found at the ancient site of Herculaneum — which along with Pompeii was utterly destroyed by the eruption in 79 A.D. — the first human remains to be found there in decades.

The man, discovered in October and thought to be around 40 to 45 years old, was surrounded by carbonized wood. Preliminary work has also found traces of fabric and what appears to be a bag. Painstaking work is continuing to analyze the remains.

The bones were tainted red, a mark of the stains left by the victim’s blood, Francesco Sirano, director of the Herculaneum Archaeological Park, told the Italian news agency ANSA.

The site of archaeological excavations of the city of Herculaneum in Ercolano, Italy.

“It’s helped enormously to understand both the last moments of the site, but also the 100 years running up to it,” professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill from the United Kingdom’s Cambridge University and a former director of the Herculaneum Project which collaborates on the ongoing excavations, told NBC News.

“The power of nature is absolutely awesome and to be under a volcanic eruption is just unimaginably violent. The site sits there peacefully in the sunshine and it seems so idyllic, and you have to explain to people that this has been through the most violent eruption.”

Wallace-Hadrill said that a previous excavation cut off the feet of the skeleton.

“Initially they found a couple of leg bones sticking out of the edge of the escarpment. And indeed the excavation through the escarpment had cut off the feet of this skeleton — a bit like finding a mafia killing,” he said.

The skeleton was found face up. Archaeologists think the man had turned to face the onrushing cloud of hot gas and debris from the volcanic eruption when he was killed.

The victims’ soft tissue was either vaporized in that heat or has decayed over centuries. In one case, researchers said the heat was enough to vitrify the brain of a body in Herculaneum, turning it into a hard glass-like substance, as the temperature reached 968 degrees Fahrenheit.

Known as Ercolano in modern-day Italy and situated to the south of Naples, Herculaneum was a seaside town favoured by wealthy Romans. In 1709, ancient remains were revealed during the digging of a well. Previous excavations in the 1980s and the 1990s exposed more than 300 skeletons there.

Modern forensic techniques can reveal far more than previous generations of archaeologists could: Earlier this year, scientists said one skeleton found in the 1980s likely belonged to a Roman soldier sent on a doomed rescue mission to Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

“You feel that you are in immediate contact with ancient life, not the blurred contact you get from typical archaeological sites. Because the process of destruction is 24 hours, you have this extraordinary immediacy,” Wallace-Hadrill said.

Pompeii and Herculaneum were situated in different directions from Vesuvius, meaning the effect of the eruption was different on both.

Wallace-Hadrill added that many of the people killed by the eruption — their charred remains often show them cowering for shelter — could have survived had they left the area.

“The wise ones, one realizes in retrospect, simply walked away from the eruption the moment it started,” he said. “If they’d all known this, they all could have escaped, they just had to walk away… But hundreds and thousands did not.”

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

207-year-old whaling ship discovered in the Gulf of Mexico

207-year-old whaling ship discovered in the Gulf of Mexico

The wreck of a 19th-century whaling ship has been identified on the sea bottom in the Gulf of Mexico. Its discovery was announced Wednesday (March 23) in a statement released by representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their partners in the expedition. 

207-year-old whaling ship discovered in the Gulf of Mexico
This image of the try-works was taken from the shipwreck site of the whaler Industry by an NOAA ROV. The try-works was a cast-iron stove with two deep kettles that were used to render whale blubber into oil.

Researchers onboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer spotted the wreck on Feb. 25 at a depth of 6,000 feet (1,800 meters).

They used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to explore a seafloor location where the shipwreck had previously been glimpsed, but not investigated, in 2011 and 2017, and their search received additional guidance via satellite communication with a scientific team onshore, according to the statement. 

A team of experts then confirmed that the vessel was the Industry, which sank May 26, 1836, while the crew was hunting sperm whales. It was built in 1815, and for 20 years, the 64-foot-long (19.5 meters) ship had pursued whales across the Gulf, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean, until a storm breached its hull and snapped its masts. 

Though 214 whaling voyages crisscrossed the Gulf from the 1780s until the 1870s, this is the only known shipwreck in the region, NOAA representatives said.

The crew list for Industry’s last voyage was lost at sea, but past ship records show that among Industry’s essential crew were Native American people and free Black descendants of enslaved African people.

The discovery of the wreck could offer important clues about the role that Black and Native American sailors played in America’s maritime industry at the time, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves said in the statement. 

“This 19th-century whaling ship will help us learn about the lives of the Black and Native American mariners and their communities, as well as the immense challenges they faced on land and at sea,” Graves said.

Life on a whaling ship would certainly have been challenging, with long hours, hard physical labour and poor food that was likely to be infested with vermin, according to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.

Living conditions could also be extremely unpleasant; a whaler’s account from 1846 described the crew’s quarters, known as the forecastle, as “black and slimy with filth, very small and hot as an oven,” J. Ross Browne wrote in the book “Etchings of a Whaling Cruise,” according to the museum.

“It was filled with a compound of foul air, smoke, sea-chests, soap-kegs, greasy pans, [and] tainted meat,” Browne wrote.

This image of an anchor was taken from the 1836 shipwreck site of the whaler Industry in the Gulf of Mexico by the NOAA ROV deployed from NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, on Feb. 25, 2022.

A deep dive

NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer collects data on unknown or little-explored seafloor regions of the deep ocean, mapping seamounts and discovering mysterious forms of elusive marine life at depths from 820 to 19,700 feet (250 to 6,000 m), according to NOAA.

Past expeditions have revealed “mud monsters” in the Mariana Trench, the “most bizarre squid” an NOAA zoologist had ever seen, and a real-life SpongeBob and Patrick living side by side on the seafloor, Live Science previously reported.

Video from the ROV combined with Industry records enabled the scientists to confirm that they had discovered the long-lost whaling brig.

A mosaic of images from the NOAA video of the brig Industry wreck site shows the outline in sediment and debris of the hull of the 64-foot by 20-foot whaling brig.

Another clue that helped experts to identify Industry was that there was little onboard evidence of its whaling activities; when the ship was sinking, another whaling vessel visited the foundering Industry and salvaged its equipment, removing 230 barrels of whale oil, as well as parts of the rigging and one of the ship’s four anchors, according to the NOAA statement.

“We knew it was salvaged before it sank,” Scott Sorset, a marine archaeologist for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and a member of the expedition’s shore team, said in the statement. “That there were so few artefacts on board was another big piece of evidence it was Industry.” 

New research has also shed light on what happened to Industry’s crew on that final voyage.

Robin Winters, a librarian at the Westport Free Public Library in Massachusetts, unearthed an 1836 article from The Inquirer and Mirror (a Nantucket weekly newspaper) reporting that Industry’s crew was rescued by another whaling ship and brought to Westport.

That was a lucky turn of events for Industry’s Black whalers in particular, who could have been jailed under local laws had they reached shore with no proof of identity, said expedition researcher James Delgado, a senior vice president at the archaeology firm SEARCH. 

“And if they could not pay for their keep while in prison, they would have been sold into slavery,” Delgado said in the statement.

WORLD

How the ancient Greeks proved Earth was round over 2,000 years ago

How the ancient Greeks proved Earth was round over 2,000 years ago

Long before NASA was sending satellites up into space, the ancient Greeks developed a way to determine the world was spherical over 2000 years ago.

How the ancient Greeks proved Earth was round over 2,000 years ago

Despite it being obvious that the world is has a round spherical shape, ‘flat-earthers’ will live and die by their convictions under the belief Planet Earth is well and truly falt.

While it may seem futile to engage in such debates if you do happen to be drawn into a discussion that makes you question your own logic/common sense just remembered – the Greeks proved the Earth was around 2000 years ago.

And they did it without leaving the comfort of their own home.

By the mid-20th century, we discovered the Earth’s circumference was exactly 40,030 km but over 2000 years earlier in ancient Greece, a mathematician by the name of Eratosthenes arrived at the same exact figure and all he had on him was a stick.

As well as being a mathematical savant Eratosthenes was head of the library at Alexandria – the capital of the Greek empire, he came to upon his discovery when he found out the city of Syene, a neighbouring metropolitan to the south, cast no vertical shadows during noon on the summer solstice.

This was because the sun was directly overhead, at its highest point so to speak. Eratosthenes wanted to find out if this was the same for Alexandria as well, so on June 21, he planted a stick into the ground and waited to see if a shadow would be cast at noon. It happened to show one shadow, which measured at seven degrees.

By this logic, if rays from the sun are coming at the same exact angle at the same exact time of the day, with a stick showing a shadow in Alexandria but not in Syene it means the Earth is curved. It’s something which Eratosthenes, and later his contemporaries, already knew.

The concept of a ‘spherical Earth’ was theorised by Greek philosopher Pythagoras around 500 BC and later validated by the great philosopher Aristotle a few centuries later.

So this is where the hardcore maths come into play, if the Earth was round it meant Eratosthenes could use his discovery to determine the ‘circumference of the entire planet’.

Because the difference in shadow length between Alexandria and Syene is seven degrees it means the two cities are seven degrees apart on Earth’s 360-degree surface. To confirm this Eratosthenes hired a man to walk the distance between Alexandria and Syene, he later learned ‘they were 5,000 stadia apart’ from each other, which equates to 800 kilometres

Eratosthenes could use simple measurements to discover Earth’s circumference – which is ‘7.2 degrees is 1/50 of 360 degrees’ according to The Independent. If you multiply 800 by 50 you get 40,000 kilometres.

So without any fancy technology or huge government funding, a man from Ancient Greece discovered the circumference of our little green planet. All he required was his brains and a stick.

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EUROPE, PORTUGAL, WORLD

Mummies uncovered in Portugal date back 8,000 years and could be oldest in the world

Mummies uncovered in Portugal date back 8,000 years and could be oldest in the world

Archaeologists are set to rewrite the history books after they uncovered new evidence that suggests the oldest instances of mummification occurred 8,000 years ago.

Researchers have taken a second look at photographs snapped 60 years ago of several skeletons that were buried in southern Portugal.

A new analysis of these photos has led them to believe that the oldest evidence of mummification actually originated in Europe, not Egypt or Chile as previously thought. During excavations in the 1960s, archaeologists discovered nearly a dozen ancient bodies in Portugal’s Sado Valley.

Analysing previously undeveloped photos, researchers now believe that at least one of those bodies had been mummified.

They theorise that this was done to possibly make it easier to transport before its burial.

Experts also found evidence that suggests that other bodies that were buried at the site may have been similarly preserved as mummies, implying that this was a widespread practice in the region.

Mummification is most commonly associated with Ancient Egypt, where elaborate burial procedures were used more than 4,500 years ago.

Archaeology breakthrough as world’s oldest mummy found in Portugal rewrites history
Archaeology breakthrough as world’s oldest mummy found in Portugal rewrites history
Archaeologists were able to reconstruct the burial sites from photographs

Other evidence of mummification outside Egypt is found in other parts of Europe, dating from about 1000 BC.

However, archaeologists have now dated this person as the oldest mummy ever discovered, predating all previous instances by a long time.

This newly identified mummy in Portugal pushes back the previous record by about 1,000 years, then held by mummies found in the coastal region of Chile’s the Atacama Desert.

When it comes to hot and dry regions like Egypt and the Atacama desert, mummification is a relatively straightforward process.

However, it is generally difficult to find evidence of mummies in Europe, where much wetter conditions mean that mummified soft tissues rarely stay preserved, according to Rita Peyroteo-Stjerna, a bioarchaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Speaking to Live Science, Ms Peyroteo-Stjerna, the lead author of the study said: “It’s very hard to make these observations, but it’s possible with combined methods and experimental work.”

Other authors of the study added: “These burials generally conform to the pattern characteristic of the mortuary practices known for these hunter-gatherer communities, but aspects of the treatment of the body, including its transformation and curation before burial, are new elements.

One of the bodies was in a hyperflexed state
The remains are believed to be 8000 years old

“New insights into the use of burial places, such as a very tight clustering of burials, and the proposed cases of mummification and the subsequent internment of hyperflexed, intact bodies highlight the significance of both the body and the burial place in the wider hunter-gatherer landscape of south-western Portugal.”

After observing the photographs, the archaeologists noted that the bones of the buried skeletons were “hyperflexed”, meaning that their limbs have been bent far beyond their natural limits.

This indicates that after the person’s death, the body had been tied up with bindings that have disintegrated since then.

The team also found that the bones of the skeleton were in excellent condition, particularly the small bones of the feet, which generally fall apart completely from the skeleton as the body decomposes.

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