‘The Mayor’ buried 6,800 years ago with drinks and food for afterlife discovered in Bavaria
Dingolfing-Landau district archaeologist Florian Eibl beside the skeleton of “The Mayor” at the excavations at the village of Exing, near the Bavarian town of Eichendorf.
About 6,800 years ago, a “mayor” was buried with a wealth of food and riches, including a halved boar’s tooth, according to archaeologists who found the rare burial in southern Germany.
The mayor’s Middle Neolithic remains were found near the Bavarian town of Eichendorf, close to Munich and Germany’s southeastern borders with Austria and the Czech Republic.
According to the local government of Bavaria’s Dingolfing-Landau district, the discovery was made last week by district archaeologists excavating at the village of Exing, about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) to the west.
The person in the grave was buried with food and drink for the afterlife; dyes for body painting; a stone ax and a stone adze; and a boar’s tooth split in two.
The rich grave goods indicate that the person buried there was of high status, possibly an elder or a chieftain — and archaeologists have dubbed them “The Mayor.”
The investigation hasn’t yet determined how old the person was when they died, or whether they were male or female.
The artifacts include pieces of gold jewelry, like this earring in the shape of a boat or barge from more than 2,000 years ago.
Rich grave
District archaeologist Florian Eibl told the German outlet Der Spiegel that it was unusual to find human remains in a grave from this time and at this place, as very few Neolithic skeletons have survived.
In addition, he said, the finds indicated a person of special position who was older in years and had probably earned their wealth and status, rather than inherited it.
The two parts of a boar’s tooth were probably two halves of a container that had once held a flint blade and tools for making fire — a symbol of status, because hunting wild boars was dangerous at that time, he said.
The person in the grave was buried in a squatting position, and several vessels had been placed around their head — but it’s not yet known what they originally held.
A drinking vessel placed in front of the skeleton’s face was probably their personal cup, and stone blades were also placed in the grave.
The artifacts found during the excavations at Exing span roughly 7,000 years, including these remains large of a pottery jar.
The excavations in the Barvarian village of Exing have revealed several sites that date from the Mesolithic period to the Bronze Age.
Archaeological site
Archaeologists from the district government have worked on excavations at Exing since 2023, ahead of a residential development there.
The spectacular finds from Exing span roughly 7,000 years, from the Neolithic through to the Copper and Bronze Ages, including pieces of gold jewelry.
Eibl said the area was important during the Neolithic period for its rich settlements such as Köthingeichendorf, which was a center of importance throughout Europe at that time.
The skeleton of “The Mayor” will now be examined on site by an anthropologist and have photographs taken to produce a precise 3D model. The technique, known as photogrammetry, involves stitching multiple digital images together to make a virtual model.
Study Impacts Understanding of First Australians’ Possible Route
Professor Sue O’Connor (left) and Dr Shimona Kealy say the “major” migration to Timor Island was no accident.
The discovery of thousands of stone artefacts and animal bones in a deep cave in Timor Island has led archaeologists to reassess the route that early humans took to reach Australia.
Researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), Flinders University, University College London (UCL) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage dated and analysed the artefacts and sediment at the Laili rock shelter in central-north Timor-Leste, north of Australia, to pinpoint the arrival of the colonists.
They detected a human “arrival signature” from about 44,000 years ago, suggesting there were no humans on the island prior to this time.
“Unlike other sites in the region, the Laili rock shelter preserved deep sediments dating between 59,000 and 54,000 years ago which showed no clear signs of human occupation,” Dr Shimona Kealy, from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, said.
“When we analyse and compare markers of human occupation from other sites across Timor-Leste and nearby Flores Island, we can confidently say humans were also absent throughout the wider region of the southern Wallacean islands.
“This is significant as these islands were most likely a gateway crossing for ancient humans making the crossing to Australia.”
Study co-author Professor Sue O’Connor, also from ANU, said Timor Island has long been considered a stepping stone island for the first human migration between mainland Southeast Asia and into Australia and New Guinea. But the new findings challenge this theory.
“The absence of humans on Timor Island earlier than at least 50,000 years ago is significant as it indicates that these early humans arrived on the island later than previously believed,” she said.
“This provides further evidence to suggest early humans were making the crossing to Australia using the stepping stone island of New Guinea, rather than Timor Island as researchers had previously suggested.
“In addition to prompting a re-evaluation of the route and timing of earliest human migration through Wallacea and into Sahul, our findings highlight the fact that migration into the islands was ongoing with occupation of the southern islands occurring thousands of years after the initial settlement of Australia.”
The sediment from the site was analysed at the Flinders Microarchaeology Laboratory by co-author Associate Professor Mike Morley.
“The shift from pre-occupation to intensive human activity at the site was very clear in the sediments,” Associate Professor Morley, from Flinders University, said.
“As soon as people arrived on the scene, their use of the cave was very intensive, with clear evidence of burning and trampling of the shelter floor underfoot.”
The research team unearthed lots of small stone tools during the excavation, as well as charred fish bones.
“We know these people specialised in making tiny stone tools, but we’re not 100 per cent sure what they were used for,” Dr Kealy said.
“Because a lot of their diet was either shellfish or small animals, you don’t really need big knives to gather that sort of food. But having small, fine tools is useful for things like stripping leaves to then weave into baskets, but also for creating wooden tools.”
Based on the sheer number of artefacts unearthed at the site, the researchers say the migration to Timor Island was a “major” one. According to the researchers, these ancient humans likely made the crossing to Timor from nearby Flores Island and mainland Southeast Asia.
“The traditional view held by researchers is that early humans who were making these significant water crossings were stumbling upon these islands by mistake, largely because it was so long ago,” Dr Kealy said.
“Their arrival on Timor was no accident. This was a major colonisation effort, evident through the sheer number of people who were making the journey.
“It’s a testament to these peoples’ level of maritime technology and the boats they created, but also their confidence and competence in braving maritime crossings.”
The research is published in Nature Communications. This work was led by Dr Ceri Shipton from UCL and also involved scientists from Griffith University and the University of Wollongong.
2,700-year-old leather saddle found in woman’s tomb in China is oldest on record
The leather horse saddle from the tomb at Yanghai in northwest China is dated to roughly between 700 and 400 B.C. and may be the oldest ever found.
Archaeologists have unearthed an elaborate leather horse saddle — possibly the oldest ever found — from a grave in northwestern China, according to a new study.
The saddle, preserved for up to 2,700 years in the arid desert, was discovered in the tomb of a woman at a cemetery in Yanghai, in the Turpan Basin of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The woman was dressed in a hide coat, woolen pants and short leather boots, and had a “leather saddle placed on her buttocks as if she was seated on it,” according to the study, published Tuesday (May 23) in the journal Archaeological Research in Asia.
The saddle — two cowhide cushions filled with a mixture of straw and deer and camel hair — was made between 724 and 396 B.C., according to radiocarbon dating. It may predate saddles known from the Scythians — nomadic, warlike horse riders from the western and central Eurasian Steppe who interacted with the ancient Greeks and Romans. The earliest Sythian saddles seem to date from between the fifth and the third centuries B.C. and have been found in the Altai Mountains region of Russian Siberia and in eastern Kazakhstan.
The graveyard near Yanghai is in the Turpan Basin region, in the east of the Tian Shan mountains, which was occupied by the Subeixi people from about 3,000 years ago.
“This places the Yanghai saddle at the beginning of the history of saddle making,” study lead author Patrick Wertmann, an archaeologist at the University of Zurich, told Live Science.
The tombs at Yanghai are thought to be from people of the Subeixi culture, who occupied the Turpan Basin from about 3,000 years ago. The culture is named after another graveyard of tombs near the modern town of Subeixi, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of Yanghai.
Horse herds
The archaeologists also examined a saddle from another Subeixi graveyard in the region, which is thought to have been made at about the same time.
Archaeologists now think horses were domesticated as herd animals up to 6,000 years ago. But the earliest evidence suggests they were kept for their milk and meat; horse-riding may not have started until up to 1,000 years later.
The first riders used mats secured to the backs of horses with straps; carvings show Assyrian cavalrymen with such horse-gear in the seventh century B.C.
Archaeologists don’t know exactly when true saddles were invented, but they likely were developed by horse-riders in Central Asia about the mid-first millennium B.C., which would make the Yanghai saddle among the oldest, Wertmann said.
The development of saddles began “when riders began to care more about comfort and safety, and also the health of the horses,” he told Live Science in an email. “Saddles helped people to ride longer distances, hence leading to more interaction between different peoples.”
The early Scythian saddles and the Yanghai saddle both have distinct supports, which help riders maintain a firm position and raise themselves in the saddle, such as when shooting an arrow. The first saddles also had no stirrups, Wertmann said.
Female riders
The saddle was found in the tomb of a woman from the pastoralist Subeixi culture; it was positioned so that she seemed to be riding the saddle.
The Subeixi had similar weaponry, horse gear and garments to the Scythians and may have had contact with them in the Altai Mountains region, the study authors wrote. But while the Scythians were nomads, the Subeixi horse-riders were likely pastoralists who looked after herds of animals within the Turpan Basin.
University of Zurich biomolecular archaeologist Shevan Wilkin, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science that the extraordinary level of preservation of the Yanghai saddle suggests other, potentially older saddles, may be found nearby.
“Usually for something organic that’s this old, like leather, then we wouldn’t have any remnants of it, or very little,” she said.
The seated position of the buried woman on the saddle suggests she was a rider. “This really shifts our ideas about who was riding horses,” Wilkin said.
Birgit Bühler, an archaeologist at the University of Vienna, who also wasn’t involved with the study, told Live Science in an email that the discovery in an ordinary tomb is “strong evidence for women participating in the day-to-day activities of mounted pastoralists, which included herding and travelling.”
The find contradicts traditionalist historical narratives associating horse-riding with warfare by elite men, she said.
1,000 years ago, Baltic pagans imported horses from Scandinavia to behead them or bury them alive
An illustration of a ritual sacrifice of a horse at Paprotki Kolonia, in what is now modern Poland.
Around 1,000 years ago, pagans living near the Baltic Sea imported horses from their newly Christian northern neighbors and then subjected the animals to gruesome public sacrifice, a new study finds
Horses were an important component of Balt culture between the first and 13th centuries, evidence shows; numerous ancient equestrian artifacts have been recovered, and travelers have reported that elite Balts drank fermented mare’s milk. Because the Balts were not literate prior to their conversion to Christianity, however, most information about their lives, including their pagan religion, comes from archaeological investigation.
In a new study published May 17 in the journal Science Advances, researchers detailed their biomolecular analysis of 80 sacrificed horses from nine archaeological sites in the eastern Baltic region — modern-day Poland, Lithuania and the Russian province of Kaliningrad sandwiched between them — and determined that both male and female horses were chosen for sacrifice and that some horses were imported from quite a distance.
A previous assumption within Baltic archaeology, according to the study, was that stallions were specifically selected for public sacrifice and that this ritual — which often involved decapitation, flaying, quartering the horses or burying them alive — was enacted at the funerals of elite male warriors in Balt culture. To test this, the team analyzed the DNA of the horses and found that roughly 66% were stallions and 34% were mares.
“Our results suggest that the Balts were not exclusively selecting male horses for this ritual, as previously thought,” lead author Katherine French, a zooarchaeologist formerly at Cardiff University in the U.K. and now based at Washington State University, told Live Science in an email.
An illustration of a sacrificial horse burial at Paprotki Kolonia.
Because horses were common in the Balts’ territory, researchers did not previously question whether the animals were sourced locally or from somewhere else.
But the new study did a strontium isotope analysis of the horses’ tooth enamel to identify the origin of the horses — and found that three were not born locally.
The strontium present in tooth crowns comes from the animals’ early diet; by measuring the ratio of two variants of strontium in one tooth or between teeth that grew at different times, researchers can match where the animal grew up or see where it moved when it was growing up.
“Results confirm that there is no possibility that the horses originated in the territory of the Baltic tribes and that the region of the highest likelihood for these horses is the Fennoscandian Peninsula, specifically east-central Sweden or southern Finland,” the researchers wrote.
All three horses were carbon-dated to about the 11th to 13th centuries, a time when trade networks across the Baltic Sea, particularly with Sweden, were well established.
It was also a period when there was still pagan resistance within the kingdom of Sweden, which officially converted to Christianity in 1164.
Katherine French examines a horse jaw to select a dental sample at the University of Białystok.
The fact that one nonlocal horse in Kaliningrad was buried with a Scandinavian-influenced artifact — a weight, possibly involved in trading — may suggest that its Balt owner was a pagan trader, the researchers wrote in the study. But it is also possible, they noted, that the imported horses arrived with their Scandinavian owners, who were buried in the Baltic style.
“In either case,” the researchers wrote, “our results prove that horses were crossing the Baltic Sea on ships, a level of mobility not previously recognized archaeologically.”
Flint Dibble, a zooarchaeologist at Cardiff University in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that the new research is both innovative and impactful, and demonstrates how scientific methods can be applied to study ancient animal populations.
“The impressive sample size — 80 individual horses — reveals the importance of applying these methods to a significant, localized dataset in order to tease out relevant archaeological patterns,” Dibble said, and “the long distance trade in horses in Northern Europe is now a topic that needs additional investigation.”
French plans to address this topic further with new research. “I’m currently working on a separate project looking at contemporary ship technology to determine how — and how many — horses could have been transported on Viking Age cargo ships.”
New Thoughts on the “Lead Lady” of the Netherlands
The remains of a rich Roman woman in a grave found during works in the centre of Nijmegen in 2001 could turn out belong to a menial worker, closer inspection by archeologists has shown.
The coffin being removed from its finding place in 2001.
The remains were buried in a lead coffin which led archeologists to believe that the occupant must have been a well-to-do Roman woman.
However, the “Lead Lady” as she was christened, may have been been far from rich, an investigation has found.
“It’s a warning to all archaeologists to do our job properly,” Nijmegen city archeologist Joep Hendriks told broadcaster NOS. “If you present a story based on a some superficial research you almost always have to amend it,” he said.
Closer inspection showed the coffin had been used before. “It was a used coffin that had been folded inside out. The ornamentation that is normally on the outside a coffin was on the inside, Hendriks said. “The coffin was also covered with a tile not a lead lid, which you would have expected in a nice complete sarcophagus burial.”
The coffin was also found to be too big for the woman, measuring two metres against her 160 centimetres. “Lead was expensive and coffins were usually made to measure so why waste money on an extra 20 or 30 centimetres? It doesn’t make economic sense,” Hendriks said.
The skeleton itself also disproves the initial theory. It shows degeneration of the dorsal vertebrae and signs of arthrosis. The state of her teeth may be an indication she used them as a tool. “You can tell that she used her teeth in repetitive actions, perhaps to process animal skins or plants. That would cause this type of wear,” Hendriks said.
How the women ended up in a recycled coffin is still a mystery although Hendriks thinks the person may have been a well-loved member of a rich Roman household. She may have been an ornatrix, or hairdresser to the woman of the house, he said.
“She would have been close to her mistress who you can imagine wanted to give her a decent burial,” Hendriks said, although he doesn’t want to jump to conclusions this time around.
“Other interpretations are possible, of course, such as a working woman who made good, or perhaps the mater familias of rich family after all. Even a second-hand lead coffin was a pretty big thing.”
DNA tests
DNA tests not available in 2001 may reveal more about the woman’s identity and where she grew up, Hendrik hopes.
“Nijmegen was a melting pot in Roman times. Nijmegen was founded by people from Gaul, soldiers from Spain and people from all corners of the Roman empire, from the Eastern Mediterranean to England. We would like to know where in this mixed society the Lead Lady belonged,” he said.
The coffin and other grave finds can be seen at the Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen.
Fossil Hunters Found Bones From An Ancient Whale… And Then They Saw The Bite Marks
There was tremendous turmoil at the top of the water’s surface. An island of flesh, once living and swimming gracefully through these ancient seas, bobbed silently, at times yanked violently to the side or jolted upward by forces below it.
The whale fin fossils. (Photo: Photos courtesy Carlos Jaramillo)
Pelagornis miocaenus, an enormous prehistoric seabird circling lazily above the scene, may have noticed the whale carcass in its entirety, partially exposed to the air, but much of it underwater. It would have seen the many sharks encircling it. Some of them grabbing mouthfuls, shaking the flesh off of the body, and darting away. Others may have attacked the whale from below, propelling themselves teeth first into the dead mammal. The head and snout of a lone great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) may have appeared amongst the waves, biting off chunks from the dead whale’s side.
A whale this size isn’t devoured in a day, no matter how hungry the sharks encircling it were. With the tastier options — the tongue and most of the fatty flesh — eaten away, the carcass was beginning to come apart. The head had long since detached, its skull drifting down to the the seafloor. Other parts were carried off to be eaten, the bones discarded elsewhere. Eventually, whatever gases or fat content kept the carcass afloat would dissipate, and it would sink.
One of the whale’s fins, in shreds, had already sunk to the sand. Ancient fish may have snacked on the threads of flesh still clinging to the exposed bones. Marine invertebrates such as worms and bryozoans attached themselves onto what remained.
In time, the remnants of this fin were covered by the seafloor.
Those same remnants saw daylight again over 2 million years later, in September 2016. Professor Joaquín Atencio, two of his students, Joel Orocú and Patricio Pimentel, and Joel’s father, Félix Orocú, discovered the exposed fossil whale bones when the tide was out in the Burica Peninsula of Panama.
After spotting the fossils in the coastal outcrop, Atencio called Carlos Jaramillo, a geologist and paleontologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, who in turn put together a team of scientists to excavate them. They uncovered several disarticulated fossil whale bones and a fossil shark tooth nearby.
The research into these bones culminated in a paper published recently in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica: “Shark-cetacean trophic interactions during the late Pliocene in the Central Eastern Pacific (Panama).”
The authors determined that these bones belonged to a type of Balaenopterid, a genus of filter-feeding whales that includes today’s humpback and blue whales. Fin bones alone are not enough to determine the exact species or the size of the marine mammal, but these particular bones did offer tantalising clues into the last moments of this animal.
“When we collected the whale fossils,” explained lead author Dirley Cortés, a paleobiologist at Redpath Museum, McGill University, “from the beginning we were really surprised about the giant size of the appendicular bones. After a while of inspection, we realised some of the bones had strange serrated marks across the surface, we came up with the excited hypothesis of shark bite marks, but it took us more time to actually confirm it.”
One such bone, they reported, has 26 separate bite traces upon it. Studying such traces is the hallmark of ichnology, a field that specialises in the grooves, marks, edges and prints left behind by living species. What might look like just a bunch of cracks on ancient bone to the average person reads like an entire language to ichnologists, one that provides remarkable insight.
“Some of the bite traces show these very finely spaced parallel lines,” said Anthony Martin, ichnologist at Emory University, “which is typical of the kind of damage you would get from a serrated tooth. That damage is generally associated with sharks.”
Absent conclusive proof one way or the other, the authors conservatively propose that at least two different sharks may have scavenged upon this whale, perhaps great white sharks. Jorge Velez-Juarbe, marine mammal curator for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, explained that this assumption is due to the size difference between the bite traces.
The scenario described at the start of this article may or may not have actually occurred. While fossils tell us a great deal, they don’t reveal every detail. We don’t know whether the whale was already dead at the time of the shark bites; we don’t know whether it was scavenged while floating on the surface or whether it had already sunk and was eaten on the seafloor. We also don’t know with certainty which species of shark gnawed on its flesh.
“From what we know, at the end of the Pliocene, there is an interesting mix of more modern fauna with other more ‘archaic’ or extinct groups,” Velez-Juarbe said. “This of course changed a bit at the end of the Neogene, when there seems to have been a marine megafauna extinction event.”
In other words, some of the creatures living in oceans 3.6 million to 2.58 million years ago are very much a part of our world today. We have filter-feeding whales and great white sharks off of our coasts. The story these fossils tell is one we can instantly imagine and understand.
Today’s sharks are not known to attack full-grown whales. If their ancestors behaved in similar ways, then it is reasonable to assume ancient sharks scavenged—rather than killed then ate—this ancient whale. The bite traces support this.
“The vast majority of bite traces on bone are scavenging,” Martin said. “In many instances, and I think in this instance, too, there might not be enough flesh to prevent the teeth from contacting the bone. Once the teeth are contacting the bone, that means either that bone is exposed or the flesh is thin enough that the teeth can contact bone.”
“This finding is of scientific importance not only because we were able to tell much about sharks feeding on whales [in prehistoric times], but because of its temporal context. As we pointed out in the paper, the genetic diversity of cetaceans, and especially mysticetes, declined around the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary, an example of a global turnover event in the marine megafauna,” wrote Cortés in an email. “Fossil marine mammals, like the one preserved here, will be useful for understanding the dynamics of the marine fauna in one of the most critical periods of Earth history, the Plio-Pleistocene transition.”
Cortés emphasised the importance of further exploring the Burica Peninsula in Panama and other nearby sites. While whale fossils are common throughout the world, discoveries have been relatively few in Central and South America. The whale specimen described here is actually the first marine mammal recorded from the Neogene (a period that spanned from 23 million years ago to 2.58 million years ago) in the Burica Peninsula.
“One of the reasons,” Cortés offered, “may be the lack of fully exposed Cenozoic outcrops in particular in the Pacific side of Central America, which makes it difficult to prospect this succession and get data. Another important reason is the number of researchers per capita.”
She described how paleontology is still an emerging science in countries such as Panama and Colombia. To illustrate this further, she explained that out of “1 million citizens, Colombia has less than 90 scientists, of which a minimum amount is involved in paleontology. Without enough paleontologists, research becomes a challenged although privileged way of life. And the panorama for women scientists does not look so encouraging either.”
“Something paleontologists always highlight is that no matter how complete, what matters most is the amazing story that fossil has to tell us,” wrote Cortés.
The stories yet to be told — the fossils hidden for millions of years — are just waiting to be found.
Mummified remains of Incan ‘Princess’ who died 500 years ago finally returned to Bolivia
In this Aug. 15, 2019 photo, the 500-year-old mummy of an Incan girl sits inside a vault at the National Museum of Archaeology in La Paz, Bolivia. Nicknamed Nusta, a Quechua word for “Princess,” the mummy recently returned to its native Bolivia 129 years after it was donated to the Michigan State University museum in 1890.
A 500-year-old mummy of an Incan girl has been returned to Bolivia some 129 years after it was donated to the Michigan State University Museum, marking what an official says is the first time human remains of archaeological importance have been repatriated to the Andean country.
Known as Ñusta, a Quechua word for “Princess,” the mummy amazes many because of its excellent state of preservation: Its black braids seem recently combed and its hands still cling to small feathers.
Experts say the mummy originally came from a region in the Andean highlands near La Paz during the last years of the Inca civilization.
Radiocarbon tests also have revealed that it dates to the second half of the 15th century, confirming the likelihood that its tomb burial preceded the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the conquest of the Inca by the Spanish.
“Despite the fact that it was given the name Ñusta, or ‘Princess,’ we don’t know if she was really a princess. We will only be able to answer that with DNA studies,” said William A. Lovis, an MSU emeritus professor of anthropology who worked for years to help bring the remains home.
The mummy was returned more than two weeks ago with the assistance of the U.S. embassy in La Paz, and a new study is expected to be carried out by November by Bolivian academics and foreign experts. Until then, accompanying funerary objects will be exhibited to the public during a celebration that pays homage to the dead on Nov. 2.
In this Aug. 15, 2019 photo, a student opens the door to a vault inside the National Museum of Archaeology where the 500-year-old mummy of an Incan girl is being stored in La Paz, Bolivia. Experts say the mummy originally came from a region in the Andean highlands near La Paz during the last years of the Inca civilization.
Culture Minister Wilma Alanoca said that in recent years, the Bolivian government has achieved the repatriation of several archaeological goods that were taken illegally, but this is the first time that a body has been brought back.
“It’s the first time that a body has been recovered, a mummy from the Inca period,” she said.
Still, many mysteries remain unsolved.
The girl, who is thought to have been part of an ethnic Aymara group known as the Pacajes, had originally been placed in a stone tomb along with sandals, a small clay jar, pouches, feathers and several types of plants including maize and coca—perhaps because some Andean civilizations believed that offerings helped the dead transition into the next life.
This Aug. 15, 2019 photo shows a 500-year-old mummy of an Incan girl clinging to bird feathers, inside a vault at the National Museum of Archaeology in La Paz, Bolivia. The girl is believed to have been around 8 years of age when she died. She is also believed to have been part of an ethnic Aymara group known as the Pacajes, which was under Inca control, said William A. Lovis, an MSU emeritus professor of anthropology who worked for years to help return the mummy to the Andean country.
In this Aug. 15, 2019 photo, an anthropology student analyzes bird feathers that were held by the 500-year-old Incan girl mummy now stored at the National Museum of Archaeology in La Paz, Bolivia. The mummy had originally been placed in a stone tomb along with sandals, a small clay jar, pouches, feathers and several types of plants, including maize and coca. Andean civilization used to give offerings to the dead under the belief that it would help their transition into the other life.
In this Aug. 15, 2019 photo, the fingers of a 500-year-old Incan girl mummy holds bird feathers, inside a vault at the National Museum of Archaeology in La Paz, Bolivia. Experts say the mummy originally came from a region in the Andean highlands near La Paz during the last years of the Inca civilization. Radiocarbon tests also have revealed that it’s as old as the second half of the 15th century, confirming the likelihood that its tomb burial predated the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the conquest of the Inca by the Spanish.
“It’s possible that the girl was an important person and that the objects placed with her had as much sacred importance as they had a useful purpose,” said Lovis. “Another possibility is that her death was an Inca sacrifice to appease or an offer to Inca deities.”
Ñusta is believed to have been about 8 years old when she died and was buried in a dress made with threads from llama or alpaca, animals which were domesticated more than 4,000 years ago in the Andes and still roam the highlands of Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
David Trigo, who heads the National Archaeology Museum in La Paz, said the well-kept objects open new doors into a society that has barely been studied.
“We can say that she was an important member of her ethnic group,” Trigo said, referring to Incan and Aymara traditions of building adobe or stone tombs known as chullpa for elite members of their communities.
For now, the remains are being preserved in a refrigerated chamber at the National Archaeology Museum in downtown La Paz.
Newly Discovered Human-Sized Dinosaur Footprint Is The Largest Ever Found
The prints indicate enormous animals that were probably around 5.3 to 5.5 metres at the hip.
Australian researchers digging in the area known as “Australia’s Jurassic Park” have found the world’s biggest dinosaur footprint yet to be discovered.
According to their findings published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the University of Queensland and James Cook University paleontologists found 20 more dinosaur footprints while digging around the Kimberly area in Western Australia.
Until now, the biggest known dinosaur footprint was a 106cm track discovered in the Mongolian desert.
At the new site, along the Kimberley shoreline in a remote region of Western Australia, paleontologists discovered a rich collection of dinosaur footprints in the sandstone rock, many of which are only visible at low tide.
The prints, belonging to about 21 different types of dinosaur, are also thought to be the most diverse collection of prints in the world.
Steve Salisbury, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Queensland told ABC News: “We’ve got several tracks up in that area that is about 1.7 meters long.
So most people would be able to fit inside tracks that big, and they indicate animals that are probably around 5.3 to 5.5 meters at the hip, which is enormous.”
The prints, found along the Kimberley shoreline, belong to about 21 different types of dinosaur and are thought to be the most diverse collection of prints in the world.
Salisbury said the diversity of the tracks was globally unparalleled and made the area the “Cretaceous equivalent of the Serengeti”. He also dubbed it “Australia’s own Jurassic Park”.
“It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia’s dinosaur fauna during the first half of the early Cretaceous period,” he said.
The findings were reported in the Memoir of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
“There are thousands of tracks,” said Salisbury. “Of these, 150 can confidently be assigned to 21 specific track types, representing four main groups of dinosaurs.”
The largest tracks belonged to sauropods, huge Diplodocus-like herbivores with long necks and tails.
The scientists also discovered tracks from about four different types of ornithopod dinosaurs (two-legged herbivores) and six types of armored dinosaurs, including Stegosaurs, which had not previously been seen in Australia.
At the time the prints were left, 130m years ago, the area was a large river delta and dinosaurs would have traversed wet sandy areas between surrounding forests.
The latest investigation was prompted after the region was selected as the site for a liquid natural gas processing precinct in 2008.
The area’s traditional custodians, the Goolarabooloo people, who were aware of the prints, contacted Salisbury and his team and asked them to investigate.
The scientists from Queensland University and James Cook University, along with Indigenous representatives, spent 400 hours documenting the prints.
“Dinosaur tracks have been known through that area, probably for thousands of years. They form part of the song cycle,” Salisbury said told ABC News.
“We got contacted to come in and have a closer look, and it didn’t take long for us to realize that … there was a spectacular dinosaur track fauna preserved there that was at risk.”
