Norway Couple Find Viking Age Grave Under Their House
When the couple removed the floor, they began to find stones and pieces of iron. Archaeologists believe they are from the Viking Age.
A Norwegian couple got quite the shock when renovating their old family house near Bodø in northern Norway this month.
After removing the floorboards and some sand with the intention to install insulation, the couple discovered several rocks. They continued digging and spotted something glittering in the light.
A Viking Age discovery
According to TV2 they first believed it was the wheel from a toy car, but as the floor had never been lifted since the house’s construction in 1914, it had to be something else. The item turned out to be a glass bead.
A glass bead was among the first objects discovered by the couple in northern Norway.
The couple also found a large iron axehead and several other iron objects. They contacted the Nordland county authority which has responsibility for cultural heritage. Experts from Tromsø museum visited the house the following day.
By Norwegian law, any cultural monuments that show traces of human activity prior to 1537 are automatically preserved.
A full excavation
Archaeologists have now started a full excavation of what they believe is a grave from the Viking Age. While such burial sites are not uncommon in Norway, this would be the first example of one found under a house.
Archaeologist Martinus Hauglid said that the glass bead and iron items are likely from the late Viking Age, when Norway transitioned to Christianity and became one kingdom.
“We assume it dates back to the 9th century, probably a grave from the Viking Age. Now there is a group of archaeologists from Tromsø doing a survey, and they will bring all the finds north,” he told Bodø Nu. The iron items and bead are already at Tromsø University for further study.
These stones formed the top of what archaeologists believe is a Viking burial ground
5,500-Year-Old Sumerian Star Map Of Ancient Nineveh Reveals Observation Of Köfels’ Impact Event
Did ancient Sumerians observe and record the impact of the Aten asteroid over 5,000 years ago?
The Sumerian star map shows people observing and recording Köfels’ impact more than 5,500 years ago.
For over 150 years scientists have tried to solve the mystery of a controversial cuneiform clay tablet that indicates the so-called Köfel’s impact event was observed in ancient times. The circular stone-cast tablet was recovered from the 650 BC underground library of King Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, Iraq in the late 19th century. Long thought to be an Assyrian tablet, computer analysis has matched it with the sky above Mesopotamia in 3300 BC and proves it to be of much more ancient Sumerian origin.
The tablet is an “Astrolabe,” the earliest known astronomical instrument. It consists of a segmented, disk-shaped star chart with marked units of angle measure inscribed upon the rim.
Unfortunately, considerable parts of the planisphere on this tablet are missing (approximately 40%), damage which dates to the sacking of Nineveh. The reverse of the tablet is not inscribed.
Still, under study by modern scholars, the cuneiform tablet in the British Museum collection No K8538 (known as “the Planisphere”) provides extraordinary proof for the existence of sophisticated Sumerian astronomy.
In 2008 two authors, Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell published a book about the tablet called “A Sumerian Observation of the Kofels’ Impact Event”.
Raising a storm in archaeological circles, they re-translated the cuneiform text and assert the tablet records an ancient asteroid strike, the Köfels’ Impact, which struck Austria sometime around 3100 BC.
The giant landslide centered at Köfels in Austria is 500 m thick and five kilometers in diameter and has long been a mystery since geologists first looked at it in the 19th century. The conclusion drawn by research in the middle 20th century was that it must be due to a very large meteor impact because of the evidence of crushing pressures and explosions.
But this view lost favor as a much better understanding of impact sites developed in the late 20th century.
In the case of Köfels there is no crater, so to modern eyes, it does not look as an impact site should look. However, the evidence that puzzled the earlier researchers remains unexplained by the view that it is just another landslide.
So what is the connection between the sophisticated Sumerian star chart discovered in the underground library in Nineveh and the mysterious impact that took place in Austria?
Examination of the clay tablet reveals that it is an astronomical work as it has drawings of constellations on it and the text has known constellation names. It has attracted a lot of attention but in over a hundred years nobody has come up with a convincing explanation as to what it is.
The Sumerian star map shows people observed and recorded Köfels’ impact more than 5,500 years ago.
With modern computer programs that can simulate trajectories and reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago, the researchers have established what the Planisphere tablet refers to. It is a copy of the night notebook of a Sumerian astronomer as he records the events in the sky before dawn on 29 June 3123 BC (Julian calendar).
Half the tablet records planet positions and cloud cover, the same as any other night, but the other half of the tablet records an object large enough for its shape to be noted even though it is still in space.
The astronomers made an accurate note of its trajectory relative to the stars, which to an error better than one degree is consistent with an impact at Köfels.
The observation suggests the asteroid is over a kilometer in diameter and the original orbit about the Sun was an Aten type, a class of asteroid that orbit close to the earth, that is resonant with the Earth’s orbit.
This trajectory explains why there is no crater at Köfels. The incoming angle was very low (six degrees) and means the asteroid clipped a mountain called Gamskogel above the town of Längenfeld, 11 kilometers from Köfels, and this caused the asteroid to explode before it reached its final impact point. As it traveled down the valley it became a fireball, around five kilometers in diameter (the size of the landslide).
Around 700 BC an Assyrian scribe in the Royal Place at Nineveh made a copy of one of the most important documents in the royal collection.
Two and a half thousand years later it was found by Henry Layard in the remains of the palace library. It ended up in the British Museum’s cuneiform clay tablet collection as catalog No. K8538 (also called “the Planisphere”), where it has puzzled scholars for over a hundred and fifty years. In this monograph, Bond and Hempsell provide the first comprehensive translation of the tablet, showing it to be a contemporary Sumerian observation of an Aten asteroid over a kilometer in diameter that impacted Köfels in Austria in the early morning of 29th June 3123 BC. Read more
When it hit Köfels it created enormous pressures that pulverized the rock and caused the landslide but because it was no longer a solid object it did not create a classic impact crater.
Mark Hempsell, discussing the Köfels event, said: “Another conclusion can be made from the trajectory. The back plume from the explosion (the mushroom cloud) would be bent over the Mediterranean Sea re-entering the atmosphere over the Levant, Sinai, and Northern Egypt.
“The ground heating though very short would be enough to ignite any flammable material – including human hair and clothes. It is probable more people died under the plume than in the Alps due to the impact blast.”
In other words, the remarkable ancient star map shows that the Sumerians made an observation of an Aten asteroid over a kilometer in diameter that impacted Köfels in Austria in the early morning of 29th June 3123 BC.
A 3,400-year-old Minoan tomb has been uncovered in an unnamed farmer’s olive grove near Ierapetra on the Greek island of Crete
The untouched Bronze Age tomb and the skeletons inside will hopefully provide archaeologists with information about the mysterious Minoan civilization.
A covered coffin from the Minoan times found in Ierapetra, Crete, Greece.
In an extraordinary example of being in the wrong place at the right time, a Greek farmer just made a startling archaeological discovery.
A 3,400-year-old Minoan tomb was uncovered in an unnamed farmer’s olive grove near the city of Ierapetra on the Greek island of Crete. According to Cretapost, the farmer was attempting to park his car underneath an olive tree when suddenly the ground beneath him began to sink.
The farmer pulled his car out from under the tree and noticed that a huge hole which measured around four feet wide had opened up where his car had been sitting. When he peeked into the hole, the farmer knew he had stumbled upon something special. He called the local heritage ministry, Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities, to investigate.
The four foot wide hole accidentally made by the farmer that ultimately led to the Minoan Bronze Age tomb.
The archaeologists from the ministry excavated the hole. What they found next was unprecedented.
The pit was approximately four feet wide and eight feet deep, was divided into three sections, and very apparently was a tomb.
In the first section, archaeologists uncovered a coffin and a variety of artifacts. The following niche held a second coffin, 14 Greek jars called amphorae, and a bowl.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, the archaeologists identified that the tomb was Minoan and of the Bronze Age due to the style of coffin they found. The artifacts — funerary vases and the two coffins— were well-preserved despite their extremely old age.
The eight-foot deep pit contained two coffins and several artifacts.
The tomb was sealed off by a stone wall and only after thousands of years of wear and tear did it deteriorate enough to buckle under the weight of the farmer’s car.
“Soil retreat was a result of the watering of the olive trees in the area as well as a broken irrigation tube,” Argyris Pantazis, the Deputy Mayor of Local Communities, Agranian and Tourism of Ierapetra, told Cretapost. “The ground had partially receded, and when the farmer tried to park in the shade of the olive, it completely retreated.”
Pantazis also said that the fact that the tomb was untouched by thieves for millennia makes it an ideal site for archaeologists to learn as much as possible about the two people buried in the tomb and life for the Minoan civilization.
A look inside the coffin of one of the two Minoans buried in the 3,400-year-old tomb.
According to Forbes, the skeletons date back to the Late Minoan IIIA-B period in archaeological chronology, also known as the Late Palace Period.
So far, not much information is known about the Minoan civilization and their way of life, save for their labyrinth palatial complexes, showcased in classic myths like Theseus and the Minotaur.
Researchers also believe that the Minoans met their end because of a string of devastating natural disasters. Most other details of the Minoan’s history remain unclear.
Further analysis of the skeletons and artifacts in the tomb in Crete will hopefully help archaeologists fill in some blanks and answer questions about mysterious Minoan civilization.
Iron Age necropolis that predates Rome unearthed near Naples
The archaeological team has unearthed 88 “pit tombs” at the site. There are also two large burial mounds that they think cover tombs of the elites of the ancient society.
An ancient necropolis discovered near Naples, Italy was used to bury the dead about 2,800 years ago, around the time the city of Rome was founded about 100 miles (161 kilometers) to the northwest.
The discovery gives researchers a rare insight into the Iron Age cultures that existed before the Roman domination of the region. The astonishing finds near the town of Amorosi, about 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Naples, include 88 burials in “pit tombs” of both men and women.
The men were typically buried with weapons, whereas the women were often buried with bronze ornaments, including bracelets, pendants, brooches — called “fibulae,” and pieces of amber and worked bone, according to a translated statement from the Italian Ministry of Culture.
The archaeologists who excavated the site have also unearthed large numbers of pottery vases of different shapes, which were usually placed in the tombs at the feet of the deceased. They think the burial ground predates the Samnites, the people who lived in the region a few hundred years later and were frequent enemies of the early Romans.
Archaeologists think the ancient burial ground, or necropolis, near the town of Amorosi, Italy is around 2,800 years old.
Early Italy
According to legend, the mythical hero Romulus founded the city of Rome in 753 B.C. amid a dispute with his twin brother Remus; but archaeologists think Rome developed from a union of several hilltop villages after about the tenth century B.C., during the Iron Age.
The early Roman state fought many wars against its neighbors, including Etruscan city-states and other Latin-speaking peoples; and in the fourth century B.C., the Romans fought a series of wars against the Samnites, who mainly lived southeast of Rome in the mountainous Apennine region.
Rome was ultimately victorious, however, and the Samnites were assimilated into Roman society after the Third Samnite War, from 298 until 290 B.C., after which Rome went on to conquer the whole of Italy and to start colonies further afield.
The ancient necropolis near Amorosi seems to have been established in the Samnite region, but hundreds of years before the Samnites arrived there, possibly from central Italy.
Archaeologists think the people who founded the necropolis belonged to what’s been called the “Pit Tomb” culture that existed throughout much of central and southern Italy during the Iron Age.
The ancient necropolis was found during archaeological excavations that were conducted before a power station is built at the site.
Ancient necropolis
The burial ground near Amorosi was discovered by archaeologists investigating the area before a new power plant is built there. The power plant is intended to supply electricity to a high-speed upgrade of the railway between Naples and the city of Bari, on Italy’s Adriatic coast.
As well as the pit tombs, the necropolis features two large burial mounds — about 50 feet (15 meters) across — that the archaeologists think cover the tombs of elite members of the ancient society.
A statement from Italy’s Ministry of Culture said the tombs of men in the necropolis often included weapons, while the tombs of women often included ornaments, such as these bronze bracelets.
The mounds are now the only visible features of the necropolis, and have been known about for millennia, but the latest excavations have only now revealed the many tombs around them, according to news reports.
The tombs, artifacts and human remains they contain will now be studied in a laboratory that’s been set up at the site, the statement said.
Stone Inscribed With Ireland’s Ogham Script Found in England
A geography teacher was tidying his overgrown garden at his home in Coventry, England, when he stumbled across a rock with mysterious incisions. Intrigued, he sent photographs to a local archaeologist and was taken aback to learn that the markings were created more than 1,600 years ago and that the artefact was worthy of a museum.
The stone, which is 11cm long and weighs 139g, is inscribed on three of its four sides. Photograph: The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum
The rectangular sandstone rock that Graham Senior had discovered was inscribed in ogham, an alphabet used in the early medieval period primarily for writing in the Irish language.
Before the people of Ireland began using manuscripts made from vellum, they used the ogham writing system, consisting of parallel lines in groups on materials such as stone. Rare examples of such stones offer an insight into the Irish language before the use of the Latin insular script.
Mr Senior (55) said: “I was just clearing a flower bed of weeds and stones when I saw this thing and thought, that’s not natural, that’s not scratchings of an animal. It can’t have been more than four or five inches below the surface.”
He washed it and consulted a relative who was an archaeologist, who suggested that he contact the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which encourages the recording of archaeological objects found by members of the public.
Teresa Gilmore, an archaeologist and finds liaison officer for Staffordshire and West Midlands based at Birmingham Museums, said: “This is an amazing find. The beauty of the Portable Antiquities Scheme is that people are finding stuff that keeps rewriting our history.
“This particular find has given us a new insight into early medieval activity in Coventry, which we still need to make sense of. Each find like this helps in filling in our jigsaw puzzle and gives us a bit more information.”
When Mr Senior sent her some photographs, she immediately saw its potential. She contacted Katherine Forsyth, professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Glasgow, who confirmed that it was an ogham script, that of an early style, which most likely dates to the fifth to sixth century but possibly as early as the fourth century.
Ms Gilmore said such stones were “very rare and have generally been found in Ireland or Scotland … so to find them in the [English] midlands is actually unusual.”
She suggested it could be linked to people coming over from Ireland or to early medieval monasteries in the area. “You would have had monks and clerics moving between the different monasteries.”
The stone, which is 11cm long and weighs 139g, is inscribed on three of its four sides.
Its purpose is unclear, said Ms Gilmore, adding: “It could have been a portable commemorative item. We don’t know. It’s an amazing little thing.”
Explaining its inscription, “Maldumcail/S/Lass”, Gilmore said.
“The first part relates to a person’s name, Mael Dumcail. The second part is less certain. We’re not sure where the S/ Lass comes from. It is probably a location. So something like ‘had me made’.”
Senior said it was exciting to be told that the artefact was significant, adding: “We’re not far from the river Sowe. My thinking is that it must have been a major transport route.”
The rock will be displayed at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, to which Mr Senior has donated it permanently. It will feature in the forthcoming Collecting Coventry exhibition, which opens on May 11th.
Ali Wells, a curator at the museum, said: “It is really quite incredible. The language originates from Ireland. So, to have found it within Coventry, has been an exciting mystery. Coventry has been dug up over the years, especially the city centre, so there’s not that many new finds. It was quite unexpected.” – Guardian
New Dates Obtained for Modern Human Remains in China
Frontal view of the Liujiang cranial and postcranial elements.
Some of China’s oldest Homo sapiens remains are about 10 times younger than previously thought. Skeletal remains of a modern human discovered in 1958 were found in southern China’s Liujiang District.
It was previously thought that the remains were up to 227,000 years old. It is thought modern humans began their trek out of Africa about 300,000 years ago.
Location of Tongtianyan cave (Liujiang) in Guangxi Province, southern China, together with the location of other key fossils of Homo sapiens in China.
Now a re-analysis of the bones published in Nature Communications has revised the estimate age of the Chinese remains to between 33,000 and 23,000 years ago.
“These revised age estimates align with dates from other human fossils in northern China, suggesting a geographically widespread presence of H. sapiens across Eastern Asia after 40,000 years ago,” says co-author Michael Petraglia, a professor at Australia’s Griffith University.
The team’s reassessment is based on radiocarbon and other techniques: optically stimulated luminescence, which measures how long it has been since sediments have been exposed to sunlight, and U-series dating which is another radiometric technique which uses uranium isotopes instead of carbon.
“This finding holds significant implications for understanding human dispersals and adaptations in the region,” says lead author Junyi Ge from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “It challenges previous interpretations and provides insights into the occupation history of China.”
Debate continues as to when modern humans made it out of Africa, where we evolved about 300,000 years ago, to East Asia.
Fossil teeth found in southern China’s Fuyan Cave are suggested to be 80,000–120,000 years old. Other finds support the idea that Homo sapiens have been in China for at least 40,000 years.
It is believed that modern humans arrived in Australia about 65,000 years ago.
Besides Homo sapiens, however, other ancient humans made it to East Asia much earlier.
Remains found near Beijing belonging to a Homo erectus individual known as “Peking Man” are between 230,000 and 780,000 years old. Other hominin finds in China are nearly 2 million years old.
Comparison of American Languages Detects Waves of Migration
Indigenous Americans, illustrated here during a mammoth hunt, developed their diverse languages from 4 different population waves that came over from Siberia, a new study suggests.
Indigenous people entered North America at least four times between 12,000 and 24,000 years ago, bringing their languages with them, a new linguistic model indicates. The model correlates with archaeological, climatological and genetic data, supporting the idea that populations in early North America were dynamic and diverse.
Nearly half of the world’s language families are found in the Americas. Although many of them are now thought extinct, historical linguistics analysis can survey and compare living languages and trace them back in time to better understand the groups that first populated the continent.
In a study published March 30 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California Berkeley, analyzed structural features of 60 languages from across the U.S. and Canada, which revealed they come from two main language groups that entered North America in at least four distinct waves.
Nichols surveyed 16 features of these languages, including syllable structure, the gender of nouns and the way consonants are produced when speaking.
The languages split into two main groups: an early one where the first-person pronoun has an “n” sound while the second-person pronoun has an “m” sound, and a later group with languages that incorporate a sentence’s worth of information in just one word.
Further linguistic analysis indicated that people arrived in the Americas in four distinct waves.
The first occurred around 24,000 years ago, when massive glaciers covered much of North America. Nichols found no unique language features, suggesting a diverse set of people and languages entered North America at that time.
A second wave of people around 15,000 years ago brought languages with n-m pronouns, while a third wave 1,000 years later brought languages with simple consonants. A fourth wave around 12,000 years ago then brought complex consonants.
Until relatively recently, researchers assumed that Indigenous people first arrived in the Americas via a land bridge from Siberia around 13,000 years ago.
But Nichols’ previous study of the linguistic data convinced her that this was not enough time for the nearly 200 Indigenous American languages to develop: Instead, she proposed people first arrived closer to 35,000 years ago.
A growing body of archaeological, geological and climatological and genetic research has since pushed back the dates of the earliest American arrivals, with a new consensus that, sometime between 30,000 and 25,000 years ago, several waves of people made their way into the Americas.
Adding linguistic studies to this work means that “the four fields confirm each other,” Nichols said. “Now I think the interpretation is very solid.”
Andrew Cowell, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that Nichols’ study is interesting because “the language data reinforces growing recognition in other fields that North America was populated much earlier than was assumed for many decades.”
Cowell noted, however, that the study’s statistical analysis shows that two languages, “Yurok and Arapaho are classed quite differently, yet the two languages are known to be genetically related as part of the Algic language super-family.” (Yurok was spoken in far-Northern California, while Arapaho is spoken in Wyoming and Oklahoma.)
Additionally, languages can be heavily influenced by their neighbors, which can blur how they were originally related, Cowell said.
While this new study presents a model for how languages entered and evolved within North America, it does not speak to their origins, which are still unknown.
“It’s likely that the people who moved into North America left relatives in Asia,” Nichols said, “and possible that some of those languages survive and have remained in Siberia.”
But the limits of the linguistic comparative method mean that we may never know for sure, Nichols said.
This chultún is the first structure of its kind to have been found underneath the Tulum archaeological zone.
A pre-Columbian apparatus that could be of great use today — a system for catching rainwater — has been found in the archaeological zone of Tulum, Quintana Roo. However, this one apparently wasn’t used as a catchment, since it was found inside a cave.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced the discovery this week of a chultún, a bottle-shaped structure used in Maya culture.
This underground chultún is the latest archaeological find inside the cave which was discovered in December 2023. (INAH)
It is the only structure of its type that has been found “indoors” at the Tulum archaeological zone. Located inside a chamber of the cave tabbed Building 25, or Casa del Halach Uinic, the chultún measures 2.48 meters (8.1 feet) in diameter and 2.39 meters (7.8 feet) deep.
According to field manager Enrique Marín Vázquez, the structure “is made up of a layer of ground coral, 1 to 2 centimeters thick, which formed part of the soil surface, and underneath we found reddish clay.
Inside, fillings of medium-sized stones, thick layers of pure ash were found and, in the deepest part, we unearthed human bone remains and burned stones.”
Officials said the discovery could correspond to the first occupation of the site, prior to the Late Postclassic period in Mesoamerica (1250-1521).
The finding occurred during work being carried out by the Program for the Improvement of Archaeological Zones (Promeza).
It is the latest notable archaeological find inside the cave, which was blocked at its entrance by a large rock, on top of human remains, before it was uncovered in December 2023.
The cave has unearthed a trove of archaeological finds, such as the remains of 11 people believed to have been members of an upper class.
José Antonio Reyes Solís, the coordinator of the Promeza research project in Tulum, said two chultúns were previously found outside, and both functioned as catchments.
The latest find, he added, “shows a striking difference” from the other two: Not only was it found inside, but “it has no signs of having stored any liquid,” he said. “Rather, it is believed, it functioned as a storehouse for food and plants, and later, had a ritual use.”
The human remains found are in the process of being investigated, he added.
One theory is that they were three infants whose bodies were buried with other materials, such as deer antlers, shark teeth and shell earrings.
INAH is working on a virtual tour that will showcase the recent cave findings at the Tulum National Park.
