EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

A Cave in France Changes What We Thought We Knew About Neanderthals

A Cave in France Changes What We Thought We Knew About Neanderthals

The stone rings found inside the French cave were probably built by the Neanderthals 176,500 years ago. The study says that the structures are the oldest known human constructions, possibly altering the way we think about our ancestors.

The team led by archaeologist Jacques Jaubert of the University of Bordeaux, using advanced dating techniques, noted that the stalagmites used in the stone ring construction had to be broken off the ground about 176,500 years ago.

Dating of the structures – if substantiated – would push back the first known cave exploration by members of the human family for tens of thousands of years. It would also change the widely held view that ancient cousins of humans were incapable of complex behaviour.

Earlier research had suggested the structures pre-dated the arrival of modern humans in Europe around 45,000 years ago and thus the idea that Neanderthals could have made them didn’t fit and was largely disregarded.

“Their presence at 336 meters (368 yards) from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity.

A chance find

The structures – discovered by chance in 1990 after a rockslide closed the mouth of a cave at Bruniquel in southwest France – were made from hundreds of pillar-shaped mineral deposits, or stalagmites, which were up to 40 centimetres (16 inches) high.

The authors said the purpose of the oval structures – measuring 16 square meters (172 sq. feet) and 2.3 square meters – is still a matter of speculation, though they may have served some symbolic or ritual purpose.

“A plausible explanation is that this was a common meeting place for some type of ritual social behaviour,” said Paola Villa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who wasn’t involved in the study.

The Neanderthals who built them must have had a “project” to go so deep into a cave where there was no natural light, said Jaubert.

“The site provides strong evidence of the great antiquity of those elaborate structures and is an important contribution to a new understanding of the greater level of social complexities of Neanderthal societies,” Villa noted.

Who were the Neanderthals?

Neanderthals were a species or subspecies of humans that became extinct between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago. Closely related to modern humans, they left remains mainly in Eurasia, from western Europe to central, northern, and western Asia.

Neanderthals are generally classified by palaeontologists as the species Homo neanderthalensis, having separated from the Homo sapiens lineage 600,000 years ago.

Several cultural assemblages have been linked to the Neanderthals in Europe. The earliest, the Mousterian stone tool culture, dates to about 300,000 years ago. Late Mousterian artefacts were found in Gorham’s Cave on the south-facing coast of Gibraltar.

In December 2013, researchers reported evidence that Neanderthals practised burial behaviour and buried their dead.

In addition, scientists reported having sequenced the entire genome of a Neanderthal for the first time. The genome was extracted from the toe bone of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal found in a Siberian cave.

ASIA, IRAN, WORLD

Breakthrough in Translating Proto-Elamite, World’s Oldest Undeciphered Writing

Breakthrough in Translating Proto-Elamite, World’s Oldest Undeciphered Writing

Specialists believe that the oldest undeciphered writing system will be decoding 5,000-year-old secrets.

“I hope we are actually about to make a breakthrough,” said Jacob Dahl, a fellow at Oxford Wolfson‘s College and Director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.

Live Science has confirmed that Dahl’s secret weapons can see this writing more clearly than ever.

In a room high up in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, above the Egyptian mummies and fragments of early civilizations, a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out the light.

This device is providing the most detailed and high-quality images ever taken of these elusive symbols cut into clay tablets.

Breakthrough in Translating Proto-Elamite, World’s Oldest Undeciphered Writing
Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of ‘a breakthrough’

It’s being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200 BC and 2900 BC in a region now in the southwest of modern Iran.

The Oxford team thinks that they could be on the brink of understanding this last great remaining cache of undeciphered texts from the ancient world.

Dahl, from the Oriental Studies Faculty, shipped his image-making device on the Eurostar to the Louvre Museum in Paris, which holds the most important collection of this writing.

The clay tablets were put inside this machine, the Reflectance Transformation Imaging System, which uses a combination of 76 separate photographic lights and computer processing to capture every groove and notch on the surface of the clay tablets.

It allows a virtual image to be turned around, as though being held up to the light at every possible angle.

So far Dahl has deciphered 1,200 separate signs, but he said that after more than 10 years study much remains unknown, even such basic words as “cow” or “cattle”.

Dahl believes that the writing has proved so hard to interpret because the original texts seem to contain many mistakes – and this makes it extremely tricky for anyone trying to find consistent patterns.

“The lack of a scholarly tradition meant that a lot of mistakes were made and the writing system may eventually have become useless,” Dahl said.

Unlike any other ancient writing style, there are no bi-lingual texts and few helpful overlaps to provide a key to these otherwise arbitrary looking dashes and circles and symbols.

Proto-Elamite writing is the first-ever recorded case of one society adopting writing from another neighbouring group.

However, when these proto-Elamites borrowed the concept of writing from the Mesopotamians, they made up an entirely different set of symbols. The writing was the first ever to use syllables, Dahl said.

Dahl added that with sufficient support within two years this last great lost writing could be fully understood.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Ancient Egyptian bird mummy turns out to be human

Ancient Egyptian bird mummy turns out to be human

A group of UK-based researchers discovered the remains of a stillborn human fetus with an unusual condition in a 2,100-year-old Egyptian mummy long thought to be that of a hawk.

The mummy of an ancient bird was found at the Maidstone Museum in the United Kingdom. Its funerary casement featured a gilt-painted hawk’s face and was just the right size for a bird.

Horus, the Egyptian falcon-headed god, was also mentioned in the hieroglyphics on it.

All these decorations combined with the common practice of animal mummification in ancient Egypt led to the misidentification of the mummy.

Ancient Egyptian bird mummy turns out to be human
Archaeologists long suspected that a tiny 2,100-year-old Egyptian mummy contained the remains of a hawk.A new analysis of the tiny mummy shows it was not a bird beneath the wrappings, but a stillborn human fetus

As a result, it was stored with other animal mummies without conducting CT scans or special attention.

However, the error came to light when the museum decided to scan their resident female mummy as well as a bunch of other animal mummies kept in storage including “EA 493 — Mummified Hawk Ptolemaic Period.”

The images of the scan revealed arms crossed over the chest and suggested that there was something else inside — a human or maybe a monkey — but not a bird for sure.

They called bioarchaeologist Andrew Nelson from Western University, London, to take a closer look.

Nelson and his interdisciplinary team conducted high-resolution micro-CT scans to virtually unwrap the mummy and found that it contains a severely malformed male human fetus, stillborn between 23 and 28 weeks of gestation.

The fetus, as the researchers revealed, suffered from major spinal abnormalities and a rare birth condition called anencephaly, wherein the brain and the skull fail to develop properly.

While the images revealed the mummified fetus had well-formed toes and fingers, the skull bore severe signs of deformities. “The whole top part of his skull isn’t formed,” Nelson said in a statement, noting that the brain of the fetus would not have formed in that scenario.

“The arches of the vertebrae of his spine haven’t closed. His earbones are at the back of his head.”

The work, as the researchers said, makes it the second mummified fetus to have been identified with anencephaly as well as the most studied fetal mummy in history.

“The family’s response was to mummify this individual, which was very rare. In ancient Egypt, fetuses tended to be buried in pots, below house floors, in various ways,” Nelson added.

According to Western University bioarchaeologist Andrew Nelson, there are only about six to eight known fetal mummies from ancient Egypt, making this family’s response very rare. The rarity of this mummification suggests it may have ties to ancient Egyptian magic

“There are only about six or eight known to have been mummified. So this was a very special individual.”

The findings also provide important clues into the diet of the baby’s mother and hint at a lack of foods containing folic acid, which plays a critical role in the development of the neural tube and can lead to anencephaly, if not provided sufficiently.

“It would have been a tragic moment for the family to lose their infant and to give birth to a very strange-looking fetus, not a normal-looking fetus at all,” the researcher concluded.

ASIA, SAUDI ARABIA, WORLD

Inscription of last Babylonian king found in Saudi Arabia, ‘special’ message written in 26 lines?

Inscription of last Babylonian king found in Saudi Arabia, ‘special’ message written in 26 lines?

A 2,550-year-old inscription, written in the name of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, has been discovered carved on basalt stone in northern Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage recently announced. 

An engraving at the top of the inscription shows King Nabonidus holding a sceptre alongside four other images that include a snake, a flower and a depiction of the moon, the commission said in a statement, noting that these symbols likely have a religious meaning. 

These engravings are followed beneath by about 26 lines of cuneiform text that experts with the commission are currently deciphering. This is the longest cuneiform inscription ever found in Saudi Arabia, the commission said in the statement. 

Inscription of last Babylonian king found in Saudi Arabia, ‘special’ message written in 26 lines?
The top of the inscription from the last king of Babylon shows engravings showing Nabonidus and four symbols.

The inscription was found in Al Hait in the Hail Region of northern Saudi Arabia. Known as Fadak in ancient times, Al Hait holds numerous ancient sites, including the remains of fortresses, rock art and water installations, the commission said. “[It] has great historical significance from the first millennium [B.C.] until the early Islamic era.” 

King Nabonidus

It remains to be seen what new information this inscription will provide on King Nabonidus (reign 555–539 B.C.).

The Babylonian Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, and at the start of Nabonidus’ reign, he conquered part of what is now Saudi Arabia and ultimately chose to live at Tayma, a city in what is now Saudi Arabia, until around 543 B.C. 

Why Nabonidus chose to live in what is now Saudi Arabia for an extended period of time is a matter of debate among historians, with some experts saying that conflicts between Nabonidus and Babylon’s priests and officials are a likely reason.

At the end of Nabonidus’ reign, the Babylonian Empire came under attack by the Persian Empire, which was led by King Cyrus the Great;

Babylon itself was captured by the Persians in 539 B.C. and the Babylonian empire collapsed. The fate of Nabonidus after the collapse is unclear. 

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Archaeologists stunned by China’s ‘unique underwater world’ shrouded in mystery

Archaeologists stunned by China’s ‘unique underwater world’ shrouded in mystery

Hidden in the depths of Qiandao Lake, China, lies a mysterious sunken city. Myriad ornate temples, each intricately carved with the script and perfectly preserved, offer a tantalising glimpse into China’s imperial past. The city, known as Shi Cheng, is 140 feet underwater and was built during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the building dating back to the 2nd century.

Its name loosely translates to “Lion City”, and was once a bustling hub of commerce.

But, when it was drowned in the mid-20th century, it was largely forgotten.

Only in recent years have researchers and the public rediscovered its ancient splendours, many of which were explored during the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary ‘China from above: Mountain and rivers’.

It was here that the documentary’s narrator noted how the islands within the newly formed lake are actually the tops of hills, describing the space beneath them as a “unique underwater world”.

Archaeologists stunned by China's 'unique underwater world' shrouded in mystery
Archaeology: The ancient city was submerged to make way for a hydropower plant in 1959
Qiandao Lake: The lake is comprised of over 1,000 islands

The ancient city was flooded as part of the Chinese government’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ programme and made way for the country’s first hydropower plant.

A landscape containing over 1,000 islands was created, which sits at the bottom of a reservoir close to the Qiandao Lake near the picturesque Wu Shi Mountain.

Lou Shanliang, a diver, was one of the first people to plunge into the lake and find the city.

He told the documentary how he used to swim in the waters as a child, and how finding out what was beneath was like discovering “another world”.

Imperial China: The structures beneath the lake offer a brief glimpse into China’s imperial history

Teaming up with Wu Lixin, a cameraman, the pair used 3D scanning technology in order to bring the city back to life on the surface. Thought to have been built at some point between 25 and 200 AD, Lion City was once one of China’s most powerful cities and held on to this status for centuries.

While it had been forgotten for over 50 years, in 2014, the authorities discovered that the city was still very much intact and decided to start allowing tourists to visit it.

Explaining that their efforts were the first time the city has been captured three-dimensionally, Mr Wu said: “If we want to get a comprehensive set of data, we have to revolve around the object and take many photos from different angles.

Ancient structures: One of the fine pieces of stonework discovered underwater
Reconstruction: A 3D image of one of the lion statues found

“Then, we input those photos into a computer programme.”

What resulted were a series of 3D images revealing the ancient stonework found underwater, including majestic statues of lions and other figures.

Mr Wu said: “I hope that through our filming and exploration more submerged historic relics and the stories behind them can be brought to light again.”

Much of the stonework found in the lake dates to the 16th century and is considered as some of the best examples of Chinese architecture. The divers also found the city walls, which date from the same period, along with some notable wide streets and 265 archways.

In addition to these, they found five entry gates to the city and six main streets paved with stones connected to one another, making the city about the same size as 62 football fields. The Lion City is believed to have reached its peak in history between 1368 and 1644 when the Ming Dynasty ruled over China.

After this point it began to decline, the fatal blow coming in 1959 when the Chinese government flooded it. Now, however, history buffs and keen tourists can visit the lost city for themselves, and even dive beneath the water with guides.

Hydropower planet: The dam that cleared the path for the reservoir

Protected from wind, rain, and sun, the entire city has been branded a “time capsule” as almost every structure remains completely intact, including wooden beams and stairs. There have since been plans to boost its tourism potential by constructing a floating tunnel across the lake.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

How did an 8000-year-old community deal with climate change?

How did an 8000-year-old community deal with climate change?

Cosmos Magazine reports that archaeologists including Rick J. Schulting of the University of Oxford have determined that Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, a cemetery on an island in northern Russia’s Lake Onega, was used for a 200-year period during the so-called mini–Ice Age.

Some 8200 years ago, a great sluice of meltwater from a now-vanished ice sheet pulsed into the North Atlantic, causing a mini-Ice Age that lasted for around 200 years. 

Across vast swathes of northern Europe, plant life began to change – broadleaf trees were outcompeted by hardier pines suited to the frigid temperatures – and animals and humans alike would have been forced to adapt to the sudden, drastic changes.

Now, in a new study out today in Nature Ecology & Environment, archaeologists from the University of Oxford have opened a small, misty window into this early Holocene upheaval, to see how one community changed in response. 

The site, the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov (YOO) cemetery in northern Russia, sits on an island in the vast Lake Onega, 350 kilometres northeast of St Petersburg.

Radiocarbon dating of remains in the cemetery shows that it was mainly used for a short window of around 200 years, spanning some 10 generations and that its use coincided with this mini-Ice Age. 

So why might people suddenly decide to organise their dead at a time of stress? The clue, the researchers say, lies in the lake. 

Site of the early Holocene cemetery of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, at Lake Onega, some 500 miles north of Moscow.

Lake Onega would have been a relative paradise as freezing temperatures closed in. With its own microclimate and lush stores of fish and plant life, it would have drawn big game such as elk to its milder shores, as well as beleaguered humans on the hunt for food. At the same time, shallower lakes in the region would likely have experienced harsh winter fish kills. 

That’s an awful lot of people milling into a small area – a well-known recipe for disaster. But humans are a resilient bunch, and the researchers believe the Lake Onega communities responded by building a more complex, more united society – their cemetery, the final resting place of their loved ones, was yet another display of social belonging and organisation.

The claim is a bold scientific leap, but it’s not unconvincing. Some 200 years on, when the climate improved, the cemetery was abandoned. 

“Whatever ‘complexity’ we see at YOO,” the authors write, “was thus situational and reversible.” 

Did this tight band of people disperse back into the landscape in smaller, nomadic groups? We’ll probably never know the exact truth of the events, but archaeology offers a tantalising vision of an ancient community in flux, at the mercy of a changing climate.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Ancient “Coyote-Man” Sculpture Recovered in Mexico

Ancient “Coyote-Man” Sculpture Recovered in Mexico

Archaeologists from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico have recovered an important artefact of pre-Hispanic culture: a monumental coyote-headed figure perched on a throne.

Ancient “Coyote-Man” Sculpture Recovered in Mexico
The coyote-man from Tacámbaro.

Known as the coyote-man from Tacámbaro, an area in the central Mexican state of Michoacán, the sculpture was discovered almost 30 years ago during construction work in the municipality.

The artefact was held in a private collection until it was recovered by the NAH Michoacán Center through a Mexican federal law that regulates the ownership and preservation of national cultural property.

The Llanos de Canícuaro neighbourhood in Tacámbaro, where the coyote-man was first unearthed, was the site of the Tarascan city of Tzintzuntza, meaning “place of the hummingbirds” in the Purépecha language.

Representations of coyote spirits were prolific in the ancient settlement, though few were as tall or intricately carved as the sculpture recovered.

In a statement, INAH said its specialists are now assessing the state of the work, as a series of fractures were sustained during its rough extraction by the municipality.

Once the conservation is executed, it’s expected to “have a place of honour within the archaeological collection of the community museum of the city council,” according to the institute.

On the importance of the sculpture, archaeologist José Luis Punzo said, “We know that the last lords of Tzintzuntzan, who wrote the Relacion de Michoacán, were the so-called uacúsecha, the ‘lineage of the eagle’.

Next to this was another large city on Lake Pátzcuaro, Ihuatzio, which means ‘place of coyotes’, where most of these sculptures have been located.”

He added: “One of the hypotheses is that the coyote-man sculptures could represent a dynasty that ruled this place, even before the Uacúsecha history was written.”

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Well-Preserved Visigoth Sarcophagus Found at Roman Villa in Spain

Well-Preserved Visigoth Sarcophagus Found at Roman Villa in Spain

Researchers in southeast Spain have uncovered an incredibly well-preserved Visigoth coffin at the site of a former Roman villa. The stone sarcophagus is about six feet, seven inches, long with a swirling geometric decoration along its slanted lid interlaced with intricate ivy leaves designs.

It’s estimated the coffin dates from the 6th century AD, when the Iberian peninsula was part of the Visigoth kingdom, after the fall of the Roman empire.

The coffin was uncovered at Los Villaricos, a Roman villa established around the first century near the modern town of Mula but abandoned by the fifth century.

Sometime between the 5th and 7th centuries, it was taken over by Germanic invaders.

A team led by Rafael González Fernández, a historian at the University of Murcia, found the coffin earlier this month, during a summer archaeological campaign.

Measuring about six-foot-seven, the carved stone coffin (above) is decorated with geometric patterns interlaced with intricate ivy leaves designs

‘We weren’t expecting this spectacular discovery,’ González told the Times of London—in fact, they initially thought they’d found an ornate rectangular column, or pilaster.

But after some delicate cleaning, they found a crismón, or Chi Rho, one of the earliest forms of Christogram, at the head of what turned out to be a coffin.

A Christogram is a combination of letters forming the initials of Jesus Christ, often overlapping the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P).

A Christogram, or a combination of letters forming the initials of Jesus Christ, often overlapping the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P)

Although the Visigoths were initially pagan, by the 6th century they had largely converted to Christianity.

Human remains were found inside the coffin, though more analysis will need to be done to learn more about who the deceased was. 

‘This sarcophagus … shows the archaeological power of [Los Villaricos] and confirms our commitment to the University of Murcia,’ Mula city councilor Diego J. Boluda told National Geographic History. ‘Undoubtedly, the piece will occupy a preferential place in the Museum of the City of Mula.’ 

While the Visigoths were initially pagan, by the 6th century they had largely converted to Christianity. Pictured: 1888 Painting depicting the 587 AD conversion of Reccared I, Visigothic king of Hispania, to Catholicism, by Antonio Muñoz Degrain

In its prime, Los Villaricos was a wealthy Roman villa, Murica Today! reports, with evidence of an olive press, storage for olive oil and other agricultural activity.

The Visigoths repurposed the villa’s main reception room into a Christian basilica and the adjoining patio into a necropolis.

The three-week excavation ‘was focused on finishing excavating the last three burials in the necropolis and continuing with the excavation work of the complex located north of the town,’ González told National Geographic.

During the Roman era, Los Villaricos was a stopping point along a trade route between Carthage and Complutum, a settlement northeast of Madrid.

Later, it would have been strategic due to its proximity to the Visigoth city of Cehegín.

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