Denver museum to return looted relics to Cambodia after the U.S. moves to seize them
Decades after they were hacked from temples and other historical sites, four ancient statues from the Denver Museum of Art are finally heading home.
The museum has agreed to turn over the relics to the U.S. government, which plans to return them to their native Cambodia, according to a forfeiture complaint filed Monday in the Southern District of New York’s federal court.
The items include a likeness of the goddess of transcendent wisdom called the Prajnaparamita and another of the sun god Surya
The repatriation announcement comes amid mounting pressure by U.S. and Cambodian authorities on prominent art institutions to reexamine their collections of Khmer art, especially pieces acquired over decades of unrest in the country when looters stole vast numbers of culturally significant antiquities.
“I am delighted by the upcoming return of these four highly significant cultural objects to Cambodia,” said Phoeurng Sackona, the Cambodian Minister of Culture and Fine Arts. “Each one has a fascinating story and priceless value to our nation.”
In recent years, the Cambodian government has launched a vigorous effort to gather information on hundreds of valuable cultural artefacts the country says were stolen.
Many of these pieces now reside in the U.S., Western Europe and Australia.
Federal authorities said that the four pieces in Denver were identified as stolen by the former leader of a major Cambodian looting team that removed ancient artefacts when the country was governed by the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s.
The museum acquired the relics from Latchford between 2000 and 2005, according to the forfeiture filing.
Latchford was indicted in 2019 for allegedly looting Cambodia’s cultural heritage on a grand scale. The case against Latchford was dropped last year after he died.
Over his decades of trading antiquities, Latchford amassed one of the world’s largest private collections of Khmer treasures, mostly Hindu and Buddhist sculptures.
Turkish workers discover animal skeleton belonging to unknown species
Digging in the yard of an old spinning factory in the eastern province of Iğdır last week, some workers discovered an animal skeleton of an unknown species.
A photo of the animal skeleton, Iğdır, eastern Turkey.
The skeleton, which remained intact under the garden, is about 1 meter (3.3 feet) tall and has the teeth of a predator.
After the workers noticed that some of the tissue attached to the skeleton had yet not deteriorated, they reported their discovery to the academics at Iğdır University’s Biodiversity Application and Research Center.
The academics came to the area where the excavation was made and took the skeleton to the university. They will conduct research to determine the species of the animal skeleton at the university.
Belkıs Muca Yiğit, a lecturer at Iğdır University, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that they will try to find out the species of the animal after the examination.
“Then we will ensure that this skeleton is preserved in a museum,” Yiğit added.
Yusuf Kıtay, the operating officer of the excavation, said the workers found the animal skeleton while they were working in an area that has not been used for the last 30-40 years.
The shape of the skeleton caught the workers’ attention and they reported the situation to the authorities, Kıtay said, adding: “We especially noticed that its hindlimbs are long.
We informed the authorities that it may be an interesting species as its feet do not have hooves but claws, and it also has sharp teeth.”
“The research will be conducted, we are also curious. I hope something interesting will come out and be useful to science,” he added.
Why this 300 million-year-old fossil discovered in Utah has the palaeontology world buzzing
A 300-million-year-old fossil discovered deep in Canyonlands National Park in Utah could belong to an entirely new species, reports Amy Joi O’Donoghue for the Deseret News.
The fossilized critter is an amniote—a land-dwelling vertebrate that lays eggs— and has four legs. It’s most likely an ancient ancestor of reptiles or mammals, though more testing is needed before scientists can definitively label it as a new species, reports Sherry Liang for CNN.
“It’s roughly the size of an iguana and (the fossil) preserves at least the vertebrae, top of the skull, and some of the shoulder girdle and forelimb,” Adam Marsh, the lead palaeontologist at Petrified Forest National Park, tells Mark Price for the Sacramento Bee.
The fossilized remains of a 300 million-year-old specimen were recently unearthed in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park and transferred to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, where they will be documented and further examined. Such a finding of a fossil from this period are particularly rare, especially in North America, so scientists are excited to learn more.
Around a year ago, a Canyonlands park ranger stumbled across the fossil and reported it to the park. Then, scientists from the Natural History Museum of Utah, Petrified Forest National Park and the University of Southern California teamed up to dig into this discovery.
They filed for a research permit and excavated the fossil last month, reports CNN.
“This is cool because it’s 50 million years older than the oldest dinosaur fossil,” Marsh tells the Deseret. “So it’s kind of cool that it’s from a period in Earth’s history where we just don’t have a lot of fossils from in North America especially.”
This creature existed between the Pennsylvanian Period (323.2 to 298.9 million years ago) and the Permian (298.9 to 251.9 million years ago).
During the Pennsylvanian era, plants started to colonize dry land by way of more evolved seeds; animals did so through the evolution of the amniotic egg, in which the embryo develops inside a shell, like with birds and reptiles.
In the Permian, the planet’s continents started to squish together to form the supercontinent Pangea, and the era ended with the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history.
“It’s a phenomenal specimen. You do not see something like that very often, so it’s really significant for that in itself,” Marsh tells CNN. “But what it indicates is that there’s probably more fossils out there, especially at Canyonlands, in this really important time interval.”
Adding to the excitement, Adam Huttenlocker, a biologist at the University of Southern California, tells CNN that finding fossils of aquatic creatures is common at Canyonlands, but this is the first time he’s heard of the discovery of a land-dwelling vertebrate in the park.
“It really goes to show what kind of fossil resources are hidden in our national parks waiting to be discovered and shared with the public,” Marsh tells the Sacramento Bee.
Possible Traces of 8th-Century Imperial Pavilion Found in Japan
Postholes and other archaeological remains that are believed to be from a dwelling for the empress at the Japanese imperial family’s official residence have been found in the ancient capital of Kyoto.
The remains appear to have been from the Tokaden pavilion, which served as a dwelling for the empress and female palace attendants, and is also mentioned in Heian literature, including “The Tale of Genji” and “The Pillow Book.” It was part of the emperor’s official residence located in the ancient Japanese capital and administrative centre of Heian-Kyo, as Kyoto was known during the Heian period (794-1185).
The postholes and other remains are thought to be from the time that the capital was moved to Heian-Kyo toward the end of the 8th century. It is the first time that remains from a building that was evidently part of the Heian-Kyo imperial residence have been discovered.
The Mainichi Postholes and stone arrangements that served as ditches, which are believed to be remains of the Tokaden pavilion of the ancient Heian-Kyo residence of the imperial family, are seen in Kyoto’s Kamigyo Ward, on Aug. 11, 2015, in this image…
The remains were unearthed during excavation work in the city’s Kamigyo Ward, carried out in 2015 by the Kyoto City Archaeological Research Institute, ahead of the construction of a group home, and the institute compiled its findings in a report.
The emperor’s private residence is said to have stretched for about 182 meters from west to east, and some 226 meters from north to south, comprising 17 pavilions, among other structures.
The excavation took place in the northwest part of the residence, which is believed to have housed the Tokaden pavilion as well as the Kokiden pavilion situated to its south.
During the excavation, five holes with diameters of between 1.2 and 1.5 meters were found running from the north to south, with a distance of around 3 to 2.1 meters between each of them.
According to the investigation, the holes were used to bury pillars in the ground without placing foundation stones.
The research institute consulted a document from the Edo period (1603-1867), which detailed the positioning of the palace buildings, and determined that the holes had been located at the southwest section of the Tokaden pavilion, which extended about 12 meters from west to east, and about 27 meters from north to south.
Furthermore, an arrangement of stones forming an L-shaped ditch, which was used to carry off rainwater from the roof, was discovered in the southwest corner of the Tokaden, and a similar ditch was also found in the northern part of the Kokiden pavilion.
A foundation stone was placed between the stone ditches, which may be traces of a corridor that connected the two buildings. The ditches are thought to be remains from the 10th century or later after the original building was rebuilt using the method of placing pillars on foundation stones.
Emperor Kanmu, who established Japan’s capital at Heian-Kyo in 794, was devoted to the culture of the Tang Dynasty in China.
It is accordingly believed that major buildings at the time were constructed by placing pillars on foundation stones, which was a method that was introduced in China.
The investigation at the site indicates that the Japanese traditional method of not using foundation stones was also adopted for Heian-Kyo.
A representative of the research institute commented, “There is great significance in finding remains from a building from the time of the establishment of the ancient capital in Kyoto. This is first-class material.”
The postholes and other archaeological remains that were found have already been backfilled.
Archeological dig in Newfoundland unearths what could be Canada’s oldest English coin
Archaeologists in Newfoundland have unearthed what may be the oldest English coin ever found in Canada—and perhaps North America. Working at the site of a former English colony, the team dug up a rare two-penny piece that was minted more than 520 years ago, between 1493 and 1499, reports Chris O’Neill-Yates for CBC News.
Minted in Canterbury between 1493 and 1499, the silver half groat dates to the middle of Henry VII’s reign, when a rebellion led by pretender Perkin Warbeck threatened to unseat the nascent Tudor dynasty.
Known as a half groat, the coin dates to the reign of England’s first Tudor king, Henry VII, who ruled from 1485 to 1509. It was uncovered at Cupids Cove Plantation Provincial Historic Site, where English merchant John Guy established a colony in 1610.
Researchers found the object near what would have been a bastion in the fortified settlement.
“Some artefacts are important for what they tell us about a site, while others are important because they spark the imagination,” says archaeologist William Gilbert, who discovered the site in 1995 and continues to lead excavations there today, in a statement.
“This coin is definitely one of the latter. One can’t help but wonder at the journey it made, and how many hands it must have passed through from the time it was minted … until it was lost in Cupids sometime early in the 17th century.”
A better-preserved example of a Henry VII half-groat.
Gilbert showed the newly unearthed, nickel-sized coin to Paul Berry, a former curator at the Bank of Canada Museum who helped authenticate the piece reports the Canadian Press.
The silver coin was minted in Canterbury around the middle of Henry’s reign when a rebellion led by pretender Perkin Warbeck threatened to unseat the nascent Tudor dynasty.
Previously, the oldest known English coin found in the country was a silver groat minted during the reign of Henry’s granddaughter Elizabeth I, in 1560 or 1561, and discovered at Cupids Cove in 2001.
Other centuries-old English coins found on the continent include a circa 1558 groat buried on Richmond Island in Maine around 1628 and a 1560 silver coin unearthed in Jamestown, Virginia.
Guy, accompanied by a group of 39 English settlers, founded what was then called Cuper’s Cove on Conception Bay in Newfoundland. Within a few years of the settlement’s establishment in 1610, the colonists had built numerous structures, including a fort, sawmill, gristmill and brewhouse, reports Bill Gilbert for BBC News. But the winter of 1612 proved “punishing,” according to the CBC, and most of the settlers—including Guy—eventually abandoned the site. The company that funded the venture went bankrupt in 1631.
Exactly who left the half-groat at the settlement is open to interpretation. Gilbert posits that one of the Cuper’s Cove settlers dropped it when the fort’s bastion was under construction. The half-goat was found within a few feet of a post that was part of the fortification’s foundation.
“My best guess is that it was probably dropped by either John Guy or one of the early colonists when they were building … in the fall of 1610,” the archaeologist tells CBC News. “That’s what I think is most likely.”
Given that the coin is about 60 years older than the Elizabethan groat found on the cove in 2001, it’s also possible that it was lost before the colonists arrived, perhaps by an early explorer of Canada.
“[The] coin was minted around the time John Cabot arrived in England in 1495,” Gilbert tells CBC News. “It’s during the period that Cabot would have been active in England and setting out on his early explorations of the new world.” (Per Royal Museums Greenwich, the Italian explorer landed on Newfoundland—literally a “newfound land”—in 1497, one month after setting sail from Bristol in hopes of discovering a shorter route to Asia.)
Analysis of the coin is ongoing, but researchers hope to display it at the Cupids Cove historical site in time for the 2022 tourist season.
Peru: Skeletal remains of 25 people found at Chan Chan archaeological site
According to an Andina report, the remains of 25 people and some 70 artefacts and ceramic vessels have been uncovered in a raised area near the southern wall at Chan Chan, the 1,100-year-old Chimu capital on the coast of northern Peru.
It was located in Trujillo Province (La Libertad region) – archaeologists behind this important find have reported.
According to Jorge Meneses —head of the archaeological research project— this find is unusual due to its characteristics and location in a raised area of the Utzh An (Great Chimu) walled complex.
“Most of them (the remains) belonged to women under 30 who were buried with objects used in textile activities, a couple of children, and a couple of teenagers.
It is a very specific population, not too young considering the average human lifespan was 40 years, “I have remarked.
Meneses said that this discovery took place three weeks ago during the fourth season of works on the southern wall at Chan Chan.
The skeletal remains were found in an area of 10 square meters, arranged in two levels of the embankment, along with approximately 70 vessels and objects used in textile work.
“This is something new to us because, in spite of this, we are finding individuals and not simple ones, but of a more relevant category due to the number of objects placed with them as an offering. We may be walking over more remains, “Cave stated.
“We have found several individuals in the western part (of the site) since 2020, and we expect to continue to do so across the eastern sector in the coming seasons. That’s why we suggest that all this raised area could be a pre-Hispanic cemetery, “she added.
Ancient human sacrifice victim’s last meal revealed
Shortly before his violent death in 400 B.C., a man — whose remains are known as Denmark’s famous bog body “Tollund Man” — ate a meal of porridge and fish, a new study finds.
The well-preserved head of Tollund Man, who lived about 2,400 years ago.
Tollund Man also had several parasitic infections from whipworms and mawworms, as well as the first reported case of tapeworm ever found in an ancient body preserved in a bog, said the researchers, who made the finding by studying a piece of Tollund Man’s colon.
“We have been able to reconstruct the last meal of Tollund Man in such great detail that you can actually recreate the meal,” study lead researcher Nina Nielsen, an archaeologist and head of research at Museum Silkeborg in Denmark, told Live Science. “That’s quite fascinating because you can get so close to what actually happened 2,400 years ago.
The ancient man’s remains were found in 1950 by a family from the nearby village of Tollund while they were digging for fuel in a peat bog. His body — and the rope tied around his neck — were so well preserved, the family thought he was a recent murder victim, prompting them to call the police, according to Museum Silkeborg.
But it soon became apparent that the Tollund Man had lived long ago and that the low-oxygen environment of the peat bog had preserved his remains. Over the years, studies have found that he died between 405 B.C. and 380 B.C., at the beginning of the Danish early Iron Age, and that he was between 30 and 40 years old when he died in a possible human ritual sacrifice.
Tollund Man had been hanged and placed in a sleeping position in a peat pit — an “extraordinary treatment” given that most dead people from that time and place were cremated and buried on dry land, the researchers wrote in the study.
A 1951 study on Tollund Man’s gut found that he chowed down on porridge for his last meal. However, techniques to analyze the gut have improved since then, so a team of researchers took another look at Tollund Man’s last few bites.
Clockwise from top left: A map showing where Tollund Man was found; a photo of Tollund Man’s colon; the jars holding Tollund Man’s colon; a photo of Tollund Man’s head.
Last meal
By looking at a previously cut and preserved piece of Tollund Man’s large intestine, the team found that the 1951 study was fairly accurate but had missed a few things, including the proportions of the meal’s ingredients.
The new analysis showed that by weight, the porridge was 85% barley (Hordeum vulgare), 9% a weed called pale persicaria (Persicaria lapathifolia) and 5% flax (Linum usitatissimum). The remaining 1% included a variety of seeds, including those from the weed corn spurrey (Spergula arvensis), the mustard family plant gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa) and three wetland plants: marsh willowherb (Epilobium palustre), compact/soft rush (Juncus conglomeratus/effusus) and marsh violet (Viola palustris). In addition, the team found pollen from barley, grasses and open dryland plants.
Barley and flax grow in different seasons, so the seeds of the weed pale persicaria were “presumably harvested along with the barley crop,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Except for the fish, here are the foods that Tollund Man ate and their respective quantities: 1) Barley, 2) pale persicaria, 3) flax, 4) black-bindweed, 5) sand, 6) gold-of-pleasure, 7) fat hen, 8) corn spurrey, 9) hemp-nettles and 10) field pansy.
Magnified photos of (a) barley, (b) sand, (c) food crust and (d) the pointed ends of flax seeds from Tollund Man’s gut
Magnified images of (a) a cluster of barley pollen, (b) epidermis cells from flax, (c) epidermis cells from barley; (d) a whipworm egg, (e) a mawworm egg and (f) a tapeworm egg from Tollund Man’s gut.
A magnified photo of Tollund Man’s gut contents.
Usually, when farmers clean and sieve grain, the small weed seeds that were collected alongside it, such as those from pale persicaria, fall out, Nielsen said. But it appears that in Tollund Man’s case, this waste material — including tiny bits of charcoal, charred food crust (indicating the porridge had been cooked in a clay vessel) and sand grains — was added to the porridge, possibly as a ritual practice, she said.
A chemical and protein analysis revealed that Tollund Man ate a fatty fish along with the porridge about 12 to 24 hours before he died. While Iron Age people in Denmark ate fish, it wasn’t a large part of the diet then, the researchers noted. Additional analyses revealed parasite eggs, which Tollund Man likely got by eating raw or undercooked meat and drinking contaminated water, Nielsen said.
The circumstances leading to Tollund Man’s death are a mystery, but the meal does offer clues, the researchers said.
“Our interpretation of Tollund Man was that he was ritually sacrificed,” Nielsen said. “At this time in the Iron Age, it was common to use wetlands for ritual activities.”
An earlier analysis revealed that though Tollund Man likely died from suffocation, his neck wasn’t broken. Perhaps a number of rituals took place before Tollund Man was hanged, including the consumption of his last meal, she said.
The study “extends our knowledge on the diet and the preparation of meals in the Danish Iron Age,” said Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummy Studies at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy, who was not involved with the research but did a similar “last meal” study on Ötzi the Iceman, who lived about 5,300 years ago in the Alps.
“It shows that it is important to re-analyze such samples, as scientific methods are continuously improving and thereby new information can be added,” Zink told Live Science in an email. “For example, we have learnt from this study that the Tollund man most likely consumed fish and meat.”
130-Million-Year Old Proteins Still Present in Dinosaur-Age Fossil
Microscopic pigment structures and proteins that graced the feathers of a Cretaceous-age bird are still present in its 130-million-year-old fossil, a new study finds.
The newfound Cretaceous-age Eoconfuciusornis specimen from northern China has 130-million-year-old beta-keratin and melanosomes on it.
The results, which confirm the oldest evidence of the structural protein beta-keratin, show that molecules can survive in their original state for hundreds of millions of years without fossilizing and that researchers can use modern techniques to identify them, the researchers said.
The tiny and ancient structures were found on Eoconfuciusornis, a crow-size early bird that lived in what is now northern China during the Early Cretaceous.
Eoconfuciusornis is one of the first birds known to have a keratinous beak and no teeth. (Not all avian predecessors were toothless. For instance, Archaeopteryx, a transitional animal between dinosaurs and birds, had sharp teeth.)
The Eoconfuciusornis specimen came from the Jehol Biota in northern China, a site known for its well-preserved fossils.
The specimen is currently housed in China’s Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, the world’s largest dinosaur museum, according to a 2010 Guinness World Records award.
At first, the researchers suspected that the fossil held pigment structures called melanosomes. However, to make sure that the tiny structures weren’t simply microbes that had accrued over the millennia, they had to do a number of tests, said Mary Schweitzer, a professor of biology at North Carolina State University with a joint appointment at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
Schweitzer co-authored the study with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“If these small bodies are melanosomes, they should be embedded in a keratinous matrix, since feathers contain beta-keratin,” Schweitzer said in a statement. “If we couldn’t find the keratin, then those structures could as easily be microbes, or a mix of microbes and melanosomes,” which would lead to inaccurate predictions of pigmentation.
To learn more, Schweitzer and her colleague’s used scanning and transmission electron microscopy to get a better view of the fossilized feathers’ surfaces and internal structures. In addition, using a technique called immunogold labelling, the scientists attached gold particles to antibodies. These gold antibodies then bind to specific proteins (in this case, keratin), which makes them visible under an electron microscope.
In addition, the scientists used high-resolution imaging to map the copper and sulfur within the feathers.
The sulfur was broadly distributed, as would be expected in a keratinous material, as “the keratin protein family incorporates high concentrations of amino acids rich in sulfur,” the researchers wrote in the study, published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In contrast, copper is found in melanosomes but not in keratin. After the mapping analysis, the researchers found the copper only in the fossil melanosomes, they said. This indicates that the Eoconfuciusornis specimen has 130-million-year-old melanosomes and that it wasn’t contaminated during its decomposition and fossilization, the researchers said.
“This study is the first to demonstrate evidence for both keratin and melanosomes, using structural, chemical and molecular methods,” said study author Yanhong Pan, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“These methods have the potential to help us understand — on the molecular level — how and why feathers evolved in these lineages.”
This isn’t the first time that researchers have found ancient structures within fossils. Schweitzer and her colleagues have also found an 80-million-year-old blood vessel belonging to a duck-billed dinosaur, and collagen proteins from a Tyrannosaurus rex. Despite these discoveries, it would be extremely challenging to use these findings to clone a dinosaur, she said.
