Oldest Fossil Human Footprints In North America Confirmed
New research reaffirms that human footprints found in White Sands National Park, NM, date to the Last Glacial Maximum, placing humans in North America thousands of years earlier than once thought.
In September 2021, scientists announced that ancient human footprints discovered in White Sands National Park were between 21,000 and 23,000 years old.
This discovery pushed the known date of human presence in North America back by thousands of years and implied that early inhabitants and megafauna co-existed for several millennia before the terminal Pleistocene extinction event.
Fossil human footprints discovered in White Sands, New Mexico likely date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to scientific evidence.
In a follow-up study, researchers used two new independent approaches to date the footprints, both of which resulted in the same age range as the original estimate.
The 2021 results began a global conversation that sparked public imagination and incited dissenting commentary throughout the scientific community as to the accuracy of the ages.
“The immediate reaction in some circles of the archeological community was that the accuracy of our dating was insufficient to make the extraordinary claim that humans were present in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum.
But our targeted methodology in this current research really paid off,” said Jeff Pigati, USGS research geologist and co-lead author of a newly published study that confirms the age of the White Sands footprints.
The controversy centered on the accuracy of the original ages, which were obtained by radiocarbon dating. The age of the White Sands footprints was initially determined by dating seeds of the common aquatic plant Ruppia cirrhosa that were found in the fossilized impressions.
However aquatic plants can acquire carbon from dissolved carbon atoms in the water rather than ambient air, which can potentially cause the measured ages to be too old.
“Even as the original work was being published, we were forging ahead to test our results with multiple lines of evidence,” said Kathleen Springer, USGS research geologist and co-lead author on the current Science paper.
“We were confident in our original ages, as well as the strong geologic, hydrologic, and stratigraphic evidence, but we knew that independent chronologic control was critical.”
For their follow-up study, the researchers focused on radiocarbon dating of conifer pollen, because it comes from terrestrial plants and therefore avoids potential issues that arise when dating aquatic plants like Ruppia.
The researchers used painstaking procedures to isolate approximately 75,000 pollen grains for each sample they dated. Importantly, the pollen samples were collected from the exact same layers as the original seeds, so a direct comparison could be made. In each case, the pollen age was statistically identical to the corresponding seed age.
“Pollen samples also helped us understand the broader environmental context at the time the footprints were made,” said David Wahl, USGS research geographer and a co-author on the current Science article.
This Oct. 2023 photo made available by the National Park Service shows White Sands National Park Resource Program Manager, David Bustos at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico.
“The pollen in the samples came from plants typically found in cold and wet glacial conditions, in stark contrast with pollen from the modern playa which reflects the desert vegetation found there today.”
These fossilized human footprints at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico are 21,000 to 23,000 years old.
Fossilized footprints in White Sands National Park.
A single human footprint at the site.
In addition to the pollen samples, the team used a different type of dating called optically stimulated luminescence, which dates the last time quartz grains were exposed to sunlight.
Using this method, they found that quartz samples collected within the footprint-bearing layers had a minimum age of ~21,500 years, providing further support to the radiocarbon results.
With three separate lines of evidence pointing to the same approximate age, it is highly unlikely that they are all incorrect or biased and, taken together, provide strong support for the 21,000 to 23,000-year age range for the footprints.
The research team included scientists from the USGS, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Park Service, and academic institutions. Their continued studies at White Sands focus on the environmental conditions that allowed people to thrive in southern New Mexico during the Last Glacial Maximum and are supported by the Climate Research and Development Program | U.S. Geological Survey and USGS-NPS Natural Resources Protection Program.
Archaeologists Have Unearthed The Remains of a 7,000-year-old City in Egypt
Egypt has announced the discovery of the remains of a lost city thought to be more than 7,000 years old, located in the Upper Egypt province of Sohag.
The ancient residential city, found alongside a nearby cemetery, dates back to 5,316 BC, and is being heralded as a major archaeological discovery that pre-dates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period that began about 5 millennia ago.
A team of archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities found the remains of ancient huts and graves during a dig 400 metres to the south of the mortuary temple of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled thousands of years later from 1290 to 1279 BC.
Seti I’s temple is located in Abydos – one of the oldest known cities of ancient Egypt and the historic capital of Upper Egypt – and the newly found dwellings and graves could be parts of the long-gone capital now resurfaced, or a separate village that was swallowed by it.
“This discovery can shed light on a lot of information on the history of Abydos,” antiquities minister Mahmoud Afifi said in a press statement.
The recently unearthed structures are thought to have been home to high-ranking officials and grave builders.
In addition to the foundations of ancient huts, the archaeologists found iron tools and pottery, plus 15 giant tombs – the capacious size of which means their intended inhabitants must have been well-established individuals.
“The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the first dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.
It’s possible that these officials oversaw the construction of royal tombs in nearby Abydos, but the size of their own resting places outside the capital suggests they didn’t want to slum it in eternity either.
“About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings,” Egyptologist Chris Eyre from the University of Liverpool in the UK, who wasn’t involved with the excavation, told the BBC.
“So, this appears to be the town, the capital at the very beginning of Egyptian history.”
According to the researchers, the ancient tools and pottery are the leftover traces of a once giant labour force that was engaged in the considerable feat of constructing these royal tombs – and if you’ve seen the kinds of structures we’re talking about, you’ll understand they had a pretty epic responsibility:
Gérard Ducher
The nearby cemetery is made up of 15 mastabas, an ancient Egyptian tomb that takes a rectangular shape, made with sloping walls and a flat roof.
According to lead researcher Yasser Mahmoud Hussein, these mastabas are now the oldest such tombs we know about, pre-dating the previous record holders in Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for another ancient Egyptian city, Memphis.
We’ll have to wait for these new findings to be verified by other scientists, but we’re excited to see what new insights further excavations will bring.
Dazzling Treasures Unearthed in Bronze Age Grave Possible Belonged to a Queen
The burial of a woman who lived and died thousands of years ago may change our perceptions of the El Argar, one of Europe’s most sophisticated Bronze Age civilizations.
It’s one of the most lavish burials from the European Bronze Age, and despite the fact that the woman was buried with a man, the majority of the expensive grave goods belonged to her, indicating that she was of much higher social status.
Researchers led by archaeologist Vicente Lull of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain concluded that women in this culture may have played a more significant political role than previously assumed by comparing her grave to that of other El Argar women.
The grave itself, a large ceramic jar named Grave 38, was discovered in 2014, at the La Almoloya archaeological site on the Iberian Peninsula, Spain.
It was found beneath the floor of what seems to be the governing hall filled with benches in a palace, an interpretation bolstered by the richness of the grave contents.
“The general lack of artifacts on the floor of [the hall] H9, combined with the structural prominence of the benches, indicate that social gatherings of up to 50 individuals could be held in this large room,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“We can only speculate as to whether such meetings were intended for discussion and participation in shared decision-making or, rather, for the transmission of orders within a hierarchical chain of command.
That the grave offerings of grave 38 far exceed those from any other contemporaneous tomb in La Almoloya, and in many other sites, suggests the second option.”
The jar contained the remains of two individuals – a man, who died between the ages of 35 and 40, and a woman, who died between the ages of 25 and 30.
Genetic analyses confirmed that they were unrelated, but radiocarbon dating shows they died at the same time or very close together, around 1730 BCE. Remains found not far from the grave were related to both – their daughter.
The man’s bones showed signs of wear and tear consistent with long-term physical activity, perhaps horse-riding, and a healed traumatic injury to the front of his head.
The woman’s bones showed signs of congenital abnormalities, including a missing rib, only six cervical vertebrae, and fused sacral vertebrae. Markings on her ribs could have been produced by a lung infection when she died.
Nevertheless, she seemed to have been wealthy. The pair was buried with 29 items, most of which were made of silver, and most of which seemed to belong to the woman – necklaces, bracelets on her arms, an awl with a silver-coated handle, and silver-coated ceramic pots, the latter two of which would have required a great deal of skill in silversmithing.
The man wasn’t without ornaments: his arm was adorned with a copper bracelet; he wore a necklace of seven large, colored beads; a dagger with silver rivets lay alongside him; and two gold ear tunnels were likely his, too.
But it was what the woman wore on her head that really excited the research team: a silver circlet, or diadem, placed with a silver disc that would have extended down to her forehead or the bridge of her nose. It’s similar to four other diadems found in the 19th century in richly appointed women’s graves.
“The singularity of these diadems is extraordinary. They were symbolic objects made for these women, thus transforming them into emblematic subjects of the dominant ruling class,” said archaeologist Cristina Rihuete-Herrada of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.
“Each piece is unique, comparable to funerary objects pertaining to the ruling class of other regions, such as Brittany, Wessex and Unetice, or in the eastern Mediterranean of the 17th century BCE, contemporary to our Grave 38.”
The silver in the grave goods had a combined weight of around 230 grams (8 ounces). This is a staggering amount of wealth to bury: in Babylon at this time, the daily wages for a laborer were around 0.23 to 0.26 grams of silver. These two people were buried with 938 days’ worth of Babylonian wages.
Previous analyses had proposed that the women buried in such rich graves were either sovereigns, or the wives of sovereigns. It’s still impossible to tell, but the research team believes that the evidence points towards the former.
“In the Argaric society, women of the dominant classes were buried with diadems, while the men were buried with a sword and dagger,” they explained.
“The funerary goods buried with these men were of lesser quantity and quality. As swords represent the most effective instrument for reinforcing political decisions, El Argar dominant men might have played an executive role, even though the ideological legitimation as well as, perhaps, the government, had lain in some women’s hands.”
As women have wielded political power often throughout history, would that really be such a surprise? The research has been published in Antiquity.
Hundreds Of Ancient Sealed Wine Jars Found In Mysterious Tomb Of Meret-Neith In Abydos
Archaeologists excavating in Um Al-Qaab archaeological site in Abydos in Sohag Governorate, Egypt, have discovered hundreds of 5,000-year-old well-preserved wine jars and grave goods in a tomb belonging to an enigmatic woman known as Meret-Neith.
Scientists hope the find can shed new light on the identity of Meret-Neith of Dynasty 1.
Mostafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said ancient inscriptions indicate that Meret-Neith had been in charge of central government offices, like the Treasury, which lends credence to the theory that she played a historically significant role. Still, so little is known about her life and reign.
According to Dietrich Raue, Director of the German Archaeological Institute, “Meret-Neith had been the only woman with her own monumental tomb in Egypt’s first royal cemetery at Abydos and was probably the most powerful woman of her era.
Raue added that recent excavations have provided new information about this “unique woman and her era” and given rise to the speculation that Meret-Neith may have been the first female Queen in Ancient Egypt, thus predating Queen Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty,” Ahram Online reports.
Her true identity, however, remains a mystery, he concluded.
E. Christiana Köhler, head of the mission, said that Meret-Neith’s monumental tomb complex in the desert of Abydos, which includes her own tomb as well as those of 41 courtiers and servants, was built of unfired mudbricks, mud, and timber.
Köhler added that through meticulous excavation methods and new archaeological technologies, the team demonstrated that the graves had been built in phases over a relatively long period.
“This observation, together with other evidence, radically challenges the oft-proposed but unproven idea of ritual human sacrifice in the 1st Dynasty,” she noted.
Several of the unearthed large wine jars had intact stoppers and contained the well-preserved remains of 5,000-year-old wine.
Dr. Waziry added that “well-preserved jars offer a unique glimpse into the past, providing a window into the culinary and cultural practices of a bygone era,” the Luxor Times reports.
As the excavations continue, archaeologists may eventually learn more about the enigmatic history and identity of Queen Meret-Neith, who may stand alone as the sole woman from the First Dynasty to have a royal tomb discovered in Abydos.
Archeologists discover human bones and Viking-era settlements in Viru-Nigula
During an archeological dig ahead of planned roadworks in Viru-Nigula, Lääne-Viru County, human bones were discovered in the vicinity of the church wall. The archaeological work confirms researchers’ earlier hypothesis that the cemetery and church were built in the medieval period on the site of an earlier settlement.
During the archaeological excavations, a total of 11 human skeletons have been discovered. Four of those found had most likely been buried in a common grave. Preliminary estimates place the burial date of the finds somewhere between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The findings from Viru-Nigula will provide bone researchers with valuable information regarding methods used to treat illnesses and injuries at that time.
“There are a number of interesting pathologies, bone fractures, and injuries that are interesting to observe in my line of work. One [skeleton] has a fracture of the femur, for example. It will be interesting to see how that person deals with it.
Clearly, someone had to care for and treat them. There’s a perception about these types of severe fractures that people at that time didn’t survive them, but in fact, they did manage to cope with them. Of course, they weren’t put in the hospital and fixed up like they are nowadays, but they have healed nicely,” said bioarcheologist and bone specialist Martin Malve.
In addition to the medieval cemetery, the location of a settlement with a history dating back to the Viking Age was also discovered at the site.
“There are a lot of pottery shards and nails, and there are also plenty of animal bones – fish bones, bird bones, for example, so the material is very rich, in addition to the human bones. We can learn what people ate and which utensils they used.
We are also taking soil samples from here, where we are trying to get plant residue, which should provide us with information about their agricultural practices,” Malve said.
The finds from different eras will inevitably lead to imaginations running wild, with plenty of speculation about what kinds of events may have taken place in Viru-Nigula at the end of antiquity, 800 years ago, and during the Crusades.
“People’s romanticism has led to suggestions that the village was burnt down, or that the Germans came and destroyed the village. But what actually happened, we don’t know.
Perhaps part of the village was deserted or demolished or a church was built in the center. If you look at the maps of the settlement and the cultural layer of the area, there is evidence that the church and the cemetery were built right in the middle of the village,” Malve said.
The two-week archaeological dig in Viru-Nigula is scheduled to end on Sunday.
Ancient Greek helmet found buried next to ‘elite warrior’ who died 2,400 years ago
A very rare bronze Greek-Illyrian war helmet, used in Greece during the time of the Greco-Persian Wars, has just been discovered in a rock-cut tomb in Dalmatia, Croatia.
The form of the iconic open-faced helmet, which archaeologists consider an especially rare find, originated in the Peloponnese during the 8th and 7th centuries BC.
The Greek-Illyrian war helmet was found in southern Dalmatia, Croatia in December of 2020.
The spectacular find was made recently during the exploration of the cave tomb in Zakotarac, located on the Pelješac peninsula, in southern Dalmatia, Croatia. The tomb was for a warrior buried approximately three centuries later, however, in the 4th century BC.
The rare find, accompanied by many other valuable objects from the era, was discovered within a previously-unknown rock-cut tomb along a hillside near Gradina.
This particular style of helmet, which became the iconic head covering of Greek warriors over the centuries, was first used by the ancient Greek Etruscans and Scythians. It later became known as the Illyrian helmet.
An alternate form of this helmet was also developed in Italy, according to archaeologists who gleaned this information from depictions on ivory relief sculptures. However, this style of helmet became obsolete in most areas of Greece in the early 5th century BC and its common use in Illyria ended by the 4th century BC.
Part of the warrior’s skull appears to be visible from the openings of the helmet, although earth has over the millennia made its way into where the rest of his head would be.
Archaeologists working at the grave site in Croatia.
Adding to the importance of the find, archaeologists also discovered a treasure trove of ancient weapons, including spears and knives, in the same Croatian grave.
At least two other people had been buried along with the warrior, including a woman, who was found wearing a bronze bracelet.
According to a report in Archaeology News Network, additional treasures at the gravesite included “fifteen bronze and silver fibulae (clasps), twelve needles, several spiral bronze ornaments and tweezers and several hundred glass paste and amber beads belonging to necklaces.”
The spectacular find was made when archaeologists were working on restoring a damaged burial mound. The rectangular space of the mound measured approximately 3 x 2 meters (9.84 x 6.56 feet).
The body of the warrior had been laid to rest in a west-east direction in the tomb, but unfortunately, his bones were found in a “rather poor condition,” according to the archaeologists.
The site of the 4th-century BC grave site in Croatia. In the distance is a hilltop settlement of Gradina that Archaeologists believe may hold further important discoveries.
The tomb dates back to earlier than the nearby colony on Korčula, which is known to have been founded in the late 4th or early 3rd century BC, according to the project coordinator, Dr. Hrvoje Potrebica, from the Department of Archaeology of Zagreb University.
The discovery was made possible after last year’s visit to western Peljesac by a team from Croatia’s Center for Prehistoric Research. In the process of exploring this area, they were able to identify potential archaeological dig sites at the Illyrian Cave Sanctuary at Nakovana, dating back to the 4th to 1st centuries BC.
Priceless objects to accompany the dead in the afterlife
During this reconnaissance, they found grave goods deposited around a stalagmite. Professor Potrebica holds that the fourth century BC Greek-Illyrian helmet “is exceptionally rare” and is one of only about forty such helmets that have ever been found in all of Europe.
Another treasure found in the grave were thirty vases of predominantly Greek origin — although the researchers believe that they had been made by both Attic and Italian workshops.
According to the archeologists, these types of vessels were among the most expensive vases made during that period. Along with these rare discoveries, the researchers were able to pinpoint many other previously unknown sites in Nakovana, Professor Potrebica stated.
The researchers additionally were able to examine another group of prehistoric mounds around the Croatian village of Zakotorac. Following a road that is believed to have been trodden in prehistoric times, they came upon yet another site known as “the Vidohovo spring.”
The archaeologists state that they believe this site will yield yet more treasures, possibly including a shrine, with Dr. Potrebica adding that it holds “enormous potential.”
An ancient Greek vase was found at the Croatian burial site.
In 2021, after all the pandemic-related restrictions will be lifted, the archeological team hopes that they will once again be able to return to this site, which will enable them to lace these finds into their proper historical context.
Dr. Potrebica told interviewers that the discovery of the bronze war helmet, along with the other “exceptional finds” on Korcula, are presenting archaeologists with a new understanding of the “importance of the southern Adriatic in the historical dynamics of this part of Europe.”
A cryptic 2,700-year-old pig skeleton found in Jerusalem’s City of David
An ancient pig skeleton is seen in Jerusalem, having been discovered in a building dating back to the First Temple.
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed the complete skeleton of a piglet in a place and time where you wouldn’t expect to find pork remains: a Jerusalem home dating to the First Temple period.
The 2,700-year-old porcine remains were found crushed by large pottery vessels and collapsed walls during excavations in the so-called City of David, the original nucleus of ancient Jerusalem. The team of archaeologists behind the discovery reported their findings in a study published in the June edition of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology.
The find of swine adds to previous research showing that pork was occasionally on the menu for the ancient Israelites and that biblical taboos on this and other prohibited foods only came to be observed centuries later, in the Second Temple period. It also ties into broader questions about when the Bible was written and when Judaism as we know it was born.
This little piggy wasn’t bacon
The animal’s skull clearly identifies it as a domestic pig, as opposed to a wild swine, and its presence indicates that pigs were raised for food in the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, says Lidar Sapir-Hen, an archaeozoologist at Tel Aviv University and at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. The fact that the skeleton was found intact suggests that this specific piglet, less than seven months old, was not eaten, but died accidentally when the building was destroyed at some point in the eighth-century B.C.E, Sapir-Hen and colleagues report.
First Temple period structures near the Gihon Spring in Jerusalem’s City of David, where the pig skeleton was found along with the “butchered” remains of many other types of animals.
But there can be little doubt of what the piglet’s ultimate fate would have been having its home not collapsed for as yet unclear reasons. In addition to large storage jars and smaller cooking vessels, the room where the pig was unearthed also hosted dozens of animal bones from sheep, goats, cattle, gazelles, as well as fish and birds, the archaeologists report.
Most of these remains were burnt or showed signs of butchery, meaning the animals had long been dead and eaten when the building was destroyed, Sapir-Hen says.
This suggests that this room was where meals were prepared or eaten,” she says. “So this pig was just waiting for its turn.”
We don’t know the cause of the building’s collapse, as there is no known major destruction event in Jerusalem in the eighth century B.C.E., says Joe Uziel, the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist who led the dig. It may have been destroyed by an earthquake or a more localized event, he speculates.
In any case, the structure was rebuilt and continued to be in use until around 586 B.C.E., when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the First Temple, Uziel says. The building had at least four rooms and was located in a fairly central area near the Gihon spring, the main source of water for the city at the time. Constructed with rough fieldstones, it was probably a private home, although the fact that bullae, or seal impressions, were unearthed in another room suggests it may have also had an additional, administrative function, Uziel says.
An archaeologist retrieves the skull of a piglet from a First Temple period building in Jerusalem’s City of David at the site where the “articulated” pig skeleton was also found.
The excavation also yielded an elegantly carved bone pendant and a human figurine. Together with the great variety of animals found alongside the pig, all of this indicates the house was occupied by an upper-class family, the archaeologist says.
The importance and central location of the house suggest that pig husbandry and pork consumption may have been a rare treat, but still very much part of “mainstream” food habits, he says. In other words, it doesn’t look like this was something done secretively by, say, a poorer household that may have been desperately in need of a quick meal.
At this point, we have to wonder how to square the idea that pigs were infrequently but openly raised in Jerusalem with the biblical injunction that: “The swine, though he divides the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.” (Leviticus 11:7-8
It’s the Levantine economy, stupid
While domesticated pig bones are rarely found in Jerusalem and in most of the Levant, they are not entirely absent, Sapir-Hen notes. In excavations from the First Temple period in Jerusalem and in other sites from the Kingdom of Judah, swine bones constitute up to 2 per cent of the animal remains unearthed, she says.
Already back in the 1990s, archaeologists also observed that pig bones were much more frequent in the coastal strip that was inhabited by the Philistines. Scholars thus concluded that a dearth of pig bones identified a site as Israelite and that the biblical ban on partaking in pork was already known and observed in the First Temple period.
But more recent research by Sapir-Hen and others has shown that the picture is much more complex. For one thing, the near absence of pig bones is not unique to Israelite sites of the Iron Age, the period that roughly corresponds to the First Temple era. Swine is equally scarce in most of Canaan during the preceding era, the Late Bronze Age, a time before the writing of the Bible or the formation of ancient Israel.
This dearth then continues in the Iron Age, not only in Judah but in many of its neighbours, including sites linked to the Canaanites, Phoenicians and Arameans, Sapir-Hen notes. Even when it comes to the supposedly pork-loving Philistines, the situation is actually more nuanced.
While the diet of Philistine city-dwellers did include a larger proportion of pigs, which were seemingly imported from Greece, swine bones are almost absent from their rural settlements, in keeping with the dietary habits of the rest of the Levant. Equally puzzling is the fact that in the Kingdom of Israel, Judah’s northern neighbour, a pig is rare in the early Iron Age, but it increases to up to 8 per cent of the animal mix at urban sites in the eighth century B.C.E.
All of this indicates that the tendency to eschew pork in the Iron Age cannot be linked to a specific ethnic identity or to the biblical prohibition, Sapir-Hen concludes. Pigs were only a small part of the Levantine diet most probably because other animals, especially goats, sheep and cattle, were more suited to the local environment and economy.
Pigs can be raised in an urban environment, as they require less space, but they also need a nearby water source: it is perhaps not a coincidence that the Jerusalem piglet was found near the city’s spring. This may explain why, throughout the Levant, swine occurrences only tend to rise at times and in places where populations increase and are concentrated in larger urban settlements, whether in Philistia, in the Kingdom of Israel or, to a lesser extent, in the more built-up sections of Judah’s capital, Jerusalem.
Gods, figurines and shrimp
Figurine and bone pendant found in the building where the piglet’s remains were found
This also gels with a growing body of research on the Israelite religion in the First Temple period. While scholars believe that parts of the Bible were already compiled at the tail end of this era, it is generally agreed that the holy text we know today only reached its final form after the Babylonian exile, in the Second Temple period.
Whenever the Bible was actually written, archaeological finds have shown that, in practice, First Temple-period Judaism was very different from the religion it would later become. While the ancient Israelites believed in Yahweh, the God of the Bible, they also worshipped other deities, including Asherah, who was thought to be God’s wife. They liberally made figurines and other graven images, ostensibly banned by the Second Commandment.
Additionally, a study published just last month in the Tel Aviv journal of archaeology looked at the finding, at archaeological sites throughout Israel, of bones from scaleless and finless fish, which are also prohibited by the Bible’s dietary rules. The research showed that catfish, sharks and other non-kosher fish were commonly consumed in Jerusalem and Judah during the First Temple period, and only for the late Second Temple period is there clear evidence that Jews were eschewing such banned seafood.
In other words, biblical prohibitions that are considered signposts of the Jewish faith today were unknown, unheeded or non-existent back in the First Temple period. And it seems that, from time to time, the ancient Israelites were not averse to literally bringing home the bacon.
Smashed pottery vessels in the room where the pig was found
Archaeologists Find Hidden Rooms in Pyramid of Egyptian Pharaoh Sahure
The pyramid of Sahure at Abusir, Egypt.
The pyramid complex of Sahure was built in the 26th to 25th century BCE for the Egyptian pharaoh Sahure. It introduced a period of pyramid building by Sahure’s successors at Abusir, on a location earlier used by Userkaf, founder of the Fifth Dynasty, for his Sun temple.
The pyramid of Sahure was first investigated by the British Egyptologist John Perring, who was the only one who was able to break off and clean the entrance as well as the descending access passage.
The burial chamber was very badly damaged by the stonecutters, and it is not even clear if it was comprised of one or two rooms.
From left to right: Exterior view of the pyramid. A passage secured with steel beams. One of the discovered storage rooms.
Perring found a single fragment of basalt, thinking that it belonged to the king’s sarcophagus.
Interestingly, in the northeastern part of the eastern wall of the burial chamber, Perring discovered a low passageway.
He suggested that this could lead to a magazine area, however, the corridor was full of rubble or waste and he did not attempt to enter it.
Due to the bad state of preservation in the interior compartment of the pyramid, precise reconstruction of the substructure’s plan was impossible.
“The conservation and restoration project inside Sahure’s pyramid, initiated in 2019 and supported by the Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), aimed to safeguard the substructure of Sahure’s pyramid,” said Julius-Maximilians-Universität of Würzburg egyptologist Mohamed Ismail Khaled and his colleagues.
“Our efforts focused on cleaning the interior rooms, stabilizing the pyramid from inside, and preventing further collapse.”
“In the process, we succeeded in securing the pyramid’s burial chambers, which had previously been inaccessible.”
One of the newly-discovered storage rooms in the pyramid of Sahure at Abusir, Egypt.
During the restoration work, they identified the original dimensions and were able to uncover the floor plan of the antechamber, which had deteriorated over time. Consequently, the destroyed walls were replaced with new retaining walls.
“The eastern wall of the antechamber was badly damaged, and only the northeast corner and about 30 cm of the eastern wall were still visible,” the archaeologists said.
“Traces of a low passageway that Perring had already noticed during an excavation in 1836 continued to be excavated.”
“Perring had mentioned that this passage had been full of debris and rubbish and had been impassable due to decay.”
“He suspected that it might have led to storage rooms. However, during further exploration of the pyramid by Ludwig Borchardt in 1907, these assumptions were called into question — other experts joined his opinion.”
“All the more surprising was our discovery of the traces of a passage. Thereby proving that the observations made during Perring’s exploration were correct,” they said.
“The work was continued, and the passage was uncovered. Thus, eight storerooms have been discovered so far.”
“Although the northern and southern parts of these magazines, especially the ceiling and the original floor, are badly damaged, remnants of the original walls and parts of the floor can still be seen.”
