Israel winery: 1,500-year-old Byzantine wine complex found
A 1,500-year-old wine-making complex, said to have been the world’s largest at the time, has been discovered in Israel, archaeologists say.
Five presses were unearthed at the huge Byzantine-era winery at Yavne, south of Tel Aviv, which is estimated to have produced two million litres a year.
After a sophisticated production process, it was exported around the Mediterranean.
The wine was aged in clay jars known as Gaza Jars, many of which were found intact at the site
Those working at the site said they were surprised by its size. There are plans to make the complex a visitor attraction once preservation work is completed.
The site contains five wine presses spread over a square kilometre (0.4 sq miles), warehouses for ageing and bottling the wine, and kilns for firing the jars used for storing it.
The end product was known as Gaza and Ashkelon wine, after the ports through which it was exported to Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor.
The site is spread over a square kilometre
It had a reputation for quality throughout the Mediterranean region, but at that time wine was also a staple for many.
“This was a major source of nutrition and this was a safe drink because the water was often contaminated,” said Jon Seligman, one of the excavation’s directors.
Decorative niches in the shape of a conch indicate that the factory owners were very wealthy
Tens of thousands of fragments have been found at the site
A fossilized trilobite first studied by an amateur palaeontologist half a century ago has provided researchers with a whole new way of seeing the world, in a very literal sense. X-rays taken of the ancient arthropod back in the early 1970s have been given a second look, revealing a structure of an eye that is unlike any seen on any animal before or since.
Phacops geesops, a trilobite from the Devonian age.
As head of Siemens radiology department, Wilhelm Stürmer knew a thing or two about using X-rays to reveal hidden secrets. This was especially true when it came to studying fossils, a passion he fueled by fitting out a minibus with X-ray equipment to take out to palaeontology sites. In spite of his expertise in radiology, Stürmer wasn’t a palaeontologist, so few took his claim of discovering optic nerves inside a 390-million-year-old Phacops geesops fossil seriously.
“At that time, the consensus was that only bones and teeth, the hard parts of living things, could be seen in the fossils, but not the soft parts, such as intestines or nerves,” says the University of Cologne palaeontologist Brigitte Schoenemann.
In addition to the nerves was an arrangement of ‘fibres’ that looked uncannily like photoreceptor cells called ommatidia. Only in this case, they were strangely elongated, roughly 25 times their own diameter; far too long to seem plausible as a light-gathering structure.
A lot has changed since then. Today, palaeontologists are comfortable with the idea that soft tissue structures can leave a clear signature in fossilized material. And super-long ommatidia have since been uncovered in the compound eyes of aquatic arthropods.
With that in mind, Schoenemann and her colleagues went back to Stürmer’s original images for a closer look. After double-checking the fossil with modern CT technology, they determined the filaments he spotted were almost certainly optic nerve fibres after all.
But it was what the foam-like nest of fibres was connected to that really grabbed the researchers’ attention: What seemed like two compound eyes were actually hundreds, split across left and right clusters.
“Each of these eyes consisted of about 200 lenses up to one millimetre in size,” says Schoenemann.
“Under each of these lenses, in turn, at least six facets are set up, each of which together again makes up a small compound eye. So we have about 200 compound eyes (one under each lens) in one eye.”
Trilobites more or less dominated the oceans for hundreds of millions of years, adapting to fill a broad range of aquatic niches with a variety of weird and wonderful body plans.
One of their most clever inventions was a visual system of unprecedented complexity. While comparably simple in modern terms, their version of eyes gave them the edge in hunting or hiding and in detecting the subtlest of changes in brightness and movement.
Though their eye anatomy came in many forms, the most common structures would be easily recognizable to most zoologists today, consisting of a neatly arranged pattern of lenses working together to turn diffuse light into a heavily pixelated map of their surroundings.
Modern insects and other arthropods continue to rely on compound eyes like these to great effect. What this pixelated view lacks in resolution is easily made up for in simplicity and adaptability, evolving to overcome limitations with a few tweaks of anatomy.
Yet for the incredible diversity of trilobite eyes, those on certain members of the suborder Phacopina have had palaeontologists stumped.
In what’s known as a schizochroal eye, each lens sits a short distance away from its neighbour, leaving a lot of empty space that could be put to use catching more light.
We now know what appears to be a single lens is, in fact, a single compound eye within two ‘hyper-eyes’.
While it doesn’t tell us why these eyes evolved, it does change what questions we need to ask about this unusual arthropod. Rather than pondering the waste of space between each lens, biologists can now speculate over the benefits hundreds of tiny eyes have in adjusting to low light, or responding to rapid changes in light conditions over a wider area.
“It is also possible that the individual components of the eye performed different functions, enabling, for example, contrast enhancement or the perception of different colours,” says Schoenemann.
Stürmer must have suspected there was something worth looking at in the eyes, having drawn an arrow in red pen pointing right at the half-dozen facets beneath one of the lenses.
Sadly, the radiologist passed away in the 1980s, long before his discovery was given the validation it deserved.
Like the trilobite, Stürmer was clearly a visionary before his time.
Obsidian ‘Spirit Mirror’ Used by Elizabeth I’s Court Astrologer Has Aztec Origins
According to a recent study, an obsidian “spirit mirror” used by a confidant of Queen Elizabeth I was actually a product of Aztec culture. The obsidian mirror, made of volcanic glass, and three other comparable items at the British Museum were discovered to have Mexican origins after an examination.
Researcher Elizabeth Healey holds John Dee’s obsidian mirror.
The obsidian mirror with the Elizabeth I connection belonged to John Dee, an adviser of hers from when she became queen in 1558 and through the 1570s. Dee served as the queen’s astrologer and also consulted with her on science. This included Dee acting “as an advocate of voyages of discovery, establishing colonies and improving navigation,” said Stuart Campbell, study author and professor at the University of Manchester.
“John Dee is a remarkable historical figure, a Renaissance polymath — interested in astronomy, alchemy and mathematics — and confidant of Elizabeth I,” Campbell wrote in an email. “Later he became involved in divination and the occult, seeking to talk to angels through the use of scryers (those who divine the future), who used artefacts — like mirrors and crystals.”
Dee may have bought the mirror in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) in the 1580s.
While it had been previously suspected that the mirror had been made by the Aztec culture, there were no records accompanying the object to show how it came into Dee’s possession.
A team of researchers used geochemical analysis to target the four obsidian objects with X-rays. This in turn caused the objects to emit X-rays, helping the scientists determine their composition by revealing the elements of the obsidian. In addition to Dee’s mirror, they studied two other Aztec mirrors and a rectangular slab of obsidian.
The analysis showed that all four were made using Mexican obsidian. Dee’s mirror and a similarly designed mirror were made using obsidian from Pachuca, a city that is a source of obsidian the Aztecs used. The third mirror and the slab are made of obsidian from the town of Ucareo, another obsidian site in Mexico.
A study on the findings was published Wednesday in the journal Antiquity. The researchers estimate that Dee’s mirror is about 500 years old, most likely made in the final decades before the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521, Campbell said.
“We know that Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés sometimes commissioned items from Aztec craftsmen so he could send them back to the Spanish court,” Campbell said. “So it is even possible that some of the circular mirrors like John Dee’s were specially made by Aztec craftsmen at the time of the conquest of the Aztec Empire to send back to Europe.”
This figure shows Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the smoking mirror, with circular obsidian mirrors on his temple, his chest and his foot highlighted.
While researchers haven’t been able to pinpoint the obsidian mirrors’ intended use in Aztec culture, depictions remain that show circular obsidian mirrors made at this time.
“They’re shown particularly in drawings of the god Tezcatlipoca, in place of a missing foot, or attached to his chest or head,” Campbell said. “The mirrors that have survived may well have actually been attached to statues of the god.
Tezcatlipoca was the god of divination and providence, amongst several other things, and the obsidian mirrors were probably much more than simply symbols of power — they also seem likely to have been used for divinatory purposes.”
Tezcatlipoca’s name also means “smoking mirror.”
The Aztecs believed that obsidian had spiritual significance, and it was used in their medicinal practices, as well as a way to ward off bad spirits or even capture souls by using the reflective nature of the volcanic glass. Items of such significance to the Aztecs would have been intriguing to the Europeans exploring Mexico.
Aztec codices created around the time of the Spanish Conquest depict mirrors, apparently in frames.
“The 16th century was a period in which new exotic objects were being brought to Europe from the New World, and opening up exciting new possibilities in the intellectual world of the period,” Campbell said. Dee, the first person known to use the term “British Empire,” would have been fascinated by the idea of the mirrors if he heard stories of how the Aztecs used them, Campbell said. Dee had an interest in the occult early on, and once he obtained the obsidian mirror, he used it to try communicating with spirits, according to the study.
John Dee was a mathematician, astrologer, alchemist and advisor to England’s Elizabeth I.
Understanding the origins of the obsidian mirror can help researchers retrace the paths of such objects from a time when appropriation occurred frequently.
“To me, it helps us understand something of the way in which the European voyages of discovery and engagement with other parts of the world, often through disastrous conquest, was matched by intellectual attempts to understand how the world worked,” Campbell said. “Novel artefacts brought back to Europe from the Americas entered collections of nobility and of intellectuals, and were used and appropriated in the efforts of people, who — like John Dee — saw themselves as scientists, to understand the world in new ways.”
During his time as Elizabeth’s confidant and adviser, she visited him several times at his home, Campbell said. Dee was considered to be one of the reigning intellectuals of that period; he had the largest library in England and one of the greatest in Europe, Campbell said. “The surviving record of (the library) is actually of major importance in understanding 16th- and early 17th-century intellectual thought,” Campbell said.
To Dee, the supernatural was indistinguishable from science. “It may have been his growing interest in those areas of study that gradually undermined his role in the court by the end of the 1570s,” Campbell said.
Prehistoric hooks and sinkers show early humans used advanced fishing techniques
Courthouse News Service reports that a 13,000-year-old collection of 19 bone fishhooks and six grooved pebbles thought to have been used as sinkers has been unearthed on the banks of the Jordan River in northern Israel by a team of researchers led by Antonella Pedergnana of the Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution.
A reconstruction of a hook and a small grooved pebble on a line. Note the sophisticated knot.
According to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. It’s some of the earliest evidence of complex fishing technology. Fish remains have been found at sites inhabited by human ancestors dating back to nearly 2 million years. But studying what technology early humans used to acquire fish is difficult because the fishing gear was typically made from perishable materials like wood and plant fibres, and they’re only preserved in unusual conditions.
The waterlogged Jordan River Dureijat site was discovered in 1999 as a result of a drainage operation. But back in the Levantine Epipaleolithic periods, it was a short-term encampment that was intermittently occupied over a span of about 10,000 years, according to an earlier study published in the PaleoAnthropology journal. It was never used for habitation, but rather it was a place that people repeatedly visited fish and hunt and take advantage of other natural resources.
In addition to the fish hooks and pebbles — the largest collection of early fishing technology to be found — arrowheads and limestone axes have also been found at the site. And because the site has been covered in water, tiny rodents and fish bones are well-preserved.
In Wednesday’s study, a team of archaeologists – led by Antonella Pedergnana of the Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution in Mainz, Germany – found plant residue on the hooks and stones that indicate the use of fishing line.
They also found a wide variety of hook shapes, suggesting they were used for catching a variety of fish sizes, and grooved lines and fibre residues on some hooks indicate the use of artificial lures.
“A look at the [the Jordan River Dureijat] fishing gear reveals that all fishing techniques and knowledge already existed some 13,000 years ago,” the study’s authors wrote in a statement.
The innovations coincide with the beginning of the transition to agriculture, and the use of lures and a wide variety of hook shapes “suggests the humans of this time were not only hunting a broad spectrum of fish but also that they had a profound knowledge of fish behaviour and ecology,” researchers note.
Based on the size of the hooks and their grooves and the remains of captured fish at the site, researchers estimate the lines used in fishing were likely strong enough to pull a 2-pound, “and possibly even heavier,” fish out of the water, according to the study.
But the hooks don’t have any eyes or holes in the shank through which to thread the line, something researchers note was likely because it weakened the narrow shank. Instead, they have grooves or knobs on the shaft, and traces of wear indicate the line wasn’t connected by a single twist but by a “complex method of binding, wrapping and tying.”
Archaeologists also found residual evidence of an adhesive being used to secure the line.
The use of artificial bait was confirmed by the presence of deep grooves, adhesives and animal hair on the end of two hooks. These lures may have included “shell flutters,” or pieces of shiny mother-of-pearl that spin in the water and attract fish.
Modern anglers still use shiny lures today, and the use of lightweight lures are used with specific casting techniques, such as fly fishing.
“Given the small dimensions of the hooks likely to have been equipped with artificial lures at [Jordan River Dureijat], the possibility that a similar angling method was already in use during the Natufian [era] should not be ruled out,” the study authors note.
“Except for the use of metal and plastic, modern fishing has not invented anything new since the Natufian,” they added in a statement.
Amazon rainforest rock art ‘depicts giant Ice Age creatures’
This huge collection of ancient cliff art paints a dramatic picture of early humans and giant beasts in the Amazon. Early inhabitants worshipped and hunted elephant-like mastodons and giant horses – alongside other Ice Age animals – back when the lush rainforest was a parched savannah.
Researchers say these drawings include a depiction of a pig-like peccary, deer, humans performing rituals, felines and canines
At least that’s according to the extraordinary paintings, made with red ochre by long-dead artists.
They are believed to be between 11,800 and 12,600 years old and took at least hundreds of years to create. Experts are staggered at the scale of the find, one of the largest of its kind in South America.
Located in the Serranía La Lindosa region of Colombia, the discovery has been dubbed “The Sistine Chapel of the Ancients”. However, instead of a beautiful man-made structure, this canvas is all Mother Nature’s handiwork.
The cliff faces paintings number in the tens of thousands and was spotted across a trio of rock shelters. Cerro Azul is the biggest, stretching nearly 3 miles. There is around 8 miles’ worth of historic artworks in total. The quality is said to be highly realistic for the time.
Human figures are depicted with colossal creatures. How big were they? Mark Robinson, speaking via a statement from the University of Exeter, refers to “giant herbivores, some which were the size of a small car.”
Researchers believe this rock art depicts a giant sloth (a); a mastodon (b); a camelid (c); horses (d and e); and a three-toed ungulate with a trunk (f)
This “megafauna” gave Robinson and co a possible insight into the ancient art exhibit. Examples of extinct wildlife, such as super-sized sloths and mastodons, offered major clues concerning dates. As Business Insider writes, “by about 11,600 BC, humans had likely killed many of the mastodons off.”
Other features daubed include trees, handprints and “geometric shapes”. A tree wasn’t just a tree to humankind in the dying years of this Ice Age.
Quoted by The Guardian, team leader Prof José Iriarte (University of Exeter) says plants had souls, and that they communicated with people “in cooperative or hostile ways”.
The group, funded by the ERC (European Research Council) and made up of experts from Britain/Colombia, also noted the surroundings.
Artists took their lunch to work with them it seems, before leaving litter on site. Delicacies like frog, armadillo and piranha were consumed, according to the University’s statement.
It sounds like the painters needed their strength. Some art is so high up it required drones to take a gander. Images of towers made from wood are displayed.
Reportedly the artists clambered onto these before jumping down. All that work was worth it in the end. Quoted by the statement, Prof Iriarte says the art was “a powerful part of the culture and a way for people to connect socially.”
The team began investigating the area in 2017. It was no easy task. For starters, the journey there was punishing. Once they completed a 2-hour drive from the town of San José del Guaviare, they had a 4-hour trek to look forward to. And access was only permitted after the signing of a peace treaty in 2016 between the Colombian government and FARC (the People’s Army). A civil war raged there for half a century. Even then additional permissions had to be sought to avoid danger.
While the cliff paintings were known about since April this year, the find was kept under the radar till now. A TV crew from Channel 4 joined the group throughout the process. Exciting details are about to be revealed to the public as part of a new series, ‘Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon’.
Presented by archaeologist Ella Al-Shamahi, it really was a matter of life and death. As reported by The Guardian, at one point the party had to sneak past a highly venomous bushmaster snake in the dark.
The ancient cliff art provides a much-needed window into a mysterious time for the Amazon. This rich and diverse environment changed a lot over the centuries. What role humans played in the shift can be examined like never before, thanks to these stunning and perfectly preserved visuals.
The Atacama Giant: The Largest Prehistoric Anthropomorphic Geoglyph in the World
The Atacama Giant is a large anthropomorphic geoglyph in the Atacama Desert, Chile. The Atacama Giant is one out of nearly 5,000 geoglyphs – ancient artwork that is drawn into the landscape – that have been discovered in the Atacama in the last three decades.
The Atacama Giant in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
It is the largest prehistoric representation of a human figure in the world with a height of 119 metres (390 ft). Its location is about 497 miles (800 kilometres) south of Peru’s Nazca lines – the best-known geoglyphs in the world.
The Atacama Giant lies in the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar desert on Earth. The desert plateau stretches almost 1,000 miles along the coast of Chile and Peru. Scattered over the desert in hills, valleys, and plains, these motifs are found alongside tracks that pre-Hispanic civilizations built and used for llama caravans.
In fact, llama caravans are depicted in geoglyphs across the Atacama, suggesting the images were somehow deeply linked to the nearby trade routes.
Moon Valley, Atacama Desert, Chile.
The geoglyphs include geometric designs such as stepped rhombuses, concentric circles, and arrows. Figures resembling people (or perhaps gods) are also represented performing different activities—for example, hunting. Animals, too, are found among the figures. Llamas, lizards, and monkeys are just a few examples.
Scholars believe some animals may correspond to divine rites, such as amphibians being used in water rituals. Modern flight and drone abilities have enabled closer study and better photography of such ancient creations around the world.
Geoglyphs are generally categorized into three types. The first is additive, or positive, meaning that rocks and other materials are strategically piled on top of the ground to create the desired shape.
A second type is considered extractive, or negative. In this case, topsoil and other materials are scraped away to reveal differently coloured subsoil.
The third type of geoglyph is a combination of both styles. While it may seem like these ancient creations would be very ephemeral, a shocking number have survived to modern times.
In the Atacama desert, the dry climate likely contributed to the preservation of the thousands of ancient designs still visible today. However, even in wetter climates such as the United Kingdom, geoglyphs such as the Uffington Horse still survive.
Other geoglyphs in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
The Atacama geoglyphs are thought to have been created by a succession of cultures, including the Inca. However, the purpose of many of the images remains a mystery. Some may have been intended as guiding information for the ancient llama caravans. Others may have been devoted to deities or used in religious practices.
The Atacama giant—notable for its size and hillside position on the hill Cerro Unitas—has been assumed to be an astronomical guide. The rays emanating from the figure’s head may have represented a headdress, but they align with the moon to tell the time in a way that was probably quite practical. By gauging the seasons, the ancients who crafted the hill figure sometime between 1000 and 1400 CE could better predict the rainy season.
Hill figures are often thought to have been intended to view from some distance, suggesting the giant may have been strategically placed.
Another giant figural geoglyph; part of the Nazca Lines UNESCO World Heritage Site in Peru.
Another famous set of geoglyphs are the Nazca Lines, located in the Nazca Desert in Peru. Created earlier than the Atacama images, the Nazca Lines date from about 500 BCE to 500 CE. They draw their name from the heavy use of long lines, created in an extractive style.
These lines surround or compose shapes and animals. Spiders, humans, hummingbirds, and more are depicted in the dry soil. Over the years, experts have suggested a variety of explanations for the geoglyphs. Ritual use, representations of constellations, and other astronomical purposes have all been hypothesized. Still, others have suggested the lines, in part, performed an important irrigation function.
While the true function of the Nazca Lines remains a mystery, much the same can be said of geoglyphs around the world. The clear importance of the sites—and the fascination they hold for modern audiences—suggest that the Atacama Giant and others of its stature will remain the focus of research for years to come.
Spider geoglyph; part of the Nazca Lines UNESCO World Heritage Site in Peru.
Treasure hunters explode 2500-year-old Lycian Rock-cut Tombs in Turkey
Treasure hunters have exploded the entrance of a 2,500-year-old rock-cut tomb, one of the six ancient sepulchres in the Elmalı district of the southern province of Antalya.
“These are cultural heritages, we must protect them to leave to the next generations,” Durmuş Altan, an archaeologist, told Demirören News Agency on Oct. 6.
According to Altan, who is also the head of the provincial directorate of cultural and social affairs, there are six rock tombs in the neighbourhood.
“Four of them are from the Lycian period,” he said and added: “Today’s Armutlu was in the territory of the then Lycia Kingdom.”
“The meticulous cut of the rock tombs shows that there was once a genuine settlement in the area,” he added.
But the latest state of the rock tombs is not pleasant. Doomed to their destiny, the rock tombs were damaged with writings on them.
Treasure hunters recently flattened the entrance of a rock tomb with explosives, the archaeologist noted.
The entrance to this ancient Lycian rock-cut tomb in Turkey was recently blasted open with dynamite.
“They think they can find sculptures or gold here in the region. These people, unfortunately, damage the cultural assets,” he added.
Few written records remain from the distinctive Lycian culture.
Lycia was located in the region that is now the Antalya and Muğla provinces, on Turkey’s southern coast, and also in Burdur province, which lies further inland. Given that there are few written records left by the ancient Lycians, not much is known about the civilization. What we do know is that they had a distinct culture that had unique aspects not found elsewhere in the ancient world.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of Lycian culture was the striking tombs they built and Ancient Origins wrote a great article about these remarkable tombs a few years ago.
The Lycians made rock-cut, sarcophagus, and pillar tombs. Of these three known types, rock-cut tombs are the most common. The earliest Lycian rock-cut tombs dating to the 5th century BC.
The Lycians believed that a mythical winged creature would carry them into the afterlife, and this is perhaps one of the reasons their tombs were carved directly into rock faces, often a cliff.
Fascinatingly, the Lycian tombs were usually carved to resemble the façade of their houses. They often had one or two stories and sometimes even three. The tombs sometimes held more than one body, most probably of people related to each other, thus extending family ties into the afterlife.
The mythological reliefs sometimes carved on the rock-cut tombs also tell us something about their religious beliefs. The Lycian tombs, rock-cut or otherwise, are thus a precious relic of an ancient culture that has not left behind many written records to help us understand them better. Archaeologist Durmuş Altan’s distress at the callous damage done to one of them by treasure seekers is, therefore, most understandable.
Of course, this is not the first time that ancient tombs and monuments have been broken open by treasure hunters. Tomb robbery goes all the way back to antiquity and has occurred all over the world.
One of the most well-known examples is from Egypt where most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were looted within a hundred years of their being sealed. In modern times, robbing ancient tombs is sometimes the work of organized gangs.
It is hoped that episodes like the latest tomb raid in Elmali will be prevented in future by greater cooperation between governments, UNESCO, and other world heritage bodies. As Altan stated, these are sacred heirlooms, and we owe it to future generations to leave them in even better shape than we found them ourselves.
Who Were the First People to Arrive in the Azores?
A group of international academics discovered evidence that people inhabited islands in the Azores archipelago 700 years earlier than previously thought. The group explains their research of sediment cores taken from lakes on some of the archipelago’s islands in their report, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Landscape view of Pico (foreground) and Faial (background) Islands.
Due to the absence of other evidence, historians have believed that people first arrived in the Azores in 1427, when Portuguese sailor Diogo de Silves landed on Santa Maria Island.
Soon thereafter, others from Portugal arrived and made the archipelago their home. In this new effort, the researchers found evidence that humans were living on some of the islands in the Azores approximately 700 years earlier.
Looking to learn more about the history of the Azores, the researchers began collecting sediment samples from several of the lakes on the islands and studying them to see what they might reveal.
Sediment samples can serve as historical evidence because the material in the air that falls to the surface of a lake and then to the lake bottom is covered over by new layers of sediment as time passes.
Analysis of the sediment cores showed an increase in 5-beta-stigmasterol in a core layer dated to a time between 700 CE and 850 CE, taken from Peixinho Lake. The compound is typically found in the faeces of livestock, such as cows and sheep—neither of which lived in the Azores prior to the arrival of humans.
They also saw upticks in charcoal particles (suggesting large fires had been burning) along with a dip in native tree pollens.
The findings suggest someone had burned down the forest to provide more land for livestock. The researchers found similar evidence in cores taken from Caldeirão Lake, which is on a different island, though it appeared approximately a century later. And they found evidence of non-native ryegrass in the sediment taken from a lake on a third island.
Lake Caldeirão inside the collapsed caldera of Corvo Island.
The findings present strong evidence of humans inhabiting the archipelago hundreds of years before the Portuguese arrived.
The researchers theorize that they were likely Norse seafarers, noting their accomplishments in sailing up and down the coasts of many parts of Europe.
