Scottish Farmer Discovers 5,000-Year-Old Lost City
Scottish Farmer Discovers 5,000-Year-Old Lost City
One day a farmer found a large stone on the island of Orkney in Scotland that didn’t look like it belonged to the environment.
When the farmer moved over the rock, he had a lifetime surprise. Skara Brae, a city hidden and lost that was about 5,000 years ago, was located underneath the stone.
The farmer thought it was a house at first because it seemed very small to be a city. But the farmer soon realised after showing to people what he had discovered that it was the lost city after all.
Skara Brae History
Orkney is an island with a very long history. It actually has one of the oldest British settlements to ever exist. Historians believe Skara Brae was an active city more than 5,000 years ago.
If this is true, then that makes Skara Brae older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Since most of it got covered with sand dunes over the years. Thus it was preserved well for thousands of years.
When it was an active city, probably it had about 50 to 100 people in it. That might not seem like a lot, but it sure is for a city back in those days when the population of people was much less.
Neolithic Lifestyle
The inhabitants of Skara Brae were makers and users of grooved ware, a distinctive style of pottery that had recently appeared in northern Scotland. The houses used earth sheltering, being sunk into the ground.
They were sunk into mounds of pre-existing prehistoric domestic waste known as middens. This provided the houses with stability and also acted as insulation against Orkney’s harsh winter climate.
On average, each house measures 40 square meters (430 sq ft) with a large square room containing a stone hearth used for heating and cooking.
Given the number of homes, it seems likely that no more than fifty people lived in Skara Brae at any given time.
The homes were not just sheltered for the citizens of Skara Brae. The center of each home contained a waterproof basin that could have possibly been used to catch fish for eating.
600 million-year-old fossils of tiny humanoids found in Antarctica
600 million-year-old fossils of tiny humanoids found in Antarctica
In the rocky terrain of the Whitmore mountain range of Antarctica, fossilised skeletal remains of what seem to be very small humans have been found.
Tiny fossilized skeletons were found in the Whitmore mountain range
Interestingly enough this finding was made when yours was truly assigned to The National Reporter in Antarctica to debunk a ridiculous tabloid story about the area’s UFO base.
We came across a group of palaeontologists who were looking for evidence that dinosaurs had once roamed the Antarctic continent before it broke loose from Africa and South America and drifted south to its present location while researching this dumb storey with many classmates.
What they found instead astonished them, not only because of what it was but because of its age.
Top; Basecamp with National Reporter tent in the foreground. Bottom; Star reporter Ace Flashman walking with his investigative team.
“We tested the fossils and have determined without a shadow of doubt that they are at least 600 million years old.”
Doctor Marly of Cambridge University told us. “600 million years ago, jellyfish first appeared. There were no human beings in the world and there wouldn’t be any for for nearly five hundred and 60 million years. There weren’t even any dinosaurs around at that time.”
“The first skeleton we found was hidden within the layers of a large piece of sedimentary rock that we had broken loose from the mountainside.
The first fossilized skeleton they found was less than a foot tall.
We knew that it would most likely contain some fossils because of its type and age.” Dr.Marly explained.
“When we split the rock apart we were completely confused. Here was this fossil from an age when the appearance of the first vertebrates were still millions of years off and it was a complete skeleton. And not only that, it appeared to be human.”
“The second skeleton was a very good specimen, Unlike the first one, the second skeleton was in a fully extended position with excellent detail.” Dr. Marly told us.
The second tiny skeleton was very well-preserved and showed quite a bit of detail.
“It is quite obvious from our study of these skeletons that they are definitely human and not a species of primate. Who they were and how large their population was and if they were technologically advanced is a complete mystery.”
The fossils have been flown to the National institute of ancient studys in Washington DC for further analysis.
The National Reporter will be doing a follow-up report on this amazing discovery within the next few months.
The National Reporter would also like to stress to our readers that these tiny fossilized humanoid skeletons are not the remains of extraterrestrial aliens as we expect the tabloids will be reporting it when the news breaks.
2,700-year-old Children’s Cemetery unearthed in Turkey’s Tenedos
A 2700-year-old children’s cemetery was discovered during ongoing excavations in the ancient city of Tenedos in Bozcaada, southeast of the Dardanelles.
Bozcaada (Tenedos) Bozcaada is the modern Turkish name for the legendary island of Tenedos. The name Tenedos refers to the legendary hero Tenes, who ruled the island during the Trojan War.
According to legend, Tenedos was the staging station of the Greek task force under Agamemnon during the Trojan War. It was used by Xerxes as a base during the Persian War.
Discoveries continue in the ongoing excavations in the ancient city of Tenedos under the direction of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Archeology Department Faculty Member Professor Turan Takaoğlu.
During the 2023 excavations, many child graves were detected in the necropolis area of the city. It was noteworthy that children who died at an early age had different types of burial practices. The children were buried with their grave goods in Pithos tombs, amphora tombs, and stone masonry tombs.
Grave within a grave
The most interesting of the children’s graves was a 6th century BC pithos or cube grave into which a second pithos grave was placed in the 4th century BC.
Six terracotta figurines and a bronze pin in the shape of a horse’s foot were placed inside the later pithos grave.
These statuettes depict two dancers wearing Phrygian headdresses, one of them a woman playing the stringed musical instrument lyre, and the remaining three standing women in Eastern costumes that can be associated with the cult of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
Bronze needle.
The figurines were subjected to restoration and conservation procedures by Dr. Çilem Yavşan. After the excavation season, the finds were delivered to the Troy Museum Directorate.
Professor Ömer Can Yıldırım, Vice President of the Excavation, told İHA that excavation works were carried out in Bozcaada Castle and Ancient Necropolis Area in 2023.
Yıldırım said, “Especially in the studies carried out in the Necropolis area, an area previously unknown in the archaeological literature and limited as a burial area for children was detected. Among the graves identified in this area, the structure we defined as a pithos grave showed the feature of a pithos within a pithos and provided the emergence of data that was not previously known in archaeological data.”
“The first burial here was made in the 6th century BC and then, after a period of about 200 years, a second burial was made in the 4th century BC, that is, in the Late Classical Period,” said Professor Yıldırım.
Yıldırım said, “When we look at the general characteristics of the artifacts, the way they are dressed, the goddess motifs are indicative of the beliefs that prevailed in this period and the respect for children buried at a young age related to reaching God.
When we evaluate these artifacts in terms of history, the stylistic and analogical features of the artifacts show that these artifacts were manufactured approximately 2,700 years ago and placed in the grave of a child who died at a young age.
“We can say that the types of clothing found on the artifacts are more related to the eastern Phrygian culture and the cult of Cybele as well as Dionysus. This feature clearly shows us that this religious ideology was dominant especially in the 4th century BC in the Necropolis of Tenedos.
The typological features reflected by the artifacts provide us with significant data in understanding the cultural characteristics of the Tenedos Necropolis during the Late Classical Period,” he said.
Ancient Roman city of Pompeii, archaeologists have unearthed a fresco depicting the Greek mythological siblings Phrixus and Helle
Archaeologists excavating a house adjacent to the House of Leda in Insula 6, Regio V, in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii have unearthed a fresco depicting the Greek mythological siblings Phrixus and Helle (also known as Ellie).
Still astonishingly colorful some 2,000 years after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius wiped out the city, the frescoes were unearthed during restoration work around the mansion of the House of Leda.
The director of Pompeii Archaeological Park, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, described the discovery as a poignant reflection of history unfolding.
The unearthed fresco depicts two refugees at sea from ancient Greece, Phrixus and Elle, brother and sister who flee their home after being driven out by their stepmother, who has bribed Delphi’s oracle to have the children killed in order to end the famine that has befallen their homeland.
The two siblings are rescued by Hera, and they escape on the Golden Fleece ram. Elle slips from the ram and drowns in the strait between Europe and Asia (named after her, or the Hellespont). In the fresco, she is seen disappearing into the waves, while her brother Frisso survives.
The fresco depicting the Greek mythological siblings Phrixus and Helle.
It is “a fresco in an excellent state of preservation,” as Archaeological Park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel put it, depicting “a myth typical of ancient Greece, but also of Pompeii, where Greek myth is very much present in all homes and is also an example of how myth, storytelling through images, wall decoration becomes part of a lived environment like this small house, not very large, but richly decorated, which tries through the paintings to emulate, to imitate the tone of life of the elites.”
The fresco is painted as if it were a framed picture, hung on a yellow wall. Others depicting still life images and several portraits of women have also been newly revealed.
Zuchtriegel also expressed hope for making these meticulously preserved homes available to the public shortly, emphasizing the cultural and historical significance of this latest discovery.
Unexpected discoveries in recent months include thirteen Nativity-style statuettes that revealed evidence of pagan ritual customs in the ancient Roman city and, in June of last year, a remarkable still-life fresco that resembled a pizza and contained an object that appeared to be a pineapple.
Rare Piece Of Metal Armor Found At 17th-Century Fort In Maryland
A piece of body armor was unearthed during excavations at a 17th-century colonial fort in Maryland, a Mid-Atlantic state of the United States.
While archaeologists continued their excavations in the City of St Mary’s, one of America’s premier historical sites, a project launched in 2021, they noticed a piece of metal sticking out of the dirt.
According to the Washington Post, the more they dug, the more they found until they came across a slab of metal the size of a cafeteria tray. Still caked with soil and corrosion materials, the plate was identified when an X-ray revealed its rivets forming the shape of three hearts.
What they found late last year was a rare piece of 17th-century armor called a tasset, which was designed to hang from a breastplate and protect one of the wearer’s thighs during battle. Originally, there would have been two — one for each leg.
“The X-ray really took our breath away,” Travis Parno, director of research and collections at Historic St. Mary’s City, told All That’s Interesting in an email. “Seeing the layers of steel, the individual rivets, the hearts(!). It was a good day.”
The metal tasset looked like a “cafeteria tray” when it was first unearthed, but archeologists suspected that it was part of a piece of armor. Photo: Historic St. Mary’s Commission
“This tasset is the second we’ve found at St. Mary’s City (the second was from a circa late-1640s context),” Parno said, “suggesting that colonists were actively making decisions about what was and wasn’t useful to be retained in their military accoutrements.”
Parno further noted that armor parts like this one are “not particularly common on 17th-century sites.” In Maryland’s hot, humid climate, the colonists most likely abandoned the tassets as suffocating and cumbersome.
The rare piece of armor called a tasset had been brought by the first European colonists who arrived in the mid-1600s to establish one of the earliest settlements in what would become the United States.
Historic St. Mary’s City, the site of the fourth permanent settlement in British North America, was Maryland’s first settlement.
Founded in March 1634 on land acquired from the local Yaocomico people by newly arrived English settlers, it served as the colony of Maryland’s first capital for 60 years before being moved to Annapolis in 1694. St. Mary’s was abandoned after it was eclipsed by Annapolis and never built over, making it an undisturbed archaeological site.
A depiction of what the 17th-century fort may have once looked like.
Colonists from Britain crossed the Atlantic on two ships called the Ark and the Dove. In 1634, they navigated up the St. Mary’s River and erected a fort — the earliest known colonial site in Maryland.
Finding evidence of the original fortified village has been one of the main objectives of archaeological research over the past fifty years. 17th-century documentation was ambiguous about the location, and references to the first fort vanished from the historical record in 1642.
Following a geophysical survey that revealed evidence of a palisade, an excavation in 2021 unearthed postholes, building outlines, coins, and artifacts from the 1620s and 1630s.
The excavation of the original fort has continued, and late last year a large structure with an attached cellar was discovered. The structure was not a home, and artifacts discovered there — musket parts, lead shot, trade beads — suggest it was used as a storehouse. The tasset was found in the cellar.
2000-Year-Old Marvel: The Mystery of the Parthian Battery
The Parthian Battery is believed to be about 2000 years old (from the Parthian period, roughly 250 BCE to CE 250).
History there have been several eureka moments and breakthrough inventions that have shaped our modern lives. Electricity is one of the most revolutionary discoveries in history, among many other amazing discoveries.
Over the centuries, several scientists and inventors have stood out for their contributions to the field of electricity. However, there are also impressive discoveries whose inventor is unknown and are almost 2000 thousand years old.
In 1936, while constructing a railway near Baghdad (once part of Iran’s mighty Parthian Empire, roughly 250 BCE to CE 250), workers stumbled upon what appeared to be an ancient battery, now famously known as the Parthian Battery.
The jar was found in Khujut Rabu just outside Baghdad, estimated to be around 2,000 years old, and consists of a clay jar filled with a vinegar solution, housing an iron rod encased by a copper cylinder. Remarkably, this configuration generates approximately 1.1 to 2.0 volts of electricity.
Tests by Western scientists have revealed that when the jar of the battery was filled with vinegar (or other electrolytes), it was capable of generating between 1.5-2.0 volts.
In 1938, German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig gave the jar’s first description, pointing out that it resembled an electric battery. American scientist Willard F. M. Gray later replicated the device, confirming its electrochemical capabilities when filled with an electrolyte such as grape juice, despite World War II impeding further exploration.
Scholars continue to debate the true function of these jars. While some argue for their use as batteries, others are skeptical, prompting questions about their origins and intended use. If they were batteries, though, who made them and what were they used for?
Unfortunately, there is no written record as to the exact function of the jar, due to the destruction of Iranian literary sources and libraries by Arabs upon the invasion of Iranian territories in the 7th century CE.
There is no written record as to the exact function of the jar, but the best guess is that it was a type of battery. Scientists believe the batteries (if that is their correct function) were used to electroplate items such as putting a layer of one metal (gold) onto the surface of another (silver), a method still practiced in Iran today.
The discovery casts doubt on accepted theories by implying that the idea for a battery may have existed long before the invention of the famous scientist Alessandro Volta.
To recall some of the defining moments in the development of electricity and power, the first of these moments was undoubtedly when the ancient Egyptians (2750 BC) electricity first recorded in the form of electric fish.
The ancient Egyptians called electric catfish the ‘thunderers of the Nile’. It sparked nearly millennia of wonder and intrigue, including the conduct and documentation of crude experiments like touching the fish with an iron rod to induce electric shocks.
Thales of Miletus discovered in the year 500 BC that rubbing lightweight materials like fur or feathers against amber could produce static electricity. Up to William Gilbert’s serious discovery of static electricity in 1600 AD, this static effect was unknown for nearly 2,000 years.
A schematic representation of the ancient Parthian battery.
Who knows! If such jars were indeed “batteries” in the modern sense, then Count Alessandro Volta’s invention of the modern battery may have been predated by 1,600 years or more.
During the last Ice Age, a bird found in northeastern Siberia died and gives a crucial insight into the evolution and effects of climate change.
An international team of scientists has learned that at least 46,000 years ago, a bird discovered in the Siberian permafrost died.
The bird was found in northeastern Siberia, a mammoth steppe that extended across northern Canada, Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age when the bird was still alive.
The 46,000-year-old bird’s delicate feet are still in good shape.
DNA collected from this frozen bird could help shed light on how at the end of the last Ice Age, when the Earth was mostly covered in ice and snow, the mammoth steppe turned into tundra, taiga and steppe biomes and could further illuminate the evolution of subspecies.
In 2018, a well-preserved bird was discovered by local fossil ivory hunters 30 km east of the village of Belaya Gora, Yakutia, in northeastern Siberia (red dot, figure 2). The bird carcass was found approximately 150 meters (492 feet) into an ice tunnel that had been hydraulically mined into the permafrost at a depth of roughly 7 meters below the earth’s surface.
The frozen bird appeared to have died non-violently before being rapidly frozen, thus preserving its body for millennia. The ‘nearly intact’ body was so well preserved that it could be identified as a horned lark, Eremophila alpestris, appearing as if she had ‘died yesterday’. So it was somewhat surprising (and quite exciting) when radiocarbon dating revealed that the lark died sometime between 44,163–48,752 years BP — in the middle of the last Ice Age.
During the last ice age, mammoth steppe was the Earth’s most extensive ecosystem, covering much of the northern portion of the planet. It featured a cold, dry climate that favoured high-productivity grasses, herbs and willow shrubs, and was dominated by long-horned bison and horses — and was home to woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and cave lions, all of which are now extinct. This ecosystem thrived for approximately 100,000 years before the thawing climate suddenly made it nearly extinct about 11,700 years ago.
This vast wide-open habitat is favored by horned larks, a species may have originated in northeastern Siberia during the middle Pleistocene (ref) before diverging into separate Eurasian and North American lineages. These small ground-nesting songbirds breed in the wide-open spaces of the high Arctic and above the tree line in mountains. Lacking any closely-related competitors, North American horned larks also breed in other, more temperate wide-open spaces, such as prairies, semi-arid regions and in deserts, which is where I first saw them.
To learn how this Pleistocene bird is related to modern horned larks, the researchers from the Centre for Palaeogenetics isolated ancient DNA from the specimen and analyzed it.
“The genetic analysis suggests that the bird belonged to a population that was a joint ancestor of two subspecies of horned lark living today, one in Siberia, and one in the steppe in Mongolia”, said lead author of the study, ornithologist Nicolas Dussex, a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University who specializes in conservation genomics and avian evolution.
“Our results support this theory since the diversification of the horned lark into these subspecies seems to have happened about at the same time as the mammoth steppe disappeared”, said co-author of the study, Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and research leader at the Centre for Palaeogenetics.
As the planet warmed at the end of the last Ice Age, mammoth steppe nearly disappeared, giving way to several habitats that we are familiar with today: tundra in the north, boreal forest (taiga) in the middle and steppe in the south.
The researchers’ ultimate goal is to map the ancient lark’s genome and compare it to genomes of modern subspecies of horned larks to learn where this bird fits into the lark evolutionary tree and to better understand how subspecies arise.
Currently, there are at least 42 formally recognized subspecies of horned larks that cluster into one of six separate lineages. Additional studies may reveal that any or all of these lineages may qualify as distinct species clusters.
“This helps us understand how the diversity of subspecies evolves”, Dr Dussex said. In recognition of being the oldest bird yet unearthed from this time period, the researchers refer to her the ‘Icebird’.
Uncovering frozen mammals in Siberia is not new: people have uncovered a veritable zoo of frozen mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, horses, bison and wolverines for many years, the researchers noted in their study (ref). But finding a frozen bird is something special because their bodies are small and fragile and thus, don’t typically preserve well.
Scientists at the Centre for Palaeogenetics are working with some of these other ancient animals, including an 18,000-year-old puppy named ‘Dogor’, which the research team are still working on to identify whether it’s a wolf or a dog. They also are working on a 50,000-year-old cave lion cub, ‘Spartak’, a 30,000-year-old severed wolf head, and a partially preserved woolly mammoth.
The horned lark (Eremophila alpestris), also known as the shore lark in Europe, is a small songbird that breeds across the northern hemisphere. It has 42 formally recognized subspecies that are divided into six different clades, each of which could warrant reclassification into distinct species clusters.
Analyzing the complete genomes of ‘Icebird’ and these other ancient specimens could provide a deeper understanding of the evolution of animals during the Pleistocene and of the impacts upon them from climate change.
“The new laboratory facilities and the intellectual environment at the Centre for Palaeogenetics will definitely be helpful in these analyses”, Professor Dalén pointed out.
The Centre for Palaeogenetics is a joint venture between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Its main objective is to bring together scientists from different disciplines, such as biology, archaeology and geology, into a cutting edge research environment dedicated to ancient DNA analyses.
World’s Oldest Unopened Bottle of Wine Remains Sealed Since the 4th Century
The origin of man’s wine romance seems to predate written history because no one is really sure when people began to get drunk.
Archaeology may not be aware of the exact date that people first began growing grapevines, but the theory is that early people may have climbed to pick berries on the trees and may have enjoyed the sugar taste and wanted to store them for longer lasting pleasure.
The fermentation would however have set in at the bottom of the bottle over time creating a liquid that was much more delicious and pleasurable than the berries they were eating.
This theory of the origin of alcohol suggests that the real revolution in the fermentation of alcohol came about around 10,000 to 8,000 BC, when humans effectively made a shift from nomadic to a more sedentary style of living, giving more preference to agriculture which lead to the production of wine.
Speyer wine bottle.
According to the archaeological records, the earliest available record of wine production is found to be in various sites in Georgia where the production was rampant in 6,000 BC, in Iran around 7,000 BC, and in Greece and Armenia around 4,500BC and 4,100 BC respectively.
It is no secret that the respect given to a bottle of wine precisely depends on its age; therefore, the older the bottle, the better taste it would generate.
But of course, there is a limit to the ‘old age’ of the bottle and a bottle found in a Roman tomb near the Speyer region of Germany certainly breaks all known records of the oldest wine available on the planet; the bottle is appropriately named as The Speyer Wine Bottle.
The Speyer Wine Bottle was first discovered in a Roman tomb in Germany, and is likely to contain a fair amount of wine, and was found in 1867 from the Rhineland-Palatine region of Germany, which is the oldest settlement in the region.
The artifact has since attracted the attention of historians and researchers and has attained the status of the world’s oldest existing bottle of wine.
The wine bottle dates back to between 325 and 359 AD, and was discovered during an excavation at a 4th-century tomb of a Roman nobleman. It is the oldest known wine bottle which remains unopened.
The Speyer Wine Bottle is housed in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer and is always displayed at the same location in the Tower Room.
The bottle itself is of 1.5-liter volume and is a glass vessel with amphora-like sturdy shoulders, which are yellowish green in color with handles shaped in the form of dolphins.
The nature of the wine in the bottle is also the subject of many speculations, and it has been suggested the most of the ethanol content of the wine has been lost, analyses have suggested that not all but at least some part of the liquid in the bottle has to be wine.
According to the historians, the wine which was produced in the region around the time was diluted with a mixture of various herbs.
The wine bottles were adequately preserved using a thick mixture of olive oil, which was used along with a thick wax seal to close the bottle, effectively protecting it from outside influence.
Scientists have long tried to get permission to fully analyze the contents of the bottle by opening it, but as of 2011 the bottle remains unopened. Thus any detailed analysis isn’t possible at the moment.
This is partly due to the concerns that the interaction of the liquid with the outside environment could potentially damage the content, rendering it useless for anyone.
The tomb that produced the wine bottle also contained two sarcophagi; one holding the body of a woman and one a man.
There are a number of stories regarding the nature of the nobleman, one theory suggests that the man was a Roman Legionnaire and the wine bottle was one of his provisions for his ‘celestial’ journey, as it was the custom around the time he must have been buried.
