The 4,000-year-old Aryan city discovered in Russia
Russian archaeologists have unearthed some ancient and virtually unknown settlements which they believe were built by the original Aryan race about 4000 years ago.
According to the team which has discovered 20 of the spiral-shaped settlements in a remote part of the Russian steppe in southern Siberia bordering Kazakhstan, the buildings date back to the beginning of Western civilisation in Europe.
The Bronze-age settlements, the experts said, could have been built shortly after the Great Pyramid some 4000 years ago by the original Aryan race whose swastika symbol was later adopted by the Nazis in the 1930s.
Swastika symbol.
TV historian Bettany Hughes, who explored the desolate part of the Russian steppe for the BBC programme ‘Tracking The Aryans’, said: “Potentially, this could rival ancient Greece in the age of the heroes.”
“Because I have written a lot about the Bronze Age world, there always seemed to be this huge missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle,” Hughes was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
She said: “We are all told that there is this kind of mother tongue, proto-Indo-European, from which all the languages we know emerge.
“I was very excited to hear on the archaeological grapevine that in exactly the period I am an expert in, this whole new Bronze Age civilisation had been discovered on the steppe of southern Siberia.”
The remains of the ancient city were explored for the first time around 20 years ago shortly after then Soviet officials relaxed strict laws banning non-military aerial photography.
But because the region is so remote the incredible cities have remained virtually unknown to the rest of Europe until now, according to the archaeologists.
They are about the same size as several of the city-states of ancient Greece and would have housed between 1,000 and 2,000 people, they said.
Hughes was driven to the vast region by the expedition’s chief archaeologist Professor Gennady Zdanovich who pointed to the cities that were buried in the ground beneath them.
The Aryan’s language has been identified as the precursor to a number of modern European tongues. English uses many similar words such as brother, oxen and guest which have all been tracked to the Aryans.
Items that have so far been dug up at the sites include make-up equipment, a chariot and numerous pieces of pottery.
The artefacts were daubed in swastikas which were used in ancient times as symbols of the sun and eternal life. But the swastika and Aryan race were adopted by Hitler and the Nazis as symbols of their so-called master race.
Evidence of ritual horse burials was found at the site which ties in with ancient Aryan texts that describe the animals being sliced up and buried with their masters.
Hughes, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London, said that “ancient Indian texts and hymns describe sacrifices of horses and burials and the way the meat is cut off and the way the horse is buried with its master”.
“If you match this with the way the skeletons and graves are being dug up in Russia, they are a millimetre-perfect match.”
Wine dating back 3,000 years has been unearthed in a nobleman’s tomb in Shaanxi province, northwest China, and is said to be the earliest wine in China’s history.
A bronze wine vessel from the West Zhou Dynasty
According to Chinese news wire Xinhua, the wine was found inside an ancient bronze vessel from the West Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC-771 BC) in the city of Baoji.
“The liquid is likely the oldest wine discovered in China”, said Liu Jun, director of the Baoji Archaeology Institute, which is in charge of the excavation project.
According to Jun, the discovery of the liquid was made when the vessel – one of six found in the tomb – was shaken.
However, the cover of the vessel remains tightly shut, and with no appropriate tools to open it at the excavation site, the liquid inside has yet to be identified.
A large “Jin” and several bronze wares discovered in the noble tomb in Shaanxi province
“Wine became a symbol of corruption during the Shang Dynasty (1600BC-1046BC) as officials drank to excess.
“This leads to the emergence of prohibition devices during the succeeding Zhou dynasty, which was put on the table to remind people to drink in moderation,” Jun said.
A 95cm-long “prohibition device” was unearthed with the vessels in the tomb, the first of its kind found in Baoji.
Excavation work is still underway at the site, with more bronze devices expected to be discovered in the next few days.
The Shang dynasty’s decline is sometimes attributed to its rulers’ heavy drinking habits.
Ancient wine isn’t unknown in China, which boasts one of the oldest wine traditions in the world.
The residue of wine over 9,000 years old has been found in ancient Chinese vessels.
In a 2004 BBC report, archaeo-chemist Patrick McGovern reported the liquid was composed of “rice, honey and fruit.”
The second oldest evidence of wine, dating back 7,000 years, hails from Iran.
Earliest known bubonic plague strain found in a 5000-year-old skull
Five thousand years ago, a rodent bit a Stone Age hunter-gatherer. The creature carried a strain of pernicious bacteria called Yersinia pestis – the pathogen that caused the Black Death, or bubonic plague in the 1300s.
The skull of a young man thought to have died from plague 5000 years ago
The bacteria likely killed the Stone Age man, who died in his 20s, according to a study published Tuesday. It’s the oldest strain of plague known to science so far.
The strain’s genome closely resembles the version of plague that wrecked medieval Europe more than 4,000 years later, killing up to half the region’s population over the course of seven years. But it’s missing a few key genes – notably, traits that helped it spread.
Unlike its microbial descendants, the plague that sickened the ancient hunter was a slow-moving disease and not very transmissible, according to Ben Krause-Kyora, a professor of ancient DNA analysis at Kiel University in Germany.
“It lacked the genes that enabled transmission by flea,” Krause-Kyora, who co-authored the new study, told Insider. During the Black Death, bites from fleas and lice were the key source of infections.
So in the millennia between the hunter-gatherer’s demise and the Black Death, Y. pestis bacteria mutated in a way that gave it the ability to jump between species via fleas.
“The change was a major driving force of a fast and widespread plague,” Krause-Kyora said.
Bacteria in the bloodstream
Yersinia pestis bacteria as seen under a microscope. This bacteria is the cause of the Bubonic plague.
The Stone Age hunter-gatherer died in a region that’s now Latvia. Near his bones, anthropologists also excavated the remains of another man, a teenage girl, and a newborn, but none had been infected. Krause-Kyora’s group hadn’t gone looking for ancient plague victims – rather, they wanted to see if the four buried people were related. But before completing their planned genetic analysis, the team screened ancient DNA extracted from the bones and teeth for traces of pathogens. That’s how they found the bacteria.
The Riņņukalns site on the banks of the Salaca River in Latvia, where 5,000-year-old bones were found.
The researchers then compared the bacteria’s genome to other ancient plague strains. A previous study described other strains that are roughly 5,000 years old, but Krause-Kyora said this particular one is a couple hundred years older. So his team concluded it was the earliest-known version of Y. pestis.
The hunter-gatherer’s DNA also showed that he had a large quantity of bacteria in his body, which suggests that he died from it. His grave site indicated that other members of his group meticulously buried him, according to the study.
“It’s hard to tell if he died quickly,” Krause-Kyora said, adding, “from the number of bacteria present, it seems he survived a higher dose and lived longer or in a more chronic way with it.”
The jawbone of a Stone Age hunter-gatherer buried in Riņņukalns, Latvia, around 5,000 years ago.
The plague can take three forms. Bubonic is the type that ravaged Europe and left victims with swollen, painful lymph nodes. Septicemic refers to infections in which the bacteria enters the bloodstream and the patient’s skin turns black and dies. Pneumonic plague, meanwhile, can cause respiratory failure.
Krause-Kyora thinks the ancient hunter had the septicemic plague, which could explain why no other members of his small group got the disease.
“They would’ve had to have direct contact with his blood,” he said – or another infected rodent would have had to bite them.
The plague is mostly zoonotic, meaning it hops from animal hosts to humans. Krause-Kyora said that the hunter-gatherer’s case can show epidemiologists how zoonotic pathogens – like Ebola, swine flu, and (most likely) the new coronavirus – change over time.
“We really have to think about how the evolution of zoonotic events could take thousands of years,” he said.
During the era when the Stone Age man lived, the plague didn’t cause widespread outbreaks. Y. pestis would pop up here and there in groups of hunter-gatherers, farmers, and nomads across Eurasia, but there was never a Black Death-level event.
“The finding confirms the early strains are associated with sporadic outbreaks that didn’t spread far,” Krause-Kyora said. What changed by medieval times, he thinks, is that people started to live in bigger communities and in closer proximity. That shift might have influenced the evolution that led the plague to live in fleas – which bite people more easily.
“It’s the bacteria adapting to population density,” Krause-Kyora said.
Possible Medieval Road Uncovered Near Bannockburn Battlefield
A long stretch of road was uncovered on Saturday during the first-ever dig at Coxet Hill in Stirling. The hill is believed to be where the Scots King Robert the Bruce set up his camp to prepare for the battle ahead of the first day of fighting, on June 23, 1314.
The statue of Robert the Bruce near Bannockburn.
It is also likely to be where the Scottish camp followers and soldiers untrained in Bruce’s tactics were based during the decisive second day when the English army was forced to flee.
These “Sma’ Folk”, concealed by the hill, are said to have emerged once victory was assured to block the line of retreat of King Edward II’s army to Stirling Castle and turned the Scottish victory into a rout.
Stirling archaeologist Dr Murray Cook, who organised the dig to mark the 707th anniversary of the battle, said the stone-built road would have gone around the hill, which was established as a hunting wood for game birds by King Alexander III in the 13th century.
It would have been used by Bruce and his army around the time of the battle, and Dr Cook believes it may also have been the route taken by the Sma’ Folk when they caused panic in the English ranks.
Dr Cook said: “Where we thought we had a boundary around Alexander III’s New Park, it now appears we have a road. We’ve got a 100-metre section of it, probably four metres wide.
The long-hidden thoroughfare skirted around the New Park, a ‘cockshot’ — a hunting wood for game birds established by King Alexander III of Scotland in around 1264. Pictured: the dig site
“This hard-packed stone road or track curves around the bottom of the Coxet Hill and doesn’t show on any of the maps going back the last 200 years, which suggests a medieval origin.
Coxet Hill was also where the sma’ folk — men lacking training or weapons — were held in reserve until the second day, once Bruce’s victory was assured. At this point, they emerged from where they had been concealed to block the line of retreat to Stirling Castle. Pictured: the Battle of Bannockburn as depicted in the 15th century ‘Scotichronicon’, showing Bruce wielding an axe and Edward II fleeing north towards Stirling Castle
“The fact it is around the medieval royal wood suggests it was there before the Battle of Bannockburn and was in use at that time. It is logical that it was used by Robert the Bruce.
“Potentially this was also the route used by the Sma’ Folk on the way to [the Battle of] Bannockburn.”
The Battle of Bannockburn was fought on June 23-24, 1314. King Edward II travelled to Scotland to find and destroy the Scottish army and relieve Stirling Castle, which had been under Scottish siege.
The Battle of Bannockburn between the English army of Edward II and Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce took place from June 23-24, 1314. Pictured: an interpretation of the first day of the battle, in which the English cavalry formations advanced on the Scots, but were ultimately forced to retreat back south over the Bannockburn
Despite being vastly outnumbered — only 6,000 men made up Bruce’s army — the Scottish proved victorious. Pictured: On the second day of the battle, the Scottish forces surprised the English by emerging from New Park, ultimately hemming Edward II’s forces against the Bannockburn and ultimately driving them to retreat
Edward’s army of up to 25,000 men far outnumbered the force assembled by Robert the Bruce, but the Scots were victorious. After a day of skirmishes, the second day of the battle ended in a decisive victory for the Scots.
Had the English army retreated to Stirling Castle they might have regrouped to fight another day – and even secured a longer-term victory – but their path was blocked.
The Sma’ Folk, seeing the tide turn in Bruce’s favour, emerged from behind Coxet Hill and caused panic among the English ranks, who fled at the sight of a new force.
Dr Cook added: “When you walk around this area, you are walking where legendary heroes like Robert the Bruce walked. It is astonishing just how much survives.”
Eighth-Century Imperial Structure Uncovered in Japan
Archaeologists have excavated one of the largest ruins of a building ever found at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in this ancient capital. The Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties announced the findings at the government-designated special historic site on June 30.
It believes the structure was the centrepiece of a residence for emperors and crown princes during the late eighth century.
One expert said the building was likely a residence for female Emperor Koken (718-770).
Remains of a structure unearthed at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in Nara.
Archaeologists began examining a roughly 924-square-meter plot in the northern Toin district in March, according to the institute. Toin is located in the eastern part of the Heijokyu palace, the nerve centre of politics during the Nara Period (710-784).
They unearthed ruins of a rectangular-shaped structure, which spans 27 meters in an east-west direction and 12 meters in a north-south direction. Also found were 50 pits dug in the ground to place pillars into them. The holes are lined up about 3 meters apart.
The building, supported by pillars placed in a grid-like formation, likely served as a living space, according to the institute.
The researchers concluded that the structure stood there between 749 and 770 during the Nara Period, based on the characteristics of a pattern on roof tiles found in the pits.
Part of roof tiles retrieved from the ruins of a building excavated at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in Nara.
Ruins of what appears to be a cooking stove found among the remains of a structure unearthed at the former site of the Heijokyu palace in Nara.
During the building’s roughly 20-year lifespan, Koken ruled from 749 to 758 before abdicating in favour of Emperor Junnin. Koken, known to have favoured a Buddhist monk named Dokyo, again ascended to the throne as Emperor Shotoku from 764 to 770.
“Shoku Nihongi,” the imperially commissioned history text on the Nara Period, notes that Emperor Shomu (701-756), father of Koken, resided in Toin when he was crown prince.
The area was later used as a site to build a residence for emperors.
“Koken particularly liked Toin, according to Shoku Nihongi,” said Akihiro Watanabe, a professor of Japanese ancient history at Nara University. “I believe the (discovered) structure was her living space.”
The institute said it plans to post a video of the ruins on its official YouTube channel in late July.
New Dates Obtained for Italy’s Bronze Age “Infinity Pool”
According to a Live Science report, Sturt Manning of Cornell University and his colleagues have dated the Vasca Votiva, a pit lined with wood unearthed in Italy’s Po Valley.
Sediment show the timber-lined pit was filled with water; archaeologists think it formed an artificial pool that reflected the sky and that it may have been used for water rituals.
A mysterious wooden structure built in Italy more than 3,000 years ago may have been a Bronze Age “infinity pool” that reflected the sky during religious rituals to give onlookers the impression they were looking into another realm, according to new research.
One of the authors of the new study has even likened the pool to England’s famous Stonehenge monument, which also symbolically may have led people into another world.
The pool-like structure was likely built sometime between 1436 B.C. and 1428 B.C. — a time of great cultural change in the region, which reinforces the idea that was established for new ritual purposes, said Sturt Manning, an archaeologist at Cornell University in New York and one of the authors of a new paper describing the research.
“As you would have come up to this thing, as soon as you’d been able to start to see the surface, you would have seen effectively the edge of the land around the sky,” Manning told Live Science. “And as you got close to it, then you would have just been looking at the [reflected] sky — so you’d have, in a sense, entered another world.” Today’s infinity pools are similar in their reflective beauty.
Italian archaeologists discovered the structure in 2004 near the town of Noceto, just west of Parma in Italy’s northern Po Valley region. They called it “Vasca Votiva” — Italian for “votive” or “sacred” tank. The archaeologists noted that the pit was roughly 40 feet (12 meters) long, 23 feet (7 m) wide and more than 10 feet (3 m) deep. It had been excavated on a small hilltop and then lined with wooden poles, planks and beams; most of them were oak, but some were elm or walnut.
Layers of sediment showed that the structure had once contained water, although no channels to distribute water led away from it, and it seemed much too elaborate to have been just a reservoir for irrigation, Manning said. Previous research of ceremonial pots and wooden figurines found inside had revealed that the structure was built in the Bronze Age, probably between 1600 B.C. and 1300 B.C. But its exact age couldn’t be verified, and its purpose had been a mystery. The new study resolves some of that uncertainty.
The mysterious Bronze Age structure — a pit excavated from a hilltop and extensively lined with timbers — was unearthed by Italian archaeologists in 2004 near the town of Noceto.
Ancient timbers
Manning is a specialist in dendrochronology — the science of dating ancient wood — and he and his team joined the project with the hope that determining the age of the timbers used to line the Vasca Votiva could accurately reveal when it was built.
It’s a difficult task; wood quickly rots when it is exposed to oxygen, and the record of dates for the growth of trees in ancient times often depends on rare finds of logs in the layers of sediment beneath ancient rivers and bogs, Manning said.
The team studied the growth rings from the timbers and measured each ring’s levels of radioactive carbon-14, which is a naturally occurring fraction of the carbon that the trees absorbed while they were alive. The trees stopped absorbing carbon when they were cut down, and so the levels of carbon-14 that remain can be used to date when that happened.
Then, the team calculated when the timbers were harvested using “wiggle matching,” in which they compared the patterns of carbon-14 absorption — the “wiggles” — with the distinctive patterns from trees that grew elsewhere in northern Europe at different times.
That enabled them to determine that the true date for the Vasca Votiva structure was in the middle of the 15th century B.C., which corresponded to a time of tremendous cultural change in northern Italy.
The dominant society in the region at that time, the Bronze Age Terramare culture, was transitioning from a simpler period of individual small farms to a period of greater social complexity, with the development of larger settlements that became cultural centres and increased use of ploughing and irrigation for farmland, the researchers wrote.
The structure contained ceremonial pottery vessels and wooden figurines that had been carefully placed within it; they suggested it dated from the Bronze Age, between 1,400 and 1,600 years ago. (Image credit: Cremaschi et al, PLOS One)
Reflecting waters
The new dates reinforce the idea that the mysterious structure at Noceto was built for new ritual and religious purposes established in the area, Manning said. There was no sign that the tank had ever been used as a simple reservoir for irrigation, and it was much too elaborately built; also, the ceremonial pots and figurines found inside it showed it was used for ritual offerings, he said.
As well, a great deal of labour would have been needed to complete the elaborate Vasca Votiva, and the excavations have shown that it was the second such structure at the same hilltop site. The first was even larger, and started about 10 years before the later structure; but discarded tools and wood shavings suggest that it collapsed as it was being built and so the latest tank was built over it, he said.
A few similar ceremonial water features have been found elsewhere in the ancient world, such as the earlier “lustral basins” found at Minoan sites on Crete that date back to at least the 15th century B.C., although those were smaller and typically made of clay and stone.
But nothing like this infinity pool has been found in northern Europe. “To our knowledge, it’s unique in the area,” Manning said.
He likened the Vasca Votiva to the Neolithic Stonehenge monument in southern England. Although Stonehenge is on a much larger scale, “you have these avenues leading to a particular ceremonial place; you’re sort of leaving one world that you’re part of and creating an impression that you’ve moved and joined another one,” he said.
“It was like an infinity pool, in a sense, because it was up at the top of a hill; if you were standing near it, looking into it, you would see through the water and see some of the pots and other objects that have been deposited carefully in it,” Manning added. “But you would also be very much looking at the sky and the clouds above you; it’s hard not to think that this might have to do with rainfall and things like that.”
The introduction of whatever supernatural water rituals took place at the Vasca Votiva in ancient times seems to have been an attempt to gain favour with the deities responsible for water and rainfall – elements that would have been vital to early farming communities, he said.
“If it was just for irrigation or something, then fine, but it doesn’t seem to work for that,” Manning said. “It’s more about some group activity that they think is going to be beneficial, or that the gods are going to be pleased that they have done this.”
This footage shows a 4,500-year-old mummy which has been unearthed by archaeologists in Peru. She is believed to be a noblewoman and can be seen wrapped in burial cloths.
She was buried in the ancient fishing village of Aspero in northern Peru along with objects featuring carved details of both coastal and jungle animals like birds and monkeys.
Experts believe the discovery is hugely significant and will provide insights into the ancient Caral civilisation.
Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed a 4,500-year-old mummy of a noble woman
The images of the coastal and jungle animals indicate possible trade between Aspero and the city of Caral, the most ancient civilisation of its kind in South America and the precursor of the Incas.
The two regions are located 14 miles from each other.
Ruth Shady, director of the Caral Archaeological zone, explained the significance of the discovery
She said: “In the settlements of the Caral civilisation there are sometimes burials.
“The sacrifice of human beings are not regular, they’re very rare.”
“In this case, it is a woman of 40 to 50 years who was buried with evidence and objects that allow us to identify her as a woman of important social status,” she continued.
“Her remains were with offerings of objects brought from different places,” Ruth continued.
“These objects, carvings depict different images from the jungle.”
“What we can infer on the basis of recovered evidence of a society which began the stage of civilisation formation 5,000 years ago in relation to settlement dwellers in the Super Valley,” she added.
She was perfectly preserved
The Caral civilisation dates back to 2,600 BCE and its archaeological site reportedly predates Inca civilisation by some 4000 years.
1,200-Year-Old Telephone, Amazing Invention of the Ancient Chimu Civilization
As a nomadic cultural historian, my subjects have led me in wildly different directions. I spent every Friday for five years in a dim, dusty reading room in West Orange, New Jersey, formerly a laboratory on the second floor of Thomas Edison’s headquarters, deciphering the blunt-pencilled scrawls of the celebrated inventor.
Two years after my biography of Edison appeared, I found myself labouring up vertiginous stairs at daybreak in Mexico, photographing the faded ocher outlines of winged snakes etched into stone temples at the vast ruins of Teotihuacán. The daunting treks led to a book on Mesoamerican myth, Legends of the Plumed Serpent.
Those two disparate worlds somehow collided unexpectedly on a recent afternoon in the hushed, temperature-controlled precincts of the National Museum of the American Indian storage facility in Suitland, Maryland. There, staffers pushing a rolling cart ushered one of the museum’s greatest treasures into the high-ceilinged room.
Nestled in an acid-free corrugated cardboard container was the earliest known example of telephone technology in the Western Hemisphere, evoking a lost civilization—and the anonymous ancient techie who dreamed it up.
The gourd-and-twine device created 1,200 to 1,400 years ago, remains tantalizingly functional—and too fragile to test out. “This is unique,” NMAI curator Ramiro Matos, an anthropologist and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the central Andes, tells me. “Only one was ever discovered. It comes from the consciousness of an indigenous society with no written language.”
We’ll never know the trial and error that went into its creation. The marvel of acoustic engineering—cunningly constructed of two resin-coated gourd receivers, each three-and-one-half inches long; stretched-hide membranes stitched around the bases of the receivers; and a cotton-twine cord extending 75 feet when pulled taut—arose out of the Chimu empire at its height.
Right: A communication device created more than 1,000 years ago by the Chimu people of Peru (Travis Rathbone/Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian) Background: Chan Chan, Peru
The dazzlingly innovative culture was centred in the Río Moche Valley in northern Peru, wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the western Andes.
“The Chimu were a skillful, inventive people,” Matos tells me as we don sterile gloves and peer into the hollowed interiors of the gourds.
The Chimu, Matos explains, were the first true engineering society in the New World, known as much for their artisanry and metalwork as for the hydraulic canal-irrigation system they introduced, transforming desert into agricultural lands.
The god Naymlap on his boat, gold plate, Chimu 1000-1450 AD.
The artefact’s recent past is equally mysterious. Somehow—no one knows under what circumstances—it came into the hands of a Prussian aristocrat, Baron Walram V. Von Schoeler.
A shadowy Indiana Jones-type adventurer, Von Schoeler began excavating in Peru during the 1930s. He developed the “digging bug,” as he told the New York Times in 1937, at the age of 6, when he stumbled across evidence of a prehistoric village on the grounds of his father’s castle in Germany.
Von Schoeler himself may have unearthed the gourd telephone. By the 1940s, he had settled in New York City and amassed extensive holdings of South American ethnographic objects, eventually dispersing his collections to museums around the United States.
The sophisticated culture was eclipsed when the Inca emperor Tupac Yupanqui conquered the Chimu king Minchancaman around 1470.
During its heyday, the urban centre of Chan Chan was the largest adobe metropolis in pre-Columbian America. The central nucleus covered 2.3 square miles.
Chan Chan sculpture and architecture
Today, the angular contours of ten immense compounds, once surrounded by thick, 30-foot-high walls, are visible. The compounds, or ciudadelas, erected successively by ten Chimu kings, were subdivided into labyrinths of corridors, kitchens, courtyard gardens, wells, burial sites, supply rooms and residential and administrative chambers, or audiencias.
Like the Inca, Matos says, the Chimu were organized as “a top-down society; this instrument would have been made only for, and used by, a member of the elite, perhaps a priest.”
Walls within walls and secluded apartments in the ciudadelas preserved stratification between the ruling elite and the middle and working classes. The NMAI telephone, Matos says, was “a tool designed for an executive level of communication”—perhaps for a courtier-like assistant required to speak into a gourd mouthpiece from an anteroom, forbidden face-to-face contact with a superior conscious of status and of security concerns.
Contemplating the brainstorm that led to the Chimu telephone—a eureka moment undocumented for posterity—summons up its 21st-century equivalent. On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs strode onto a stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and announced, “This is the day I have been looking forward to for two and a half years.”
As he swiped the touchscreen of the iPhone, it was clear that the paradigm in communications technology had shifted. The unsung Edison of the Chimu must have experienced an equivalent, incandescent exhilaration when his (or her) device first transmitted sound from chamber to chamber.
