Possible shaman’s snake stick from 4,400 years ago discovered in a Finnish lake
Archaeologists in Finland have uncovered an intricately carved wooden staff that may have been used by Stone Age shamans for rituals. More than half a metre long, the perfectly preserved life-sized wooden stick is a carving of a snake, shaped as if it is slithering away.
It was found at Järvensuo 1, a wetland site in Finland’s southwest that was occupied between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, and is ‘unlike any other wooden artefact found in Northern Europe’ during this period.
The archaeologists say the object is 4,400-years-old, meaning it dates back to the Neolithic period – the final division of the Stone Age.
Incredibly preserved detail of the carved snake’s head. The unbelievably well-preserved wooden stick was intricately carved in the shape of a snake slithering away
‘This delicately carved natural-sized snake figurine is a magnificent, thought-provoking glimpse from far back in time,’ said study author Dr Satu Koivisto at the University of Turku.
‘I have seen many extraordinary things in my work as a wetland archaeologist, but the discovery of this figurine made me utterly speechless and gave me the shivers.’
Contemporary rock art shows snake-shaped objects being held by human-like figures, which is why the experts think the carving was a Stone Age shaman’s staff for rituals.
Side view (a) and top view (b) of the stick, suspected to be a staff. The archaeologists say the object is 4,400-years-old, meaning it dates back to the Neolithic period
‘There seems to be a certain connection between snakes and people,’ said co-author Dr Antti Lahelma from the University of Helsinki.
‘This brings to mind northern shamanism of the historical period, where snakes had a special role as spirit-helper animals of the shaman.
‘Even though the time gap is immense, the possibility of some kind of continuity is tantalising – do we have a Stone Age shaman’s staff?’
Järvensuo 1 was discovered by accident by ditch diggers during the 1950s but had not been fully excavated. As such, archaeologists have been working to explore the site since 2019.
The prehistoric lakeshore has wetland conditions conducive to preserving wooden items. Previous excavation work at the site unearthed a wooden scoop with a handle like a bear’s head.
Järvensuo 1, a wetland site, is located in south-west Finland at the foot of a moraine hill rising in the middle of a large peatland plateau. Archaeological interest is with the southern shore of the drained Rautajärvi Lake. a) Location map; b) study area at Järvensuo; c) aerial photograph of the site
The artifact was found at Järvensuo, a site located beside a lake in southwest Finland. A large number of artifacts associated with fishing were also found at the site.
Several other wooden artefacts have been found by the new investigations, including wooden utensils, structural remains and pieces of fishing equipment.
According to archaeologists, this indicates Järvensuo 1 was the site of not just bizarre rituals involving the snake figurine, but practical activities as well-meaning it offers a snapshot of all aspects of ancient life.
‘Well-preserved finds from wetlands help our understanding of ancient peoples and the landscape where they performed both mundane and sacred activities,’ said Dr Koivisto.
Sadly, Järvensuo 1 and the historical treasures within are under threat from drainage and other changes to the local environment, exacerbated by climate change.
‘The signs of destruction caused by extensive drainage are already clearly evident at the site and its organic treasures are no longer safe,’ said Dr Koivisto.
Pioneering technology has helped experts find a lost camp built and used by thousands of Roman soldiers sent to conquer Northwest Iberia. The discovery is the largest and oldest Roman military fortified enclosure excavated so far in Galicia and northern Portugal. The foundations of the enclosure wall date from around the second century BC.
The 2,100-year-old Roman military camp of Lomba do Mouro in Melgaço, Portugal.
Experts analyzed a section of sediment from the wall’s foundations using an optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating technique. This made it possible to date the last time the quartz crystals were exposed to sunlight and how long they were buried under the walls.
The discovery means Lomba do Mouro is the oldest scientifically identified Roman camp to date in Galicia and northern Portugal and may link its construction to the first Roman military campaigns in Gallaecia.
The camp of Lomba do Mouro, in Melgaço, Portugal, was constructed by around 10,000 Roman troops who were crossing the Laboreiro Mountain between the Lima and Minho rivers. It was designed to be a temporary fortification, used for a day or weeks at most in the warmer months, and was built quickly.
The army was crossing high ground for safety. Written sources describe fighting during their excursion, but also some potential agreements were made with the local community.
Temporary camps are hard to spot because little archaeological evidence is left behind—due to their non-permanent nature and because they were often destroyed on purpose when the Roman Army left.
Dr. João Fonte, from the University of Exeter, a member of the research team, said: “Written sources mention the army crossing different valleys, but until now we didn’t know exactly where.
Because of the temporary nature of the site, it’s almost impossible to find without using remote sensing techniques, and radiocarbon dating wouldn’t have been accurate because plant roots creep into the structure.”
“We have found numerous military camps in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula in recent years, but their dating is very complex.
As they are temporary enclosures, there is very little material or organic evidence in them that would allow a scientifically valid dating to be obtained, until now.”
Covering more than 20 hectares, Lomba do Mouro was discovered using remote sensing techniques by the romanarmy.eu research collective and was the subject of an archaeological survey in September 2020.
Detail of trench 2
The campaign was led by University of Exeter archaeologist João Fonte as part of the Finisterrae project funded by the European Commission through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant (grant agreement 794048).
Until now the oldest dated Roman camp in Galicia and northern Portugal—excavated by the same team—was Penedo dos Lobos (Manzaneda, Ourense), where coins could be found linking this enclosure with the war campaigns known as the Cantabrian Wars (29-19 BC), with which the Emperor Octavian Augustus put an end to the process of conquest of Hispania. Lomba do Mouro was built a hundred years before Penedo dos Lobos.
In 137 BC the Roman consul Decimus Junius Brutus entered Gallaecia with two legions, crossing the rivers Douro and Lima and reaching the Minho.
The dating of the walls, together with the large dimensions of the enclosure, support the hypothesis that the camp may have been erected by a contingent linked to these times, although due to the degree of uncertainty of the dates it is difficult to establish a direct association with the episode of Decimus Junius Brutus campaign.
According to a Science Magazine report, palaeontologist Qiang Ji of Hebei GEO University and his colleagues have examined a hominin skull discovered on the banks of the Songhua River in northeastern China in 1933.
A massive, remarkably complete skull from China may reveal the long-sought face of a Denisovan.
Almost 90 years ago, Japanese soldiers occupying northern China forced a Chinese man to help build a bridge across the Songhua River in Harbin. While his supervisors weren’t looking, he found a treasure: a remarkably complete human skull buried in the riverbank.
He wrapped up the heavy cranium and hid it in a well to prevent his Japanese supervisors from finding it. Today, the skull is finally coming out of hiding, and it has a new name: Dragon Man, the newest member of the human family, who lived more than 146,000 years ago.
In three papers in the year-old journal The Innovation, palaeontologist Qiang Ji of Hebei GEO University and his team call the new species Homo longi. (Long means dragon in Mandarin.) They also claim the new species belongs to the sister group of H. sapiens, and thus, an even closer relative of humans than Neanderthals. Other researchers question the idea of a new species and the team’s analysis of the human family tree.
But they suspect the large skull has an equally exciting identity: They think it may be the long-sought skull of a Denisovan, an elusive human ancestor from Asia known chiefly from DNA.
Paleoanthropologist Marta Mirazón Lahr of the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the work, says she’s “skeptical of the statements about humans’ long-lost sister lineage.” But she and others are thrilled with the find. “It’s a wonderful skull; I think it’s the best skull of a Denisovan that we’ll ever have,” says paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The stunning skull was brought to light by the bridge builder’s grandchildren, who retrieved it from the well after their grandfather told them about it on his deathbed. They donated it to the Geoscience Museum at Hebei GEO University. But before Ji could ask him precisely where he found the fossil, the man died, leaving the researchers uncertain of its geological context.
With no geological context, Ji enlisted several researchers to help date the skull. Griffith University, Nathan, geochronologist Rainer Grün and colleagues linked strontium isotopes in sediment encrusted in its nasal cavities to a specific layer of sediments around the bridge, which they dated to between 138,000 and 309,000 years ago. Uranium-series dating on the bone also gives it a minimum age of 146,000 years.
Next, the researchers tried to identify the skull. Paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University, who led the effort, was initially puzzled: The massive skull had a brain comparable in size to that of modern humans. But it couldn’t be a member of H. sapiens because it had larger, almost square eye sockets, thick brow ridges, a wide mouth, and a huge molar.
Ni, who is also a palaeontologist who studies fossil dinosaurs and primates, used computational statistical methods to build and analyze a data set of more than 600 traits from the skull, such as measurements of its length and brow size, as well as the presence or absence of traits such as wisdom teeth. He compared 55 traits from 95 other fossilized skulls, jaws, or teeth from the genus Homo from around the world.
The computer model sorted the fossils into family trees, finding the tree that fits best with the data had four main clusters. The new skull nestled in a cluster whose branches included several skulls from China’s Middle Pleistocene, a period 789,000 to 130,000 years ago when several lineages of hominins coexisted.
Within the cluster of Chinese fossils, the new skull was most closely related to a jawbone from Xiahe Cave on the Tibetan Plateau. Proteins in that jawbone, as well as ancient DNA in the sediments of the cave, strongly suggest it was a Denisovan, a close relative of Neanderthals who lived in Denisova Cave in Siberia off and on from 280,000 to 55,000 years ago and left traces of its DNA in modern people.
To date, the only clearly identified Denisovan fossils are a pinkie bone, teeth, and a bit of skull bone from Denisova Cave. But the enormous, “weird” molar from the new find fits with the molars from Denisova, says Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto who analyzed them with Hublin.
The paper authors acknowledge that the find could be a Denisovan. And Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum and co-author on two of the papers, says so directly: “I think it probably is a Denisovan.”
But the team has not yet tried to extract ancient DNA or proteins from the skull or molar to test that idea. In the meantime, their analysis showed the cluster of Chinese fossils was closer to early H. sapiens than to Neanderthals who were alive at the same time, Ni says. “It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species. However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of H. sapiens.”
Although other researchers are stunned by the size and completeness of the skull, many are critical of the analysis. “When I saw this analysis, I nearly fell off my chair,” Hublin says.
They question how the skull was found to be closely related to the Xiahe jawbone because there are no overlapping traits to compare as the skull has no jawbone. Also, DNA studies reveal modern humans are more closely related to Neanderthals than Denisovans; if the Xiahe jawbone is indeed from a Denisovan, the new skull’s closest relative is likely a Neanderthal, not H. sapiens. “It’s premature to name a new species, especially a fossil with no context, with contradictions in the data set,” says María Martinón-Torres, a paleoanthropologist at CENIEH, the national centre for research on human evolution in Spain.
For now, the paper authors say they do not want to risk destroying the tooth or other bone to get DNA or protein. But other researchers hope that work happens soon. Viola, for one, says he hopes that one day, “I can finally look into the eyes of a Denisovan.”
Dozens of ancient pyramids found at a single site in Sudan
Among the discoveries are pyramids with a circle built inside them, cross-braces connecting the circle to the corners of the pyramid. Outside of Sedeinga only one pyramid is known to have been built in this way.
At least 35 small pyramids, along with graves, have been discovered clustered closely together at a site called Sedeinga in Sudan. Discovered between 2009 and 2012, researchers are surprised at how densely the pyramids are concentrated.
In one field season alone, in 2011, the research team discovered 13 pyramids packed into roughly 5,381 square feet (500 square meters), or slightly larger than an NBA basketball court. They date back around 2,000 years to a time when a kingdom named Kush flourished in Sudan. Kush shared a border with Egypt and, later on, the Roman Empire.
The desire of the kingdom’s people to build pyramids was apparently influenced by Egyptian funerary architecture.
At Sedeinga, researchers say, pyramid building continued for centuries. “The density of the pyramids is huge,” said researcher Vincent Francigny, a research associate with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in an interview with LiveScience.
“Because it lasted for hundreds of years they built more, more, more pyramids and after centuries they started to fill all the spaces that were still available in the necropolis.”
This aerial photo shows a series of pyramids and graves that a team of archaeologists has been exploring at Sedeinga in Sudan. Since 2009 they have discovered at least 35 small pyramids at the site, the largest being 22 feet (7 meters) in width.
The biggest pyramids they discovered are about 22 feet (7 meters) wide at their base with the smallest example, likely constructed for the burial of a child, being only 30 inches (750 millimetres) long.
The tops of the pyramids are not attached, as the passage of time and the presence of a camel caravan route resulted in damage to the monuments. Francigny said that the tops would have been decorated with a capstone depicting either a bird or a lotus flower on top of a solar orb.
The building continued until, eventually, they ran out of room to build pyramids. “They reached a point where it was so filled with people and graves that they had to reuse the oldest one,” Francigny said.
Francigny is excavation director of the French Archaeological Mission to Sedeinga, the team that made the discoveries. He and team leader Claude Rilly published an article detailing the results of their 2011 field season in the most recent edition of the journal Sudan and Nubia.
The inner-circle
Among the discoveries were several pyramids designed with an inner cupola (circular structure) connected to the pyramid corners through cross-braces. Rilly and Francigny noted in their paper that the pyramid design resembles a “French Formal Garden.”
Only one pyramid, outside of Sedeinga, is known to have been constructed this way, and it’s a mystery why the people of Sedeinga were fond of the design. It “did not add either to the solidity or to the external aspect [appearance] of the monument,” Rilly and Francigny write.
A discovery made in 2012 may provide a clue, Francigny said in the interview. “What we found this year is very intriguing,” he said.
“A grave of a child and it was covered by only a kind of circle, almost complete, of brick.” It’s possible, he said, that when pyramid building came into fashion at Sedeinga it was combined with a local circle-building tradition called tumulus construction, resulting in pyramids with circles within them.
People were buried beside the pyramids in tomb chambers that often held more than one individual. This image shows a child who was buried with necklaces.
An offering for grandma?
The graves beside the pyramids had largely been plundered, possibly in antiquity, by the time archaeologists excavated them. Researchers did find skeletal remains and, in some cases, artefacts.
One of the most interesting new finds was an offering table found by the remains of a pyramid. . It appears to depict the goddess Isis and the jackal-headed god Anubis and includes an inscription, written in Meroitic language, dedicated to a woman named “Aba-la,” which may be a nickname for “grandmother,” Rilly writes.
It reads in translation:
Oh, Isis! Oh Osiris!
It is Aba-la.
Make her drink plentiful water;
Make her eat plentiful bread;
Make her be served a good meal.
The offering table with the inscription was a final send-off for a woman, possibly a grandmother, given a pyramid burial nearly 2,000 years ago.
Atlantis found in west Africa the evidence is overwhelming
You have to give credit to the amateur archaeologist/historian that goes by the name of Bright Insighton YouTube, as he has a knack for assembling highly relevant facts and evidence to demonstrate that history is not always what we think it is or what has been recorded.
He recently crafted, very skillfully I might add, three documentary videos which leave little doubt that the lost city/civilization of Atlantis is not in the places that most have determined it to be, but rather in a seemingly unlikely location – West Africa, or in Mauritania to be precise.
He provides a very thorough list of solid historical, geological, and archaeological evidence that not many experts in these fields can easily deny.
He begins where most historians have – with Plato’s account (the dialogues of the Critias and the Timaeus) which he got from Solon (638 – 558 BC) – a Greek statesman who had visited Sais (in Egypt) around 590 BC and got the information from an Egyptian priest who stressed that it was some 9,000 years old.
Here is one excerpt:
There were alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another, there were two of land, and three of water, which were turned as if with a lathe each having its circumference equidistant every way from the centre.
The image above illustrates this schematic quite well. And the following image was taken of the site – named the Richat Structure, or the “Eye of the Sahara”, in Mauritania:
This is the closest resemblance to the description offered by Plato of any archaeological site that claims to be that of Atlantis. There is no denying it. Even its size is almost precisely the same as Bright Insight describes in his videos.
In addition to the striking similarities between the description of Atlantis in Plato’s account and the site located in the West African nation, there are many topographical attributes that corroborate it.
Although no formal (or at least pubhttps://visitingatlantis.com/george-s-alexander-answers-faq/licly acknowledged) archaeological excavation has taken place at this very remote site, there has been a team that has explored it in situ, namely George S. Alexander and Natalis Rosen from Visiting Atlantis.
Here are a few pictures from the website which show the location and topographical nature of the site:
Map of Mauritania with the ‘RICHAT’ today
There is a lot of additional evidence presented, but there was one in particular that had caught my attention.
An ancient map by the famous historian Herodotus (484 – 425 BC) from around the same time period had an inscription ”ATLANTES ?” labelled on it with the location that appears to be in the same general vicinity as the site of the Richat Structure in Mauritania. Amazing.
I will leave you with Bright Insight’s three videos along with a few additional resources whereby you can form your own judgement and conclusions about whether this is indeed Atlantis.
It will certainly be interesting to see in the years (or decades) to come with more exploration and archaeological work at the site to see what other evidence may corroborate that this is indeed the lost city of Atlantis.
Bright Insight’s three videos:
FIRST: The Lost City of Atlantis – Hidden in Plain Sight – Advanced Ancient Human Civilization
SECOND: This is How We Know Atlantis Existed…AND Where – Lost Ancient Civilization Hidden in Plain Sight (2)
THIRD: Ancient Map PROVES The Lost City of Atlantis is The Eye of The Sahara – Ancient Civilization
The Largest Cave ever found on earth. so big, it has its own ecosystem
The Son Doong Cave in Vietnam is the largest cave passage in the world. This huge and intricate cave system was created by water that percolated down from a rainforest above, ultimately carving into the rock.
Deep inside the cave sits a flourishing jungle, which grows 200 meters below ground level in an area where the cave roof has collapsed.
Home to an impressive ecosystem with a dangerous system of pathways, this rainforest is quite the destination. To date, only explorers and very few tourists have laid eyes on it. Would you dare to be one of them?
An Accidental Discovery
For a cave that’s located inside of an UNESCO listed park, Vietnam’s Phong Nha-Ke Bang, it’s quite shocking that it was first discovered only 3 decades ago – on accident by a local farmer.
In 1990, while seeking shelter from a storm in the jungle, Ho Khanh stumbled upon this 3-million-year-old natural wonder and reported it to the British Caving Research Association.
Unfortunately, however, Khanh lost track of the cave’s exact location and it took almost 2 more decades for Son Doong cave to be rediscovered.
Unbelievably, in 2008, Ho Khanh stumbled upon the elusive cave once again! Luckily he remembered the location this time around and experts finally began exploring, eventually determining Son Doong to be the largest cave in the world.
Inside of a Rainforest, Inside of a Cave
Appropriate to its record-breaking size, Son Doong also houses an impressive ecosystem.
They are formed by a concretion of calcium salts polished by moving water.
Large stalagmites in the passage of Hang Son Doong in Vietnam. The tallest has been measured at 70 meters in height.
Not only does it have its own localized weather system, but this massive cave is home to the largest stalagmite ever found, nicknamed “Hand of Dog,” and a cave floor littered with rare limestone pearls.
But all of that isn’t even close to everything Son Doong has to offer — this fascinating cave system has its very own rainforest, the Garden of Edam.
With time, collapsed ceilings have created holes called dolines, allowing lush foliage to grow and creating a remote and dangerously inaccessible jungle.
Son Doong’s rainforest is home to flying foxes and endangered tigers, as well as rare langurs and trees as tall as buildings.
On bright days sunbeams stream through the dolines, illuminating carpets of moss below on a section of the cave nicknamed “Watch Out for Dinosaurs.”
Since 2012, one tour company called Oxalis has been taking a strict number of tourists per year into Son Doong — a treacherous five-day trek that only a lucky few will ever experience.
Ancient Egyptian Head Cones Were Real, Grave Excavations Suggest
Most of the garments depicted in ancient Egyptian art are relatively straightforward to decipher, but there’s a particular wearable article that has baffled archaeologists. In statuary, murals, funerary stelae, coffins and relief sculptures dating between 3,570 and 2,000 years ago, people repeatedly appeared wearing cones on their heads, a bit like party hats.
Now, for the first time, archaeologists have actually identified two such cones, crafted out of wax and adorning the heads of skeletons dating back some 3,300 years. The finds were excavated from the cemeteries of the city of Akhetaten, also known as Amarna.
This discovery may finally help to resolve several hypotheses over the meaning of these head cones, and what their function may have been back in the day.
“The excavation of two cones from the Amarna cemeteries confirms that three-dimensional, wax-based head cones were sometimes worn by the dead in ancient Egypt, and that access to these objects was not restricted to the upper elite,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“The Amarna discovery supports the idea that head cones were also worn by the living, although it remains difficult to ascertain how often and why.”
Two figures wear head cones in a wall painting from the archaeological site of Amarna, Egypt, dating to roughly 3,300 years ago
Akhetaten itself is a curiosity. The city was set up by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who famously went religiously rogue, setting up his own cult to the sun-god Aten. He established Akhetaten as his capital city in around 1346 BCE, but his attempt to steer Egypt to a new religion was not popular, and Akhetaten was abandoned not long after the Pharaoh’s death in 1332 BCE.
In art discovered in the city, as well as Egypt at large, the head cone makes a not-infrequent appearance. It’s often depicted on the heads of guests at a banquet, or tomb owners participating in funerary rituals or being rewarded by a king.
The cones are also found in depictions of people fishing and hunting in the afterlife and playing music. And the somewhat unusual headgear seems to have a particular association with childbirth, fertility and healing.
The two skeletons found wearing the cones at Akhetaten belonged to a woman around 29 years of age, and an individual whose sex has not been determined, aged between 15 and 20 years.
The woman, excavated in 2010, was in good condition, still intact as she had been laid to rest. She still retained her hair; tangled up in it was the cone, broken apart and burrowed through by insects, but recognisable.
Interestingly, a pattern imprinted on the inside of the cone seemed consistent with fabric weave, as though the interior of the wax structure had been lined.
The grave of the second individual, excavated in 2015, had been robbed, leaving the skeleton jumbled together at the foot of the grave. However, it too had retained hair; and in this hair, the researchers identified a second cone.
Although these discoveries don’t reveal the purpose of the cones, they do narrow things down a bit. For instance, both burials were simple and uninscribed, from a cemetery interpreted as belonging primarily to labourers.
This could mean that either the head cones were not just for high-status members of society but for everyone; or, as also inferred from a recently discovered burial, that the workers copied what they saw the nobility doing.
It also casts some light on hypotheses regarding the purpose of these cones. One idea suggests that the cones were symbolic – like the halos that appear around the heads of Western saints – and not actually a real object. Obviously, this discovery of two actual cones puts that one to bed.
Another hypothesis considered the cones to be solid lumps of scented unguent, or filled with scented fat, which would melt and leak down out of the cone, scenting the wearer’s hair and body in a ritual purification practice. Careful analysis of the cones, however, found no traces of either fat or perfume, nor was there any melted stuff in the wearers’ hair.
In 2010, researchers excavating this young woman’s grave discovered a waxy cone atop her head.
Rather, the cones seemed to have been a hollow shell, shaped around or reinforced by fabric. It is possible that they were “dummy” cones created just for burial purposes, and that hats worn by the living were constructed differently, but it also seems possible that the cones could have been a type of formal ritual hat.
“There is no reason to assume .. that hollow – or perhaps textile-lined/-stuffed – cones of wax were not also worn in life. Even if scented, they may not have been intended to melt en masse and moisturise, serving more to mark the wearer as someone who was in a purified, protected or otherwise ‘special’ state,” the researchers write.
“In the case of ancient Akhetaten, we can probably interpret head cones as part of a suite of personal accoutrements deemed appropriate for use in a range of celebrations and rituals for, and involving, the living, the dead, the Aten and other deities.”
Pompeii dig uncovers 2000-year-old remains of rich man and slave killed by Vesuvius volcanic eruption
Archaeologists uncovered the skeleton remains of two males who perished about 2,000 years ago in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The bones are thought to be those of a wealthy man and his male slave who attempted to flee the volcano’s explosion.
The bodies were found in a side room of the cryptoporticus, in the form of a passage-way below the villa which led to the upper floor.
During an excavation of the ruins from what was once an elegant villa with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea on the outskirts of the ancient Roman city, parts of the skulls and bones of the two men were found.
The remains of the two victims, lying next to each other on their backs, were found in a layer of grey ash at least 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep. In 2017, a stable with the remains of three harnessed horses was also found in the same area.
In a statement issued by Pompeii officials, they said that the men apparently escaped the initial fall of ash from Mount Vesuvius but then succumbed to a powerful volcanic blast that took place the next morning. The later blast “apparently invaded the area from many points, surrounding and burying the victims in ash,” the officials said.
Judging by cranial bones and teeth, one of the men was young, likely aged 18 to 25, with a spinal column with compressed discs. That finding led archaeologists to hypothesize that he was a young man who did manual labour, like that of a slave.
The other man had a robust bone structure, especially in his chest area, and died with his hands on his chest and his legs bent and spread apart.
He was estimated to have been 30- to 40-years-old, Pompeii officials said. Fragments of white paint were found near the man’s face, probably remnants of a collapsed upper wall, the officials said.
Based on the impression of fabric folds left in the ash layer, it appeared the younger man was wearing a short, pleated tunic, possibly of wool. The older victim, in addition to wearing a tunic, appeared to have had a mantle over his left shoulder, said reports.
According to a report by The Associated Press, both skeletons were found in a side room along an underground corridor, or passageway, known in ancient Roman times as a cryptoporticus, which led to to the upper level of the villa.
Pompeii archaeological park director general, Massimo Osanna said that the find was “truly exceptional”, while Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini said it underlined the importance of Pompeii as a place for study and research.
Osanna further stated, “The victims were probably looking for shelter in the cryptoporticus, in this underground space, where they thought they were better protected. Instead, on the morning of Oct. 25, 79 A.D., a blazing cloud (of volcanic material) arrived in Pompeii and…killed anyone it encountered on its way.”
The famous Mount Vesuvius is located near Naples in Italy and is well known throughout the world for its massive destructive eruption. It is also known as Vesuvio among the locals and stands 4,203 feet (1,281 meters) tall and has a semi-circular ridge called Mount Soma that rises 3,714 feet.
It has erupted over 50 times and remains an active volcano till date.
