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.
Mexican cave contains signs of human visitors from 30,000 years ago
At first glance, Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico’s Zacatecas state is an unlikely place to find signs of early humans, let alone evidence that might change the story of the peopling of the Americas. It sits a daunting 1000 meters above a valley, overlooking a desert landscape in the mountains north of Zacatecas. Getting there requires a 4- or 5-hour uphill scramble over a moonscape of jagged boulders.
But in the soil below the cave’s floor, a team led by archaeologist Ciprian Ardelean of the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, University City Siglo XXI, dug up almost 2000 stone objects that researchers think are tools. By combining state-of-the-art dating methods, the team argues that humans were at the site at least 26,000 years ago—more than 10,000 years before any other known human occupation in the region. “Chiquihuite is a solitary dot” of human occupation, Ardelean says.
The dates place humans there during the height of the last ice age when ice covered much of what is now Canada and sea levels were much lower. To have settled in Mexico by then, Ardelean says, people must have entered the Americas 32,000 years ago or more before the ice reached its maximum extent.
“If it is true people were in Zacatecas by 32,000 years ago, that changes everything—it more than doubles the time people have been in the Americas,” says Oregon State University, Corvallis, archaeologist Loren Davis, who was not part of the research team. But he remains sceptical, in part because he isn’t convinced the artefacts are tools. “I’m not going to say it’s impossible,” he says. “But if all they found are fractured rocks without any corroborating evidence, it’s natural to be skeptical.”
Still, he and others say they’re willing to be convinced. For decades, most researchers thought humans arrived in the Americas approximately 13,000 years ago; occasional claims of an earlier arrival met strong criticism. But over the past decade, evidence for earlier migrations has emerged at sites from Canada to southern Chile.
Most researchers now think people travelled by boat along North America’s west coast, exploiting marine resources, as early as 16,000 years ago, when the interior of the continent was mostly frozen over.
Stone tools like this one, from deep in Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico, suggest people lived there at least 26,000 years ago.
Just one other site—Bluefish Caves, in Canada’s Yukon territory—has yielded dates as old as Chiquihuite. Researchers attribute thousands of broken animal bones there—dated to about 24,000 years ago—to human hunting. But the site remains controversial, in part because few stone tools or cut marks have been found among the bones.
Ardelean heard about the cave from local villagers. Beginning in 2012, he and his team spent 1 month or more at a time at Chiquihuite, resupplying every few weeks using donkeys. Although forbidding today, the site would have looked far more hospitable 26,000 years ago.
A spring-fed creek flows near the cave’s original entrance, which was blocked long ago by rockslides. DNA and other evidence the researchers extracted from inside the cave show it opened onto a lush landscape harbouring cranes, condors, marmot, goat, sheep, horses, and bears. “It looked a lot more like British Columbia or Oregon than desert,” Ardelean says.
Digging into the cave floor over the past 8 years, Ardelean and his team found stones shaped into what look like scrapers, hand axes, spear points, and other tools at depths of up to 3 meters.
Dating experts at the University of Oxford, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and elsewhere determined when the rocks had last been exposed to light and radiocarbon-dated more than 50 samples of animal bone and charcoal found near the tools.
As the group reports today in Nature, the artifacts were deposited starting 26,000 years ago and accumulated on the cave floor for the next 16,000 years. The authors argue that it adds up to a continuous human presence, with people regularly visiting the cave over millennia.
But the team found no human DNA or bones cut marked by human hands. Nor did they discover a central hearth, so they can’t be certain whether the bits of burned wood analyzed for radiocarbon dates are from wind-blown wildfires or human-made campfires.
“The evidence is what the evidence is,” says team member Lorena Becerra-Valdivia, a radiocarbon dating expert at UNSW. “We’re quite confident that the stone tools are, indeed, stone tools.”
Critics point out that the tools are simple and don’t resemble other toolkits from the Americas, raising the possibility they’re the product of natural breakage. “They look like they could be artifacts, but why aren’t they found anywhere else in the landscape?” wonders David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University.
The tools’ consistency is also remarkable, he says. “If these tools are real, why are they only found—so far at least—in this one spot over a 10,000-year period? Humans adapt and adopt new technology.”
Becerra-Valdivia says work in other sites, especially those south of the United States, may turn up corroborating evidence. “We need to take a really good look at South America.”
And Ardelean says Chiquihuite has more secrets to reveal: “This is not a hit-and-run discovery. There’s more evidence coming.”
Archaeologist discovers a 6,000-year-old island settlement off the Croatian coast
Croatia, June 24 – Archaeologist Mate Parica was examining satellite images of Croatia’s coastline when he spotted something unusual. “I thought: maybe it is natural, maybe not,” said Parica, a professor at the University of Zadar.
The image showed a large, shallow area on the seabed jutting out from the eastern shore of the island of Korcula.
Parica and a colleague decided to dive at the site and discovered what they believe is a Neolithic settlement from around 4,500 years BC, built on a small piece of land that was connected to the main island by a narrow strip.
Aerial view of Neolithic settlement in Lumbarda, Croatia, June 23, 2021.
The pair found the remains of stone walls which had surrounded the settlement, as well as tools and other objects used by the inhabitants.
“We found some ceramic objects and flint knives,” he said.
Archaeologist diver works on a Neolithic settlement in Lumbarda, Croatia.
Marta Kalebota who runs the archaeological collection in the Korcula town museum said the settlement’s location was highly unusual.
“We are not aware at the moment of a similar finding elsewhere that a Neolithic settlement was built on an islet connected with a narrow strip of land,” she said.
Parica also said the island settlement discovery was atypical and that Neolithic finds were mostly made in caves.
“The fortunate thing is that this area, unlike most parts of the Mediterranean, is safe from big waves as many islands protect the coast.
That certainly helped preserve the site from natural destruction,” he said.
New early human discovered in 130,000-year-old fossils at Israeli cement site
Tel Aviv University Professor Israel Hershkovitz, holds what scientists say are two pieces of fossilised bone of a previously unknown kind of early human discovered at the Nesher Ramla site in central Israel.
Researchers in Israel have discovered a previously unknown type of ancient human who coexisted with our species around 100,000 years ago.
They believe the remains discovered near Ramla are those of one of the “final survivors” of a long-extinct human race.
A team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem excavated prehistoric remains near the city of Ramla that could not be matched to any known species of the Homo genus, which includes contemporary humans (Homo sapiens).
A partial skull and jaw from a person who lived between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago were discovered.
The fragments of a skull and a lower jaw with teeth were about 130,000 years old and could force a rethink of parts of the human family tree, the researchers said.
University of Tel Aviv anthropologists and archaeologists led by Yossi Zaidner called the discovery the “Nesher Ramla Homo type” after the place where the bones were discovered in a paper published in the journal Science.
Dating to between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago, “the morphology of the Nesher Ramla humans shares features with both Neanderthals… and archaic Homo,” the researchers said in a statement.
“At the same time, this type of Homo is very unlike modern humans — displaying a completely different skull structure, no chin, and very large teeth.”
Along with the human remains, the dig uncovered large quantities of animal bones as well as stone tools.
“The archaeological finds associated with human fossils show that ‘Nesher Ramla Homo’ possessed advanced stone-tool production technologies and most likely interacted with the local Homo sapiens,” archaeologist Zaidner said.
“We had never imagined that alongside Homo sapiens, archaic Homo roamed the area so late in human history”.
The researchers believe that early Nesher Ramla Homo group members were already present in the Near East 400,000 years ago.
The new discoveries bear resemblances to ancient “pre-Neanderthal” European populations, according to the researchers.
The treasure inside beer lost in a shipwreck 120 years ago
Long-forgotten strains of yeast are searched for in wrecks, abandoned breweries and other places in the hope that they can be put to good use if they are resurrected. gently relieving himself through a hatch in the sunken hold, he could see the wreckage treasure waiting for him. He had been there for over 100 years. But now a part was about to be released from its resting place.
Many of the bottles found on board the Wallachia remained unopened despite spending more than 100 years underwater
The explorer in question, Steve Hickman, a dive technician and amateur diver, was carrying a small bag in the net with him.
The treasure he was looking for was beer. Rows of glass beer bottles, partly buried in the silt, were kept in the hold of this ship. With visibility reduced to zero, Hickman was effectively blinded. But he knew this shoulder wellve and had visited it several times before. He continued, searching for more bottles in the dark. Once he gathered and bagged a few, he escaped and his team carefully brought the bottles to the surface.
The wreck was Wallachia, a cargo ship that sank in 1895 off the coast of Scotland following a collision with another ship in thick fog. Wallachia had just left Glasgow and was packed with
Since he began diving in Wallachia in the 1980s, Hickman has collected tens of bottles containing whiskey, gin and beer. But his recent visit, teamwork with several fellow divers, led to something unusual.
The bottles they recovered were turned over to scientists at a research company called Brewlab, who, along with colleagues at the University of Sunderland, was able to extract live yeast from the liquid in three of the bottles. . They then used this yeast in an attempt to recreate the original beer.
In 2018, a similar project in Tasmania used yeast from 220-year-old beer bottles found on a wreck forget close to a drink from the 1700s. But the study of Wallachia yeast revealed a surprise. These beers contained an unusual type of yeast and the team behind the work is now evaluating whether this strain perishes. long overdue could have applications in modern brewing or could even improve the beers of today.
When opened, the beer inside the bottles found on the Wallachia had a far from appetising odour, but the yeast they contain could be invaluable
In any case, there is a
“Yeast species apart from Saccharomyces cerevisiae are often more tolerant of things like using frozen dough and sometimes even have increased lifting capacity, ”Heil explains.
Thomas says he wants to sample and study yeast sealed containers found on even more shipwrecks, or other times well preserved and watered capsules. And by studying the genetics of ancient yeast strains, it might also be possible to identify previously unknown but desirable genes, which might influence genetically modified yeast in the future.
But the Wallachia Wreck is a sobering reminder of how lucky we are to have access to a handful of historic yeasts that keep us alive. can partner with confidence at a specific time and place.
In the 30 or so years since Hickman dived there, he has witnessed the wreckage deteriorating over time. The structures and walkways above and around the engine room collapsed. The cracks in the ship’s ageing walls widened. The ship is disappearing.
“I suspect that maybe in the next 20-30 years it will be completely gone,” he says.
Wallachia will disappear. probably taking her remaining beer bottles with her as she slowly shatters on the seabed. Precious link with 19th-century brewers will finally disappear forever, taking with it the precious yeasts it carries in
Remains of a 3000-year-old shark attack victim discovered in Japan
Newspapers regularly carry stories of terrifying shark attacks, but in a paper published today, Oxford-led researchers reveal their discovery of a 3,000-year-old victim – attacked by a shark in the Seto Inland Sea of the Japanese archipelago.
The research in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, shows that this body is the earliest direct evidence for a shark attack on a human and an international research team has carefully recreated what happened – using a combination of archaeological science and forensic techniques.
The grim discovery of the victim was made by Oxford researchers, J. Alyssa White and Professor Rick Schulting, while investigating the evidence for violent trauma on the skeletal remains of prehistoric hunter-gatherers at Kyoto University.
They came upon No24, from the previously excavated site of Tsukumo, an adult male riddled with traumatic injuries.
‘We were initially flummoxed by what could have caused at least 790 deep, serrated injuries to this man,’ say the Oxford pair. ‘There were so many injuries and yet he was buried in the community burial ground, the Tsukumo Shell-mound cemetery site.’
They continue, ‘The injuries were mainly confined to the arms, legs, and front of the chest and abdomen. Through a process of elimination, we ruled out human conflict and more commonly-reported animal predators or scavengers.’
Since archaeological cases of shark reports are extremely rare, they turned to forensic shark attack cases for clues and worked with expert George Burgess, Director Emeritus of the Florida Program for Shark Research. And reconstruction of the attack was put together by the international team.
The team concluded that the individual died more than 3,000 years ago, between 1370 to 1010 BC. The distribution of wounds strongly suggest the victim was alive at the time of the attack; his left hand was sheared off, possibly a defence wound.
Individual No 24’s body had been recovered soon after the attack and buried with his people at the cemetery. Excavation records showed he was also missing his right leg and his left leg was placed on top of his body in an inverted position.
According to the pair, ‘Given the injuries, he was clearly the victim of a shark attack.
The man may well have been fishing with companions at the time, since he was recovered quickly. And, based on the character and distribution of the tooth marks, the most likely species responsible was either a tiger or white shark.’
Co-author Dr Mark Hudson, a researcher with the Max Planck Institute, says, ‘The Neolithic people of Jomon Japan exploited a range of marine resources…
It’s not clear if Tsukumo 24 was deliberately targeting sharks or if the shark was attracted by blood or bait from other fish. Either way, this find not only provides a new perspective on ancient Japan but is also a rare example of archaeologists being able to reconstruct a dramatic episode in the life of a prehistoric community.’
