Archaeologists have discovered a 2800-year-old Urartian Castle in eastern Turkey
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a castle dating back 2,800 years ago on a mountain at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) in the Gürpınar district of eastern Turkey’s Van province.
According to their examinations, the findings show that the castle had been used by different civilizations since the Urartians.
The remains were unearthed during an excavation project sponsored by Van Yüzüncü Yıl University. A large cistern with a depth of 6.5 meters, a length of 6.5 meters and a diameter of 2.5 meters, walls and ceramic artefacts were also found in the castle.
The remains of the newly-discovered castle’s walls, Van, eastern Turkey.
Archaeologists examine the remains of the castle on a mountain, Van, eastern Turkey
“Although it is believed to be dated back to the Urartian era like the Van Castle, we see that it was mostly used in the Middle Ages,” Rafet Çavuşoğlu, the head of the excavation team and an archaeology professor at Van Yüzüncü Yıl University, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
“We understand from the ceramic pieces, the cistern and the city walls that this place was built about 2,800 years ago,” he said.
He added that limestone rock and sandstone were used in the construction of the walls in the area.
The newly found castle will contribute to the historical richness of the district, Hayrullah Tanış, district mayor of Gürpınar, said. “In cooperation with Van Yüzüncü Yıl University, we made an important discovery here.
We found a new castle witnessing the Urartian period and the Middle Ages. This discovery excites us in terms of tourism and culture,” Tanış added.
Perfect 215-million-year-old dinosaur print found by a girl, 4, on Welsh beach
A girl from Wales discovered a well-preserved 215 million-year-old dinosaur print, described as the ‘finest of its type found in 10 years. After making the discovery on a beach at Bendricks Bay near Barry, four-year-old Lily Wilder has been hailed by researchers.
The girl, from Llandough, near Cardiff, found the fossilised rock as she walked out with her dad, Richard, 47.
The print is just over 3.9 inches long and was made by a two-footed dinosaur currently unknown to science.
Lily Wilder with her mum Sally and dad Richard and the dinosaur footprint she found on Bendricks Bay Barry
The creature that created it is thought to have stood about 75cm tall and 2.5m long.
Experts called it ‘the finest impression of a 215-million-year-old dinosaur print found in Britain in a decade.
The footprint as it was found by Lilly Wilder, 4
It was so perfect Mum Sally, 38, said they initially thought it was a carving made by artists.
She said: ‘Lily saw it when they were walking along and said, “daddy look”.
‘When Richard came home and showed me the photograph, I thought it looked amazing.
‘Richard thought it was too good to be true. I was put in touch with experts who took it from there.
‘We weren’t even sure it was real.
‘I was imagining an artist had gone down and scratched it out, but I knew dinosaur footprints had been found along that piece of the coast before, so I just thought I’d ask some people.
‘I found this fossil identification page on Facebook and I posted it on there and people went a bit crazy.
‘It’s all been so exciting, discovering that it’s actually what they thought it was.’
It was inspected after Sally and their husband Richard reported the finding to experts, including palaeontologists, who specialise in dinosaurs.
Karl-James Langford, of Archaeology Cymru called it ‘the finest impression of a 215-million-year-old dinosaur print found in Britain in a decade.’
He added: ‘It’s so perfect and absolutely pristine, it’s a wonderful piece.
‘I would say it’s internationally important and that is why the museum took it. I would say it’s the best dinosaur footprint found in the UK in the past 10 years.’
A spokesman from the National Museum in Cardiff said the detail in the fossil was of great value to science.
‘Its spectacular preservation may help scientists establish more about the actual structure of their feet as the preservation is clear enough to show individual pads and even claw impressions.’
Remains of a 7,000-Year-Old Lost City Discovered in Egypt
Egypt has announced the discovery of the ruins of a long-lost city in the Upper Egypt province of Sohag, which are believed to be over 7,000 years old.
The 5,316 BC residential city, discovered alongside a nearby cemetery, is being hailed as a major archaeological find that predates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period, which lasted about 5 millennia.
During a dig 400 meters south of the mortuary temple of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled thousands of years later from 1290 to 1279 BC, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities discovered the remains of ancient huts and graves.
Seti I’s temple is located in Abydos – one of the oldest known cities of ancient Egypt and the historic capital of Upper Egypt – and the newly found dwellings and graves could be parts of the long-gone capital now resurfaced, or a separate village that was swallowed by it.
“This discovery can shed light on a lot of information on the history of Abydos,” antiquities minister Mahmoud Afifi said in a press statement.
The recently unearthed structures are thought to have been home to high-ranking officials and grave builders.
In addition to the foundations of ancient huts, the archaeologists found iron tools and pottery, plus 15 giant tombs – the capacious size of which means their intended inhabitants must have been well-established individuals.
“The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the first dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.
It’s possible that these officials oversaw the construction of royal tombs in nearby Abydos, but the size of their own resting places outside the capital suggests they didn’t want to slum it in eternity either.
“About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings,” Egyptologist Chris Eyre from the University of Liverpool in the UK, who wasn’t involved with the excavation, told the BBC.
“So, this appears to be the town, the capital at the very beginning of Egyptian history.”
According to the researchers, the ancient tools and pottery are the leftover traces of a once giant labour force that was engaged in the considerable feat of constructing these royal tombs – and if you’ve seen the kinds of structures we’re talking about, you’ll understand they had a pretty epic responsibility:
The nearby cemetery is made up of 15 mastabas, an ancient Egyptian tomb that takes a rectangular shape, made with sloping walls and a flat roof.
According to lead researcher Yasser Mahmoud Hussein, these mastabas are now the oldest such tombs we know about, pre-dating the previous record holders in Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for another ancient Egyptian city, Memphis.
We’ll have to wait for these new findings to be verified by other scientists, but we’re excited to see what new insights further excavations will bring.
Archaeologists uncover lost Indigenous NE Florida settlement of Sarabay
The University of North Florida archaeology team is now fairly confident they have located the lost Indigenous northeast Florida community of Sarabay, a settlement mentioned in both French and Spanish documents dating to the 1560s but had not been discovered until now.
The type and amounts of Indigenous pottery the team is finding combined with the type and dates for European artefacts as well as cartographic map evidence strongly supports this location as the late 16th/early 17th century Mocama settlement.
The researchers have opened large excavation blocks with many exciting new artefacts finds and are currently searching for evidence of houses and public architecture.
UNF Archaeology Lab at the dig site.
The students, led by Dr. Keith Ashley, UNF Archaeology Lab director and assistant professor, have recently recovered more than 50 pieces of early Spanish pottery as well as Indigenous pottery that dates to the late 1500s or early 1600s.
They have also recovered bone, stone and shell artefacts as well as burned corn cob fragments.
Expanding upon UNF excavations conducted at the southern end of Big Talbot Island in 1998, 1999, and 2020, the UNF research team has completed what is likely the most extensive excavations at a Mocama-Timucua site in northeastern Florida history.
This dig is part of the UNF Archaeology Lab’s ongoing Mocama Archaeological Project. This study focuses on the Mocama-speaking Timucua Indians who lived along the Atlantic coast of northern Florida at the time of European arrival in 1562.
The Mocama were among the first indigenous populations encountered by European explorers in the 1560s.
The team hopes to ultimately confirm the discovery of Sarabay by finding evidence of houses and public architecture.
They will continue to explore and learn about Sarabay’s physical layout during continuing fieldwork projects over the next three years.
13-foot-long ‘Book of the Dead’ scroll found in burial shaft in Egypt
Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a cache of treasures—including more than 50 wooden sarcophagi, a funerary temple dedicated to an Old Kingdom queen and a 13-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll—at the Saqqara necropolis, a vast burial ground south of Cairo, according to a statement from the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiques.
A 13-foot-long (4 meters) copy of chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead was found in the burial shafts. The name of the papyrus’s owner Pwkhaef is written on it. The Book of the Dead helped guide the deceased through the afterlife.
As first reported by Al-Ahram, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and his colleagues discovered the coffins, which appear to date back to the New Kingdom era (1570–1069 B.C.), in 52 burial shafts measuring 33 to 40 feet deep. Paintings of ancient gods and excerpts from the Book of the Dead, which was thought to help the deceased navigate the afterlife, adorn the sarcophagi.
Hawass tells CBS News’ Ahmed Shawkat that researchers first started excavating the site, which stands next to the pyramid of King Teti, first of the Sixth Dynasty rulers of the Old Kingdom (2680–2180 B.C.), in 2010.
“[B]ut we didn’t find a name inside the pyramid to tell us who the pyramid belonged to,” he adds.
Now, reports Agence France-Presse, experts have finally identified the complex—which boasts a stone temple and three mud-brick warehouses that housed offerings and tools—as the tomb of Teti’s wife, Queen Naert.
Around a month ago, the team found Naert’s name etched onto a wall in the temple and written on a felled obelisk near the entrance of the burial, per CBS News.
“I’d never heard of this queen before,” Hawass says to CBS News. “Therefore, we add an important piece to Egyptian history, about this queen.”
A mummy mask worn by the deceased is seen here.
Board games were also found in the burial shafts. This particular game appears to be Senet, a game that was popular in ancient Egypt.
Among the goods found in the burial shafts is this boat with rowers.
According to the statement, this is the first time archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old coffins at Saqqara—one of Egypt’s “richest archaeological sites,” as Jo Marchant wrote for Smithsonian magazine last year. In recent months, excavations at the necropolis have yielded an array of exciting, albeit newer, finds, from sealed sarcophagi to ancient statues.
“Actually, this morning we found another shaft,” Hawass told CBS News on Monday. “Inside the shaft, we found a large limestone sarcophagus. This is the first time we’ve discovered a limestone sarcophagus inside the shafts. We found another one that we’re going to open a week from now.”
The coffins found in the burial shafts probably hold the remains of followers of a Teti-worshipping cult formed after the pharaoh’s death writes Owen Jarus for Live Science.
Experts think that the cult operated for more than 1,000 years; members would have considered it an honour to be entombed near the king.
Other highlights of the discovery include a set of wooden masks; a shrine to the god Anubis; bird-shaped artefacts; games including Senet, which was believed to offer players a glimpse into the afterlife; a bronze axe; paintings; hieroglyphic writings; and fragments of a 13-foot-long, 3-foot-wide papyrus containing Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead.
The name of the scroll’s owner, Pwkhaef, is inscribed on the papyrus, as well as on one sarcophagus and four sculptures, according to Live Science.
These finds, notes the statement, as translated by CNN’s Amy Woodyatt, “will rewrite the history of this region, especially during the 18th and 19th dynasties of the New Kingdom, during which King Teti was worshipped, and the citizens at that time were buried around his pyramid.”
DNA shows Scythian warrior mummy was a 13-year-old girl
Remains of the young ancient Scythian warrior
The story of a clan of warrior women was formed in Greek mythology during a time when there were ancient gods, warriors, and rulers. These powerful female combatants from Asia Minor said to be daughters of the gods, have captured people’s imaginations for ages and continue to pervade popular culture today as mythical Amazon warriors.
For a long time, these warrior women were assumed to be figments of ancient imaginations, but archaeological evidence has since revealed that the warrior women, who may have inspired these myths, really did exist. Late last year, an archaeological discovery of two women thought to be nomadic Scythians from around 2,500 years ago (4th century BCE) was revealed. They were buried in what’s now the western Russian village of Devitsa, with parts of a horse-riding harness and weapons, including iron knives and 30 arrowheads.
“We can certainly say that these two women were horse warriors,” said archaeologist Valerii Guliaev of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology at the time.
The Scythian remains with the headdress.
They were found in a burial mound with two other women – one aged between 40-50 years old, who wore a golden headdress with decorative floral ornaments. The other, aged 30-35, was buried alongside two spears and positioned like she was riding a horse.
“During the last decade, our expedition has discovered approximately 11 burials of young armed women. Separate barrows were filled for them and all burial rites which were usually made for men were done for them,” explained Guliaev.
Plate from headdress made from an alloy of 65-70 percent gold.
Now, another team from Russia has mapped the genome of 2,600-year-old Scythian remains that had been discovered in a wooden sarcophagus with an array of weapons back in 1988.
“This child was initially considered to be male because with him were found characteristics [usually attributed to male] archaeological finds: an axe, a bow, arrows,” archaeologist Varvara Busova from the Russian Academy of Sciences told ScienceAlert.
But the child’s DNA revealed the remains were actually female. “That means we can say with some probability that [Scythian] girls have also participated in hunting or military campaigns,” Busova added.
The warrior girl was buried in Siberia’s modern-day Tuva republic, with an axe, a birch bow and a quiver with ten arrows – some wood, bone or bronze tipped. Due to the larch coffin sealing tightly against fresh air, her remains were partially mummified.
The Scythian girl’s battle axe.
“This young ‘Amazon’ had not yet reached the age of 14 years,” said lead author of the new research, archaeologist Marina Kilunovskaya from the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences.
The girl was clothed in a long fur coat, a shirt, and trousers or a skirt. Using a scanning electron microscope, the researchers found her coat was composed of a patchwork of skins from a rodent related to Jerboa. And carbon dating of other grave items placed the burial complex from 7th-5th centuries BCE, which is early Scythian times.
Busova said the research team would now like to get more accurate dating of the young warrior girl’s remains, investigate the composition of the metal grave objects, and work to restore and conserve what they have found. They’re also hoping CT scans of the remains may give them clues on how the young female warrior died.
The young warrior’s arrows.
The finding “unwittingly brings us back to the myth about the Amazons that have survived to this day thanks to Herodotus (Herod. IV: 110-118),” the team wrote in their paper.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus claimed Amazons fought the Scythians, but it seems they could actually be the Scythian women who trained, hunted and fought alongside their male counterparts.
“About one-third of all Scythian women are buried with weapons and have war injuries just like the men,” historian Adrienne Mayor told National Geographic in 2014.
“They lived in small tribes, so it makes sense that everyone in the tribe is a stakeholder. They all have to contribute to the defence and to war efforts and hunting.”
Through the centuries, myths of the Amazons have been embellished with outrageous claims, from cutting off their own breasts to improve their archery, to murdering their male children.
But we now have the opportunity to learn more about the true female warriors behind the myths thanks to modern archaeological studies and DNA techniques.
1,800-year-old Roman Chariot with horses found buried in Croatia
In Croatia, archaeologists discovered the fossilized remnants of a Roman chariot that had been buried with two horses as part of a burial ritual.
A large burial chamber for an ‘extremely wealthy family’ was found in which the carriage with what appears to be two horses had lain.
Archaeologists from the City Museum Vinkovci and Institute of Archaeology from Zagreb discovered the Roman carriage on two wheels (known in Latin as a cisium) with horses at the Jankovacka Dubrava site close to the village of Stari Jankovci, near the city of Vinkovci, in eastern Croatia.
The horses’ remains and the chariot were all buried together in what appears to have been a ritual reserved for very wealthy families.
The discovery is believed to be an example of how those with extreme wealth were sometimes buried along with their horses.
Curator Boris Kratofil explained to local media that the custom of burial under tumuli (an ancient burial mound) was an exceptional burial ritual during the Roman period in the south of the Pannoinan Basin.
He said: ‘The custom is associated with extremely wealthy families who have played a prominent role in the administrative, social and economic life of the province of Pannonia.’
The discovery is estimated to be from the third century AD but the team of scientists are working to confirm its age.
Archaeologists say the discovery will allow them to know a little more about the family whose members were buried in this area 1,800 years ago.
The director of the Institute of Archaeology Marko Dizdar said that it was a sensational discovery that is unique in Croatia.
He said: ‘After this comes a long process of restoration and conservation of the findings, but also a complete analysis of the findings.
‘In a few years, we will know a little more about the family whose members were buried in this area 1,800 years ago.
‘We are more interested in the horses themselves, that is, whether they were bred here or came from other parts of the empire, which will tell us more about the importance and wealth of this family.
‘We will achieve this through cooperation with domestic as well as numerous European institutions.’
9,000-Year-Old Obsidian Tools Found at Bottom of Lake Huron
A scuba diver near a submerged hunting structure at the bottom of Lake Huron.
Obsidian, or volcanic glass, is a prized raw material for knappers, both ancient and modern, with its lustrous appearance, predictable flaking, and resulting razor-sharp edges.
As such, it was used and traded widely throughout much of human history. Obsidian from the Rocky Mountains and the West was an exotic exchange commodity in Eastern North America.
“Obsidian from the far western United States is rarely found in the east,” said Dr Ashley Lemke, an anthropologist in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington.
The two ancient obsidian artefacts were recovered from a sample of sediment that was hand excavated at a depth of 32 m (105 feet) in an area between two submerged hunting structures at the bottom of Lake Huron.
“This particular find is really exciting because it shows how important underwater archaeology is,” Dr. Lemke said.
“The preservation of ancient underwater sites is unparalleled on land, and these places have given us a great opportunity to learn more about past peoples.”
Photomicrographs of the two obsidian flakes from Lake Huron. Scale is in millimetres.
The larger artifact is a mostly complete, roughly triangular, biface thinning flake made from black and translucent material with a sub-vitreous texture.
The second artefact is a small, very thin, translucent flake on a material visually similar to the larger specimen.
“These tiny obsidian artefacts reveal social connections across North America 9,000 years ago,” Dr. Lemke said.
“The artifacts found below the Great Lakes come from a geological source in Oregon, 4,000 km (2,485 miles) away — making it one of the longest distances recorded for obsidian artifacts anywhere in the world.”
The findings were published in the journal PLoS ONE.
