PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

The oldest civilisation in the Americas: Have you heard of it?

The oldest civilisation in the Americas: Have you heard of it?

Almost five thousand years ago, humankind came together in a way never seen before. We began to turn our backs on the traditional hunter-gatherer form of survival.

Tribal communities based around families began to form into larger hierarchical systems. The techniques to build permanent structures were developed. And the worship of deities was taken to a new level.

Civilisations were being born – and one of the first was Caral in Peru.

I find it a bit strange the way this happened almost simultaneously (in the grand scheme of human history) around the world – but just in a few select places.

Experts debate whether this happened independently or whether the idea spread across the world. Regardless, it was the dawn of a new era for mankind.

The oldest civilisation in the Americas: Have you heard of it?

In the Americas, it was on the coast of what is now Peru that the first cradle of civilisation emerged in about 2600BC. On a site called Caral, these ancient people with bountiful food on hand in the rich ocean, rose at around the same time as five other major civilisations.

Caral was eerily similar to some of the other great cultures growing at the same time. They built stone pyramids here, for instance, at exactly the same time that the Egyptians were building their much more famous counterparts.

But there were also differences. No artwork adorned the structures of Caral in Peru. Unlike in Egypt or Mesopotamia, the people of Caral did not seem to have the same aesthetic tastes (or knowledge).

There is no evidence they made or used ceramics, another key utensil and form of artwork in other civilisations. But they did have textiles.

In fact, the textiles were for more than just clothing and decoration. It’s believed the people of Caral also used textiles as their form of writing. Strings of different lengths with knots in various places are one way they could have communicated.

If this new advanced culture was not famous for art or ceramics, it was its architecture that was its strength. The same grand pyramids and temples of worship that were built here thousands of years ago are still partly standing around me on the day I visit.

They don’t just prove that the Caral civilisation was advanced enough to build these large monuments – it also shows that they had an advanced religious ideology.

The pyramids and other important structured would certainly have been used for worship and other ceremonies.

Although Caral-Supe is not one of the most famous sights in the country, I think it’s one of the most interesting places to visit in Peru. There’s a fascinating story behind it and there’s much more to see than you might expected for something that is 5000 years old!

AFRICA, WORLD

Earliest known war driven by climate change, researchers say

Earliest known war driven by climate change, researchers say

Researchers discovered 61 bones in the Nile Valley region in the 1960s, the earliest evidence of human conflict. The deaths were first attributed to a single armed battle. However, a recent reexamination of the 13,000-year-old bones revealed that individuals died over a period of years as a result of recurrent violence that was exacerbated because of climatic changes during the period.

Earliest known war driven by climate change, researchers say
Two of the individuals found buried at Jebel Sahaba in the Nile Valley in the 1960s are shown. Pencils mark the position of associated stone artifacts. Image courtesy of the Wendorf Archives of the British Museum.

Published in Scientific Reports, the findings build on previous research around remains discovered in Jebel Sahaba, a prehistoric cemetery that dates to between 13,400 and 18,600 years ago, marking the oldest recorded evidence of interpersonal violence among human groups.

The study reframes the conflict between hunter-gatherers in the context of climate change and offers a unique lens into the emergence of violence and mass death in the stone age.

A closer examination of the skeletons — of adults, teens, and children — revealed previously undocumented healed and unhealed injuries sustained from brutal and continued violence. “That injury pattern more likely arose from periodic, indiscriminate raids rather than a single battle, in which the dead would have consisted mainly of male fighters,” the researchers say.

This suggests violence was a material part of life and resulted from multiple raids and ambushes — or “minor battles” — during that time because of resource competition, researchers from the U.K. and France say.

And more importantly, “repeated violent episodes [around that time] were probably triggered by well-recorded environmental changes,” paleoanthropologist Isabelle Crevecoeur, who conducted the study with her colleagues, told ScienceNews.

Isabelle Crevecoeur (right) and Marie‑Hélène Dias‑Meirinho (left) study the Jebel Sahaba human remains in the Egypt and Sudan department of the British Museum.

Since this was a pre-agriculture period, rival groups living in the same space competed for meals and other resources, which might have triggered fighting among regional groups.

“The new report fits a scenario in which ancient, possibly culturally distinct communities violently raided each other when dwindling resources threatened their survival,” said bioarchaeologist Christopher Stojanowski of Arizona State University in Tempe, who did not participate in the new study but has studied the Jebel Sahaba remains.

The Nile Valley, the area between now southern Egypt and northern Sudan, was believed to be a space of refuge for prehistoric people, who might have moved there from the arid, less fertile areas in Africa and southwest Asia. Moreover, the expanse of plains also meant an easier search for animals to hunt and fish.

This time coincided with a fluctuating climate — between 11,000 and 20,000 years ago, the Ice Age showed signs of slowing down, resulting in widespread flooding and disrupting the ecological balance; Crevecoeur mentions there was proof of very extreme flooding of the Nile, which resulted in reduced fishing and hunting spots and depleted habitats.

The origins of warfare have been a matter of dispute for a long: whether violence originated among Stone Age hunter-gatherers or among state societies within roughly the past 6,000 years. The new findings thus alter the history of violence in the stone age.

“These results enrich our understanding of the contexts in which violence emerges among foragers,” Luke Glowacki, at the Department of Human Biology at Harvard University, told NewScientist. “They provide additional evidence for an emerging consensus that foragers, just like agricultural peoples, had interpersonal violence in the form of raids and ambushes.”

The researchers note, however, that the cause for the violence cannot be determined with absolute certainty, since there are no written documents.

But the consensus was drawn based on the fact that this earliest recorded violence was sporadic, long-drawn, and took place against the backdrop of climate change depleting resources needed for survival.

Records of hunter-gatherers from the stone age not only offer an insight into warfare, but also show how climate change — that manifests as resource scarcity, flooding, and loss of habitat — triggers conflict and displacement. “These changes were not gradual at all,” Isabelle Crevecoeur says. “They had to survive these changes that were brutal.”

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

3,800-Year-Old Gold Ornament Unearthed in Germany

3,800-Year-Old Gold Ornament Unearthed in Germany

Live Science reports that a gold artefact thought to have been worn as a hair ornament has been found in a woman’s grave in southwestern Germany. 

3,800-Year-Old Gold Ornament Unearthed in Germany
This gold artifact, which may have been used as a hair ornament, was found buried with a woman who died around 3,800 years ago

Archaeologists have uncovered the 3,800-year-old burial of a woman who was around 20 years old when she died in what is now Tübingen, Germany. Inside her tomb, archaeologists found just one grave good — a spiral gold wire that may have been used as a hair ornament. 

It’s considered the oldest gold artefact found in southwest Germany. “The gold contains about 20% silver, less than 2% copper, and has traces of platinum and tin.

This composition points to a natural gold alloy typical of gold washed from rivers,” a chemical composition that suggests it came from the Carnon River area in Cornwall, England, the researchers said in a statement. 

“Precious metal finds from this period are very rare in southwestern Germany,” the researchers said in the statement.

“The gold finds from the Tübingen district [is] evidence that western cultural groups [such as from Britain and France] gained increasing influence over central Europe in the first half of the second millennium [B.C.],” researchers said. 

Left: The woman, whose remains were buried in this tomb, was around 20 years old when she died. Right: Students from the Institute of Prehistory and Medieval Archaeology of the University of Tübingen are shown here excavating the grave.

The woman was buried in a fetal position facing south, not far from a prehistoric hilltop settlement where other graves have been found. 

The researchers found no evidence of any injuries or disease, so they have no idea what she died from, Raiko Krauss, a professor in the Institute of Prehistory and Medieval Archaeology at the University of Tübingen, told Live Science.

Krauss and Jörg Bofinger, a conservator with the Baden-Württemberg State Office for Cultural Heritage Management, led the excavation of the grave. 

The fact that the artefact is made of gold suggests that the woman may have had a high social status, the researchers said.

They ran radiocarbon dating on the woman’s remains, finding she died sometime between 1850 B.C. and 1700 B.C.

At that time, writing had not yet spread to southwest Germany so there are no written records that could help to identify who she might have been. 

See Also: MORE ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS

The grave was excavated in autumn 2020 and the team’s findings were published May 21 in the journal Praehistorische Zeitschrift. 

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Beloved Gaza bookshop becomes a casualty of Israel-Hamas conflict

Beloved Gaza bookshop becomes a casualty of Israel-Hamas conflict

“If I compare it to what is happening, it is minimal, but destroying the main bookstore we have is something serious,” said Refhat Alarir, an academic.

At 6 am on Tuesday, Sameer Mansoor answered the call at his Gaza City home. This Israeli army was asking if it was a little more than a mile away inside its bookstore and publishing house. They said that they did not want to hurt her and then they disconnected the phone.

Shortly afterwards, the store – a beloved local institution standing on the ground floor of a large building – collapsed into a pile of rubble.

Beloved Gaza bookshop becomes a casualty of Israel-Hamas conflict
A Palestinian man holds a book he removed from under the rubble of the Kuhail building which housed Samir Mansour’s bookstore in Gaza City.

Established 21 years ago, his bookstore was one of the biggest sellers of books for children, students, academics and reading enthusiasts in the Gaza Strip. He also published books and published stories written by local authors.

“The bookstore was like my soul,” said 53-year-old Mansoor, who was born in the Gaza Strip and said he had nothing to do with politics.

“Books are my life.”

The Mansoor shop was one of the casualties of the fighting between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls the barricaded and impoverished Gaza Strip, home to 2 million Palestinians. Hamas has been labelled a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.

According to officials on both sides, at least 230 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have been killed in the fighting. According to the Government Information Office in Gaza, 184 residential buildings and 1,335 housing units have been destroyed in Gaza.

A spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces said they could not find specific information about the attack on the building that houses the bookstore.

The Israeli military said it has targeted more than 1,000 targets since the fighting began earlier this month. Israel says that its purpose is to avoid civilian casualties and that Hamas intentionally takes responsibility for locating its military infrastructure with civilians.

In addition to Israeli airstrikes, nearly 600 of the more than 4,000 rockets fired from Gaza towards Israel have fallen and landed in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli military, since the beginning of the fighting.

For the Palestinians, the bookstore played an important role as a centre of intellectual life, and its destruction represents a widespread loss of culture in Gaza.

“If I compare it to what is happening, it is minimal, but it is something serious to destroy the main bookstore we have,” Refhat, an academic and editor of the short story collection “Gaza Rights Back,” Alarir said.

Alarir has shopped in stores since 1997 when he began his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza. In addition to selling several titles in English, he said, the shop often supplies titles requested by customers and makes them affordable, something that other local bookstores were not able to do.

He now worries that “people won’t be able to buy the books they want, people won’t be able to read some novels for their university studies, especially for English majors.”

For Eman Bashar, Mansoor’s bookstore was more than just a place to buy books, it was a place where she met the man who had become her husband, a Palestinian writer of “The Complete Works of Ghassan Kanafani” Was bonding over a copy.

In the years that followed, Bashar, an English teacher, has built a library in his Jabalia home, which consists mainly of shop-bought books.

“This is where we met, so it killed a memory for me. It was very precious to us,” Bashar, who has two sons, said in a phone interview.

Located near several universities, including the Islamic University, Mansoor’s bookstore was also the informal home of several English-language book clubs.

Rahf Al Hallaq, a student of English literature at Islamic University, said, “When you lose a place like this, it breaks your heart because it takes away that place, which makes you the person you are.”.This latest round of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians began on May 7, when Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Hamas responded by firing a rocket at Israel, which has responded with its bombing campaign.

Mansoor said he would like to renovate his store one day, though he is unsure when it will be.

“We’ll wait until the war is over,” he said.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Archaeology news: 100 million-year-old ancient turtle fossil discovered in Texas, USA

Archaeology news: 100 million-year-old ancient turtle fossil discovered in Texas, USA

Archaeologists have discovered a new, 100 million-year-old turtle fossil in Texas, USA. The ancient remains are believed to be the earliest remnants of the side-necked turtle in North America and have unravelled some of the mysteries surrounding reptile migration from the relatively unknown Cenomanian age.

Archaeologists in Texas, USA have discovered the remains of the oldest side-necked turtle in North America. The turtle, which has been named Pleurochayah appalachius, was well adapted for coastal living and had large bony attachments to its upper arms.

The site sits on the remnants of an old river delta from the Late Cretaceous period (80 to 66 million years ago), which was believed to flow through the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Scientists have been using the dried-up river delta to unravel numerous fossilised remains over a number of years.

Archaeologists had previously discovered dinosaur and crocodilian fossils at the site.

Now, they’ve made a brand new discovery, which could transform their understanding of hard-to-track reptiles.

The unearthed fossil belonged to an extinct lineage of pleurodiran turtle – a type of side-necked turtle.

Side-necked turtles withdrew their necks sideways into their shells when they’ve threatened.

The discovery hints that side-necked turtles migrated to North America around the Cenomanian age – between 100 and 94 million years ago.

The archaeologists, who reported their findings in Scientific Reports, uncovered a number of adaptations on the turtle.

These adaptations suggest that it was a coastal-dwelling species.

In particular, it had large bony attachments on its upper arms.

The attachments would provide powerful swimming strokes, and suggested the turtle would swim with a rowing style of movement, as opposed to the modern-day flapping motion.

The newly discovered species swam in a different style to modern turtles

P.appalachius also had an unusually thick outer shell bone, when compared with its inner shell bone. It would have given the turtle even more protection from predators, especially in the marine environment, the scientists said.

Lead author of the study, and senior research specialist at the Midwestern University College of Graduate Studies, Brent Adrian, said: “This discovery provides the earliest evidence of side-necked turtles in North America.

“[It] expands our understanding of the first migrations of the extinct bothremydids [a type of extinct side-necked turtle].

“It further establishes the Arlington Archosaur Site as an important fossil unit that is revealing the foundations of an endemic Appalachian fauna.”

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The AAS has been used by archaeologists since 2009, although the river delta was first discovered six years earlier. Active excavations have been ongoing, almost continually, since then. About 2,000 individual fossils have been discovered at the site, ranging from multiple species of both animals and plants.

EUROPE, WORLD

2,000-Year-Old Intact Tomb Discovered in Malta

2,000-Year-Old Intact Tomb Discovered in Malta

A Punic tomb dating back over two thousand years was discovered during works carried out by the Water Services Corporation (WSC) in Żabbar. 

2,000-Year-Old Intact Tomb Discovered in Malta
The Punic remains were found in Zejtun

The tomb, which was still sealed, was opened, revealing a number of urns containing the cremated remains of human bones.

Given the site’s archaeological sensitivity, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage requested that an archaeologist accompany the WSC crew in case any ancient remains are discovered. 

In a statement, WSC said the first indications show that the burial site includes the remains of an adult and a child.

Moreover, an amphora, two urns, an oil lamp, a glass perfume bottle and other pottery vessels typical of the Punic period were also found. 

The burial rite was altered through the Punic and Roman times. Sometimes the bodies were burnt, and other times they were buried intact in the grave.

Cremation necessitated a variety of resources, including wood to burn the body and the presence of a person throughout the whole process of cremation which took several hours. 

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Currently, the material is being removed from the tomb and transported to a laboratory, where the pottery and bones are being consolidated, cleaned, and analyzed. 

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A Unique Native American Map Everyone Should See

A Unique Native American Map Everyone Should See

Finding an address on a map can be taken for granted in the age of GPS and smartphones. But centuries of forced relocation, disease and genocide have made it difficult to find where many Native American tribes once lived.

Aaron Carapella, a self-taught mapmaker in Warner, Okla., has designed a map of Native American tribes showing their locations before first contact with Europeans.

Aaron Carapella, a self-taught mapmaker in Warner, Okla., has pinpointed the locations and original names of hundreds of American Indian nations before their first contact with Europeans.

As a teenager, Carapella says he could never get his hands on a U.S. map like this, depicting more than 600 tribes — many now forgotten and lost to history. Now, the 34-year-old designs and sells maps as large as 3 by 4 feet with the names of tribes hovering over the land they once occupied.

Carapella has designed maps of Canada and the continental U.S. showing the original locations and names of Native American tribes.

“I think a lot of people get blown away by, ‘Wow, there were a lot of tribes, and they covered the whole country!’ You know, this is Indian land,” says Carapella, who calls himself a “mixed-blood Cherokee” and lives in a ranch house within the jurisdiction of the Cherokee Nation.

For more than a decade, he consulted history books and library archives, called up tribal members and visited reservations as part of research for his map project, which began as pencil-marked poster boards on his bedroom wall. So far, he has designed maps of the continental U.S., Canada and Mexico. A map of Alaska is currently in the works.

What makes Carapella’s maps distinctive is their display of both the original and commonly known names of Native American tribes, according to Doug Herman, senior geographer at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

This map of Mexico features both the original and commonly known names of some indigenous nations.

“You can look at [Carapella’s] map, and you can sort of getting it immediately,” Herman says. “This is Indian Country, and it’s not the Indian Country that I thought it was because all these names are different.”

He adds that some Native American groups got stuck with names chosen arbitrarily by European settlers.

They were often derogatory names other tribes used to describe their rivals. For example, “Comanche” is derived from a word in Ute meaning “anyone who wants to fight me all the time,” according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

“It’s like having a map of North America where the United States is labelled ‘gringos’ and Mexico is labelled ‘wetbacks,’ ” Herman says. “Naming is an exercise in power. Whether you’re naming places or naming peoples, you are therefore asserting a power of sort of establishing what is reality and what is not.”

Look at a map of Native American territory today, and you’ll see tiny islands of reservation and trust land engulfed by acres upon acres ceded by treaty or taken by force.

Carapella’s maps, which are sold on his website, serve as a reminder that the population of the American countryside stretches back long before 1776 and 1492.

See Also: MORE ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS

Carapella describes himself as a former “radical youngster” who used to lead protests against Columbus Day observances and supported other Native American causes. He says he now sees his mapmaking as another way to change perceptions in the U.S.

“This isn’t really a protest,” he explains. “But it’s a way to convey the truth in a different way.”

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

Huge spiral found in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made

Huge spiral found in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made

A huge spiral covering 100,000 square metres discovered in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made, according to experts, who say it dwarfs the Nazca lines in South America.  

The spiral artwork is made up of a series of small geoglyphs covering an area of about a million square feet in the Thar desert in India, first spotted on Google Earth by Carlo and Yohann Oetheimer, a father and son research team from France. 

Nazca lines in Peru are a group of geoglyphs etched into a 380 sq mile area of desert sands dating back to at least 500 BCE, featuring figures of animals and plants. 

While the South American geoglyphs are more plentiful, with up to 300 characters, and cover a larger area, a line in India is significantly larger than anyone Nazca line. 

The lines make up four distinct symbols, created by scraping sand and silt near the village of Boha, with the largest single symbol 2,374ft long and 650ft wide, made of a single seven and a half mile line spiralling inwards. 

Study authors, not affiliated with any institution, say the lines may be at least 150 years old, but can’t say anything more specific, adding their meaning is lost to history and they need to visit to study determine any dating.

Huge spiral found in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made
Boha 3’s meandering lines.
Huge spirals discovered in the Indian desert may be the largest drawing ever made, according to experts, who say they dwarf the Nazca lines in South America

The duo searched through images on Google Earth showing the desert for unusual features. In the images they found eight possible sites, eventually discounting seven of them as being natural features.

The pair took a drone to the region in 2016 and flew it over the site.

During the drone flight, they found seven of eight predicted sites were actually just furrows dug for failed tree plantations. They found that the eighth site, near the village of Boha, had four distinct symbols, made up of 20 inch wide lines of varying length and complexity. 

At the centre of the selection of geoglyphs is a symbol 2,374ft long and 650ft wide, made of a single seven and a half mile spiralling line. 

South-west of this mega-spiral is a second line that repeatedly bends back on itself to form a grid of parallel lines, the team explained. There are also a pair of smaller geoglyphs to the north and south-west, but they are both heavily eroded. 

Despite the work being carried out by independent, researchers, ‘the report is convincing,’ says Daniela Valenzuela from the University of Tarapaca in Chile. 

The Nazca lines in Peru cover a wider area than the Thar lines, but the individual figures and lines are smaller, with the longest labyrinth line 2.7 miles long. The lines can’t be seen from the ground, according to the researchers, with Valenzuela saying ‘this may be significant. 

Adding that it may imply that their significance came from the act of creation, not later viewing by future people. 

The study authors wrote in their paper: ‘Three memorial stones positioned at key points, give evidence that planimetric knowledge has been used to create this elaborate design.’ 

Planimetric elements in geography are features independent of elevation – roads, rivers, lakes and buildings.

The lines make up four distinct symbols, created by scraping sand and silt near the village of Boha, with the largest single symbol 2,374ft long and 650ft wide, made of a single seven and a half mile line spiralling inwards

‘These artefacts allow us to envisage hypothetical modalities of edification,’ the authors wrote. 

‘We collected indicators of antiquity suggesting that these lines may be at least 150 years old and possibly linked to the Hindu memorial stones surrounding them. 

‘The lack of visibility from the ground raises the question of their function and meaning. So far, these geoglyphs, the largest discovered worldwide and for the first time in the Indian subcontinent, are also unique as regards their enigmatic signs.’ 

In the case of the Nazca line geoglyphs, they were likely created by people removing the black topsoil to reveal light-coloured sand hidden underneath.  Geoglyphs span large land tracts located between the towns of Palpa and Nazca, and some depict animals, objects or compact shapes.

The spiral artwork is made up of a series of small geoglyphs covering an area of about a million square feet in the Thar desert in India, first spotted on Google Earth by Carlo and Yohann Oetheimer, a father and son research team from France
Aerial view of giant spiral (Boha 1) and Boha 2, including the serpent figure in lower-right corner.

Often, the composition of a geoglyph cannot be fully realised at ground level. Only when one is high enough in the air can they discern the shapes. For this reason, the intricacies of the designs were not fully realised until aeroplanes were invented and the artwork was seen from the sky.

‘We will need to go to India in the near future in order to complete our research and have a precise dating, in order to understand their function and meaning better. For now, the dating is hypothetical,’ Carlo Oetheimer told MailOnline. 

All In One Magazine