The archaeologist J.A. Clason finds extensive accounts of Viking voyages in earlier Icelandic sagas. They describe a mysterious “sunstone”, which Scandinavian seafarers used to locate the Sun in the sky and navigate on cloudy days.
So, What is Iceland spar?
Iceland spar is a crystal of calcite (calcium carbonate). Calcite is a fairly common mineral and comes in a spectacular range of colors caused by the impurities it contains.
Iceland spar is rather unique among the calcites. It contains no impurities, so it’s nearly colorless and transparent to both visible and ultraviolet light.
For centuries, the only source of this pure calcite was located near Reydarfjördur fjord in eastern Iceland, hence most of the world called it Iceland spar (spar means a crystal with smooth surfaces). The Icelanders just called it silfurberg, meaning silver rock.
A crystal of Iceland spar has two very interesting properties. First, it is a natural polarizing filter. Second, because of its natural polarization, Iceland spar is birefringent, meaning light rays entering the crystal become polarized, split, and take two paths to exit the crystal – creating a double image of an object seen through the crystal.
There is good evidence that the Vikings used the polarizing effect of Iceland spar to navigate the North Atlantic. The constant fog and mist in the North Atlantic often make navigation by stars or sun impossible.
The Vikings called Iceland spar a ‘sunstone’ because the polarizing effect can be used to find the direction of the sun even in dense fog and overcast conditions. It can even find the direction of the sun when the sun is actually below the horizon, as happens when you’re sailing above the Arctic circle.
The polarizing effect of Iceland spar can accurately locate the sun even through heavy clouds or mist. If you’re a Viking. I’ve tried it and had no success at all.
The second interesting feature of Iceland spar is birefringence, meaning it refracts light into two separate images, which is more noticeable.
The double image may just seem mildly interesting to you and me. But it turned the scientific world (at least the optical part of it) upside down back in the 1600s.
A piece of Iceland spar on my worktable, doubly refracting the gridlines.
How did that help the Vikings?
Researchers studied a piece of Iceland spar discovered aboard an Elizabethan ship that sunk in 1592.
They found that moving the stone in and out of a person’s field of vision causes them to see a distinctive double dot pattern that lines up with the direction of the hidden Sun.
Screenshot from the TV show Viking
The polarization of sunlight in the Arctic can be detected, and the direction of the sun identified within a few degrees in both cloudy and twilight conditions using the sunstone and the naked eye.
The process involves moving the stone across the visual field to reveal a yellow entoptic pattern on the fovea of the eye, probably Haidinger’s brush.
When light passes through calcite crystals, it is split into two rays. The asymmetry in the crystal’s structure causes the paths of these two beams to be bent by different amounts, resulting in a double image.
Giant Headless Buddha Statue found Beneath Chinese Apartments
In the old neighborhood of Chongqing, southwest China, people had passed by two residential buildings constructed upon a steep hill, indifferent to what lay underneath. It turns out that these two apartment buildings that sit upon the cliff face had been carved by Lord buddha.
The massive statue — about 30-feet tall and with its head missing — was hidden by a dense coating of foliage, and only exposed during recent repairs to the residential building, according to the local Nan’an district government.
Photos of the enigmatic headless sculpture have gone viral on Chinese social media since the accidental discovery, where many have referred to it as “the Buddha,” attracting headlines and stirring instant curiosity in its history and origins.
The seated Buddha sculpture uncovered in Chongqing is missing its head.
Now only partially covered in moss, the statue is depicted seated with its forearms resting on its lap and its hands holding what appears to be a round stone. The folds and some details of the figure’s clothes are also visible.
The statue is believed to have been built during China’s Republican era (1912-1949), according to a national survey of cultural relics.
While that study was conducted just over a decade ago, the sculpture had been neglected and appears to have been completely forgotten until recently.
Its head was likely destroyed during the 1950s, and the apartment buildings around it were built in the 1980s, said the district government on China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo.
The ‘Buddha’ statue (location identified with the red square) used to be covered by dense foliage. ( Weibo)
However, experts invited by the district’s cultural relics management office to study the statue said it was not of Buddhist origin and is likely related to folk religion.
A temple dedicated to the Daoist god of thunder was once built next to the statue, though it was dismantled in 1987, the district government told state-run media outlet The Paper.
The religious statue was already designated as a district-level cultural relic before 1997, it added.
That the statue could be so quickly hidden is perhaps, a reflection of the rapid urban expansion that has unfolded in Chongqing.
In recent decades, countless structures have been built to accommodate a bustling population of over 30 million people, sometimes at the expense of historical and cultural relics. Because of the city’s mountainous terrain, many homes are built on hillsides.
Archaeologists find the source of Stonehenge sarsen stones
A team of researchers from the UK and South Africa has discovered that most of the hulking sandstone boulders — called sarsens — that make up the famous Stonehenge monument appear to share a common origin 25 km (15.5 miles) away in West Woods on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, Wiltshire.
The origins of the stones used to build Stonehenge around 2500 BCE and their transportation methods and routes have been the subject of debate among archaeologists and geologists for over 400 years.
Two main types of stones are present at the monument: the sarsen stones that form the primary architecture of Stonehenge and the bluestones near the centre of the monument.
Feasts at nearby Durrington Walls drew attendees from all over Britain.
The smaller bluestones have been traced to Wales, but the origins of the sarsens have remained unknown, until now.
“Archaeologists and geologists have been debating where the sarsen stones used to build Stonehenge came from for more than four centuries,” said Professor David Nash, a scientist in the School of Environment and Technology at the University of Brighton and the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“These significant new data will help explain more of how the monument was constructed and, perhaps, offer insights into the routes by which the 20- to 30-ton stones were transported.”
Stonehenge in context: (A) distribution of silcrete boulders across southern Britain, including sarsens and conglomeratic variants known as puddingstone; (B) sampling sites and topography in the Stonehenge-Avebury area, along with proposed transportation routes for the sarsen stones; (C) plan of Stonehenge showing the area of the monument enclosed by earthworks plus numbered peripheral sarsen stones; (D) detail of the main Stonehenge monument showing the remaining bluestones and numbered sarsen stones.
To learn where the huge boulders came from, Professor Nash and colleagues used portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (PXRF) to initially characterize their chemical composition, then analyzed the data statistically to determine their degree of chemical variability.
Next, they performed inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and ICP-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) of samples from a core previously drilled through one sarsen stone — Stone 58 — and a range of sarsen boulders from across southern Britain.
After comparing these signatures, they were able to point to West Woods as the sarsens’ earliest home.
The reason the monument’s builders selected this site remains a mystery, although the scientists suggest the size and quality of West Woods’ stones, and the ease with which the builders could access them may have factored into the decision.
“We still don’t know where two of the 52 remaining sarsens at the monument came from,” Professor Nash said.
“These are upright Stone 26 at the northernmost point of the outer sarsen circle and lintel Stone 160 from the inner trilithon horseshoe.”
“It is possible that these stones were once more local to Stonehenge, but at this stage, we do not know.”
“We also don’t know the exact areas of West Woods where the sarsens were extracted.”
“Further geochemical testing of sarsens and archaeological investigations to discover extraction pits are needed to answer these questions.”
Revealed: Cambodia’s vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle
Archaeologists in Cambodia have found multiple, previously undocumented medieval cities not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat, the Guardian can reveal, in groundbreaking discoveries that promise to upend key assumptions about south-east Asia’s history.
The Australian archaeologist Dr Damian Evans, whose findings will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, will announce that cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology has revealed multiple cities between 900 and 1,400 years old beneath the tropical forest floor, some of which rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.
Invisible city
For centuries, the Angkor region’s wealth of artefacts drew looters, archaeologists. They focused their attention, both good and ill, on Angkor Wat and a few other nearby moated temple complexes. Based on those ruins, the first European explorers to encounter Angkor in the 19th century assumed Khmer urbanites lived in what were basically moated cities of a few thousand people. These European explorers thought Angkor Wat was something like a medieval walled city in Europe, which typically held fewer than 10,000 people. They explained all the moated complexes in the Angkor area by suggesting that maybe the royal family and their people were moving from one moated city to the next overtime. But as archaeologists learned more in the intervening century, something about those population numbers seemed off. Beyond the moated cities were vast canal systems and reservoirs hinting at something bigger.
The ruins of Preah Khan of Kompong Svay covered with forest. An urban network was revealed by the lidar imagery around this temple.
Unfortunately, most of Angkor had become a tangle of jungles and small farms by the 20th century. There was little evidence of medieval settlements beyond the moats’ precise edges. Even if explorers were willing to hack through the dense growth, there was little to find. In a Khmer city, only the temples were made from stone. Everything else was built from perishable materials like wood. All that remained of Angkor’s homes and other non-religious structures were the elevated clay mounds of their foundations, which had been designed to prevent flooding during Cambodia’s intense wet season. Most of the city’s dramatic waterworks for flood runoff and water storage had been reduced to pits and troughs in the Earth. It was practically impossible to identify a medieval Angkorian house deep within the jungle.
All that changed when airborne LiDAR (for “Light Imaging, Detection, And Ranging”) came into common use for mapping in the early 2000s. Archaeologists working in Cambodia immediately seized on it. By scattering light off the surface of the planet, LiDAR systems can produce maps with accuracy down to the centimetre even if the ground is covered in heavy vegetation. The system is ideal for a place like Angkor, where the city’s remains are cloaked in vegetation and characterized almost entirely by elevated or depressed plots of ground.
The LiDAR rig was a Leica ALS70 HP instrument, mounted in a pod attached to the right skid of a Eurocopter AS350 B2 helicopter along with a 60 megapixel Leica RCD30 camera.
With funding from the National Geographic Society and European Research council, archaeologist Damian Evans and his colleagues conducted broad LiDAR surveys of Angkor in 2012 and 2015. The team’s mapping rig consisted of a Leica ALS70 HP LiDAR instrument mounted in a pod attached to the right skid of a Eurocopter AS350 B2 helicopter alongside a 60 megapixel Leica RCD30 camera. It was as if an invisible city suddenly appeared where only overgrowth and farmland existed before. For the first time in centuries, people could discern Angkor’s original urban grid. And what they saw changed our understanding of global history.
Archaeological researcher Piphal Heng, who studies Cambodian settlement history, told Ars that the LiDAR maps peeled back the forest canopy to reveal meticulous grids of highways and low-density neighbourhoods of thousands of houses and pools of water. There was “a complex urban grid system that extended outside the walls of Angkor Thom and other large temple complexes such as Angkor Wat,Preah Khan, and Ta Prohm,” he said. With the new data, scientists had solid evidence that the city of Angkor sprawled over an area of at least 40 to 50 square km. It was home to almost a million people. The scattered, moated complexes like Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom were merely the most enduring features of what we now know was the biggest city on Earth during the 12th and 13th centuries.
This aerial photo shows what Angkor Wat looks like today, surrounded by vegetation and a few areas of modern farms and homes. None of the vast city grid from 800 years ago is visible.
In the LiDAR map, you can clearly see the central urban grid of Angkor extending from Angkor Thom (top left) and Angkor Wat (bottom left).
Here you can see the areas covered by the LiDAR surveys in 2012 and 2015.
A map of the greater Angkor area, showing the extent of the urban sprawl revealed by LiDAR.
From legend to reality
The city of Angkor has its origins in the ninth century during the reign of Jayavarman II. He unified large parts of Southeast Asia by establishing the Khmer Empire across regions we know today as Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Inscriptions on temple walls at Sadok Kok Thom in Thailand describe how he established a city called Hariharalaya, located near Siem Reap in the Angkor area. But the inscriptions also say that Jayavarman II declared himself a supreme ruler or “god-king” in a lavish Hindu ceremony held at his residence on Kulen Mountain in a city called Mahendraparvata. Accounts of the Kulen Mountain phase in Jayavarman’s life are so sparse and fantastical that debates have raged among scholars about whether he actually lived in Mahendraparvata at all.
To find out more, archaeologists targeted Kulen Mountain in their latest LiDAR survey. Evans published some of the first results from this 2015 survey in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Royal Academy of Cambodia archaeologist Kaseka Phon explained to Ars via e-mail that the LiDAR has uncovered an Angkor-like city grid at the abandoned city of Mahendraparvata on Kulen Mountain. Plus, the LiDAR “shows not only features of the construction, but also water features” that are clearly versions of Angkor’s incredible water management facilities. The new survey revealed massive stone quarries, now filled in, that produced the rock used to build some of the temples of Angkor. Kulen Mountain’s role in the birth of the Khmer Empire is no longer a legend—it’s an established historical fact.
This transformation of legend into fact has been a theme of the LiDAR surveys. Angkor’s huge population is described in temple inscriptions and reports written by Chinese travellers who visited the city during the 12th-century reign of King Suryavarman II, who built Angkor Wat. But historical sources are often exaggerated or incomplete. Plus, it was difficult for Western researchers to believe that the Khmer Empire’s great city was home to almost a million people, dwarfing European cities of the same era. Now, such facts are impossible to deny.
Angkor city planning
Angkor reached megacity proportions in the 12th century when Suryavarman II ordered the construction of Angkor Wat (which he dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu). At that time, the urban sprawl in Angkor was not only enormous, but it was centrally planned with rigorous precision. Heng told Ars that “the shape of roads, walls, moats, mounds, and ponds were probably made based on urban templates commissioned by the Angkorian rulers” while residents of different neighbourhoods probably had different degrees of freedom to modify those plans. Heng continued:
At temples such as Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm, the grid usage was significantly varied. For example, based on our recent excavations, after the urban grid was laid out, there is little evidence of modification—if at all—in a series of habitation mounds inside Angkor Wat. While for Ta Prohm, its inhabitants seem to have more freedom in modifying parts of their gridded mounds.
To learn more about everyday life in Angkor Wat, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign archaeologist Alison Carter has done excavation work on some of the residential mounds inside the enclosure. In 2015, she got funding from the National Geographic Society to excavate one of the residential mounds identified via LiDAR. Carter discovered what appears to be the remains of a brick stove, complete with ceramic vessels for cooking. Chemical analysis revealed remains of pomelo fruit rind, seeds from a relative of the ginger plant, and grains of rice. This is what archaeologists call “ground-truthing,” and it’s further confirmation that the mounds we see in LiDAR are actually from households rather than other structures.
The picture that’s emerging of Angkor is much like a modern low-density city with mixed-use residential and farm areas. As Evans put it to Ars, “in the densely inhabited downtown core there are no fields, but that nice, formally planned city centre gradually gives way to an extended agro-urban hinterland where neighbourhoods are intermingled with rice-growing areas, and there is no clear distinction between what is ‘urban’ or ‘rural’.” The city was a miracle of geoengineering with every acre transformed by human hands, whether for agriculture or architecture.
Perhaps Angkor’s greatest technological achievement was its sophisticated waterworks, including artificial canals and reservoirs. People strolling through the city 800 years ago would have passed through neighborhoods whose carefully arranged homes were built alongside rainfall ponds for families, as well as enormous canals for the city as a whole. Massive rectangular reservoirs held water all year around for agricultural use.
Each neighbourhood would have looked slightly different, though all relied on the same water infrastructure. The city had to survive the floods of the rainy season and slake the thirst of people and farms in the dry season. For centuries, it accomplished this incredible feat, which modern cities still struggle with. Suryavarman II ruled a city whose mythic proportions were enabled by the most sophisticated engineering techniques of his day.
Comparison of major temple complexes in the 12th to 13th centuries, all at the same scale. Later developments (right column) show more variable grids than earlier ones (left column), with areas within the moat divided neatly into ~100×100 m “city blocks.” 6a: Angkor Wat. 6b: Beng Mealea. 6c: Preah Khan of Kompong Svay. 6d: Preah Khan of Angkor. 6e: Ta Prohm. 6f: Banteay Chhmar.
“Mound fields” across Cambodia. Panels a,b are in the Phnom Kulen area. Panels c,d are immediately to the north of the main temple complex at Sambor Prei Kuk. Panels e,f are Immediately to the west of Banteay Srei temple at Angkor. Panels g,h: Near the exit of the East Baray reservoir at Angkor, new archaeological mapping (3g) based on the 2012 ALS data has added further detail to a ~10×10 grid of mounds (3h) and revealed a second mound field to the south of the exit. Panels 3a,c and e are conventional aerial imagery acquired in the 2015 campaign. Panel 3g is based on archaeological maps by Damian Evans, Christophe Pottier and Pelle Wijker.
Unexplained, rectangular coil patterns associated with major temples across northwest Cambodia, revealed in LiDAR maps.
Mysterious coils and mounds
Plenty of unknowns remain at Angkor, and the LiDAR surveys have revealed two previously unseen structures that nobody has been able to explain so far. The first is a complicated rectangular maze pattern dubbed the “coils,” “spirals,” or “geoglyphs.” These were first spotted outside the moat at Angkor Wat during the 2012 survey, but the 2015 survey revealed similar coils outside the enclosures at Beng Mealea and Preah Khan. At first glance, they appear to be waterworks, but Evans and his colleagues dismissed that idea because they are too shallow and are cut off from the city’s general waterworks.
Currently, the reigning hypothesis is that these rectilinear coils were specialized gardens for growing plants used in temple rituals. The often-flooded channels might have contained lotus, while the raised areas could have supported “aromatics such as sandalwood trees.”
More mysterious are the so-called “mound fields” found near some of Angkor’s largest reservoirs and canals. Unlike the residential mounds excavated by Carter and her colleagues, these mounds aren’t packed with ceramics and food remains. They are just mounds, clearly the foundations for an elevated structure or structures. Their locations suggest that they may have been related to the city’s waterworks, but of course, correlation does not equal causation. Further research is needed to unlock the secrets of the coils and mound fields.
The lost city in the sands: Inside the ancient citadel of the Black Pharaoh’s which has pyramids to rival Egypt.
This is the lost city of Meroë in Sudan, with beautifully maintained pyramids as impressive as their more famous counterparts in Egypt. However, unlike the famed pyramids of Giza, the Sudanese site is largely deserted.
The pyramids at Meroë, some 125 miles north of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, are rarely visited despite being a Unesco World Heritage site.
Sanctions against the government of longtime President Omar al-Bashir over Sudan’s long-running internal conflicts limit its access to foreign aid and donations, while also hampering tourism.
The pyramids bear decorative elements inspired by Pharaonic Egypt, Greece and Rome, according to UNESCO, making them priceless relics, Unlike their more famous counterparts in Giza, Egypt, the Sudanese site is largely deserted and visited by very few tourists each year.
The site, known as the Island of Meroë because an ancient, long-dried river ran around it, once served as the principal residence of the rulers of the Kush kingdom – one of the earliest civilizations in the Nile region – and known as the Black Pharaohs.
Their pyramids, ranging from 20 feet to 100 feet tall, were built between 720 and 300 B.C. The entrances usually face east to greet the rising sun.
‘Egypt doesn’t have the monopoly on pyramids,’ said Eric Lafforgue, a photographer who travels the world documenting tribes.
‘Sudan has many of them and discovers new ones regularly. The most beautiful and impressive pyramids form the Meroë Necropolis.’
The Unesco World Heritage website describes the site as: ‘The heartland of the Kingdom of Kush, a major power from the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D.’
It explains that the property consists of the royal city of the Kushite kings at Meroe and the nearby religious site of Naqa and Musawwarat es Sufra.
Meroë and others bear the marks of more recent history, with many marked out by their flat tops – the result of being dynamited by Italian explorer Giuseppe Ferlini, who is 1834, came and pillaged the site.
The pyramids bear decorative elements inspired by Pharaonic Egypt, Greece, and Rome, according to Unesco, making them priceless relics.
However, overeager archaeologists in the 19th century tore off the golden tips of some pyramids and reduced some to rubble, according to Abdel-Rahman Omar, the head of the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum.
Tourists are few and far between in the forgotten pyramid village of Meroë in Sudan, with around 15,000 visiting a year
The ruins of a kiosk discovered in Naga, a religious site near to the ancient Kush city of Meroe, where the rulers were one of the earliest civilisations in the Nile region
Naga, where this sculpture of a ram was one of many discovered dating back to the first century B.C., forms part of the Unesco world heritage site with Meroe and religious site Musawwarat es Sufra
On a recent day, locals reported just a few tourists and white camels roaming the site, watched by a handful of security guards.
Sudan’s tourism industry has been devastated by economic sanctions imposed over the conflicts in Darfur and other regions.
Al-Bashir’s government, which came to power following a bloodless Islamist coup in 1989, has struggled to care for its antiquities.
Qatar has pledged $135 million to renovate and support Sudan’s antiquities in the last few years. But Mr Omar said Sudan still receives just 15,000 tourists per year.
Chocolate uncovered by National Library 120 years past expiry date still almost good enough to eat
One of the world’s oldest boxes of chocolates, dating back 120 years to the Boer War, was discovered by conservators at the National Library of Australia. At the bottom of a box of personal papers from the estate of Australian bush poet Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson, the souvenir chocolate tin was discovered.
Remarkably, after more than a century, the chocolates were not only unmolested but still seemed almost good enough to eat. There were also traces of old straw packing and silver foil wrapping on the chocolate bar, marked into six fingers.
The discovery astonished staff in the Library’s conservation lab, who weren’t expecting to find Banjo’s sweets hidden amongst a career’s worth of poetry, diaries, and newspaper clippings.
Buckingham Palace commissioned the chocolates out of Queen Victoria’s private purse.
“There was quite an interesting smell when they were unwrapped,” National Library of Australia (NLA) conservator Jennifer Todd said.
“[It was] an old tin of chocolates, belonging to Banjo, with the chocolates still wrapped in the box.”
The century-old Cadbury logo is still pressed into the chocolate.
Chocolates fit for a Queen
There was no explanation provided about why Banjo Paterson had the chocolates, or — critically — why he hadn’t eaten them. But a little research unearthed some answers about the tin. It was commissioned by none other than Queen Victoria herself, to provide comfort to Boer War troops at the turn of a new century.
The tin was adorned with the royal visage, inscribed with the phrases “South Africa, 1900” and “I wish you a happy New Year, Victoria RI.”
And although intended for troops, the commemorative chocolate tins became hot items of trade at the front, as Canadian soldier Private C Jackson wrote home in December 1899.
“I have just received a box of chocolate, Her Majesty’s present to the South African soldiers … there is such a demand for them by the officers and everybody else, as mementos,” he wrote.
“In fact, I have been offered five pounds for mine, and at the Cape, as much as 10 pounds is being paid.” Banjo Paterson had shipped out to South Africa in October 1899, as a war correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, returning to Australia nearly a year later.
It’s speculated Paterson bought the chocolate tin from serving troops and, like many of the soldiers, sent it home to preserve it from the South African heat.
Chocolate company was at loggerheads with Queen Victoria
There is another twist to the tale of Banjo Paterson’s chocolates — they were particularly controversial. Cadbury UK told the ABC the initial 1899 request from Buckingham Palace was for “70,000 to 80,000-pound tins of cocoa … to be paid for out of [Queen Victoria’s] private purse” for the troops in South Africa.
The chocolates were found among possessions of Banjo Paterson.
According to an internal memo from Cadbury Brothers, “the cocoa must be made into a paste and sweetened ready for use under the rough and ready conditions of camp life — the tins to be specially made and decorated.”
But the owners of Cadbury were pacifists, and initially wanted nothing to do with supplying their products to the Boer war. The order was subsequently amended from tins of cocoa to chocolate blocks — and Cadbury at first refused to stamp its name on either the tin or the chocolate inside.
Ultimately the Palace won the diplomatic tug-of-war with Cadbury, as the Queen insisted that her troops know it was “good quality” British chocolate. Good enough, it seems, to last more than a century with only minor decay.
Crowdfunded conservation
The chocolate tin — and newspaper clippings from Banjo Paterson’s time as a war correspondent — were held by the author himself until his death in 1941, then passed down through generations of his family before being acquired by the NLA last year. Now the Library has embarked on the ambitious task of conserving and digitizing the collection to share with the world.
And, befitting “The Banjo’s” popular appeal, financing for the project had come through crowdfunding. NLA Director-General Marie-Louise Ayres said the library easily raised the $150,000 to catalogue and preserve the collection.
“Every year we ask every member of the public if they’d like to contribute to a project,” Dr. Ayres said.
“The Banjo Paterson papers is such an iconic collection we were sure that when we went out to the public and asked them for help they’d give it — and they did.”
Other treasures being conserved from the Banjo Paterson collection include an early version of “Waltzing Matilda” and a large silver gelatin portrait later reproduced on the Australian $10 note.
Unfortunately, the photograph had suffered tearing and water damage hanging in the family home — and was certainly in worse shape than Banjo’s chocolates. The Banjo Paterson collection will be available for viewing online once the project is completed.
For now, though, the chocolates will stay at the National Library of Australia, stored securely in a cool, dry place.
Scientists uncover 20,000-year-old Ice Age woolly rhino in Russia
During a search in Russia’s permafrost, an animal dating back at least 20,000 years was discovered and it is over 80% preserved and straight-up wild to see. The woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) was once a common species throughout Europe and Northern Asia.
On average, they were between 9.8 to 12.5 ft from head to tail and would weigh between 4,000 and 6,000 pounds once fully grown. Their closest living genetic relative is the Sumatran rhinoceros but looking at a picture of them they almost appear as if a unicorn made babies with an American buffalo.
These Wooly Rhinos had two horns, one big and one small(er). The bigger horn would measure up to 4.6 feet and the horn itself would weigh over 33 pounds.
As you can tell, I’m learning all of this on the fly because I’ve only ever heard of this species once before today. It’s not like this is one of those animals they taught us about in elementary school.
Well, according to the Siberian Times, archaeologists found a juvenile (estimate 3 to 5 years old) wooly rhino ‘in permafrost deposits by river Tirekhtyakh in the Abyisky ulus (district) of the Republic of Sakha.’ I did a quick search on Google Maps of that location and it’s in eastern Russia almost straight north of North Korea.
It is a little grizzly. After all, it’s a 20,000+ year old animal and not a newborn bunny. But it’s crazy to see how intact it is:
It is the best preserved to date juvenile woolly rhino ever found in Yakutia, with a lot of its internal organs – including its teeth, part of the intestines, a lump of fat and tissues – kept intact for thousands of years in permafrost
The juvenile rhino with thick hazel-colored hair and the horn, found next to the carcass was discovered in the middle of August in permafrost deposits by river Tirekhtyakh in the Abyisky ulus (district) of the Republic of Sakha.
The sensational discovery is still in the Arctic Yakutia waiting for ice roads to form so that it can be delivered to scientists in the republic’s capital Yakutsk.
It is the best-preserved to date juvenile woolly rhino ever found in Yakutia, with a lot of its internal organs – including its teeth, part of the intestines, a lump of fat and tissues – kept intact for thousands of years in permafrost.
‘The young rhino was between three and four years old and lived separately from its mother when it died, most likely by drowning’, said Dr. Valery Plotnikov from the Academy of Sciences who has been to the discovery site and made the first description of the find.
‘The gender of the animal is still unknown. We are waiting for the radiocarbon analyses to define when it lived, the most likely range of dates is between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago.
The rhino has a very thick short underfur, very likely it died in summer’, Dr. Plotnikov said. (via Siberian Times)
It’s absolutely wild that its last meal was intact in its stomach too. They are waiting on analysis of the contents from the rhino’s stomach and internal organs to try and determine what exactly it was eating.
Despite its awesome horns that I would’ve assumed was for picking up monkeys out of trees, the woolly rhinoceros primarily ate grass and sedges. Due to their massive sizes, they had to eat A LOT of grass to sustain themselves which wasn’t exactly easy during an ice age.
To read more about this fascinating discovery, you can head on over to the Siberian Times which has a lot of information about this discovery along with a few other rare discoveries from this year including two extinct cave lion cubs.
Using Ancient Farming Technique, an African Man Who Stopped a Desert
Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer from Burkina Faso, stopped desertification in his village by working together with his family to plant trees that have now grown into a vast forest. This in response to a long dry spell that, coupled with over-farming, over-grazing and over-population were plaguing the northern part of the country.
Initially, farmers in his community ridiculed him and thought he was going mad.
Reviving the forest with ancient techniques
With no access to modern tools and lack of education, he started using an ancient African farming practice called Zai, which leads to forest growth and improved soil quality.
Yacouba Sawadogo, the farmer from Burkina Faso who stopped the advance of desertification by reviving the forest using the ancient African practice of Zai
Gradually, the barren land was transformed into a forty-hectare forest containing over 96 tree and 66 plant species, many of which edible and medicinal, as well as a number of animals.
“Thomas Sankara (who was President of Burkina Faso between 1983 and 1987, editor’s note) launched an appeal to develop initiatives to stop the advancement of the desert – Sawadogo recounts – and when he came to see my work, he asked me what technique I was using and I told him it was Zai. That’s why I’m also known as Yacoub Zai”.
Two Farming Techniques
Zaï is a farming technique that has been used traditionally in the western part of the Sahel, which includes Burkina Faso. In essence, this technique involves the digging of holes in the soil that is not very permeable, so that runoff can be collected.
These holes have a depth that ranges from 5 to 15 cm (1.97-5.91 inches), and a diameter of between 15 and 50 cm (5.91-19.69 inches). Fertilizers or compost may be placed in the holes to increase the number of nutrients in the soil.
Crops may then be planted in these holes. The advantages of this technique are many. For instance, this is a simple and cheap technique that may be utilized by any farmer. It is, however, a labor-intensive technique, and therefore, the cost is higher in terms of manpower. In addition, farmers need to monitor and maintain their Zaï holes. Nevertheless, the efficacy of Zaï is evident, as its use has resulted in increased crop yield.
Another traditional technique employed by Sawadogo is known as cordons pierreux. Like Zaï, this technique is aimed at using runoff to combat desertification. Whilst the Zaï holes collect runoff, the cordons pierreux prevent the runoff from going to waste by slowing its flow.
This technique uses small blocks of rubble or stones that are arranged in a thin line across the field, which slows down the flow of runoff, thus allowing more time for the water to penetrate the earth.
Zaï farming technique.
The Man Who Stopped the Desert, the documentary
After embarking on such ground-breaking work in the semi-arid African desert, Sawadogo was featured in a 2010 documentary, The Man Who Stopped the Desert, becoming famous around the world.
In addition, he has conferred the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “alternative Nobel Prize” in 2018, “for turning barren land into forest and demonstrating how farmers can regenerate their soil with innovative use of indigenous and local knowledge”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOIWJFzx68E
The Man Who Stopped The Desert (documentary)
Partners coming on board
The technique he utilizes, Zai, has also spread to neighboring Mali, and he teaches it to the many people who come to learn from him.
“I want to design a training program that will be the starting point for many fruitful exchanges across the region and there are so many farmers from neighboring villages that visit me for advice on good quality seeds to plant,” Sawadogo says. “I’ve chosen not to keep my farming methods as secrets to myself”.
Even the Centre on International Cooperation (CIC), a foreign policy think tank based in New York University, proposes to encourage millions of Western African farmers to invest in trees.
This will help them improve their food security and climate change adaptation, according to natural resources management specialist Chris Reji.
Threats to the forest haven’t stopped hope
Today, Sawadogo is facing serious problems from several quarters. Northern Burkina Faso has become increasingly volatile due to incursions by jihadist groups and inter-communal conflict, which have brought insurgent attacks and social unrest.
An expansion project in the area has taken up a considerable portion of the forest he spent years growing: homes have been built on his land, with little compensation being offered. In addition, the entire family is on guard to protect the area from people wanting to steal wood.
However, the farmer’s message about the future of the environment and conservation remains profound. “If you cut down ten trees a day and fail to plant even once a year, we’re headed for destruction”.
