EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

3,000-Year-Old Castle Built by Mysterious Civilization Found at The Bottom of a Lake in Turkey

3,000-Year-Old Castle Built by Mysterious Civilization Found at The Bottom of a Lake in Turkey

3,000-Year-Old Castle Built by Mysterious Civilization Found at The Bottom of a Lake in Turkey
Underwater ruins of Armenian castle in lake Van ( Anadolu Ajansı )

A team of Turkish archaeologists has discovered the remains of what is believed to be a 3,000-year-old castle from the Armenian kingdom of Urartu (Ararat) submerged underwater in Lake Van.

The underwater excavations were led by Van Yüzüncü Yıl University and the governorship of Turkey’s eastern Bitlis Province. The castle is said to belong to the Iron Age Armenian civilization also known as the Kingdom of Van, Urartu, Ararat, and Armenia.

The lake itself is believed to have been formed by a crater caused by a volcanic eruption of Mount Nemrut near the province of Van. The current water level of the reservoir is about 150 meters higher than it was during the Iron Age.

“Civilizations living around the lake set up large villages and settlements while the water level of the lake was low, but they had to leave the area after it increased again,”

said Tahsin Ceylan, one of the researchers of the newspaper.

The researchers are expecting to conduct further excavations to reveal the full scale of this discovery. The discovery is expected to attract tourism.

Although now within the borders of the Republic of Turkey, the Lake, and town of Van is the very heartland of Armenian civilization since times immemorial. In fact, so much so, that it is considered the very place where Armenian ethnic identity was first born. According to the records of the 5th-century Armenian historian Movses of Khorene, Hayk (the legendary founder of the Armenian nation) settled near Lake Van in 2492 BC where he first founded the village of Haykashen and build there the mighty fortress of Haykaberd.

At the very shores of Lake, Van Hayk assembled his army and told them that they must defeat the Babylonian tyrant king Bel who had marched against him and his people, or die trying to do so, rather than become his slaves. At Dyutsaznamart (meaning: “Battle of Giants”) near Lake Van, Hayk finally defeated Bel. Hereafter Hayk named the region where the battle took place after his own name and the site of the battle Hayots Dzor (meaning: “Valley of the Armenians”). Thus the Armenian nation and its first free kingdom were born on the very shores of Lake Van after which the Armenians call themselves ‘Hay’ and their country – ‘Hayk’ or ‘Hayastan’, in honor of the legendary founder Hayk.

The ancient Hittite inscriptions deciphered in the 1920s by the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer testify to the existence of a mountain country called ‘Hayasa’ and its vessel lying around Lake Van. The Annals of Mursili (14th century BC) describes the campaigns of Mursili against Hayasa:

And when I arrived in Tiggaramma, the chief cup-bearer Nuvanza and all the noblemen came to meet me at Tiggaramma. I should have marched to Hayasa still, but the chiefs said to me, ‘The season is now far advanced, Sire, Lord! Do not go to Hayasa.’ And I did not go to Hayasa.

Map of historic Armenian with Lake Van at its center. (from Encyclopædia Britannica Online)

It was exactly the works of Movses of Khorene that led to the initial discovery of the Armenian kingdom of Van (Urartu). The existence of this kingdom was unknown to science until the year 1823 when a French scholar, J. Saint-Martin, chanced upon a passage in the ‘History of Armenia’ by Movses of Khorene who had recorded the kingdom in great detail. Inspired by these writings Jean Saint-Martin sent a team to the described location and discovered a kingdom completely unknown to Western academia at the time.

Khorenatsi had described the ancient settlements in Van and attributed them to one of the descendants of Hayk; Ara the Beautiful son of Aram. His description exactly matched, the later discovered, Assyrian clay tablet attributing the foundation of the kingdom to the first king of Urartu; King Aram (c. 860 – 843 BC).

“Urartian history is part of Armenian history, in the same sense that the history of the ancient Britons is part of English history, and that of the Gauls is part of French history. Armenians can legitimately claim, through Urartu, an historical continuity of some 4000 years; their history is among those of the most ancient peoples in the world.”

– Mack Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia, A History, 1987, revised in 2001

The lake was the center of the Armenian kingdom of Ararat from about 1000 BC, afterward of the Satrapy of Armenia, Kingdom of Greater Armenia, and the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan. Along with Lake Sevan in today’s Armenia and Lake Urmia in today’s Iran, Lake Van was one of the three great lakes of the Armenian Kingdom, referred to as the Seas of Armenia. Its name “Van” is one of the ancient Armenian words for “town” which is still reflected in many Armenian toponyms such as Nakhichevan (meaning: “place/town of descend”), Stepananvan (meaning: “town of Stepan”), Vanadzor (meaning: “valley of Van” ), Sevan, and even the capitol city of Armenia; Yerevan.

Lake Van and its adjacent town also named Van is today part of Turkey, however, its historic Armenian traces are still visible. At the very center of this lake, there is an island called Akhtamar that still holds a thousand-year-old Armenian church; the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Armenians lived in Van up until the early 20th century when Armenians were prosecuted by the Ottoman Turks during the Armenian Genocide. One of the last stands of the Armenian people known as the Resistance of Van, where over 55,000 Armenian civilians were massacred by Ottoman militias and bandits, was extensively discussed in newspapers of that time around the world.

The resistance occupies a significant place in Armenian national identity because it symbolizes the Armenians’ will to resist annihilation at the very heartland of the Armenian people.

General view of Akdamar (Akhtamar) Island and the Armenian cathedral of the Holy cross (915 AD).
Medieval Armenian gravestones, Lake Van.
An early 20th century picture of the 10th century Armenian monastery of Narekavank, which once stood near the southeastern shore of the lake.
EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Archaeologists discover almost complete 300,000-year-old elephant skeleton

Archaeologists discover almost complete 300,000-year-old elephant skeleton

This is how the ancient humans may have discovered the elephant’s carcass on a lake shore at what is now Schöningen, Germany.

Archaeologists have discovered the nearly complete skeleton of an enormous, now-extinct elephant that lived about 300,000 years ago in what is now the northern German town of Schöningen, according to new research.

Although this elephant — the Eurasian straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) — likely died of old age, meat-eaters promptly devoured it; bite marks on its bones suggest that carnivores feasted on the dead beast, and flint flakes and bone tools found near the elephant indicate that humans scavenged whatever was left, the researchers said.

“The Stone Age hunters probably cut meat, tendons, and fat from the carcass,” project researcher Jordi Serangeli, head of the excavation in Schöningen, said in a statement.

The elephant died on the western side of a vast lake, a hint that it perished from natural causes.

“Elephants often remain near and in water when they are sick or old,” Ivo Verheijen, a doctoral student in archaeozoology and paleontology at the University of Tübingen, said in the statement. In addition, the elephant, a female, had worn teeth, suggesting it was old when it died, he said. 

Archaeologists discover an almost complete 300,000-year-old elephant skeleton
This 3D image was created by stitching together 500 individual photos that were taken of the straight-tusked elephant.
The remains from the front part of the elephant’s body are shown here.
Excavator Martin Kursch uncovers one of the elephant’s feet.
The excavation site in Schöningen, Germany

Image Gallery

Researchers have found the remains of at least 10 elephants dating to the Lower Paleolithic — also known as the Old Stone Age (about 3 million to 300,000 years ago) —  over the past several years at Schöningen. But this new find is by far the most complete. The remains include 7.5-foot-long (2.3 meters) tusks — which are 125% longer than the average 6-foot-long (1.8 m) tusk of a modern African elephant, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

The researchers also found the complete lower jaw, numerous vertebrae and ribs, large bones from three of its four legs, and all five of its delicate hyoid bones, which are found in the neck and help support the tongue and voice box. 

This P. antiquus elephant had a shoulder height of about 10.5 feet (3.2 m) and would have weighed about 7.5 tons (6.8 metric tons). “It was therefore larger than today’s African elephant cows,” Verheijen said.

Near these remains, researchers found 30 small flint flakes and two long bone tools. Micro flakes embedded in these two bones suggest the ancient humans who scavenged the elephant used them to sharpen stone tools (called knapping) at the site, said project researcher Bárbara Rodríguez Álvarez, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen. 

Of note, the ancient humans who likely scavenged the elephant were not Homo sapiens. The earliest evidence of H. sapiens in Europe dates to about 45,000 years ago, according to excavations at a cave in Bulgaria, a study published last week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution found. Instead, these human scavengers were likely H. heidelbergensis, an extinct human relative who lived about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, the researchers in Germany said.

Wildlife watering hole

The lake was a popular hole for elephants, according to several of their preserved footprints just 330 feet (100 m) from the new elephant excavation site. 

“A small herd of adults and younger animals must have passed through,” Flavio Altamura, a researcher at the Department of Antiquities at Sapienza University in Rome, said in the statement. “The heavy animals were walking parallel to the lakeshore. Their feet sank into the mud, leaving behind circular tracks.”

These elephants would have lived in a comfortable climate, comparable to today’s; about 300,000 years ago, Europe was in the Reinsdorf interglacial, a warmer period bookended by two glacial (or colder) periods. Other animals thrived there, too. About 20 kinds of large animals lived around the lake, including lions, bears, saber-toothed cats, rhinoceroses, wild horses, deer, and large cattle, according to excavations. “The wealth of wildlife was similar to that of modern Africa,” Serangeli said.

All of these animals attracted ancient human hunters. Archaeologists have found the remains of 10 wooden spears and one throwing stick from 300,000 years ago, according to a study published online on April 20 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. 

The new finding was uncovered in a collaborative effort between the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen in Germany and the Lower Saxony State Office for Heritage. The research will be published in the magazine “Archäologie in Deutschland” (Archaeology in Germany) and was presented at a press conference in Schöningen on May 19.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Archaeologists reveal 4,000-year-old rock-cut tomb, artifacts in Saqqara

Archaeologists reveal 4,000-year-old rock-cut tomb, artifacts in Saqqara

A team of Egyptian and Japanese archaeologists has unveiled a rock-cut tomb believed to be more than 4,000 years old and a myriad of artifacts spanning different historical periods during its current excavation season in Saqqara Necropolis.

Waseda University and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) are conducting a joint study at the Saqqara Necropolis. Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities confirmed the finds on Saturday.

In a Facebook post, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said: “The joint Egyptian-Japanese archaeological mission between the Supreme Council of Archaeology and Waseda University has succeeded in uncovering a rock tomb from the Second Dynasty, a number of architectural elements, burials and archaeological finds in the Saqara region.

“The mission has carried out recording and archaeological documentation of all the archaeological finds found this season.

The discovery “provides invaluable insights into the history of this region,” said Nozomu Kawai, head of the Japanese team.

According to Ahram Online, the discoveries include the remains of a human buried with a colored mask and the burial of a small child, both of which are thought to date back to the Second Dynasty. According to experts, the tomb dates from 2649 to 2150 BC.

The architectural marvel, thought to date back to the Second Dynasty, has intricate designs and provides insight into the craftsmanship of ancient Egyptian builders.

The tomb’s design and the pottery discovered within it are important indicators for understanding its historical context.

An artifact at the burial site in Saqqara, Giza Governorate, Egypt, where a team discovered a Second Dynasty tomb and more artifacts at the Saqqara excavation site.

Other artifacts include a coffin from the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 BC) containing a well-preserved alabaster vessel. Burials from the Ptolemaic eras were also uncovered.

Two terracotta statues depicting the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, a deity initially prominent in funerary practices, and the child deity Harpocrates, the god of silence and secrets in the Ptolemaic periods were also discovered.

Among the notable finds are the remains of a human burial with a colored mask.

According to Ahram, the trove of discoveries included various amulets, pottery models, and ostraca, which are pieces of broken pottery with hieratic inscriptions (cursive scripts used in ancient Egypt).

Kawai said that the mission has documented all the discoveries. “We hope to uncover more secrets of the Saqqara archaeological site in the upcoming seasons, further enriching our understanding of this historically significant area,” he stated.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Funerary urn depicting Maya corn god uncovered during Maya Train work

Funerary urn depicting Maya corn god uncovered during Maya Train work

Funerary urn depicting Maya corn god uncovered during Maya Train work

Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) conducting salvage work along Section 7 of the Maya Train discovered a funerary urn with a carved image of a corn god.

According to a press announcement by INAH,  the general director of INAH, Diego Prieto Hernández, said that, in terms of its typology, this urn has been identified as a Paaktzatz-style vessel.

The funerary urn “presents a very interesting image of the corn god emerging from the leaves of a cob,” Hernández said.

According to Prieto Hernández, the urn was found near a similar vessel, which may indicate that the vessels were part of an ancient offering. Due to its typology, the clay pot has been identified as a Paaktzatz-style urn, containing human remains.

An anthropomorphic pastillage figure depicting the Maya corn god is seen on the funerary urn, according to a press release, and an owl is depicted on the lid, which is also present on the other vessel.

A funerary urn depicting the Maya corn god.

On the front of the vessel is a small anthropomorphic figure made of pastillage (a decorative technique using pieces of ceramic paste), alluding to the deity’s representation as an ear of corn in the growth stage.

In addition to the depiction of the corn god, the urn has ornamentation resembling the Mayan symbol “ik,” which represents wind and divine breath.

The ornamentation of the second vessel consists of applications on the sides, which simulate the thorns of a ceiba tree, a sacred tree among the Mayans of the past and present.

Archaeologists stated that similar images of the Maya deity have been found in figurines from the island of Jaina, in Campeche.

During the Classic Period of Maya iconography, the owl was considered an omen and a symbol of war. Paaktzatz vessels from the Río Bec region of Campeche, crafted between 680 and 770 A.D., provide evidence of this.

Archaeologists, archaeological work done through Jan. 8 on sections 5, 6 and 7 of the Maya Train has uncovered and protected 40,000 archaeological sites, some 1,000 artifacts, over 200,000 ceramic fragments, and 148 human burials.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

A tiny, 48-million-year-old primate Horse Looked Like a Badger

A tiny, 48-million-year-old primate Horse Looked Like a Badger

The 48-million-year-old beast could have resembled a modern-day badger, according to a reconstruction of a wild horse the size of a small dog.

Experts named the early equid ‘Propalaeotherium voigti’ after it was discovered in an oil pit in Messel, near Frankfurt, in southern Germany, in 2015.

The Messel Pit, which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in late 1995, is a decommissioned quarry that has yielded numerous amazingly preserved fossils.

A tiny, 48-million-year-old primate Horse Looked Like a Badger
A reconstruction of a primitive horse the size of a small dog has revealed that the 48-million-year old creature may have looked like a modern-day badger. Pictured, the P. voigti fossil

These have included mammals, fish, beetles, and even crocodiles and alligators.

Propalaeotherium voigti belonged to a genus of ancestral horses that was native to both Europe and Asia during the early Eocene epoch and broadly resembled the tapirs of today’s South America and Asia.

These creatures would have weighed in at just around 22 pounds (or 10 kilograms) and stood at around 20 inches (50 centimeters) tall. 

According to experts, P. voigti would have sported a coat much like that of a modern-day deer and would have lived in small herds.

The fossilised specimen’s short neck, arched back and splayed, nail-life ‘hooflets’ — rather that the hooves of modern horses — indicate that it was adapted for a life of foraging amid the subtropical rainforests that once covered Europe.

In fact, fossil evidence from the Messel oil pit has revealed that the diminutive horses dined on berries and leaf matter that they picked from the forest floor. 

It was not be until the late Eocene — around 33.9 million years ago — that horses in general began to evolve longer legs and shift their weight onto individual toes in order to better escape predation as their habitats shifted to grassland.

Palaeontologist Martin Fischer of the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena collaborated with artists Amir Andikfar and Jonas Lauströer to turn a high-resolution computer tomography (or CT) scan of the Propalaeotherium voigti specimen into a 3D reconstruction, pictured

It was this change, also, which resulted in the horse family moving their diet from foliage to grass — selecting for the evolution of longer, more durable teeth.

Propalaeotherium voigti is to be recognised this year — the 25th anniversary of the Messel pit obtaining UNESCO status — as the ‘heraldic animal’ by the Hessian Landesmuseum Darmstadt, which holds the largest collection of fossils from the pit.

Palaeontologist Martin Fischer of the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena collaborated with artists Amir Andikfar and Jonas Lauströer to turn a high-resolution computer tomography (or CT) scan of the specimen into a 3D reconstruction.

The reconstruction will be on display at the Hessian Landesmuseum Darmstadt from August 18, 2023.

ASIA, SAUDI ARABIA, WORLD

Scientists discover hundreds of thousands of animal, and human bones in Saudi Arabia cave

Scientists discover hundreds of thousands of animal, and human bones in Saudi Arabia cave

Although hyenas look and hunt like canines, they’re members of the mongoose family and therefore more closely related to a cat. However, just like dogs, hyenas have an affinity for hiding bones — it’s just that they can tend to go a bit overboard.

The Umm Jirsan lava tube in Saudi Arabia.

Case in point, archaeologists were left speechless after they stumbled across a lava tube cavern in northwestern Saudi Arabia that is packed with hundreds of thousands of bones gathered by striped hyenas over the course of 7,000 years.

The ultimate hoarders

The gruesome floor filled with ancient animal bones was found deep in a lava tube system — a network of caverns carved by lava flow. The site, known as Umm Jirsan, was discovered in 2007, but it was only recently that researchers ventured deep into the dark caverns.

Mathew Stewart, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, led a team of researchers who catalogued nearly 2,000 bones and teeth belonging to at least 14 different species, including cattle, horses, camels, rodents, and even humans.

Hundreds of thousands of other bones that are yet to be analyzed still lie on the cavernous floor.

Radiocarbon dating of the samples suggests the animal remains range from 439 to 6,839 years ago, which can only mean these lava tubes had been used as dens for at least 6,000 years.

Images of Saudi Arabia’s Umm Jirsan “hyena cave”: A: Entrance to the western passage and surrounding area. B: Entrance to the western passage. Note the team members on the right-hand wall for scale. C: The back chamber in which the excavation was carried out. D: Plotted sampling square before surface collection and excavation. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

The striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) is a bit smaller than spotted and brown hyenas. They have a broad head with dark eyes, a thick muzzle, and large, pointed ears, with a mane of long hair growing along the back.

Their most striking feature is the legs: the front legs are much longer than the hind legs. This gives hyenas their distinctive walk, making them seem like they’re always limping uphill.

Hyenas are nocturnal or crepuscular predators that stay out of sight during the day, preferably in a natural cave or a burrow dug into the hillside. Sometimes they may take over the dens of other creatures where they transport bones to be eaten, fed to the young, or cached for later use.

It’s a well-established fact that hyena dens aren’t tidy at all, being normal to find leftover bones scattered across the floor. However, the lava tube horde stunned even the researchers who were most familiar with the hyenas.

Hyenas will eat an entire human body — except for the skull cap

Although they didn’t find hyenas at the site, the researchers are certain this was one of their dens judging from the cuts, bites, and digestion marks left on the bones.

The presence of human skull fragments was also telling of hyena presence since the animals are known to scavenge through burial grounds in search of food. They normally will consume everything except for the top of the skull.

“The size and composition of the bone accumulation, as well as the presence of hyena skeletal remains and coprolites, suggest that the assemblage was primarily accumulated by striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena),” the authors wrote in a study published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

Molars and mandibles belonging to wild cows, rabbits, wild goats, camels, and wolves.

It’s highly unlikely that the six skullcaps with gnaw marks on them found at the site belong to humans who were killed by a hyena hunting party.

The mammals are mostly scavengers but when they do hunt they prefer to target hares, birds, and antelopes. However, the possibility that some hunter-gatherers were killed by hyena packs cannot be entirely ruled out.

Today, striped hyenas are a threatened species in Saudia Arabia but thousands of years ago they were common across the Arabian Peninsula.

The current investigation at Umm Jirsan was undertaken as part of the Paleo deserts Project, a large-scale research initiative aimed at tracking environmental and climate change in the Arabian Desert region over the past one million years.

Of particular interest is how human and animal migration in the region waxed and waned with the changing climate. This is a challenging goal since the unforgiving desert climate in the region tends to destroy any exposed organic matter.  Luckily, the Umm Jirsan lava tubes create a perfect time capsule that will give scientists material to work with for years to come.

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Well-Preserved Cave Lion Cub Found to be a 28,000-Year-Old Female

Well-Preserved Cave Lion Cub Found to be a 28,000-Year-Old Female

A nearly 28,000-year-old cave lion cub discovered frozen in the Siberian permafrost is so well preserved, you can still make out each and every one of her whiskers.

Researchers in Sweden claim the cub, nicknamed Sparta, is probably the best-preserved Ice Age animal ever uncovered and describe Sparta in Quaternary. Her teeth, skin, and soft tissue have all been mummified by the ice. Even her organs remain intact.

To date, Sparta is the fourth cave lion cub (Panthera spelaea) found buried in the permafrost of Yakutia, which lies in the northeast corner of Russia. She was discovered in 2018 by local resident Boris Berezhnev who was looking for ancient mammoth tusks among the tundra.

As wildlife hunting and trade have become more restricted, ‘tusk hunters’ like Berezhnev have begun to search for ancient ivory in the icy north. With climate change weakening the permafrost and extending the tusk hunting season, we’re finding more ancient remains – and not just from woolly mammoths. In the past few years, residents in Siberia have pulled woolly rhinos, wolves, brown bears, horses, reindeer, and bison out of the permafrost, and some of these carcasses date as far back as 40,000 years.

Clearly, these icy steppes were once home to numerous large mammals. In fact, a year before finding Sparta near the Semyuelyakh River, Berezhnev found another cave lion carcass just 15 meters (49 feet) away. This one, named Boris, showed slightly more damage, possibly from its permafrost cave collapsing, but it was still remarkably intact. 

Researchers in Sweden, who have since helped analyze the carcasses, claim both Boris and Sparta are about one to two months old. Yet despite their physical proximity and similar appearances, Boris is thought to be roughly 15,000 years older, give or take a few centuries.

Today, the little we know about cave lions mostly comes from fossils, tracks, and ancient cave art.

Mummified bodies found in permafrost are some of the best evidence we have of their existence. Their frozen carcasses look remarkably similar to modern lions in many ways, just on a much larger scale and with a much warmer coat. But one of the most iconic features of African lions, their mane, seems to be missing on cave lions.

Figure 6 from the Quaternary study: The appearance of the frozen cave lion cub mummies: (a) female Sparta; (b) male Boris. Photos of lion cubs’ heads from the side: (c) Sparta; (d) Boris; (e) Sparta mummy as seen from above; (f) dark brown ‘brush’ of Sparta’s tail.


In fact, early human artwork from the time suggests cave lions rarely sported manes, or if they did, they were extremely discrete. Some Ice Age paintings, for instance, show dark patterns of colouring on the cave lion’s face, but it’s unclear what that represents.

Boris and Sparta are both juvenile cave lions, which means it’s hard to say how their coats would have developed as they aged. Apart from some dark colouring on the backs of their ears, researchers say they are mostly covered in yellowish-brown fur.

If the cubs had a chance to grow up, experts think their fur would probably have turned more of a light grey to help them camouflage in the cold Siberian Arctic.

The presence of a mane is important because it could tell us about the social structures of cave lions. For example, whether they live by themselves or in groups with clear hierarchies.

At the moment, scientists are still debating whether cave lions during the Ice Age roamed the steppes of Siberia on their own or in pride like modern African lions.

There’s one particular painting in France’s Chauvet cave from the Ice Age that depicts nearly a dozen cave lions, both male and female, in the act of hunting bison.

“Hunting in groups can be more effective than solitary hunting when the prey is large, and cave lions would have had many such prey species available in their ecosystem, for example, mammoths and rhinoceros, when there were no other options available to them,” the authors of the recent analysis write.

“In addition, large pride would have helped to protect their kill from the competition and also to protect the cubs and young from predators.”

For now, this is all just guesswork. Even though we have found some astonishingly intact cave lions in recent years, we still don’t have enough information about these extinct predators to reach any conclusions about their social structures.

Perhaps one day, that could change. Maybe we will unearth another cave lion with some hint about their long-lost lives. Or maybe one day, we will successfully bring cave lions back to life.

“There is a very realistic chance to recreate cave lions, and it would be a lot easier than to clone a woolly mammoth,” palaeontologist and one of the study’s authors Albert Protopopov told the Siberian Times.

Some scientists have suggested we do this with woolly mammoths as well, but cave lions are a much younger species. Protopopov suggests that we could supplement their clones with some of the genes from modern African lions, making the work a bit easier. That’s obviously a controversial idea, and the reality of it is probably still a ways off.

For now, the next step is to sequence the entire genome of both Sparta and Boris. Then, we can figure out what to do with the information we collect.

ASIA, WORLD

Tajik Buddha in Nirvana – the Largest in the World: 42 feet long and 9 feet high

Tajik Buddha in Nirvana – the Largest in the World: 42 feet long and 9 feet high

Tajik Buddha in Nirvana – the Largest in the World: 42 feet long and 9 feet high

In the past, while Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan destroyed two immense statues of Buddha, art historians in neighboring Tajikistan meticulously restored a huge reclining Buddha from the same period. The world’s largest “Buddha in Nirvana.”

Tajikistan carefully preserves the artifacts of Buddhism. The country is also home to the world’s largest clay statue of Buddha in Nirvana.

It is not for nothing that the Buddha in Dushanbe attracts thousands of tourists and pilgrims every year. This is the largest statue of Buddha in Nirvana in the world. Its length is about 14 meters, and it was created as much as 1600 years ago.

The Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe became famous precisely thanks to her. Buddha today is one of the main attractions of the country.

The terra-cotta figure, found in the 1960s among the ruins of a temple in southern Tajikistan, depicts a reclining Buddha, one hand resting on his hip, the other on a pile of pillows.

Soviet archaeologists discovered the Buddha in the temple at the ruins of Adjina-Tepa, on a wind-swept field 50 miles north of the Afghan border.

Buddha in Nirvana.

Known as Buddha in Nirvana, it was created in the sixth or seventh century and is believed to be a relic from the time when Buddhism ruled over the high mountains and deep valleys of Central Asia and Afghanistan before the advent of Islam.

Like its Afghan cousins, Tajikistan’s Buddha is huge: 42 feet long and 9 feet high. The statue is housed in a hall that is a replica of the room in a Buddhist monastery where the Buddha was once kept, visited by worshipers who entered the room, walked past the statue, and walked out.

For more than 30 years after its discovery, the statue was kept in three separate pieces in the storage rooms of the Tajik Museum of Architecture and History because there was no money to restore it.

Following independence, Tajikistan invited restorers from Russia’s Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and solicited foreign grants.

A French non-governmental organization, the Agency for Technological Cooperation and Development, helped pay specialists involved in the restoration.

In early 2001, the United States allocated 30 thousand dollars for the restoration of the clay figure. A little later the Japanese government issued a grant of 260 thousand dollars to the museum.

For the final restoration of the Buddha, restorers from the Hermitage, under the direction of Vera Fomin, came to the aid of their Tajik colleagues of the Museum of Antiquities.

The restoration of the giant statue lasted two years (2000-2001). The largest clay statue of Buddha in the world appeared before the visitors of the Museum of Antiquities on September 9, 2000, the day of the 10th anniversary of the independence of Tajikistan.

More than 97% of the population of Tajikistan today are Muslims, and according to the museum’s management, caring for artifacts and ancient objects of worship from the pre-Islamic era speaks of tolerance and respect for other faiths and demonstrates the true face of a Muslim.

All In One Magazine