EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Petrified Horse with saddle and harness unearthed intact in a stable near Pompeii

Petrified Horse with saddle and harness unearthed intact in a stable near Pompeii

In a missed escape to safety from the Vesuvius eruption, some horses recently found in a 2,000-year-old stable seem to be frozen.

Just at the top of the equestrian iceberg was a horse recently discovered stuck in the ruins of a residential Pompeii villa. After the finding was confirmed last week, archaeologists have revealed that during the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius that famously buried the ancient Roman settlement, at least three horses died in the villa’s stable.

When they were struck by the toxic, pyroclastic floods that swept through Pompeii and its surroundings after midnight in the summer of 79 A.D., at least two of the animals were harnessed and may be prepared for a frantic evacuation. 

The stunning, complete plaster cast of one of the villa’s horses is the first of its kind from Pompeii. When the volcano erupted, many of the town’s residents and animals collapsed and died in place after being struck with waves of superheated poisonous gas and ash. Their decaying bodies then left hauntingly shaped voids in the hardened ash layer.

In the late 19th century, archaeologists developed a method of injecting plaster into these voids to capture more details about the dead. Since then, it’s mostly been used on humans—and an infamous chained dog—but this was the first attempt on a large mammal.

The team also cast two legs from another horse discovered nearby, but the rest of the void left by that body had been destroyed by tomb robbers, known locally as tombaroli, who were tunnelling around of the walls of the ancient villa to steal artefacts they could sell on the black market.

The bodies of several horses side-by-side in their stables.

Newfound survivor camp may explain the fate of the famed Lost Colony of Roanoke

The void and skeletal remains of a third horse were also almost completely destroyed by tombaroli, zooarchaeologist Chiara Corbino, who studied the horses, tells National Geographic.

Evidence for bits and bridles around the two cast horses suggests that they were harnessed by people trying to flee the eruption, says Massimo Osanna, general director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. The remains of the third horse are too incomplete to determine whether it was also harnessed at the time of death, says Corbino.

Operation Artemis

The villa, located in the Civita Giuliana area outside the walls of ancient Pompeii, was originally discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, then partially excavated in the 1950s and later sealed.

Investigators spotted the tombaroli tunnels last summer and alerted archaeologists from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, who then excavated the previously unknown stable area.

Italian authorities have since confirmed to National Geographic that the find is the result of a significant criminal investigation known as Operazione Artemide (Operation Artemis), led by Italy’s national gendarmerie, the Carabinieri.

This multi-year investigation took off in 2014 after thieves stole a frescoed depiction of Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, from the walls of an ancient Pompeiian house that is currently closed to the public.

By early 2015, the operation had swept up more than 140 suspects—tombaroli, illegal art dealers, and even some mafia members—in simultaneous dawn raids across 22 Italian provinces. Teams recovered some 2,000 ancient artefacts, including illegally excavated vases, coins, and architectural fragments.

According to Osanna, research at the villa has been concluded for the time being, but the archaeologists do not rule out continuing excavations in future, which might reveal yet more tragic moments frozen in time.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

This 4,500-Year-Old Ramp Contraption May Have Been Used to Build Egypt’s Great Pyramid

This 4,500-Year-Old Ramp Contraption May Have Been Used to Build Egypt’s Great Pyramid

In a 4,500-year-old quarry in Egypt, archaeologists have uncovered an ancient ramp structure that could justify how the ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids.

According to researchers from the University of Liverpool and Cairo’s French Institute for Oriental Archaeology, the Daily Mail says, the sloping ramp lined with two staircases and wooden poles may have been the location of a pulley device intended to make it easier to move large blocks of stone.

In a statement, Yannis Gourdon, co-director of the project, said This system is composed of a central ramp flanked by two staircases with numerous post holes.”

“Using a sleds which carried a stone block and were attached with ropes to these wooden posts, ancient Egyptians were able to pull up the alabaster blocks out of the quarry on very steep slopes of 20 per cent or more.”

The ancient ramps, which are located in the Hatnub quarry, are steeper than archaeologists expected.

This 4,500-year-old system used to pull alabaster stones up a steep slope was discovered at Hatnub, an ancient quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Two staircases with numerous postholes are located next to this ramp. An alabaster block would have been placed on a sled, which was tied by ropes to the wooden poles.

Previous calculations had suggested that ramps could not have been steeper than a 10 per cent grade in order to raise the blocks to the necessary height, which would have required ramps of absurdly long distances.

But by using the post holes, workers would have been able to move the stones with more force, and without dragging the massive blocks behind them.

The world has long marvelled at the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, the last of the Seven Wonders of the World that still exists.

Many archaeologists favour the theory that ramps were used to move the massive stone blocks that comprise the pyramids, but the exact nature of such a system has long remained a mystery.

“Since this ramp dates to the reign of Khufu (builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the World), our research offers the exciting possibility for offering further insights into the logistics and technologies used in constructing that astonishing building,” said Roland Enmarch, an Egyptologist who worked on the project, in a statement.

A new graphic reveals the complex system of ramps and pulleys that may have been used by the Egyptians to construct the ancient pyramids. The system raised stone blocks weighing several tonnes hundreds of feet into the air via enormous sleds, archaeologists believe

Other experts, however, aren’t so sure. Although the blocks removed from the quarry would have been about the size of those used to construct the pyramids, the site’s alabaster is much softer than the pyramids’ hard granite stone.

“It’s a stretch to take an alabaster quarry and say this is how the pyramids were built because the pyramids weren’t built out of alabaster,” Kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptian art and architecture at the Los Angeles’s University of California, told the History Channel.

“The way that the ancient Egyptians cut and moved stone is still very mysterious.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Another Possible Lost Cemetery Site Found in Florida

Another Possible Lost Cemetery Site Found in Florida

An investigation into the whereabouts of a segregation-era lost cemetery has found possible burial sites with ground-penetrating radar on MacDill Air Force Base property, according to a report in The Tampa Bay Times.

This would be the fifth lost cemetery found in the Tampa Bay area over the last 16 months. The Port Tampa Cemetery for Blacks was once near the corner of Interbay Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue. That land is now part of the base. The cemetery disappeared around the time the base opened in 1941.

There are no known records of the at least 38 bodies buried there being moved. Archaeologists began looking for the cemetery earlier this year and their report was sent to MacDill on Friday.

The red square indicates where possible graves from the Port Tampa Cemetery for Blacks were discovered on MacDill Air Force Base.

NAACP Hillsborough County Branch President Yvette Lewis also received a copy of the report. She shared it with the Tampa Bay Times. MacDill has not yet replied to a Times request for comment via email. Voicemail to a base spokesman did not pick up.

A report on Tampa cemeteries — written in the 1930s but issued in 1941 by the federal Works Progress Administration — said the Port Tampa Cemetery could be reached by starting at the corner of Interbay Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue, heading south 884 feet, turning east and going 1,327 feet.

Ground-penetrating radar in that area “identified anomalies as possible burials,” the archaeological report provided by the NAACP said. “While these anomalies were not clustered or arranged in patterns typically seen in historic cemeteries, their spacing is consistent with the use of an area as an expedient informal burial ground, where intermittent burials took place and where individual burials would not be in family groups or arranged in obvious rows.”

According to that report, there are four other areas where the cemetery could have been located:

• Immediately west of where the radar discovered grave-like anomalies. That spot is suspect because aerial maps from 1938 show it as a cleared square area.

• A 45-acre “wooded area in the northwestern area” of the base near where the radar possibly found graves. Because the archaeologists could not confirm the cemetery’s boundaries, the archaeologists recommend the “wooded tract be treated with caution in the event that human remains may be present.”

Archaeologists investigated each of those other areas with radar and dogs that can sniff human remains but found no evidence of burials. Still, those areas should be considered “sensitive,” the report read, and any work that could disturb possible graves should be avoided.

Overall, the report said, the archaeologists found obituaries and death certificates for 38 people buried in the cemetery. That included 12 stillborn infants.

The Works Progress Administration report stated it was a Black cemetery, but archaeologists did find one death record for a white burial.

The base suggests erecting a marker near Dale Mabry Gate that will honour the cemetery, according to an email from MacDill to the NAACP that Lewis also shared with the Times.

“Be it known that this plaque serves as a memorial to those dearly departed love ones who are believed to be buried on MacDill AFB at what was known as the Port Tampa Cemetery,” is suggested language for the marker.

It would also include this quote from Hillsborough County Judge Lisa D. Campbell, whose maternal grandparents buried a stillborn in the cemetery: “Through the curtain of time, we find you here, in infinite peace. We call your name and you answer in legacy and honour. Rest. Eternally.”

Port Tampa was established in the 1890s as a separate city. African Americans moved there for the jobs at the port, but they dried up once Port Tampa Bay opened to the east in the mid-1920s.

MacDill opened in 1941 and Port Tampa was annexed by the city of Tampa in 1961.

Graves from four other cemeteries have been discovered in the Tampa Bay area over the last 18 months — two in Tampa and two in Clearwater. Three of those were for Blacks. The fourth, Ridgewood Cemetery found on Tampa’s King High School campus, was for the indigent and unknown, but records indicate nearly all the burials Black.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Intact Roman Glass Vase Discovered in France

Intact Roman Glass Vase Discovered in France

According to the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Studies, an unusual vase from the late Roman period was uncovered in central France during the excavations of an ancient cemetery.

The archaeologist Michel Kasprzyk named it the “first complete specimen found to date in Gaul,” in a virtual press conference after its discovery, referring to the Celtic tribes that populated Western Europe during the 4th century and ultimately came under Roman rule.

The artefact is a diatretic vase, which means it is made from reticulated glass. Just 10 intact diatretic vases were ever recovered, according to Kasprzyk, the last of which was discovered in North Macedonia in the 1970s.

The glass vase recovered earlier this year in the French town of Autun is the first uncovered in the ancient territories of Gaul. It measures around 4.7 inches high and 6.3 inches in diameter, and is adorned with a message in relief reading “Vivas feliciter,” or “live happily.”

Deputy excavation manager Nicolas Tisserand said during the conference that for now, the piece will be “kept away from light, under drastic security conditions, before being studied and meticulously restored.”

Per a report in Le Figaro, the excavations were carried out from June to mid-September on the Gaul necropolis near Saint-Pierre l’Estrier, one of the oldest Christian churches in Burgundy.

Around 150 plots have been unearthed at the site, and they have led to the discovery of sandstone sarcophagi and lead and wooden coffins.

An array of precious gems, furniture, and jewellery have also been uncovered, including small gold earrings likely crafted for a child. 

“These exceptional and extremely rare discoveries are interesting avenues for the study of the aristocracy of Autun, precociously Christianized at the beginning of the 4th century,” said Kasprzyk.

The entire site, which includes an 11th-century basilica and monastery, has been under study by archaeologists and historians since the mid-1970s due to its rich repository of local and regional history. In 1979, the religious structure was designated a historic monument.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Archaeologists discovered ancient bedroom ‘erotica’ art in Pompeii

Archaeologists discovered ancient bedroom ‘erotica’ art in Pompeii

In the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii was a “sensual” depiction of a legendary Spartan queen who is sex with a swan. Further evidence, not that it was needed, that people just love erotic pictures.

In a bedroom in the town that was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, a newly discovered fresco capturing a scene from classical mythology was found.

The figure of Leda, impregnated by the Roman god Jupiter, who has taken the form of a swan. The incredibly detailed artwork shows Leda protecting the swan with her cloak as he sits on her lap.

Archaeologists uncovered the, incredibly vivid, fresco during works to bolster Pompeii’s structures after rains and wear-and-tear caused some ruins to collapse, the body that oversees the ancient site said.

Depictions of Leda and Jupiter were not uncommon in Pompeii but the archaeological park’s director Massimo Osanna praised the discovery as exceptional because the skilled artist had painted it to make it appear that Leda was looking at whoever entered the bedroom.

“Leda watches the spectator with a sensuality that’s absolutely pronounced,” Osanna told Italian news agency ANSA.

He noted the fresco’s context in the Greek “myth of love, with an explicit sensuality in a bedroom where, obviously beside sleep, there could be other activities.”

The painting was found in an opulent house where another splendid fresco was discovered earlier this year.

Osanna said one theory is that the owner was a rich merchant who wanted to display his good taste by filling his house with myth-inspired art.

Leda is an important figure in classical mythology. She was said to have borne children fathered by the god Zeus, the Greek version of Jupiter, and by a mortal king of Sparta. She is the mother of Helen of Troy and the twin’s Castor and Pollux.

Centuries after the destruction of Pompeii the story of the swan’s seduction of Leda became a favoured subject in Renaissance Italy and inspired works by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

The fresco is the latest in a series of impressive recent finds in Pompeii. Last Year graffiti was discovered that shifted the timeline of the catastrophic eruption by several months while the separate discovery of six skeletons huddled together shed further light on how people reacted as Vesuvius laid waste to their world.

CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

“Alien” skeleton found in Chile actually human fetus with a rare bone disorder

“Alien” skeleton found in Chile actually human fetus with a rare bone disorder

Alien? Alien? Primate Subhuman? Reluctant child? Fetus mummified? The Internet shakes at the nature of “Ata,” a bizarre 6-inch skeleton used in a recent UFO documentary. A Stanford University scientist who boldly entered the fray has now put to rest doubts about what species Ata belongs to. But the mystery is not over.

The story began 10 years ago when the diminutive remains were reportedly found in a pouch in a ghost town in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Ata ended up in a private collection in Barcelona; producers of the film Sirius latched onto the bizarre mummy as evidence of alien life.

Last fall, immunologist Garry Nolan, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Proteomics Center for Systems Immunology at Stanford in California, heard about Ata from a friend and contacted the filmmakers, offering to give them a scientific readout on the specimen. They asked him to give it a shot.

Among the apparent abnormalities, Ata sports 10 ribs instead of the usual 12 and a severely misshapen skull. “I asked our neonatal care unit how you would go about analyzing it. Had they seen this kind of syndrome before?” Nolan says. He was directed to pediatric radiologist Ralph Lachman, co-director of the International Skeletal Dysplasia Registry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.

“He literally wrote the book on pediatric bone disorders,” Nolan says. Lachman was blown away, Nolan recalls: “He said, ‘Wow, this is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’ “

To study the specimen, Nolan sought clues in Ata’s genome. He initially presumed the specimen was tens or hundreds of thousands of years old—the Atacama Desert may be the driest spot on the planet, so Ata could have been preserved for aeons.

He consulted experts who had extracted DNA from bones of the Denisovans, an Asian relative of European Stone Age Neandertals. It turned out that their protocols weren’t necessary. “The DNA was modern, abundant, and high quality,” he says, indicating that the specimen is probably a few decades old.

To the chagrin of UFO hunters, Ata is decidedly of this world. After mapping more than 500 million reads to a reference human genome, equating to 17.7-fold coverage of the genome, Nolan concluded that Ata “is human, there’s no doubt about it.” Moreover, the specimen’s B2 haplotype—a category of mitochondrial DNA—reveals that its mother was from the west coast of South America: Chile, that is.

Meanwhile, after examining x-rays, Lachman concluded that Aka’s skeletal development, based on the density of the epiphyseal plates of the knees (growth plates at the end of long bones found only in children), surprisingly appears to be equivalent to that of a 6- to 8-year-old child. If that holds up, there are two possibilities, Nolan says. One, a long shot, is that Ata had a severe form of dwarfism, was actually born as a tiny human, and lived until that calendar age.

X-rays show that Ata is no hoax, but its DNA will disappoint UFO buffs.

To test that hypothesis, he will try to extract haemoglobin from the specimen’s bone marrow and compare the relative amounts of fetal versus adult haemoglobin proteins.

The second possibility is that Ata, the size of a 22-week-old fetus, suffered from a severe form of the rare rapid ageing disease, progeria, and died in the womb or after premature birth.

Nolan hasn’t yet turned up hits for genes known to be associated with progeria or dwarfism. He’s stepping up the search for mutations through additional sequencing and casting a wider net.

Another possibility is a teratogen: a birth defect-inducing toxicant along the lines of thalidomide. Nolan plans to analyze tissue using mass spectrometry to look for toxicants or metabolites. But reports of a handful of other Tom Thumb-sized skeletons from Russia and elsewhere have Nolan leaning toward a genetic explanation.

At least one expert has a more prosaic take—but agrees that the specimen is human. “This looks to me like a badly desiccated and mummified human fetus or premature stillbirth,” says William Jungers, a paleoanthropologist and anatomist at Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York.

He notes that “barely ossified and immature elements” of the hands and feet, and the wide-open metopic suture, where the two frontal bones of the skull come together down the middle of the forehead.

“Genetic anomalies are not evident, probably because there aren’t any,” he says. Nolan responds that the rib number and epiphyseal plate densities remain a riddle; while he is open to the fetus hypothesis, he thinks that the jury is still out.

Nolan’s analysis went viral; besieged as he has been by the media circus, he doesn’t regret having gotten involved in debunking a claim of alien life. “I’m thrilled with the outcome,” he says.

Once the analyses are complete, he says, he’ll submit his findings for peer review. The other claim Nolan debunks is that Ata is an elaborate hoax. The x-rays clearly show these are real bones, complete with arterial shadows, he says. “You just couldn’t fake it,” he says, adding, with a laugh, “unless you were an alien.”

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Sculpture of Greek God Hermes Found in Athens

Sculpture of Greek God Hermes Found in Athens

According to a statement released by Greece’s Ministry of Culture and Sports, municipal workers discovered a fragment of an ancient sculpture built into a sewer line under Aiolou Street, near St. Irene Square. 

The head of an ancient statue of the Greek god Hermes has been unearthed during excavations for sewage system improvements in central Athens, the ministry of culture said Sunday.

The “original artwork dating late 4th century BC or early 3rd century BC” is in good condition, a statement said.

The marble head found just 1.3 metres (four feet) under the pavement on the busy Aiolou street on Friday, “depicts the god in a mature age and is obviously a part of a herm”, the statement added.

Herms or Hermas are sculptures, usually of the head of Hermes, and sometimes a torso, which was set on a squared column erected at road crossings as signs.

This handout picture released by the Greek Culture Ministry on November 15, 2020, shows the head of an ancient statue of the Greek god Hermes, in Athens

According to Greek mythology, Hermes was the son of Zeus and the messenger of the gods, who also protected travellers and merchants.

The ministry gave no estimate of the value of the sculpture but it was immediately transported to a warehouse of the directorate of antiquities.

On Saturday, Athens mayor Kostas Bakoyannis posted a photo of the Hermes head on his Facebook account. “Unique Athens”, he said.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Israel uncovers King David-era fortress on Golan Heights

Israel uncovers King David-era fortress on Golan Heights

The Golan Antiquities Authority’s excavations uncovered a fortified complex between the 11th to 10th centuries BCE from the time of King David. This unprecedented fortified complex raises new research concerns regarding the Iron Age settlement of the Golan.

Archaeologists claim that the fort was built by the kingdom of Geshur, an ally of King David, to control the region.

Before constructing the new Hispin neighbourhood, excavations were performed and funded by the Ministry of Construction and Housing and the Golan Regional Council, with the participation of many residents of Hispin and Nov, and students from the pre-military academies at Natur, Kfar Hanasi, Elrom, Meitzar and Katzrin.

According to Barak Tzin and Enno Bron, excavation directors on behalf of the Antiquities Authority, “The complex we exposed was built at a strategic location on the small hilltop, above the El-Al canyon, overlooking the region, at a spot where it was possible to cross the river.

The c. 1.5-m.-wide fort walls, built of large basalt boulders, encompassed the hill. In the excavation, we were astonished to discover a rare and exciting find: a large basalt stone with a schematic engraving of two-horned figures with outspread arms. There may also be another object next to them.”

The Israel Antiquities Authority excavation at the Golan’s Hispin, where a circa 11th century fort was discovered
The Israel Antiquities Authority excavation at the Golan’s Hispin, where a circa 11th century fort was discovered.

A figure carved on a cultic stone stele was found in the Bethsaida Expedition Project in 2019, directed by Dr Rami Arav of Nebraska University, at Bethsaida just north of Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee).

The stele, which depicts a horned figure with outspread arms, was erected next to a raised platform adjacent to the city gate. This scene was identified by Arav as representing the Moon-God Cult.

The Hispin stone was located on a shelf next to the entrance, and not one but two figures were depicted on it. According to the archaeologists, “It is possible that a person who saw the impressive Bethsaida stele decided to create a local copy of the royal stele.”

The cultic stele from Bethsaida discovered in the Bethsaida Excavation Project in 2019.

The fortified city of Bethsaida is considered by scholars to be the capital of the Aramean kingdom of Geshur that ruled the central and southern Golan 3,000 years ago.

According to the Bible, the kingdom maintained diplomatic and family relations with the House of David, and one of David’s wives was Maacah, the daughter of Talmi, king of Geshur.

Cities of the kingdom of Geshur were found along the Kinneret shore, including Tel Ein Gev, Tel Hadar and Tel Sorag, but such sites are rare in the Golan.

Archaeologists will now start researching the possibility that the Geshur kingdom had a more extensive presence in the Golan than was previously thought.

Following this discovery, changes in the development plans will be carried out together with the Construction and Housing Ministry so that the unique fortified complex will not be damaged.

The complex will be developed as an open area along the El-Al river bank, where educational archaeological activities will be carried out, as part of cultural heritage and a link with the past.

This aligns with the authority’s policy that learning the past through working in the field strengthens the younger generation’s bonds with their roots.

All In One Magazine