CZECH REPUBLIC, EUROPE, WORLD

Suspected Human Sacrifices Unearthed Beneath Medieval Castle

Suspected Human Sacrifices Unearthed Beneath Medieval Castle

In the 1,000-year-old ruins of Breslov Castle in Southern Moravia, archeologists have confirmed that three skeletons have been identified as victims of ritual killings.

The archaeologist Miroslav Dejmal said: “The individuals had been buried in the foundations of the older phase of the rampart right at the time of its construction.

“In very extreme positions, the three skeletons were found close to one another and were probably tied together.”

The castle in Břeclav, South Moravian, the Czech Republic, where the human sacrifice victims were found.

“These unfortunates seem to have fallen victim to some drastic pagan practice, or murder”, explains Dejmal. “It is hard to imagine that all three died at the same time by accident. And most importantly, placing them on the first layer of stones of the newly rampart and the position of the bodies, suggests they were in fact sacrificed.” 

The Sacrificial Origins of Haunted Houses

Dejmal explains that the men had been placed on the first layer of stones of a newly constructed rampart and their positions also suggested they were sacrificed.

Next week a team of anthropologists will attempt to shine light on the mystery of the three sacrificed men, to learn if they were local and perhaps related, and the archaeologist said it is possible they were prisoners of war enslaved into building the stone walls before being sacrificed or executed.

Archaeologists use the term “foundation sacrifice” when referring to burying a human being beneath, within or upon the foundations of buildings.

An article on JSTOR says in medieval times building a structure was an “affront to the spirits and deities of the land” and to appease them, sacrificial rituals were performed.

Believed to have been transformed by death, the sacrificed became protective spirits that guarded the buildings in which they were entombed, and this concept according to Seán Ó Súilleabháin in his 1945 paper “ Foundation Sacrifices ” is perhaps “the root of our modern haunted-house tales.”

Human sacrifice remains found in the South Moravia, Czech Republic.

Child Trafficking in the 11t​h Century

According to Alan Dundes 1995 paper published in The Journal of American Folklore , all across the Balkans, ballads about foundation sacrifices are so renowned that variants of the tale have been embraced as part of national identity in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Greece (among other places).

An Albanian version of the tale “ Rozafa’s Castle ,” tells of “three brothers” laying the walls of a mighty fortress when old man said “the castle spirit seeks a human life.”

And there is plenty of evidence for foundation sacrifice substitution where empty coffins buried under houses representing the dead and coins, eggs, books, candles, bottles of wine and playing cards were used as sacrificial substitutes.

An example of human sacrifice is found in the history of the small village of Vestenberg, 2 1/2 hours from Ansbach in Germany, where a large hill surrounded by a deep moat holds the foundations of ancient stone towers built by the Vestenbergs, the wealthiest family of medieval Franconia.

According to D. L. Ashliman of the University of Pittsburgh, in his paper Human Sacrifice in Legends and Myths , an eighty-year-old woman said that when Vestenberg Castle was being built, the mason built a seat into the wall for a small child whose mother had given it up to be sacrificed for “a large sum of money.”

Return to the Ancient Murder Scene

Returning to the Lednice-Valtice valley, and the early 11th-century building of Břeclav castle, considering how commonplace and widespread foundation sacrifices were at that time, the question of the three men chained together upon the first layer of foundation stones is no longer a mystery as much as it is a point of newfound archaeological interest.

As soon as next week, a new team of archaeologists and anthropologists will head to South Moravia to begin their quest aimed at illustrating the circumstances of their deaths, but they are quite convinced that they will find further layers of evidence of sacrificial ritual.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Ancient Maya kingdom with pyramid discovered in southern Mexico

Ancient Maya kingdom with pyramid discovered in southern Mexico

Since exploring for over a quarter of a century, archeologists have at last discovered the site of Sak Tz’i, a Maya kingdom that’s referenced in sculptures and inscriptions from across the ancient Maya world. But it wasn’t archaeologists who made the find.

A local man discovered a 2- by 4-foot (0.6 by 1.2 meters) tablet near Lacanja Tzeltal, a community in Chiapas, Mexico.

The tablet’s inscriptions are a treasure trove of mythology, poetry, and history that reflect the typical Maya practice of weaving together myth and reality.

A drawing (left) and a digital 3D model (right) of a stone slab found at the newly discovered kingdom.

Various sections of the tablet contain inscriptions that recount a mythical water serpent, various unnamed gods, a mythic flood, and accounts of the births, lives, and battles of ancient rulers, according to a news statement from Brandeis University in Massachusetts. 

Sak Tz’i’ sat on what’s now the border between Mexico and Guatemala, and it probably wasn’t an especially powerful kingdom, Charles Golden, an associate professor of anthropology at Brandeis University, said in the statement. 

Despite being surrounded by stronger neighbors, evidence suggests that the kingdom’s capital city was occupied for more than a millennium after being settled in 750 B.C.

The kingdom’s longevity may be due to the fortifications that surrounded its capital city. The researchers found evidence that the city was protected by a stream with a steep ravine on one side and defensive masonry walls on the other. 

The team members added that the kingdom may have benefitted from forming strategic peace deals with its more powerful neighbors.

Even though this kingdom never achieved great power, “Sak Tz’i’ was a formidable enemy and an important ally to those greater kingdoms, as evidenced by the frequency by which it appears in texts at those sites,” the researchers wrote in the study, published online in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

That said, the kingdom experienced conflict, both with its neighbors and from nature, the archaeological record suggests. For instance, there’s a figure of a dancing ruler carved into the bottom of the tablet.

This ruler is dressed like the god Yopaat, who is associated with violent tropical storms. The figure holds a lightning-bolt ax in his right hand and a stone weapon used in ritual combat in his left hand. 

What’s more, the researchers found another sculpture at the site that appears to tell of a fire that destroyed part of the city during a violent conflict with one of its neighbors.

University of Pennsylvania student Whittaker Schroder (left) and Brown University bioarchaeologist Andrew Scherer (right) excavate the remains of the Maya ball court.

Since excavation began in the summer, the researchers have identified several structures that offer insight into political, religious, and commercial life in the kingdom. These include the remains of pyramids, a royal palace, and a ball court. 

One of the capital’s most striking features, the ruins of a pyramid that once stood 45 feet (14 m) tall, is surrounded by structures that might have served as houses for elites and religious rituals, the researchers said.

The pyramid also has a number of stelae (carved stone slabs) around it, including one showing the soles of nobles’ feet facing outward toward the viewer, “an unusual depiction otherwise featured only on a few Maya vases,” the researchers wrote in the study.

In addition, the researchers uncovered a 1.5-acre (0.6 hectares) courtyard called the Plaza Muk’ ul Ton, or Monuments Plaza, where people gathered for religious and political ceremonies.  The discovery marks a major step forward in the study of the ancient Maya world.

The researchers hope further analysis of the site’s architecture and detailed inscriptions will offer new insight into the politics, economy, rituals, and warfare of the Maya civilization’s western regions.  Going forward, the archaeologists plan to use lidar — or light detection and ranging — a tool that uses lasers and can be mounted on an airplane or drone to discover architecture and topography hidden under the dense jungle canopy.

The team is especially interested in how kingdoms such as Sak Tz’i’ managed to survive for so long, despite apparently never becoming as powerful as rival kingdoms in the region.  

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Archaeology breakthrough: 2,000-year-old ‘mini Pompeii’ discovered in France

Archaeology breakthrough: 2,000-year-old ‘mini Pompeii’ discovered in France

This find took place in the district of Sainte-Colombe, southern Lyon, and was dubbed a Mini Pompei by its similarity to the Roman town buried in Naples after the Vesuvius eruption in 79 A.D.

Archaeologists have discovered vestiges of armor worn by what they believed to be a retired Roman officer, as well as beautiful mosaics and pottery frozen in time.

Like the famous Pompeii, experts believe that the city was buried under ash and debris after a huge disaster, but it did not follow a volcanic eruption.

The site’s main archaeologist, Benjamin Clement, told PBS in 2017: “So we’ve just discovered the pieces of huge armor from the first century.

“Here we have a small part of the belt and this type of decoration comes from the belt on the front of the armor.

Archaeologists uncovered a mini Pompeii
The discovery was made near Lyon

“We have all the parts of the armor, all the little parts that come out of it.

“Only 10 minutes ago we found a little sword, I’ll show it to you.”

“If you come and look, we also have all the protection for the shoulders. “

Clement explained how the findings provide insight into life over two millennia ago. He added, “Mosaics are really interesting because they are part of art, like a statue.

“But for the understanding of the lifestyle of the Roman people, most of them were from the middle and lower classes.

Ancient pottery shows how the Roman Empire was cooking and eating

The French Minister of Culture, Marie-Agnès Gaidon Bunel, added: “There has been an increase in clandestine treasure hunting in France in recent years, with objects recovered from archaeological sites, which we are not at all happy.

“The Minister of Culture is trying to combat this practice because the removal of these objects from their archaeological framework prevents us from dating the site and they are actively marketed outside of France.”

Some have called the discovery the most important of the past 50 years, as it helps to rebuild the stronghold of the Roman Empire over France.

Unlike Pompeii, tourists will not be able to get a first-hand look at the site, as it has now been reconstructed, with an apartment complex and parking.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Paleolithic Engraving Found on Burial Slab in Israel

Human Figure Detected on 14,000-year-old Burial Slab in Israel

HAIFA, ISRAEL—According to researchers Danny Rosenberg, György Lengyel, Dani Nadel, and Rivka Chasan of the University of Haifa have found an engraving on a Natufian burial slab discovered in northern Israel’s Raqefet Cave.

The human figure on a Natufian burial slab: Actual and illustration

The researchers suggest the image resembles a dancing shaman, or perhaps a person dressed as an animal, or even a lizard, and that Natufian burial rites may have been more complex than previously thought.

The stone, which was carried up a cliff and into the cave, was found covering the remains of several people who died between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago.

The picture on the slab is an extremely rare example of a recognizable human figure made by Natufians, the researchers say.

According to scholars, Danny Rosenberg, Györgie Lengyel, and Dani Nadel and researchers, Rivka Chasan, in their recent paper in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, the Natufian culture exists from around 15,000 to about 11,700 years ago and extend from Sinai in south-northern Syria and east into Jordanian desert.

The protracted period of transition from Paleolithic hunter-gatherer society to Neolithic agriculture that started around 15,000 years ago in the Mediterranean region is dubbed the Natufian period.

Small nomadic groups gave way to complex sedentary or semi-sedentary communities that existed on the threshold of an agricultural society.

At some sites, archaeologists tend to agree that the Natufians actually settled year-round in hamlets. As they settled and began to farm (and had dogs), the Natufians established what may be the earliest distinct cemeteries, where communities buried at least some of their dead.

At least some others who were dearly departed were relegated to beneath the floor of the home or laid to rest nearby.

The incised slab with the humanoid image in Raqefet Cave: front, back and profile

But it seems that when they did bury their dead, Natufian mortuary practices were elaborate.

Their funerals may have featured gathering and feasting, and – going by the newly found crude depiction – dancing.

The figure on the slab could plausibly be a shaman with an exposed penis or be dressed up as an animal, in which case the protuberance could be a tail.

Or maybe it was a lizard. In time, hopefully, more slabs will be found and examination with advanced technology will shed new light on this intriguing phenomenon, the researchers add.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Kneeling Decapitated Skeleton was Ancient Chinese Sacrifice Victim

Kneeling Decapitated Skeleton was Ancient Chinese Sacrifice Victim

HENAN PROVINCE, CHINA—According to  AncientOrigins report, archaeologists from the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Jiyuan Municipal Cultural Relics.

The undated file photo shows a stove unearthed from the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, central China’s Henan Province.

The team has uncovered a headless human skeleton in a pit at central China’s Chaizhuang site, which dates to the late Shang Dynasty (1600–1050 B.C.)

The remains were found facing north in a kneeling position with hands crossed in front, suggesting that the person had been beheaded as a human sacrifice.

Archeologists found a large number of tombs from the Late Shang Dynasty, providing evidence for the study of ancient social and ceremonial rituals, in the excavation of the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan.

The bone remains found at the site suggest that the human sacrifice was beheaded, facing north and kneeling in the pit with his hands crossed in front of him.

The undated file photo shows a relic unearthed from the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, central China’s Henan Province.

“This well-preserved human bone is shaped like the oracle bone inscription of the character ‘Kan,'” said Liang Fawei, head of the Chaizhuang site excavation project.

Liang said according to the study on records of oracle bone inscriptions unearthed in Yin Ruins, sacrificial culture prevailed in the Shang Dynasty and hieroglyphs such as “She,” “Shi,” “Tan” and “Kan” were used to describe sacrificial activities of different rituals.

Among them, the word “Kan” depicts the way of offering sacrifices of people or livestock in pits.

Oracle bone inscriptions, or Jiaguwen, are an ancient Chinese language named for their inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones.

They are a primitive form of Chinese characters and the oldest fully-developed characters in China.

The undated file photo shows human bones remains in kneeling position unearthed from the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, central China’s Henan Province.

Previously, the remains of human sacrifice discovered were mostly in a lying posture.

Experts assumed that the sacrificial method recorded in the hieroglyph “Kan” suggests burial in an upright position, which must have been a more prevailing burial than that in a lying position.

Archaeologists from the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Jiyuan Municipal Cultural Relics Team have excavated 6,000 square meters of the site since 2019.

Their survey found the ancient Chaizhuang settlement covers 300,000 square meters.

Semi-crypt-type houses, wells, ash pits, roads, and fireworks have been found at the site, along with a trove of relics including pottery, stone, bone, mussel, and jade artifacts.

ANTARCTICA, WORLD

Antarctica exposed: Very unusual 90 million-year-old dinosaur discovery made after the scan

Antarctica exposed: Very unusual 90 million-year-old dinosaur discovery made after the scan

The group, which included researchers from Imperial College London, explored fossilized remains 30 meters below west Antarctica’s ice for 90 million years.

A study of preserved roots pollen and spores revealed that the environment at that time was much warmer than previously thought. Led by geoscientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, their work suggests summer averages in this Cretaceous environment would have been in the 20Cs (68Fs).

Their findings, published in the journal Nature online, suggests Antarctica once had a thriving rainforest.

ANTARCTICA scientists made a “very unusual” discovery dating back 90 million years to the time when dinosaurs roamed the icy continent.

A video announcing the finds, detailed earlier this month: “A mission to the Antarctic has revealed fossilized plant roots preserved deep under the ocean since the time of the dinosaurs.

“It seems this freezing landscape was once home to a lush forest.

“Johann Klages and his team set out on a ship with a special drill to extract a core of material stretching down 30 meters into the seafloor.

“Studying the core, including analysis of fossilized pollen and spores, is revealing more about the environment of this ancient rainforest.

“This was one of the warmest periods in Earth’s history, with carbon dioxide levels several times higher than they are today.”

Dr. Klages explained how the team took a CT scan of what they found.

He said: “90 million years ago, a temperate rainforest existed in West Antarctica, only 900km away from the South Pole.

“When we extracted the core, we could already see what was inside and that it was very unusual, therefore we decided to scan them in a CT scanner back home.

“What we see here is an overview of the CT-scanned core and the yellow strata that we see is the sandstone, and now we transition into the network of fossil roots, and we can nicely see how the roots are connected with each other and are pristinely preserved.

“We have thin roots, we have thick roots and it’s really a network as you would get in a forest near you if you drilled down.”

Dr. Klages said that it is likely dinosaurs would have roamed the continent more than 90 million years ago.

He added: “It revealed a very warm temperature for this latitude and annual mean temperatures that are similar to those of northern Italy.

“It would be very certain that also dinosaurs and insects lived in that environment and in an environment that was dark for about four months during the year because we have the polar light.

“These extreme greenhouse climates are important for us to understand in full detail because it allows us to look into the future of how the planet will look if we excessively emit CO2 as we do now.”

EUROPE, SWITZERLAND, WORLD

The couple got missing in 1942 found in Melting Swiss Glacier

The couple got missing in 1942 found in Melting Swiss Glacier

The bodies of a couple missing for 78 years have been disclosed by a melting Swiss glacier thawed by rising temperatures. It’s not exactly a happy ending for their relatives, but at least it’s an ending, after many decades of uncertainty.

The rural residents who lived near the Diablerets mountains, Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin went out to tend to their cows on 15 August 1942 and never returned. Now DNA matching has confirmed the recovered bodies are the missing couple.

Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, one of her daughters was 4 years old at the time of disappearance and now has 79 years old. She told Le Matin, Sarah Zeines, that she was three times climbing the glacier in the hope of finding traces of her parents

Francine and Marcelin Dumoulin disappeared in 1942.

“We spent our whole lives looking for them,” says Udry-Dumoulin. “I can say that after 78 years of waiting for this news gives me a deep sense of calm.”

The couple’s remains were uncovered on the Tsanfleuron glacier above the Les Diablerets ski resort by a ski lift worker, reports the BBC, at a height of 2,615 meters (8,579 feet). According to the director of the ski lift firm, it’s likely the pair fell into a crevasse.

Les Diablerets, Switzerland

Alongside their bodies were backpacks, a watch, tin bowls, a glass bottle, and male and female shoes still encased in ice. The bodies were found lying next to each other.

After the original disappearance, villagers spent two-and-a-half months searching for the Dumoulin’s, but eventually, their seven children were resettled with other families.

Marcelin and Francine, who were 40 and 37 respectively at the time of their disappearance, are far from the only missing people to be slowly revealed as the ice recedes.

Local police report that bodies hidden for decades are often uncovered,  and they have a list of 280 missing people stretching back to 1925.

Warmer temperatures have caused maximum snow depths in the Swiss Alps to drop by 25 percent since 1970, while the ski season has shrunk by 37 days at the same time – an indication of shifting snow levels.

Experts are crediting climate change for revealing other remains, like the two Japanese climbers discovered in the Swiss Alps in 2015, and the New Zealand climber whose body was found at the foot of the country’s Tasman glacier in the same year.

Back in 2014 the Italian Alps even gave up bodies of soldiers who died in World War I.

A steady trickle of frozen artifacts has been discovered in the same region since the 1990s, including a well-preserved love letter to someone named Maria.

As for the Dumoulin’s, they can now be given a proper funeral, although their daughter Marceline isn’t going to go for the usual black clothing.

“I think that white would be more appropriate. It represents hope, which I never lost,” she says.

WORLD

Artificial Intelligence Identifies Ancient Dog Poop

Artificial Intelligence Identifies Ancient Dog Poop

The mixing of pieces of prehistoric poop is certainly not the definition of a raging good time for many people. However, for archaeologists keen on learning more about the health and diet of past populations—as well as how certain parasites evolved, the evolutionary history of the microbiome—such samples can be a veritable goldmine of information.

Nonetheless, it can be difficult to determine whether fecal samples are human or were produced by other animals, particularly dogs.

According to a recent article in the journal PeerJ, an International team of scientists has now developed a new way of combining host DNA and gut microbiome analysis with open-source machine-learning software.

The challenge of determining

Whether paleofeces and coprolites are of human or animal origin date back to the 1970s. Usually, only those samples found with human skeletons or mummies could be designated as being of human origin with any certainty.

Exceptions could be made for samples found in ancient latrines since they are highly likely to be human; samples found in trash deposits, however, are more ambiguous. 

Subsequent work to document the morphology of mammal feces has made it easier to separate human from animal samples, since there are enough differences to make such distinctions. The exception is dog poo, which bears a strikingly close resemblance to human feces in both size and shape, is frequently found at the same archaeological sites, and has a similar composition. And frankly, some ancient societies routinely ate dog meat, while dogs are known to nibble on human feces. So DNA from both can be present in the same archaeological sample.

Dog feces recovered from a 7000-year-old Chinese farming village

There are some helpful clues. For instance, ancient dog poo samples “typically contain masses of short, nibbled dog hairs and odd inclusions, such as fragments of clothing and rope,” the authors of the PeerJ paper wrote.

The presence of specific parasites can also indicate whether a sample is human or canine, such as eggs from pinworms (Enterobius vermicularis), which are typically only present in human feces. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) can also be useful for identifying plant remains (such as pollen grains) in ancient samples. Rehydrating the samples can also help make the distinction since human feces will turn the rehydration solution dark brown or black; animal samples typically remain clear or turn yellow.

Dog or human?

This new coprolite identification method, dubbed coproID, combines host DNA analysis with analysis of the distinct colonies of microbes living inside humans and dogs. The scientists used their open source software to analyze both a previously sequenced modern fecal dataset, as well as a newly sequenced dataset of paleo-poop specimens and sediments from archaeological digs.

For the latter dataset, there were 20 archaeological samples (13 paleofeces, four sediments, and three sediments taken from human pelvic bone) from 10 sites, spanning periods from the prehistoric era to the medieval era, 17 of which were newly sequenced.

They got their modern fecal samples from a long-term Boston type 1 diabetes study, as well as from a broader study on human gut microbiome biodiversity being conducted in villages in the West African Republic of Burkina Faso. Per the authors, “Feces were collected fresh and stored frozen until analysis.”

The researchers found that, using the method, they could distinguish between fecal and non-fecal samples, as well as human and canine fecal samples. “One unexpected finding of our study is the realization that the archaeological record is full of dog poop,” said co-author Christina Warinner of the Max Planck institute for the Science of Human History.

“One unexpected finding is the realization that the archaeological record is full of dog poop.”

Specifically, coproID correctly identified seven of the 13 samples of paleo-poop (five humans, two canines) and flagged the non-fecal sediments as “unknown.” Of the six fecal samples, the software couldn’t identify, three did not have sufficiently preserved microbiome components to make a determination.

The other three uncertain samples hailed from a prehistoric archaeological site in the Rio Zape Valley in Durango, Mexico, and showed both high levels of dog DNA and microbiome profiles more typical of humans.

The Rio Zape samples “could have originated from a human who consumed a recent meal of canine meat,” the authors suggest. “Dogs were consumed in ancient Mesopotamia, but further research on the expected proportion of dietary DNA in human feces is needed to determine whether this is a plausible explanation.”

The alternative is that the samples came from dogs with a different microbiome profile than the microbiome data used in the study, derived from a single study of Labrador retrievers and beagles.

“Identifying human coprolites should be the first step for ancient human microbiome analysis,” said co-author Maxime Borry. “With additional data about the gut metagenomes of non-Westernized rural dogs, we’ll be better able to classify even more ancient dog feces as in fact being canine, as opposed to ‘uncertain.'”

All In One Magazine