Lost Maya city discovered deep in the jungles of Mexico
An aerial image of the lost Maya city was made using lidar.
Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered the remains of a lost Maya city hidden deep within the jungles of the Yucatán Peninsula. The site, located in the Balamkú ecological reserve in the Mexican state of Campeche, contains multiple large pyramids that were built during the Classic period of the Maya civilization (between A.D. 250 and 1000).
The archaeologists named the location Ocomtún, meaning “stone column” in Yucatec Maya, in a nod to the many columns dotting the site, which covers approximately 124 acres (50 hectares), according to a translated statement.
The team found the city while mapping the Maya lowlands with billions of lasers shot from an aircraft flying overhead.
This technique, known as light detection and ranging, or lidar, is a noninvasive way for researchers to understand the topography of human-made structures hidden beneath foliage. In this case, the lidar revealed a Maya city with several pyramidal structures, with the tallest towering nearly 50 feet (15 meters), according to the statement.
“The site served as an important center at the regional level,” lead archaeologist Ivan Ṡprajc, a department head at the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies in Slovenia, said in the statement.
The Maya had numerous city sites scattered across southern Mexico and Central America; the civilization reached its peak during the first millennium A.D. until it “collapsed” between 800 and 1000. (Although their culture has transformed, there are still Maya alive today.)
In addition to finding the pyramids and columns, while on foot, the archaeologists discovered ceramics, three plazas, a court used to play ballgames, and a complex comprising “low and elongated structures arranged almost in concentric circles,” according to the statement.
However, archaeologists are still investigating how the Maya used some of the structures.
“It is possible that they are markets or spaces destined for community rituals,” Ṡprajc said. “The most common ceramic types that we collected on the surface and in some test pits are from the Late Classic (600-800 AD).
However, the analysis of samples of this material will offer us more reliable data on the sequences of occupation.”
Pedra do Inga: A 6,000-Year-Old Monument Depicting an Ancient Star Map
Its most prominent symbols depict stars, the Milky Way as well as the constellation of Orion. Most glyphs etched on the massive stone represent animals, fruits, humans, and constellations, but also a plethora of yet unrecognizable symbols and images.
Its most prominent symbols depict stars, the Milky Way as well as the constellation of Orion
There’s a strange, massive stone located in the municipality of Ingá, in the interior of the Brazilian state of Paraíba called the Inga stone or Pedra do Inga.
On its surface, the ancients carved a series of intricate symbols, stars, and spirals.
The stone itself is massive; the rock formation covers an area of approximately 250 square meters.
Altogether primarily, a vertical wall 46 meters long by 3.8 meters high, and adjacent areas, there are entries whose meanings are unknown.
In addition to the stars, and spirals, ancient ‘astronomers’ carved other entries whose exact meanings remain a mystery to experts.
Despite this, scholars have agreed on the fact that depictions of stars, constellations, and ever galaxies are clearly visible on the rock’s surface.
While the exact age of the inscriptions is hard to tell, researchers argue that the rock formation can be dated back to around 6,000 years.
So far, experts have identified more than 400 engravings on the stone’s surface. Some of them are zoomorphic in nature, while others represent abstract symbols as well as stars.
There is a hypothesis that indicates the petroglyphs of Ingá are exceptionally important from an archaeoastronomical point of view.
Back in 1976, Spanish engineer Francisco Pavía Alemany began mathematically studying the archaeological monument.
His first results were published in 1986 by the Instituto of Arqueologia Brasileira (Pavía Alemany F. 1986). Alemany identified on the stone’s surface a series of “bowls” and another petroglyph etched into the vertical surface of the wall of Inga that formed a “solar calendar”, over which a gnomon projected the shadow of the first sun rays of every day.
Alemany later continued studying the stone bit this time focusing on recording and documenting a series of symbols on the surface where the observer could identify petroglyphs reminiscent of stars, that appeared to have been grouped together in what appeared to be constellations.
But it is the coexistence of the “bowls” and “constellations” on the rock’s surface which gives the Pedra do Inga its archaeoastronomical significance.
The site where the Inga Stone stands today is in constant danger of being damaged beyond repair by vandals.
See the face of ‘Ava,’ a Bronze Age woman who lived in Scotland 3,800 years ago
Researchers used scans of a Bronze Age woman’s skull to create a facial approximation of what she may have looked like 3,800 years ago.
In 1987, Scottish workers accidentally unearthed the burial of a Bronze Age woman during a road construction project.
The stone, coffin-like tomb, called a cist, contained the woman’s skeletal remains alongside grave goods, including a short-necked pottery beaker, a cow bone fragment, and small pieces of flint.
The burial in Achavanich, in northern Scotland, came to be known as the Achavanich Beaker Burial. However, not much was known about the woman, whom archaeologists nicknamed “Ava,” other than what they determined through anthropological analysis.
She was between 18 and 25 years old when she died, and based on measurements of her tibia (shinbone), she was tall, standing approximately 5 feet, 7 inches (1.71 meters), according to a study published online on June 22.
Based on her grave goods, it’s possible that Ava was part of the Bronze Age “Bell Beaker” culture, which was common in Europe during this time period and known for its distinctively round pottery drinking vessels.
Now, a new image offers a glimpse of what this mystery woman might have looked like.
To make the three-dimensional facial approximation, researchers used existing computed tomography (CT) scans of Ava’s roughly 3,800-year-old skull.
However, since the cranium was missing a mandible, or lower jaw, the team used data culled from CT scans of living donor individuals to piece together the final image, according to the study.
“Thanks to anatomical, statistical and logical data, it was possible to reconstruct” her face even without the mandible, study author Cícero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert, told Live Science in an email. “I then set out to trace the profile of the face, which we do through a combination of soft tissue thickness markers, which inform the limits of the skin,” he explained.
From there, the team performed an “anatomical deformation” of the virtual donor “that is adjusted until the donor’s skull converts to the skull of Ava,” Moraes said, “causing the skin to follow the deformation, resulting in a face compatible with the approximated individual.”
A 2016 analysis of Ava’s likeness showed her with light skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. But a separate facial approximation of Ava in 2018 analyzed her DNA and determined that she most likely had brown eyes and black hair and that “her skin [was] slightly darker than today’s Scots’,” the researchers wrote in the new study.
The researchers speculated, based on her height and facial features, that she may have been considered imposing during that time period.
Surrounded by bones, ancient Maya canoe may have been used in rituals
In 2021, underwater archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico located a mysterious canoe inside an underwater cave near the Maya city of Chichén Itzá. It was found while workers were building a tourist rail project as part of the archaeological rescue work.
Carbon analysis of the canoe determined that it was built during the 16th century. (Image credit: National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH))
It was revealed that the wooden canoe was surrounded by 38 bone remains, including a human metatarsal, armadillo, dog, turkey, and eagle bones.
Based on the initial studies in laboratories in Mexico and abroad, experts concluded that due to the presence of the large variety of bones, the boat was possibly used by the Maya in an ancient ritual before it was placed in the cavern and was flooded.
Signs of ritual
The armadillo, as per the Maya, was considered an avatar of the underworld deity commonly known as God L, who wears a cape that mirrors the design of the armadillo’s shell.
The archaeologists commented that the remains of the armadillo, which could swim easily underwater whilst holding its breath and holding its claws to the ground, would be “an allusion to the entry of said animal into the underworld.”
“There are known images in Mayan ceramics in which [the armadillo] appears as a ‘stool of the gods,’ with characters that place their feet on it,” stated Alexandra Biar, an archaeologist from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). “This would be directly linked to the archaeological evidence observed in the cenote,” with the armadillo serving as a manifestation of the deity.
Archaeologists Jesús Gallegos, along with Biar stated that the morphology of the boat itself also supports the ritual use of the canoe; since having a very heavy bow and stern, its navigation capacity should have been limited in more dynamic waters; hence they do not rule out that it had been created for symbolic purposes, they said in a statement.
Earlier claims refuted
It was also earlier reported that the Mayan canoe is tentatively dated between 830-950 AD, near the end of the Maya civilization’s classical zenith, when dozens of cities across present-day southern Mexico and Central America thrived amid major human achievements in math, writing, and art.
But after studying the wood of the canoe, Biar pointed out that the analyses for carbon 14 have shown that the organic material dates from the 16th century and not from the classical zenith period.
Measuring 1.6 meters in length and 80 cm in width, it was earlier believed that the canoe was used to transport water from the cenote or deposit ritual offerings, as per INAH.
Earlier last month, Interesting Engineering reported that INAH had discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the deep jungles of Mexico. Archaeologists named the city Ocomtun, which means “stone column” in the Yucatec Maya language.
This bronze part from a horse chariot was unearthed from one of the tombs, suggesting the entire chariot and perhaps the horses that drew it were also entombed there.
The mysterious origins of ancient bronzeware found in a part of northern China may have been uncovered, with the discovery of the ruins of a complete Bronze Age town in the area.
Archaeologists have now recovered hundreds of astonishing artifacts — including bronze drinking vessels, painted pottery, ornaments inlaid with turquoise and carved pieces of jade — at the vast Zhaigou archaeological site, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of the modern city of Yulin in Shaanxi province.
The relics, dating from more than 3,000 years ago, were made during the Shang Dynasty, which ruled northern China from about 1600 B.C. to 1046 B.C.
This bronze bird figurine inlaid with pieces of turquoise is among the roughly 3,000-year-old artifacts unearthed from the elite tombs at the Zhaigou site.
Archaeologists described the find at a news conference in Beijing by China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration.
Experts said that local people had been unearthing ancient artifacts on their farmland since the 1940s, but their origins were unknown. Now, the discovery of the entire Bronze Age settlement at the Zhaigou site, spread over 11 hills and covering more than 1.2 square miles (3 square kilometers), explains their history, the archaeologists said.
“All of the basic elements of a central settlement have been discovered at the site,” Xu Lianggao, a researcher with China’s Institute of Archaeology, told the state-owned newspaper China Daily. “We found some tombs and large-scale structures in this area in the past, but this time the complete face of a settlement has been unveiled.”
A bone delicately carved with designs that represent a catfish and inlaid with pieces of turquoise.
Ancient settlement
Shaanxi along with neighboring Henan and Shanxi, make up the so-called “cradle” of ancient Chinese civilization in the Yellow River basin; and the Shang Dynasty is the earliest for which there is archaeological evidence, although the Xia Dynasty is said to have preceded it between 2070 B.C. and 1600 B.C.
A total of 13 ancient Chinese dynasties had their capitals in Shaanxi over more than 1,000 years, explaining why the modern province has been a source of many major archaeological finds.
Excavations at the Zhaigou archaeological site started in June 2022, and the ancient town is now recognized as the largest in the region, with some of the wealthiest tombs yet discovered, according to reports of the news conference.
At least seven elite tombs have been found at the Zhaigou site since excavations started in June 2022. This bronze star inlaid with turquoise is among the hundreds of artifacts found there.
The Zhaigou site is one of the largest ever found from this early period; the grave goods in the 3000-year-old tombs include these earrings made of gold and jade.
Archaeologists think the site consists of an entire settlement with tombs, central buildings, and artisan workshops spread over 11 nearby hills. The finds include this carved bone.
The Zhaigou site includes several elite tombs with wealthy grave goods, like this jade carving of a bird. Archaeologists think it may have been the capital of a state assimilated by the Shang.
The archaeological site dates from the period of the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty, between about 1600 and 1000 BC. This tortoise shell may have been used for divination.
Archaeologists have already found nine aristocratic tombs at Zhaigou, of which seven are rectangular tombs with passages, indicating they belonged to local leaders, Sun Zhanwei, a researcher at the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology, told China Daily.
“Tomb passages symbolize a high social status,” he said. “In this hierarchy, those without a high status could not have a tomb passage.”
The Bronze Age town’s center was made with rammed-earth, a building technique in which a mix of damp soil is compacted inside a mold or framework. Buildings with different functions have also been discovered there, including artisan workshops and pottery kilns.
According to the Chinese state-owned television channel CGTN, archaeologists at Zhaigou have also unearthed several bronze pieces of horse chariots and the remains of horses, which will be “crucial evidence for exploring the emergence of chariots in China and the development of chariot burial customs.”
Archaeologists have now unearthed more than 200 items from tombs there, such as lacquerware, that are similar to those found at other Shang dynasty sites.
Experts at the news conference said that the ruins at Zhaigou may have once been the capital of a separate state that had been conquered by the Shang, who was based in the city of Yinxu in Henan, and thereafter paid tribute to them.
This 48-Million-Year-Old Fossil Has an Insect Inside a Lizard Inside a Snake
Palaeontologists have uncovered a fossil that has preserved an insect inside a lizard inside a snake – a prehistoric battle of the food chain that ended in a volcanic lake some 48 million years ago.
Pulled from an abandoned quarry in southwest Germany called the Messel Pit, the fossil is only the second of its kind ever found, with the remains of three animals sitting snug in one another.
“It’s probably the kind of fossil that I will go the rest of my professional life without ever encountering again, such is the rarity of these things,” palaeontologist Krister Smith from Germany’s Senckenberg Institute told Michael Greshko at National Geographic. “It was pure astonishment.”
Smith and his team suspect that the iguana ate a shiny insect meal, and then two days later was swallowed headfirst by a juvenile snake.
It’s unclear how the snake ultimately died, but what we do know is it got too close to the deep volcanic lake that once bubbled in the Messel Pit, and was either poisoned or suffocated by the toxic fumes.
Its corpse likely slid into the lake after death, where the Russian doll of skeletons was preserved perfectly for millions of years.
Rare ‘Nesting Doll’ Fossil Uncovers Beetle in Lizard in Snake. Snake with lizard and beetle: The rare tripartite fossil food chain from the Messel Pit.
Beetle inside a reptile inside a snake.
“To see this kind of trophic scale recorded within the gut of a snake is a very cool thing,” UK palaeontologist Jason Head from the University of Cambridge, who wasn’t involved with the study, told National Geographic.
While the combination of snake-lizard-bug is entirely unique in the fossil record, this isn’t the first time a prehistoric turducken has been discovered.
Back in 2008, Austrian researchers found a 250-million-year-old fossil that had preserved a shark that had eaten some kind of amphibian that had eaten a small fish.
It’s far more fragmentary than the Messel Pit fossil, but it was the first real indication that the food web of the time was far more complex than researchers had thought.
If anywhere is likely to be harbouring more of these types of fossils, it’s the Messel Pit, which in the past has served up the now notorious Darwinius masillae fossil, a fossilised beetle with its turquoise iridescence largely intact, and two turtles caught in the middle of doing, erm, turtle things…
The best-preserved fossils in the world from the Eocene epoch, which ran from around 56 to 34 million years ago, have been found here, and Smith and his team are already planning another trip back.
“This fossil is amazing,” says one of the researchers, Agustín Scanferla. “We were lucky men to study this kind of specimen.”
Iron Age Celtic Woman Wearing Fancy Clothes Buried in This ‘Tree Coffin’ in Switzerland
THE ANCIENT corpse of a woman buried in a hollowed-out tree has been found in Switzerland.
It’s believed the woman, who died 2,200 years ago, commanded great respect in her tribe, as she was buried in fine clothes and jewellery.
The ancient corpse of a woman buried in a hollowed out tree in Zurich, Switzerland. Pictured are parts of her remains including her skull (top), as well as her jewellery (blue, bottom)Credit: Zurich archaeology department
Scientists say the woman was Celtic. The Iron Age Celts are known to have buried members of their tribe in “tree coffins” buried deep underground.
The woman’s remains were found in the city of Zurich in 2017, according to Live Science.
An analysis carried out by the city’s archaeology department shows she was around 40 years old when she died in 200 BC.
Her bones suggest she did little manual labour during her lifetime, suggesting she was someone of importance.
Artist’s impression of the woman in her coffin. The coffin was made out of a hollowed tree trunkCredit: Zurich archaeology department
And here’s how they found itCredit: Zurich archaeology department
“A specialist determined the order of the layers of clothing on the basis of the textile, fur and leather scraps preserved in the grave,” a statement said.
“So the woman wore probably a dress made of fine sheep’s wool, about another woolen cloth and a coat of sheepskin.”
Her jewellery consisted of bronze bracelets, a delicate bronze belt and a stunning necklace strung with amber and glass beads.
And of particular interest to scientists was the clasp on the woman’s necklace.
Both ends of the bling had a clip known as a brooch that allowed the woman to string blue and yellow beads onto it.
Jewellery buried with the womanCredit: Zurich archaeology department
A necklace found in the coffinCredit: Zurich archaeology department
It’s been proposed the woman may have known a Celtic man who was buried about 260 feet from her grave.
He was found buried with a sword, shield and lance. The pair were buried in the same decade.
The Celts are most commonly associated with Britain, but actually stretched as far as modern day Turkey.
They were renowned for being fierce fighters – the conquering Romans built Hadrian’s Wall to protect themselves from the Celts who had fled north.
The Largest Dinosaur Footprint Ever Has Been Found in Australia’s ‘Jurassic Park’
On a 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) stretch of coastline in Western Australia, there lies a prehistoric treasure trove.
Thousands of approximately 130-million-year-old dinosaur footprints are embedded in a stretch of land that can only be studied at low tide when the sea – and the sharks and crocodiles that inhabit the region – can’t hide them.
What scientists found there is truly special, according to a study recently published in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
“Nowhere else in the world has as many dinosaurs represented by a track that Walmadany does,” Steve Salisbury, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland and lead author of the study, says in a video describing the area.
Included among those many dinosaur tracks is the largest dinosaur footprint ever found. At approximately 1.75 meters long (about 5 feet, 9 inches), the track came from some sort of giant sauropod, a long-necked herbivore.
Salisbury et al, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
“There’s nothing that comes close” in terms of size, Salisbury tells CNN.
But there’s far more there than one giant footprint.
The University of Queensland/Vimeo
“We see a unique dinosaur fauna that includes things like stegosaurs and some of the biggest dinosaurs to have ever walked the planet, gigantic sauropods,” Salisbury says in the video.
This was the first evidence of stegosaurs ever found in Australia.
There are also tracks from meat-eating theropods that walked on two feet and left three-toed prints with shapes similar to those many remember from the film Jurassic Park.
In this case, the three-toed prints have a special significance: in local lore, the tracks belong to Marala, an Emu man who journeyed through the region, giving laws that dictated how people should behave.
The University of Queensland/Vimeo
In a press release announcing the findings, Salisbury also describes the various other types of dinosaur tracks discovered.
“There were five different types of predatory dinosaur tracks, at least six types of tracks from long-necked herbivorous sauropods, four types of tracks from two-legged herbivorous ornithopods, and six types of tracks from armored dinosaurs,” he says.
The University of Queensland/Vimeo
The University of Queensland researchers were brought in more than five years ago by the aboriginal Goolarabooloo community, who are the traditional custodians of the area and have known about the tracks for many years.
The Western Australian Government had selected the region as a processing site for liquid natural gas, and the local groups wanted experts to help protect the region and show what was at stake.
The area was designated a National Heritage site in 2011, and two years later it was announced that the gas production project wouldn’t happen.
The University of Queensland/Vimeo
Since no equipment could be left out when the tide came in, the researchers used drones to map the area with digital photography and laser scans.
According to Salisbury, they have spent more than 400 hours out on the reefs.
“It’s such a magical place – Australia’s own Jurassic Park, in a spectacular wilderness setting,” he says in the video.
