EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Archaeologist Busted for Faking Artifacts Showing Jesus Crucifixion

Archaeologist Busted for Faking Artifacts Showing Jesus Crucifixion

An archaeologist accused of forging a trove of Roman artifacts that allegedly show a third-century depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the early use of the Basque language. 

The Telegraph also announced that archeologist Eliseo Gil and his two former fellow members were present in a criminal court this week in the Spanish Basque Country’s capital Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Their allegation is that they have created forgeries of ancient graffiti on hundreds of pieces of pottery, glass, and brick that they claim was found in the Roman ruins at Iruña-Veleia, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) west of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Gil claimed the graffiti on the artifacts showed very early links between the Roman settlement in Spain and the Basque language; he also claimed that a drawing of three crosses scratched on a piece of ancient pottery was the earliest known portrayal of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. 

But other archaeologists have disputed the finds. Among other major discrepancies, they pointed out that some of the languages of the graffiti show that it was made in modern times. 

Gil and his former colleagues, geologist Óscar Escribano and materials analyst Rubén Cerdán, say they are not guilty of any deception.

Gil and Escribano are facing five and a half years in prison if they are found guilty of fraud and damaging heritage items, while Cerdán faces two and a half years in prison if he is found guilty of making fraudulent documents vouching for the authenticity of the artifacts.

The artifacts were inscribed with phrases in Latin from the wrong period, Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and a modern form of the Basque language.

Gil became a celebrity in Spain’s Basque Country in 2006 when he claimed that hundreds of broken ceramic pieces known as “ostraca” — covered with drawings; phrases in Latin, Greek and Basque; and Egyptian hieroglyphics — had been unearthed at the Iruña-Veleia site.

But some other archaeologists became suspicious, and they alerted officials in the Álava provincial government, which owns the Iruña-Veleia site.

The other archaeologists alleged that writing on the artifacts, supposedly from the second to the fifth centuries, contained words and spellings from hundreds of years later, modern commas and the mixed-use of uppercase and lowercase letters, a practice which dates from after the eighth century.

The graffiti on some of the artifacts also contained hieroglyphics spelling out the name of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti, who was probably unknown until her rediscovery in the early 20th century, and a Latin motto created around 1913 for an international court at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Experts also considered that the Christian iconography of the crucifixion portrayed on the most famous artifact dated from hundreds of years later than claimed. 

A scientific commission convened by the provincial government in 2008 ruled that 476 of the artifacts were manipulated or outright fakes and that Gil and his colleagues had perpetrated an elaborate fraud, according to its report. In response, the provincial government stopped Gil and his company from working at Iruña-Veleia and pressed charges, which have now come to court.

Gil maintains that he is innocent and that there is no scientific evidence that the artifacts are fake. At a news conference in 2015, Gil said the accusations, as well as his ostracism from the archaeological world, we’re like “going through torture.”

As well as ancient languages from the wrong time periods, some artifacts are inscribed with modern punctuation marks and a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters not used until more than 1,000 years later.

The prosecutor’s office of the provincial government is seeking more than 285,000 euros ($313,000) for damage to authentic artifacts from Iruña-Veleia allegedly inscribed with fake graffiti.

They’ve also asked the court to jail Gil and his associates, fine them and disqualify them from working on archaeological sites.  Many archaeologists are convinced that the artifacts are fake, but they don’t know if Gil and his associates are responsible for the inauthenticity of the artifacts. 

“I have no doubts about their falsity,” said archaeologist Ignacio Rodríguez Temiño, told BBC in an email. “There is no dispute on the Iruña-Veleia case in the academic world.”

Rodríguez Temiño works in Seville for the provincial government of Andalucía. He is the author of a paper published in the archaeological journal Zephyrus in 2017 that detailed evidence that the artifacts from Iruña-Veleia are fakes and possible reasons for the deception. He noted that Basque public companies and government bodies awarded Gil and his associates sponsorships worth millions of dollars for their work at Iruña-Veleia.

The fake artifacts were an attempt to promote certain ideas about Basque nationalism, including the early use of the Basque language and the early Christianization of what is now the Basque Country, he said. 

Both are “stories that a certain segment of Basque society longs to hear,” he said.

ASIA, BIBLICAL, ISRAEL, WORLD

How archaeologists were stunned by ‘oldest biblical text ever’ discovery near the Dead Sea

How archaeologists were stunned by ‘oldest biblical text ever’ discovery near the Dead Sea

We witnessed some biblical discoveries this year which proved true in many histories such as the watchtower of the 8th century, the church of the 5th century, a settlement connected to the crucifixion of Jesus among others.

Nevertheless, the scholars were surprised when archeologists had uncovered an almost similar text to the Dead Sea Scroll.

Jesus was born in 4 AD and crucified, it is said, by crucifixion somewhere between 30AD and 33AD and by resurrection three days later. through the resurrection, he came back. But a discovery in the 21st century shook off that belief.

The Dead Sea Scrolls date back more than 2,000 years

A team of archaeologists discovered Gabriel stone, which was a tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew text from the Dead Sea that also includes some controversial prophecies.

The biblical investigator Simcha Jacobovici recently explained these texts which date back to the 1st century BC.

The experts stated that “Perea is located on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, it is here that the most famous writings ever were unearthed. Discovered in 1948, the more than 2,000-year-old documents are the oldest biblical texts ever found.”

It should be noted that after the discovery of the Gabriel Inscriptions, archaeologists were stunned and when scholars deciphered it, they were startled by the fact that they were looking at the Dead Sea Scroll on a stone, said Jacobovici.

Church

Recently during Amazon Prime’s “Decoding the Ancients” series, Jacobovici mentioned that the similarities between the Gabriel inscriptions and the scrolls are impressive as both are written in ink, both the texts are written in two columns and have the Hebrew letters suspended from the upper guidelines.

Jacobovici said that this suggests that the stone, like the scrolls, originates from the shores of the Dead Sea.

“So in search of a Gabriel-like stone in the area of Perea, Simcha travels here to meet with archaeologist Konstantinos Politis, who’s been digging in this area for 20 years.

Among the artifacts unearthed by Politis, Simcha is struck by the ancient Jewish and Christian gravestones reminiscent of the Gabriel Inscription. And Politis has a lot more artifacts like this,” said the expert.

The discovery of Gabriel’s inscription has caused controversy due to its context. An expert in Talmudic and biblical language at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Israel Knohl, translated line 80 from the inscription which says, “in three days, live, I Gabriel command you”.

As per his interpretation, it was a command from the angel Gabriel who asked (someone) to rise from dead after three days. But he also understood that the recipient of this command was Simon of Peraea, a Jewish rebel who was killed by the Romans in 4the century BC.

Later, a biblical expert Ada Yardeni agreed to Knohl’s interpretation while other scholars have rejected Knohl’s reading.

However, later in 2011, Knohl accepted that “sign” is more relevant than “live” but the latter is a possible reading. No wonder, the year 2019 has witnessed some Biblical findings resurface to make these them relevant and controversial yet again.

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

Earth’s oldest known meteor crash site found in Australian Outback

A 2.2-billion-year-old crater is Earth’s oldest recorded meteorite impact

Throughout its life, our planet has been pummelled by countless asteroids and comets – even more so than the crater-ridden Moon. Today, thanks to Earth’s continually changing surface, there are remarkably few scars left to tell the tale.

Australia’s relatively stable and ancient landscape not only harbours potentially the largest of those blemishes, but scientists now think it also contains the oldest… by a long, long shot.

“When the age came back at 2.229 billion years, that blew our hair back,” geochemist Aaron Cavosie from Curtin University in Australia told ScienceAlert.

“We’ve known about this crater for almost 20 years, but nobody realised it was the oldest until now.” The Yarrabubba crater is a massive indent in the Western Australian outback, roughly 70 kilometres wide (44 miles).

The impact was always assumed to be ancient, but modern geological dating suggests this particular case is over 200 million years older than the next oldest impact. If humans represent the tip of your fingernail on the timeline of your outstretched arms, this would place the Yarrabubba collision smack dab in the centre of your chest, roughly half the age of Earth.

Researchers drew the estimated shape of the vanished Yarrabubba impact crater over this Google Earth image of Western Australia. The structure may be part of the oldest known impact crater on Earth.

We know this because when the meteorite hit, it sent a high-pressure shock wave through the area, rattling atoms and damaging minerals on a minute level.

“After the shock wave passes through rocks, they are compressed like a spring,” Cavosie told ScienceAlert.

“When they release, the instantly heat up, to temperatures higher than that found in a volcano. This makes some rocks in the centre of impacts vaporise, while others just melt at high temperature, often over 2,000 degrees C (3,600 F). “

Uranium is steadily converted to lead at a known pace, but when these crystals are shocked and heated up, they are suddenly rid of all lead, re-setting the ‘isotopic clock’.

Winding back the billions of years on this timeline is notoriously difficult because it essentially requires a collection of tiny isotopic traces in the crystal structure of grain no more than the width of a hair. Luckily enough, Yarrabubba had just what the researchers were looking for.

“[The] crater was made right at the end of what’s commonly referred to as the early Snowball Earth, a time when the atmosphere and oceans were evolving and becoming more oxygenated and when rocks deposited on many continents recorded glacial conditions,” says the earth and planetary scientist Chris Kirkland from Curtin University.

This means that when the meteorite hit Earth over 2 billion years ago, it may very well have collided with a continental ice sheet, kicking up huge amounts of rock, ash and dust – like a major volcanic eruption.

Running simulations, the authors calculate this situation would spread between 87 trillion and 5,000 trillion kilograms of water vapour into the atmosphere. Since water is an efficient greenhouse gas, this might have helped modify the climate and thaw the planet.

This is just a potential scenario; the exact climate conditions of this time are still under debate. Even still, the authors argue that considering Earth’s atmosphere contained only a fraction of today’s oxygen, “a possibility remains that the climatic forcing effects of H2O vapour released instantaneously into the atmosphere through a Yarrabubba-sized impact may have been globally significant.”

Impact craters like this one are precious windows into Earth’s past, and yet there are only about 190 of these structures in the world, some of which are hard to differentiate from tectonic deformation.

Palaeoclimate scientist Andrew Glikson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that while he considered the team’s dating “excellent”, in his opinion the oldest known impact structure was in Greenland 800 million years earlier, although there’s currently fierce debate over whether this impact structure was actually made by a meteorite.

Regardless of the results of that debate, research on Yarrabubba shows that extremely old impact events may very well have affected our climate history on a large scale.

“These kinds of discoveries re-write pages in the history books, and inform us about the early evolution of Earth,” Cavosie told ScienceAlert.

“That feeling never goes out of style.”

ASIA, BIBLICAL, ISRAEL, WORLD

Extinct date palms grown from 2000-year-old seeds found near Jerusalem

Extinct date palms grown from 2000-year-old seeds found near Jerusalem

Seven date palm trees have been grown from 2000-year-old seeds that were found in the Judean desert near Jerusalem. The seeds – the oldest ever germinated – were among hundreds discovered in caves and in an ancient palace built by King Herod the Great in the 1st century BC.

The find reveals how ancient farmers were selectively breeding dates from around the region, and it could give clues to how dates can survive for millennia.

Robin Allaby, a genetics expert at Warwick University who was not part of the research team said: “This is an extraordinary finding.“It shines a light on the fact that we don’t understand long-term seed viability.”

Sarah Sallon, an ethnobotanist at the Hadassah Medical Center, and colleagues have collected hundreds of seeds for growing the date plants.

Some were excavated from Masada, Israel—a mountaintop fortress on a plateau overlooking the Dead Sea that was partly built by the biblical King Herod; others came from caves around the Dead Sea used for storage and living quarters.

Extinct date palms grown from 2000-year-old seeds found near Jerusalem
Palm trees in the ruins of Babylon. Two of the seeds found are like modern Iraqi varieties of date, which may be linked to the return of Jews from exile in the sixth century BC.

The researchers soaked 34 of the most promising specimens in warm water and liquid fertilizer and then planted them in sterile potting soil.

Six seeds germinated and sprouted into seedlings that would eventually become date palms. The successful seeds were all several centimeters long, 30% larger than modern date seeds, suggesting dates that were significantly larger than modern varieties.

To verify that the seeds were ancient—and not more recent specimens deposited amid archaeological artifacts by burrowing animals, for example—the team carbon-dated seed shell fragments clinging to the roots after the seeds had successfully sprouted. The seeds were between 2200 and 1800 years old, the team reports today in Science Advances.

Initial genetic analysis of the plants grown from the ancient seeds suggests farmers in the region were growing dates that mixed traits from around the ancient world.

The result, according to classical writers like Galen, Strabo, and Herodotus, was a large, sweet, shelf-stable fruit that was a prized treat throughout the Roman world. After the collapse of the Roman empire and the Arab conquest of the region, Judean date farming declined. By the time of the Crusades, around 1000 C.E., the area’s date plantations were no more.

The new plants could be the beginning of a revival—if not of the ancient dates then at least of their best features. Study co-author Frédérique Aberlenc, a biologist at the French National Institute for Sustainable Development, says the group plans to pollinate the female plants in the near future, hopefully allowing them to bear fruit.

The idea is to produce fruit with traits that could be used to improve modern varieties, increasing their sweetness and size and resistance to modern pests, for example. The plants could also provide a window into how date plants manage to protect and preserve their DNA over the course of many centuries.

Although an older grass seed was successfully germinated after millennia frozen in Siberian permafrost, these dates are some of the oldest plants ever successfully germinated. That’s because DNA and RNA usually fragment over time into tiny pieces.

That may be enough for ancient DNA analysis, but not to grow a living date palm plant. “For these seeds to germinate, the DNA had to be intact, which goes against a lot of what we know about DNA preservation,” says University of York archaeogeneticist Nathan Wales, who was not involved with the study. “It’s not out of the question that there is some really cool biological system at work that preserves DNA [in dates].”

Sallon says the unusual conditions around the Dead Sea probably helped. “Low altitude, heat, dry conditions—all of those could affect the longevity of the embryo,” she says.

The seeds’ unusual size could have played a role, too. The more genetic material there is, the more is likely to remain whole, Allaby says. “But it’s still extraordinary. … It beggars belief that you would have entire chromosomes intact.”

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Footprints Made by Neanderthals who Walked in Lava Hours After Eruption

Footprints Made by Neanderthals who Walked in Lava Hours After Eruption

The ‘ Ciampate del Diavolo ‘ or devils trail, along the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy, was made by Neanderthals is the belief of archeologists.

About 81 footprints from at least five individuals can be seen etched in the solid lava and considering the age of the rock, experts believe the group lived ‘before our species existed’.

According to the New Scientist, the prints match the Sima de Los Huesos ‘ hominoid foot, based on size and shape: the ‘ bones ‘ pit ‘ in Atapuerca in northern Spain.

The team also determined that the prints were made hours or days after the violent volcano erupted some 50,000 years ago.

The dense collection of hot gas and volcanic materials, or pyroclastic flow, heated to more than 570 degrees Fahrenheit at the time of the eruption and based on the distance between each step, experts concluded the lava was still soft, but cool enough for a slow walk. 

Approximately 81 footprints from at least five individuals can be seen etched in the solid lava and considering the age of the rock, experts believe the group lived ‘before our species existed’

The Roccamonfina is a stratovolcano with a radius of about six miles and is located along the northern Campania coast, at a distance of about 37 miles to the northwest of Mount Somma and Mount Vesuvius. 

The volcano has been extinct for more than 50,000 years, but ash from its last explosion is well-preserved in the area. 

Archaeologists first discovered 67 footprints in 2001 that headed both down and uphill. 

The footprints are located at the top of the Roccamonfina volcano and after further examination, another uncovered 14 prints have been spotted -bringing the total to  81. 

Footprints Made by Neanderthals who Walked in Lava Hours After Eruption
The team also determined that the prints were made hours or days after the violent volcano erupted some 50,000 years ago.
The footprints are located at the top of the Roccamonfina volcano and after further examination

The tracks are believed to have been made by a group walking at a speed of 13 feet per second, Forbes reported. 

There have been many artifacts uncovered in the surrounding area that leads experts to think this mysterious group frequently visited the area – and could have harvested the rocks to make stone tools. 

‘The new data also provide some hints for exploring new hypotheses about the presence of the Palaeolithic hominins in the Roccamonfina territory, although the specific identity of the trackmakers still remains unaddressed,’ the researchers wrote in the journal published in Journal of Quaternary Science. 

‘ How many and which species were present at that time in Europe are, indeed, challenging questions, still the subject of open debate.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Board-game piece from the period of first Viking raid found on Lindisfarne

Board-game piece from the period of first Viking raid found on Lindisfarne, England.

The first wave of Viking raids in England has announced a small glass crown as a rare archaeological artifact.

On the holy island of Lindisfarne, a tidal island located off the north-western coast of England in Northumberland, a small working glass artifact was uncovered.

The Times reports that historians claim the crown was gameplay from the hnefatafl (king’s table) games strategy board gamed in England, Ireland and Scandinavia, prior to the arrival of chess in the 12th century, made from spinning blue and white glass with green glass bobbles.

The relic, which is no bigger than a grape, is described as being “of exquisite workmanship” showing influence from across the North Sea and if it is indeed a hnefatafl gaming piece it is a rare archaeological treasure linking the English island with the Vikings at the beginning of a turbulent period in English and Scandinavian history.

A ‘Viking’ teaching how to play the ancient board game, ‘hnefatafl’.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is perhaps best known for the 8th century illuminated gospels manufactured in the island’s first monastery, but in 793 AD the island was sacked in what was the first major Viking raid in Britain or Ireland.

The newly discovered gaming piece, according to a report in the Guardian, is thought to have maybe been accidentally dropped by a Viking or owned by a “high-status local” imitating Norse customs. Regardless, the treasure offers archaeologists a hard link between Lindisfarne ’s Anglo-Saxon monastery and the Norse raiders that sacked it.

Dr. David Petts, the project’s lead archaeologist and senior lecturer in the archaeology of northern England at Durham University, said that while the exact location of the island’s early wooden monastery is not known, recent excavations on the island by archaeologists and volunteers from  DigVentures have located a cemetery and a building.

DigVentures excavations on Lindisfarne are crowdfunded and greatly staffed by volunteers and this rare find was made last summer by the mother of one of the excavation teams who visited the site for a day celebrating her birthday.

Found in a trench dating to between the 8th and 9th centuries the gaming piece dates to around the time of the first Viking raid and according to DigVentures’ managing director, Lisa Westcott Wilkins, several of the most significant finds from Lindisfarne have been made by members of the public.

The “big argument”, says Wilkins, is whether you can do real archaeology with members of the public, but “you can” as long as it is properly supervised, she says.

When Wilkins was first presented with the tiny glass piece she says her “heart was pounding, the little hairs on my arms were standing up”, but as a scientist, she had trained herself out of having an emotional response to even such a fine piece, “it’s a piece of evidence, bottom line,” she said. But because the piece is “just so beautiful and so evocative of that time period,” the scientist said she just couldn’t help herself.

Game pieces, from the board game ‘hnefatafl’, similar to the glass artifact discovered in Lindisfarne.

Dr. Petts said we often tend to think of early medieval Christianity, especially on islands, “as terribly austere: that they were all living a brutal, hard life” but this was not the case for everyone.

According to the archaeologist, even if it is proven the game this piece belonged to was being played by pilgrims or wealthy monks in the period before the Vikings raided, he says, it demonstrates that the influence of Norse culture had already extended across the Nordic regions.

Moreover, the professor says, in the 8th century Lindisfarne was “a bustling place peopled with monks, pilgrims, tradespeople, and even visiting kings,” and the sheer quality of this piece suggests someone on the island lived an elite lifestyle.

Ruins of Lindisfarne priory.

According to Anglo-Saxon writers, the opening weeks of the year 793 AD were worrying times in northern England with folk reporting whirlwinds, sporadic lightning, and even “fiery dragons flying in the air”.

And while in most years the preceding famine would have fulfilled the meaning of these prophetic signs, on  June 8th darkness spread on England in the form of a fleet of heathens who appeared on the east horizon “and miserably destroyed God’s church on  Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter”.

I have been careful not to call the Viking raid on the island of Lindisfarne, the first, but the “first major” attack on England, for only four years before, in 789 AD, according to English Heritage, “three ships of Northman had landed on the coast of Wessex, and killed the king’s reeve who had been sent to bring the strangers to the West Saxon court”.

But the assault on Lindisfarne differed greatly from this skirmish because it was a direct strike at the Christian sacred heart of the Northumbrian kingdom, desecrating what is known as “the very place where the Christian religion began” in England. It was where the venerated Cuthbert (d. 687) had served as a bishop and where his remains were worshiped as that of a saint.

Stained glass depicting St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.

The message delivered by the 793 AD raid was clear: we don’t just want your fields, fish, and women, but we are here to topple your king. And in this context no more fitting a discovery could ever have been made on Lindisfarne than an easily breakable crown.

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

Scientists discover humans may have been living in Australia for 120,000 years

Scientists discover humans may have been living in Australia for 120,000 years

When did the first people arrive in Australia?…did they follow the routes we’re told about?

Makes sense, doesn’t it?…coming down through Papua New Guinea, the Asian corridor to the top end of Oz, where we’re told the earliest evidence is found…but another site may push human migrations back even further…

A site filled with blackened stones in southern Victoria, Australia has raised the possibility that humans existed on the continent 120,000 years ago — twice as long as the previously established timeframe of early human life in the land “down under.”

Moyjil research has discovered a blackened stone, which scientists believe has been fractured by heat making it a possible hearthstone from a fireplace.

It seems when the topic comes up, it’s met with skepticism or almost claims of mental impairment…It’s safe to assume that anyone traveling, exploring or whatever to an unknown land would hug the coast…food is plentiful and fresh water can be found relatively close by…That’s where I believe the evidence would lie…think about it like this… you are at the beach all set up and the tide starts rolling in. What do you do?..you move further up the beach…

Some common counters are always along the lines of…show the evidence…it can’t be proven etc…and, to be honest, it’s probably a valid argument…but in some circumstances, the evidence may be difficult to produce…

As recently as 10,000 years ago…Tasmania was cut off from mainland Australia due to rising sea levels…

An example is a place an hours run south from Wollongong. During the ice age, the Shoalhaven and Crookhaven Rivers flowed across what is now the continental shelf. Silt deposits at the Nowra Bridge exceed 70 meters (with freshwater shells at that depth) and indicate that the river would have been flowing at the bottom of a 100m gorge.

The sea reached its present level approximately 6,000 years ago and from this time numerous archaeological sites survive…

In the past, scientific research suggestive of human habitation in Australia up to 120,000 years ago had been considered and then rejected.

Several habitation sites have produced discoveries pointing to a much earlier than expected period, but the controversy led to more conservative dating. The new finding should cause a rethinking of all relevant archaeological sites…

As far as I’m aware at no point has Asia and Australia been connected…or at least not recent enough as to allow a foot crossing…so at some point a sea voyage occurred, granted not a long one, but one all the same…

Research and analysis are still ongoing…but I think there’s a good chance a missing piece of the puzzle could be under the waves…

One other find of interest is a gene that potentially shows interbreeding with species not yet discovered…

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Beads Found in 3,400-year-old Nordic Graves Were Made by King Tut’s Glassmaker

Beads Found in 3,400-year-old Nordic Graves Were Made by King Tut’s Glassmaker

The burial sites from the Danish Bronze Age dated from 3,400 years ago provided beautiful glass beads as a special treat. They aren’t just any old beads though.

They have actually turned out to have come from ancient Egypt, from the workshop that made the blue beads buried with the famous boy-king Tutankhamun.

This is not only a remarkable find, but also shows that trade routes between the far North and the Levant were established as early as the 13th Century BCE, which is an amazing discovery.

King Tut was nicknamed the boy king as he began ruling just at the age of nine.

The stunning blue beads aren’t the only evidence of trade between ancient Denmark and the region in question. Altogether, 271 glass beads have been found at 51 burials sites across Denmark with the majority originating from Nippur, Mesopotamia, which is about 50 km southeast of today’s Baghdad in Iraq.

Out of all the beads which were unearthed, twenty-three of them were blue, which was a rare color back in ancient times. In the late Nordic Bronze Age, Lapis lazuli was the most precious gemstone and blue glass was the next best thing, according to Jeanette Varberg, who is associated with the research.

One of the blue glass beads was found with a Bronze Age woman buried in Olby, Denmark, in a hollowed oak coffin.

The woman was wearing a sun disc, a smart string skirt decorated with tinkling, small bronze tubes, and an overarm bracelet made of amber beads. Clearly, she had been quite a smart and potentially wealthy woman. Another one of the beads was found as part of a necklace in a separate burial site for another woman.

One of the blue glass beads was found with a Bronze Age woman buried in Olby, Denmark.

All 23 of the blue beads were analyzed using plasma-spectrometry, which is a technique that enables comparison of trace elements in the beads without damaging or destroying them but while still offering plenty of information.

A glass bead found in a 3400-year old Danish grave turns out to have come from ancient Egypt.

The results of the analysis showed that the blue beads buried with the women actually originated from the same glass workshop in Amarna that adorned King Tutankhamun at his funeral in 1323 BCE.

King Tuts’ golden deathmask contains stripes of blue glass in the headdress, as well as in the inlay of his false beard. This proves that there was some sort of trade link between the two areas at that time.

In ancient Egypt, Glass beads were a bit of a luxury adornment and were not prevalent, except in the graves of the elite where the selection was choice but limited in quantity. So, how did cobalt beads designed for Kings and Queens end up in Nordic burial sites? Well, there is some speculation that the two ancient lands traded the luxury glass beads for amber, an element that Denmark is rich in.

Both the Egyptian and Mesopotamian glass beads which were found in the graves in Denmark suggest that there were trade routes already established 3,000 years ago.

It works the other way around too – Nordic amber has also been found as far south as in Mycenae, Greece and at Qatna, near Homs in Syria, suggesting that they were trading for one another’s precious stones and beads.

Amber was associated with the Sun God – in both ancient Egypt and the Nordic areas.

Couple this with other finds such as Cypriot copper found in Sweden and picture of an elaborate trade system begins to form. In addition to this, Nordic amber beads, as well as beads made of Egyptian glass and copper ingots, formed part of the precious cargo of the ship which was wrecked at Uluburun, outside the coast of Turkey.

All In One Magazine