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AUSTRALIA, WORLD

Scientists Found The Remains of a 700,000-Year-Old ‘Hobbit’ Like Human Ancestor in Indonesia

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Scientists Found The Remains of a 700,000-Year-Old ‘Hobbit’ Like Human Ancestor in Indonesia

An international team of researchers has just announced the discovery of 700,000-year-old remains that are related to a tiny species of human ancestor, lovingly referred to as ‘hobbit‘.

Found on an island in Indonesia, the newly found hominins only grew to around 1 metre in height, and it’s not year clear whether they represent a new species.

But they look remarkably like the currently known hobbit species, Homo floresiensis – the big difference is that they lived more than 600,000 years before them, which shakes up our understanding of hominin evolution.

“This find has important implications for our understanding of early human dispersal and evolution in the region and quashes once and for all any doubters that believe Homo floresiensis was merely a sick modern human (Homo sapiens),” said lead researcher Gert van den Bergh, from the University of Wollongong in Australia.

“Remarkably, these fossils, which include two milk teeth from children, are at least 700,000 years old.”

The team discovered a fragment of jaw and six teeth, from at least one adult and two children, buried beneath an ancient riverbed at a site known as Mata Menge, on the Indonesian island of Flores.

This is the same island where H. floresiensis was discovered back in 2003. Nicknamed the ‘hobbit’, the species is pretty incredible, because they might have lived alongside modern humans, right up until 12,000 years ago.

But some scientists have argued that, instead of a species of tiny hominins, the remains they were identified from could have simply been sick humans. 

A scientist’s estimation of what the “hobbits” might have looked like

This new discovery adds more evidence against that argument – in fact, it suggests that ancestors of the small-statured hominins were roaming Indonesia hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens showed up. In other words, hobbits were real.

“All the fossils are indisputably hominin and they appear to be remarkably similar to those of Homo floresiensis,” said one of the researchers, Yousuke Kaifu, from Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, who compared the fossils against modern and extinct hominins.

So where do these hobbits fit on our family tree? And how did they end up on a remote island? Publishing their results in Nature, the team proposes that they might have evolved from tall, upright species, Homo erectus, and somehow shrunk again.

“The morphology of the fossil teeth also suggests that this human lineage represents a dwarfed descendant of early Homo erectus that somehow got marooned on the island of Flores,” said Kaifu.

The fossils included some tiny teeth.

“What is truly unexpected is that the size of the finds indicates that Homo floresiensis had already obtained its small size by at least 700,000 years ago,” he added.

In fact, the discovery of ancient tools at the same site dating back 1 million years suggests the hobbits might have been living there even longer, and for some reason evolved their small stature to suit the island environment. 

If that’s the case, it would force us to do a rewrite of the hominin family tree.

“It is conceivable that the tiny Homo floresiensis evolved its miniature body proportions during the initial 300,000 years on Flores, and is thus a dwarfed side lineage that ultimately derives from Homo erectus,” said van den Bergh.

“It is also possible that this lineage pre-dates the first hominin arrival on Flores, implying speciation occurred on a stepping-stone island between Asia and Flores, such as Sulawesi.”

There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’re now a lot closer to understanding this enigma of a tiny species, and where it fits on our family tree. 

For van den Bergh, it’s a pretty huge moment, seeing as he’s been digging at the site for more than 20 years – and worked alongside Australian scientist Mike Morwood during that time, who discovered the original hobbit species in 2003, and who passed away three years ago. 

The team is now digging even deeper into the ancient riverbed to find more complete skeletal remains, which will be key to properly evaluating and classifying the discovery. They’re also looking for a precursor species that would explain the link between Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Moroccan Cave Find Shows Ancient Humans Made Clothes 120,000 Years Ago

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Moroccan Cave Find Shows Ancient Humans Made Clothes 120,000 Years Ago

Researchers have announced the discovery of bone tools in a cave in Morocco that appear to have been used to carefully remove skins and fur from the bodies of dead animals. The skins recovered this way were apparently used to make clothing.

Such a find would not normally be considered remarkable. But these particular tools are approximately 120,000 years old, which pushes the timeframe for clothes-making practices farther back into the past than scientists would have once believed was possible. 

“These bone tools have shaping and use marks that indicate they were used for scraping hides to make leather and for scraping pelts to make fur,” anthropologist and research team leader Dr. Emily Hallett explained in a press release from science journal publisher Cell Press .

“At the same time, I found a pattern of cut marks on the carnivore bones from Contrebandiers Cave that suggested that humans were not processing carnivores for meat but were instead skinning them for their fur.”

The ancient fur and leather makers were early Homo Sapiens (modern humans), who at this point had yet to leave Africa to explore and colonize the rest of the planet. Even before the original great migration that scattered their populations across the globe, the earliest humans were showing a surprisingly sophisticated range of behaviors.

“Our study adds another piece to the long list of hallmark human behaviors that begin to appear in the archaeological record of Africa around 100,000 years ago,” stated Dr. Hallett, who along with most of the scientists involved in this research project is affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.

The Contrabandiers Cave site, Morocco

Researchers don’t expect to find actual clothing samples during excavations at Contrebandiers Cave. Leather and fur clothing would be too delicate to be preserved for more than 100,000 years.

But fascinating studies of the DNA of clothing lice have shown that they likely evolved from human head lice somewhere between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. This takes their origin back to the time when modern humans were still living exclusively Africa, offering further evidence that people have been making clothes for a very long time.

The Tools Tell the Tale

As they explain in an article detailing their discoveries in the journal iScience, Dr. Hallett and her colleagues closely examined the remains of animal bones excavated over several decades from Contrebandiers Cave on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. These bones had been unearthed in layers dating back to between 120,000 and 90,000 BC, and had been found alongside the skeletal remains of humans who were using the cave throughout that time period. 

Some of the animal bones (62 to be exact) had clearly been fashioned into tools of various kinds, and one type of tool in particular caught their attention. These sturdy objects were made from the rib bones of cattle, and had been rounded into the shape of a spatula on one end. 

“Spatulate-shaped tools are ideal for scraping and thus removing internal connective tissues from leathers and pelts during the hide or fur-working process, as they do not pierce the skin or pelt,” the researchers wrote in their iScience article.

Skinned fox bones with evidence of scraping

A few of the bones Dr. Hallett and her colleagues looked at hadn’t been made into tools at all. But they contained telltale scraping marks showing that attached skin and fur had been thoroughly and carefully removed. It is notable that the bones that contained such markings came from species that likely would have possessed thick coats of fur, including ancient versions of foxes, wildcats, and jackals. 

Dr. Hallett found other marked bones that came from species similar to modern cattle. But in these cases, the cuts and scrapings had different characteristics. These marks were of a type that would be caused if meat were being deboned, in preparation for it to be used as food.

One other intriguing discovery found at the cave was a whale’s tooth , which had been partially modified and was likely used to flake stone. Dating to the same 120,000 to 90,000 BC period, this is the oldest tool made from marine mammal bone that has ever been found during an archaeological excavation, anywhere in the world. Nothing of its kind from any time period had ever been found in northern Africa before, Dr. Hallett confirmed.

Prehistoric Humans Were Doing It, and Neanderthals Were Doing It, Too

Dr. Hallett doesn’t think modern humans were the only hominin species to discover the benefits of clothes-making.  She believes that European Neanderthals were making clothing from animal skins and furs before modern humans arrived in the region, most likely approximately 40,000 years ago . 

Evidence is available that supports this theory. In 2013, archaeologists discovered a particular type of leatherworking tool known as a lissoir during excavations at two caves (Abri Peyrony and Pech-de-l’Azé) in southwestern France. These caves were once occupied by Neanderthals rather than humans, and that the tools in question had apparently been manufactured around 50,000 BC.

Commenting on the latest findings in Morocco, Dr. Matt Pope, an archaeologist from University College London, told the Guardian that these ancient humans must have been accomplished leatherworkers.

“This is an adaptation which goes beyond just the adoption of clothing,” he said. “It allows us to imagine clothing which is more waterproof, closer-fitting and easier to move in, than more simple scraped hides.” 

How the tools were fashioned and used

Dr. Pope noted that well-processed leather could have also been used to make containers, windbreaks, shelters, and many other useful products. Since Neanderthals were using similar sophisticated tools in Europe, he theorized, they must have been quite skilled at making leather products of various types as well.

Dr. Hallett is curious to see if other archaeologists exploring human-occupied caves elsewhere in Africa will find similar evidence of ancient clothes-making practices. Now that they know such evidence exists, they will know what to look for and won’t dismiss findings that push the clothes-making timeline back even deeper into prehistory.

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

‘Lost’ 2nd-century Roman fort discovered in Scotland

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‘Lost’ 2nd-century Roman fort discovered in Scotland

Archaeologists have discovered the buried remains of a Roman fort along Scotland’s ancient Antonine Wall.

Archaeologists have discovered the foundations of a “lost” second-century Roman fort in western Scotland — part of an ill-fated effort to extend the empire’s control throughout Britain.

The remains of the newfound small Roman fort are now underground. But it was one of about 41 defensive structures along the Antonine Wall, which stretched across Scotland for 40 miles. The defenses included 16 larger forts.

The fort was one of up to 41 defensive structures built along the Antonine Wall — a fortification of mainly earthworks and wood that ran for about 40 miles (65 kilometers) across Scotland at its narrowest point, according to Historic Environment Scotland (HES), a government agency.

The Roman emperor Antoninus Pius ordered the wall built in A.D. 142 in hopes of surpassing his predecessor Hadrian, who about 20 years earlier had built the fortification known as Hadrian’s Wall about 100 miles (160 km) to the south.

But his push was ultimately unsuccessful, in part because of the hostility of the Indigenous people. (At this time the Romans called them “Caledonians”; later they would call them “Picts,” from a Latin word meaning “painted people,” because of their body paintings or tattoos.) After 20 years trying to hold their new northern line, the Romans abandoned the Antonine Wall in A.D. 162 and retreated back to Hadrian’s Wall. 

Archaeologists detected the fort’s buried stone foundations with a non-invasive geophysical technique called gradiometry, which measures tiny variations in the Earth’s magnetic field.

“Antoninus Pius was effectively a bureaucrat,” historian and archaeologist John Reid told Live Science. “He had no military experience, and we think he was looking for a win that he could pretty much guarantee against the exotic Caledonian people.”

Reid explained that Roman emperors needed to claim a military victory, and so Antoninus Pius used his conquest of Scotland — while it lasted — to justify his rule.

Reid, who was not involved in the new discovery, is author of the book “The Eagle and the Bear: A New History of Roman Scotland” (Birlinn, 2023) and chairman of the Trimontium Trust, which investigates Roman archaeology in the Scottish Borders region.

“Lost” fort

Archaeologists from HES found the buried remains of the small fort, or “fortlet,” beside a school on the northwestern outskirts of the modern city of Glasgow.

The structure was mentioned by an antiquarian in 1707, but it had never been found since, despite efforts to locate it in the 1970s and 1980s.

The fort consisted of two small wooden buildings surrounded by a rampart of stone and turf up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) high, built along the south side of the Antonine Wall. The rampart had two wooden towers above gates on opposite sides — one at the north to let people, animals and wagons through the wall and one at the south.

None of the Roman forts along the Antonine Wall are now visible, although excavations have revealed evidence and its defensive ditch can still be seen in some places.

But there’s now nothing above ground to show that the fort was ever there; , and the archaeologists located its buried stone foundations using gradiometry, a noninvasive geophysical technique that measures tiny variations in Earth’s magnetic field to detect underground structures. 

About 12 soldiers — many of them local auxiliaries, or “auxilia,” who had signed on to fight for the Romans — would have been stationed at the fort for about a week at a time to keep watch over the area and prevent raids on the fortifications.

They’d then be relieved by a new detachment of soldiers from a larger Roman fort at Duntocher, about a mile (1.6 km) to the east, according to the HES statement.

Roman wall

The fort is mentioned in writings from 1707, but it hadn’t been seen since. No sign of it now remains above the ground.

There’s now little visible evidence of the Antonine Wall, and the newly discovered fortlet is a rare find.

Reid said it helped confirm a theory that the Romans first hoped to duplicate Hadrian’s Wall, with stronger and higher fortifications made of stone and a small fort, or “milecastle,” every mile of its length. “But then they thought better of it and decided they needed proper-sized forts,” he said. 

Roman fortifications in the Tayside region, north of the Antonine Wall, showed that the Romans planned to subjugate all of Scotland, but the Antonine Wall and any northern possessions seem to have been abandoned after A.D. 162, he said. 

Thereafter, Hadrian’s Wall became the northernmost frontier of the empire, seemingly until Roman rule collapsed in Britain in the early fifth century, he said.

Reid’s Trimontium Trust has conducted excavations at Burnswark Hill, the site of a Caledonian hillfort and a fortified Roman military camp built to attack it after Antoninus Pius ordered his legions to conquer Scotland north of Hadrian’s Wall. Among the finds there were whistling sling bullets that the Romans may have used as “terror weapons” against the defenders.

The reason for the Roman eventual withdrawal from the Antonine Wall and back to Hadrian’s Wall is not well understood. 

“There’s lots of debate,” Reid said. “Was it because the Romans got fed up? Was it because the Romans had trouble elsewhere? Was it because it was too costly to run two frontiers? Was it because Antonius Pius died [in A.D. 161]? Nobody’s really sure; I suspect it was a combination of all of those.”

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Human head carvings and phallus-shaped pillars discovered at 11,000-year-old site in Turkey

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Human head carvings and phallus-shaped pillars discovered at 11,000-year-old site in Turkey

Archaeologists in Turkey have found evidence that an 11,000-year-old prehistoric site was used for a ceremonial parade through a building containing phallus-shaped pillars and a carving of a human head.  

Human depictions and obelisks are seen at Karahantepe, an important settlement from the Neolithic period, in Haliliye district of Sanliurfa, Turkey.

Called Karahantepe, the site is located in southern Turkey, east of Şanlıurfa, and has a series of buildings that date back to long before writing was invented. Within the remains of the buildings, archaeologists found carvings of human heads, snakes and a fox, as well as several interestingly shaped pillars. 

For instance, the archaeologists discovered 11 pillars near a carving of a human head. “All pillars are erected and shaped like a phallus,” Necmi Karul, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Istanbul University, wrote in a paper recently published in the journal Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi. 

In the journal article, Karul did not speculate as to why the heads and phallus-shaped pillars were built or what meaning they may have had. 

This building is connected to three others to form a complex of sorts. Ancient people may have held a ceremonial parade through this complex, Karul said.

Current evidence suggests that people used the complex for “a ceremonial process, entering the building from one end and exiting at the other end, having to parade in [the] presence of the human head” and the phallus-shaped pillars, Karul wrote in the journal article.

More excavation and analysis will need to be done before archaeologists can say for certain that this parade took place, Karul wrote. 

Rather than being abandoned, the buildings were filled in with dirt, possibly during a decommissioning ceremony of sorts. 

The site dates to a similar time as Gobekli Tepe, another archaeological site that has large buildings and carvings of animals and human heads. Gobekli Tepe is also located near Şanlıurfa, and archaeologists are trying to determine the relationship between the two sites. 

Although Karahantepe was discovered in 1997, excavations didn’t start until 2019. Between those years, researchers completed several archaeological surveys of the site. Karul did not reply to requests for comment. 

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

1,000-year-old grave of Siberian warlord horseman who lost arm in battle revealed

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1,000-year-old grave of Siberian warlord horseman who lost arm in battle revealed

Archaeologists in Siberia have unearthed an elaborate grave belonging to an 11 th century warlord horseman who lost his left arm in his final battle, according to a news release in the Siberian Times .

  The ancient warrior towered nearly a foot over his peers and was buried with a bear fang on his face, a symbol of his great strength.

Archaeologists discovered the remains of the man they named Bogatyr (‘Great Warrior’) in an ancient burial mound near Omsk in south western Siberia. An analysis of the bones suggests that the warrior had been trained in combat since childhood.

He belonged to the tribes of the Ust-Ishim culture, which were the ancestors of modern indigenous Khanty and Mansi peoples. These people were known to have been small in stature at the time, so the fact that Bogatyr measured 180cm would have made him appear like a giant.

The features of Bogatyr’s grave and the fact that his lower arm and hand were buried with the rest of the corpse, but severed from it, suggests that this Siberian warrior died in battle.

“Our warrior was killed in the battle. His left arm was severed in battle and placed near the body, and his shoulder was broken. But he was buried according to ritual which means he was a respected person.

All the elements of the ritual give us an opportunity to discover historical and political conditions of the epoch the warrior lived in,” said archaeologist Mikhail Korusenko, who led the expedition.

The grave of the Siberian warlord. His left lower arm can be seen severed from the rest of his body. Credit: Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, Siberian branch of Russian Academy of Sciences.

Bogatyr was buried with mirror and a bronze plate, which lay on his chest, 25 war arrows made from metal and bone that are still sharp, bronze tools, a bronze cauldron with the remains of food to nourish him in the afterlife, a horse’s bridle, suggesting he was a horseman, and remains of leather and fur, which may have formed part of his clothing or were the quiver decorations on his arrow.

The researchers believe that the mirror, which measured 10cm in diameter, may have been worn as an amulet and was placed on his chest as a tool to communicate with the gods. 

The bronze mirror measuring 10cm in diameter, which was found on the warrior’s chest. Picture: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian branch of Russian Academy of Sciences

Bogatyr was buried with a death mask, most of which had disintegrated. However, researchers were able to determine that the mask was originally comprised of fabric and included pockets over the eyes and mouth which contained metal fish figurines.

The fish were deliberately snapped in half, which may have been a ritualistic act that held some religious importance. Next to his nose was the massive fang of a bear, a sign of his strength and power, according to Mr. Korusenko.

The death mask, with number 4 marking the bear’s fang, and numbers 2 and 4 showing metal fish figurines with broken-off heads that were covering the warrior’s eye sockets. Picture: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian branch of Russian Academy of Sciences

Mr. Korusenko said that the grave of the warrior is “a truly unique find which would allow us to fill pages about not only the cultural, but the military history of this part of the region, as we know very little about this particular period of time.”

ROMAN, WORLD

‘Liquid gypsum’ burial from Roman Britain scanned in 3D, revealing 1,700-year-old secrets

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‘Liquid gypsum’ burial from Roman Britain scanned in 3D, revealing 1,700-year-old secrets

About 1,700 years ago, liquid gypsum was poured over the remains of an elite family in Roman Britain.

A researcher scans the negative cavity of a liquid gypsum burial from the Roman era.

About 1,700 years ago, a wealthy Roman family was buried with a bizarre material — liquid gypsum — poured over their corpses. Now, a noninvasive 3D scan of this burial has revealed the insides of their burial cocoon.

Gypsum is a mineral and key ingredient in cement and plaster that, on rare occasions, Roman-era people used in burials. Once the deceased were placed in lead or stone coffins, liquid gypsum was poured over the bodies, which then hardened into protective shells. After that, the coffins were buried in the ground

Most of the coffins’ contents eventually decayed, leaving behind plaster casts with cavities similar to those of the victims discovered at Pompeii. 

The scan’s finding is “unparalleled,” as these gypsum cavities are filled with details, preserving imprints of shrouds, clothes, footwear and even weaving patterns, according to a statement from the University of York in the U.K. 

The gypsum remains from the roughly 1,700-year-old burial of the two adults and infant from Roman Britain.

The burial examined, the multibody grave from York, is presumed to be that of a family who died simultaneously around 1,700 years ago. The scan revealed the contours of two adult bodies, as well as that of an infant who had been wrapped in cloth bands.

Even the small ties used to bind the burial shroud around one of the adults’ heads were visible from the scans.

The remains of a liquid gypsum burial from a long and narrow stone coffin. The gypsum cavity reveals that the body was once wrapped in cloth and that the poured gypsum did not cover the feet.

“The Roman family gypsum casing is particularly valuable because neither the skeletons, nor the coffin, were retained after their discovery in the 19th c[entury],” when there was a building boom in and around the city, project principal investigator Maureen Carroll, chair of Roman archaeology at the University of York, in an email. 

Remarkably, the casing reveals more than the skeletons could, she said. “We are very lucky to have this casing, as it shows the precise position of the bodies and their relationship to each other exactly at the moment when the liquid gypsum was poured over them and the lid of the coffin closed about 1700 years ago!”

However, it’s still a mystery why Romans poured gypsum into coffins. Grave goods indicate that gypsum burials were reserved for an elite social class.

Traces of aromatic resins from Arabia and the Mediterranean have been discovered in other gypsum burials from York. These resins were luxuries accessible only to the very wealthy.

Archaeologists have also discovered gypsum burials in Europe and North Africa, which were also occupied by the Roman Empire, but the burials are most common from the third and fourth centuries in Britain, with York and the surrounding region sporting about 50 of them — the highest concentration of gypsum burials discovered to date, Carroll said.

“3D scanning has never before been applied to the material in Britain or any of the other gypsum/plaster/chalk burials elsewhere,” Carroll noted.

Next, the team plans to scan all 16 gypsum burial cavities in the York museum, in hopes of identifying characteristics of those interred, such as their age, sex, health and region of origin, according to the statement.

The researchers presented their findings, which were done in partnership with the York Museums Trust and Heritage360, on June 3 at the York Festival of Ideas.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

METAL DETECTORIST UNEARTHS STUNNING £15,000 GOLD HAT PIN FROM 1485 WHICH MAY HAVE BELONGED TO KING EDWARD IV

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Metal detectorist unearths stunning £15,000 gold hat pin from 1485 which may have belonged to King Edward IV

In a region in Lincolnshire, England, a metal detector discovered a silver hat pin from the 15th century.

It is thought that the jewel belonged to Edward IV, a prince who was known in the Wars of the Roses for both his good looks and his spectacular achievements.

The ring is estimated as being worth as much as $18,000. Lisa Grace, 42, an amateur detectorist, discovered the medieval jewel, which is in pristine condition.

“It is believed the pin is linked to royalty as Edward IV and his circle wore strikingly similar pieces during his two reigns as King from 1460 until his end in 1483,” wrote the Daily Mail.

“The jewel is designed as a sun in splendor — the personal emblem of Edward IV.”

The piece may have been lost in battle.

A metal detectorist has unearthed a gold hatpin that may have links to King Edward IV and is worth £15,000. Lisa Grace spotted the Medieval jewel while searching a recently-ploughed field in Lincolnshire

Other clues to its royal ownership: At the center of the piece is a purple amethyst stone, another of Edward IV’s favorites. The pin closely resembles a jewel depicted on Edward IV’s hat in a portrait preserved in The Museum Calvet in Avignon, France.

Grace said she was stunned at her discovery, just a few inches below the surface. “When I found it, the jewel wasn’t far under the ground at all as the field had recently been ploughed,” she said to the media.

Specialists say they have been experiencing “early interest from both collectors and museums and are expecting offers between £10,000 and £15,000.”

Edward IV of England meets with Louis XI of France at Picquigny to affirm the Treaty of Picquigny

An official from Duke’s Auctioneers said: “The jewel does bear a striking resemblance to the one in a well-known portrait of Edward IV from the Musee Calvet.” But he also said that it could have belonged to a courtier.

“The fact is we shall never know, but it clearly belonged to someone of high status in the upper echelons of medieval society.” Edward IV was not born the son of a king but was the oldest son of Richard, Duke of York, descended from Edward III.

Richard and his supporters came into conflict with Henry VI, the Lancaster ruler who was widely derided for his weak character and suffered from at least one complete mental breakdown.

King Edward IV

Richard of York served as regent during Henry VI’s incapacity. He died when Edward was in his teens and Edward became the claimant of the throne as the Yorks attempted to assume leadership of England through defeating the Lancasters in battle. Edward IV was made a king of England on March 4, 1461.

Weeks after declaring himself king, he challenged the Lancasters in the Battle of Towton. It was one of the bloodiest battles in English history, with nearly 30,000 dead, and Edward won, even though the Lancaster army had more men. In battles, Edward IV was an inspiring and able general.

Battle of Towton

Edward was over six feet tall and considered very handsome. The Croyland Chronicler described Edward as “a person of most elegant appearance and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person.” He was interested in creating a fashionable and glamorous court.

His chief supporters wanted him to make a dynastic marriage but he fell in love with a beautiful widow, Elizabeth Woodville, and made her queen. She was highly unpopular, and Edward lost his throne to a resurgent Lancaster force for a time. After more battles, he was made king again in 1471.

Edward IV, line engraving by Simon François Ravenet. National Portrait Gallery, London

After this comeback, Edward IV ruled until his sudden demise from illness in 1483. He had become overweight and devoted to his mistresses.

When he passed, his oldest son was only 12, and Richard III, Edward’s younger brother, usurped the throne. Edward’s two sons were both imprisoned in the Tower of London and disappeared from public view.

Edward IV’s oldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, married Henry VII, the Lancaster claimant who vanquished Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth. Their son, Henry VIII, resembled his grandfather, Edward IV, in his height and some say his character. The present queen, Elizabeth II, is directly descended from Edward IV.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Archaeologists Have Found a 3,000-Year-Old Bakery in Armenia, After Realizing a Layer of Ash Was Actually Wheat Flour

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Archaeologists Have Found a 3,000-Year-Old Bakery in Armenia, After Realizing a Layer of Ash Was Actually Wheat Flour

Last fall, when researchers unearthed the remains of a 3,000-year-old structure in the western Armenian town of Metsamor, they faced two mysteries: First, they didn’t know what purpose the structure had served. Beyond that, a strange powdery substance covering the area left them stumped.

“We knew it was something organic and collected about four to five sacks worth of the material,” Krzysztof Jakubiak, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw who led the excavation, tells  Jennifer Nalewicki.

The team assumed, at first, the material was simply ash. After all, charred remnants of the building’s reed roof and wooden beams indicated it had met its end in a fire. 

But upon closer examination, the substance was “decoded and recognized as remains of wheat flour,” says Jakubiak to Artnet’s Vittoria Benzine. “The samples were examined by an archaeobotanist expert, who confirmed this preliminary supposition.”

These findings solved both of the team’s mysteries at once. The powder wasn’t ash, but wheat flour. They had unearthed an ancient bakery.

Archaeologists originally mistook the flour residue in the building for ash.

Archaeologists estimate that the structure could have once held as much as 3.5 tons of flour, making it a site for mass production. They also found that furnaces were likely added after the building’s construction, indicating that the structure may have once served another purpose. Before becoming a bakery, perhaps it was “used for ceremonies or meetings, and then was turned into storage,” says Jakubiak.

The bakery’s flour is now far past its prime. Still, the discovery remains important; the building is one of the oldest known structures of its kind from the southern Caucasus and eastern Anatolia, per Szymon Zdziebłowski of Science in Poland. 

The building appears to have operated between the late 11th and early 9th century B.C.E. as part of the fortified settlement established at Metsamor in the 4th millennium B.C.E.

An aerial view of Metsamor, where the bakery was excavated

Little is known about the settlement, which covered 247 acres before being conquered in the eighth century B.C.E. by Argishti I, since its ancient inhabitants did not have a written language, according to Science in Poland.

However, archaeologists continue to learn more about Metsamor through new discoveries, including a recently unearthed tomb filled with gold pendants.

Jakubiak  that his team plans to continue to examine the bakery, which is remarkably well-preserved, in order to gain more insight into Metsamor’s history.

“Because the structure’s roof collapsed during a fire, it shielded everything, and luckily, the flour survived,” he adds. “It’s astounding; under normal circumstances, everything should be burned and gone entirely.”

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

10,500-year-old Bones Found in Bog are Germany’s Oldest Human Remains

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10,500-year-old Bones Found in Bog are Germany’s Oldest Human Remains

Archaeologists digging at a Stone Age campsite in northern Germany have found 10,500-year-old cremated human bones. These Mesolithic era ‘bog bones’ are the oldest human remains found so far in northern Germany.

Not only is this the earliest known human burial in northern Germany, it is also the first time human remains have been found at Duvensee Bog, the site of several campsites from the Mesolithic era or Middle Stone Age (between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago) in the Schleswig-Holstein region, according .

The cremated bog bones are about 10,500 years old. They are the first human remains found at any of the Mesolithic sites at the Duvensee bog.

Duvensee Bog is a prehistoric inland lake that has completely silted over in the last 8,000 years and formed a peat bog. The bog’s anaerobic environment naturally preserves organic remains, but there was so little of the burnt bones that it wasn’t until the discovery of a human thigh bone that the archaeologists were  able to confirm that they had unearthed a human burial, reports Arkeonews.

The Ancient Duvensee Campsites

The campsite where the bog bones were recovered is only one of at least 20 Mesolithic and Neolithic campsites at Duvensee, and it is located at what was once the western shore of the prehistoric lake. The campsites were used for roasting hazelnuts and spearing fish, both very valuable sources of nutrition for hunter gatherers.

Paddle of Duvensee dating to around 6200 BC. It is one of the world’s oldest surviving wooden paddles.

The campsites increased in size over time, possibly indicating a wider spread of hazelnut trees as the climate changed. “In the beginning, we have only small hazelnut roasting hearths, and in the later sites, they become much bigger,” Harald Lubke, an archaeologist at the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, an agency of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation.

The burial campsite was first discovered by archaeologist Klaus Bokelmann and his students in the late 1980s. They discovered worked flint artifacts there not during an archaeological excavation but as a result of a casual challenge issued during a barbecue at a house in a nearby village.

The entire area has yielded flint fragments although flint doesn’t occur naturally there. According to Lubke, this seems to indicate that the hunter gatherers repaired their tools and weapons here when they used the campsites during the annual hazelnut harvest in autumn.

The Cremated Bog Bones

The first sites Bokelmann and his team investigated were on what must have been islands in the ancient lakes. While they found mats made of bark for sitting on the damp soil, pieces of worked flint, and the remains of many Mesolithic fireplaces for roasting hazelnuts, they didn’t find any burials at the island sites.

“Maybe they didn’t bury people on the islands but only at the sites on the lake border, which seem to have had a different kind of function,” Lubke .

Unlike in the later Mesolithic period, there were no designated burial sites during the early Mesolithic period and the dead seem to have been buried near where they died, according to Lubke.

At the Duvensee burial, pieces of the largest bones were left after the cremation, and it’s not clear if they were wrapped in hide or bark before they were buried.

Archaeologists unearth the oldest burial site to date in northern Germany.

The find is very significant given that it is extremely rare to find human burials from the early Mesolithic period in Europe. While Late Mesolithic (seventh-sixth millennium BC) graves have been found in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, the only other early Mesolithic burial found in Europe so far is in Hammelev in southern Denmark, about 120 miles (195 kilometers) to the north of the Duvensee site. Interestingly, that too is a cremation burial, indicating that cremation may have been the preferred funerary practice at the time.

Several sizable bone fragments that were not completely charred were found during the excavation. Lubke hopes that they will be able to recover archaeological DNA from them, Arkeonews reports. The entire grave was raised in a soil block for laboratory study.

A Connection with Mesolithic Sites in Britain

The Duvensee campsites date to around the same time as the Mesolithic site at Star Carr in North Yorkshire and some of the artifacts found there are remarkably similar.

At that time and until about 8,000 years ago, Lubke explains that the Schleswig-Holstein region and Britain were connected by a now-submerged region called Doggerland, and Mesolithic groups would have exchanged technologies across the regions.

While archaeologists have been digging at Duvensee Bog since 1923, according to Arkeonews, and have also discovered Stone Age hunter gatherer shelters there, the recent cremation burial find has been very exciting.

It has energized them to step up excavations in the region in the hope of discovering what other activities its Mesolithic occupants carried out there. “We’ve only opened a new door here at the moment. But behind it, there are only dark rooms at the moment,” Lubke said.

ASIA, MYANMAR, WORLD

Smallest Dinosaur Ever Discovered Found Perfectly Trapped in Amber

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Smallest Dinosaur Ever Discovered Found Perfectly Trapped in Amber

Jurassic Park eat  your heart out. The smallest dinosaur on record has been found stuck in amber. When we think about dinosaurs, the creatures we picture are usually quite large, such as the Apatosaurus or the T-Rex. We know others are smaller, such as Velociraptors, but even those were around 180 pounds.

Some dinosaurs were a lot smaller than that, a fact which recently demonstrated when scientists recently reported finding the smallest dinosaur ever discovered, trapped in a chunk of amber, according to the BBC. The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature.

The fossil was found in northern Myanmar, in a piece of amber that is approximately 99 million years old. It is the skull of a dinosaur that resembled a bird, and its size suggests that the entire creature would only have been about as large as a bee hummingbird, the smallest bird currently living.

Even other small dinosaurs, such as the Microraptor, were still a couple of feet in size and could weigh between two and three pounds. This new find, however could have only weighed a couple of grams.

Its diminutive size may help researchers gain some insight about how small birds evolved from larger dinosaurs. According to Jingmai O’Connor from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, there are problems that are very particular to creatures of that size, including staying warm and how to fit all the necessary sensory organs into such a small head.

The tiny dinosaur caught in amber.

Most birds have a ring of bones that supports the eye. Usually the bones that make up that ring are square and pretty straightforward. This new find, which has been named Ocludentavis khaungeae, has a similar ring, but instead of being square, the bones are spoon-shaped.

The only animal currently known to share that type of characteristic are certain types of lizards. The bones of the eye would have been cone shaped, which means the little creatures would have had very good eyesight.

Artwork of the tiny bird dinosaur by HAN ZHIXIN

Owls also have the same sort of cone shape, but their eyes face forward, whereas the eyes of O khaungeae seem to have faced sideways. The tip of the cones would have been narrow, as well, restricting the amount of light that could enter the eye, which means that this was a creature that was active during the day. Finally, it appears that its eyes would have bulged outward in a way that no modern living creatures does.

Professor O’Connor called it the weirdest fossil she’s ever seen, but feels lucky to be able to study it. Unfortunately, since the fossil is only the skull, there is only limited information that can be gathered from it about who its body looked and functioned. Some features of the fossil resembled those of dinosaurs, others resemble those of birds.

At present, researchers don’t know if the collection of features they’re observing is an adaptation because of the creature’s small size, or it they are a product of its lifestyle.

The fossil’s jaw had a lot of teeth – more than 100 –, which strongly suggests that it was a predator, probably feeding on insects. Its eyes were placed on the sides of its head, however, meaning that it doesn’t have the sort of binocular vision that scientists associate with predator species of all types.

The specimen even still contains some of its soft tissue, preserved in the amber that surrounds it, which is common for specimens that are found in amber, since the resin surrounds and preserves the creatures at the moment of their death, protecting them from decay. In the case of such small animals, their bodies are so fragile that there aren’t many examples in the fossil record.