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EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Bones of Handless Man Found Near Mysterious Medieval Dolphin Burial

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Bones of Handless Man Found Near Mysterious Medieval Dolphin Burial

The body of a man without hands thought to have been buried hundreds of years ago has been found by archaeologists on a rocky islet off the coast of Guernsey, one of the British Channel Islands – just a few feet from where a mysterious medieval skeleton of a dolphin was found last year.

Phil De Jersey, a Guernsey government archaeologist, said the skeleton of the handless man appeared to have been buried much later than the baffling burial of that dolphin skeleton on the same islet, and therefore the two burials probably aren’t related. But he said that the latest find added much to the mystery of the rocky islet of Chapelle Dom Hue.

The islet lies about 900 feet (300 meters) from the west coast of Guernsey, overlooking the sea and the stones of a Neolithic burial ground on the mainland of the island.

The human remains appear to have been buried several hundred years ago on the islet of Chapelle Dom Hue.

Though Chapelle Dom Hue is only about 50 feet (10 m) across today – so small that the sea at high tide cuts it into two pieces – archaeologists say it was once larger; during the medieval period, the islet was home to a colony of a few reclusive Christian monks, they said.

The archaeological team first thought the skeleton found this year might have been that of a monk who had suffered from leprosy, which might account for the missing wrists and hands, De Jersey told Live Science.

But some details of the remains of the man’s clothes — especially the shirt buttons — made the researchers think that the body was buried in the 16th or 17th century, well after Chapelle Dom Hue was occupied by monks.”Our working hypothesis at the moment is that this is a drowning, or a body washed up,” De Jersey said.

“It was given a quick but relatively respectful Christian burial at the spot where it got washed up on that island.”

Dolphin Burial

Last year, De Jersey reported that his team had found a dolphin skeleton that appeared to have been buried on the island sometime during the Middle Ages when monks had lived there.

The carefully buried skeleton perplexed the archaeologists because it might have easily been just dumped in the sea a few yards away, without the trouble of a burial.

The dolphin carcass, De Jersey said, might have been buried with salt to preserve it for eating, and then forgotten; or perhaps it was regarded as a holy animal — although his research has not revealed why a dolphin would be regarded as holy at that time and place.

The human remains were buried only about 30 feet from the mysterious skeleton of a dolphin, found last year, that had been buried sometime in the Middle Ages.

Subsequent studies of the dolphin skeleton tended to confirm that it was buried on the islet in the early 1400s, but no further light had been shed on the mysterious burial, he told Live Science.

The human burial on the island had come to light in the last few months as a small cliff had weathered away, about 30 feet (10 m) from the site where the dolphin skeleton had been found, he said. Eventually, the weathering revealed the upper part of the foot and toe bones.

Archaeologists then excavated the site and found the remains of a man about 5 feet tall, but without any hands or wrist bones.

Mystery Man

De Jersey now thinks the human body washed up on the islet and was buried there sometime in the 1500s or 1600s.

The hands of bodies that have drifted at sea are often eaten by fish; in fact, the skull of the body showed signs of damage that could have happened when it drifted up among rocks on the shore. The lower part of the left arm is also missing, but “the feet have survived relatively well, perhaps because it had some sort of footwear,” he said.

Archaeologists think the remains may be of a seaman who drowned and floated at sea before being washed up on the islet.

The archaeological team will try to get a radiocarbon date on the skeleton, but the remains of a few buttons on his shirt suggest that it was later than the medieval period.”

Buttons in the early medieval period were quite rare and unusual, and these look to me like something later that might have been part of a sailor’s dress,” he said.

So far, the dolphin and human skeletons are the only skeletal remains found in the islet of Chapelle Dom Hue, but De Jersey won’t rule out the possibility that there still may be bones to find: “There is not a huge amount of space over there left to find more things, but who knows?”

“There was a little bit of excavation done there by an archaeologist in the 1890s,” De Jersey said. “He wrote about it, and said that he didn’t think it was worth going back there again because there was nothing more to be said about the place — and I quite like that because, really, how wrong could he be?”

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

Carbon Dating Indicates That India’s Oldest Known Burial Site is 4,000 Years Old

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Carbon Dating Indicates That India’s Oldest Known Burial Site is 4,000 Years Old

In 2005, Shriram Sharma, a farmer from Sanauli village Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district, was carrying about his day, and ploughing his field. Little did he know that what was otherwise part of his daily routine would lead to an accidental discovery of skeletons and copper pots, which would one day raise questions about ancient global history. 

He alerted the local media about his discovery, and soon, a team from the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) arrived at the scene, to begin digging deep into three bighas (0.40052356 acres) of Sharma’s land.

The first round of excavations lasted for 13 months, during which they found chariots, coffins, pots, skeletons, what could arguably be the world’s oldest copper helmet, and more, tentatively dating back to 2000 BCE. 

Interestingly, most wooden artefacts were layered with copper sheaths, inlays, and wires,  which prevented them from decomposing for nearly 4,000 years. “In the area where we excavated furnaces, we suspect that the superstructure was made of wood.

The carbon dating tests confirmed that the burial site — where 125 burials were discovered — is 4,000 years old.

But the sediment is very difficult to work with and retrieving wood impressions is particularly tricky. Thank God for the copper inlays and covering, which helped us identify the findings,” Disha Ahluwalia, who was appointed the site-in-charge in February, tells The Better India.

The most striking aspect of the excavation has been the discovery of three chariots, which brings up questions regarding the Aryan Invasion theory.

The design and size of the chariot indicate they were horse-driven and were contemporary to the Mesopotamian and Sumerian cultures. According to historians, the horses were brought from Central Asia by the invading Aryan army around 1500 BC. Besides, the Harappan civilisation had chariots driven by bulls. 

The ASI carried out two more rounds (in 2018 and 2019) of meticulous digging thereafter, bringing forth several intriguing theories and discoveries about the Sanauli burial site.

Needless to say, Sanauli has caught everyone’s attention, as these discoveries could be a major chapter piecing together history in this century. Discovery Plus recently released a 55-minute documentary called ‘Secrets of Sanauli — Discovery of the Century, made by director Neeraj Pandey and compared by Manoj Bajpayee.

It follows the archaeological findings and questions the western hegemonic narratives. The theories, history and language have been simplified by experts including Dr VN Prabhakar – IIT Gandhinagar, Dr BR Mani – National Museum, and so on. 

Did Sanuali coexist with the Harappan civilisation? 

The archaeologists found a slew of antiques such as chariots, a torch, an antenna sword, highly decorated coffins, and helmets. The astonishingly well-preserved remains are similar to those found in the late Harappan phase.

However, the Orche-Coloured Pottery (OCP) and copper-coated items are reasons enough to dismiss that Sanauli was part of the late Harappan phase. Hence, it could be that Sanauli was another Chalcolithic culture that existed alongside Harappa.

“The 2005 excavations helped us discover pottery of different sizes, besides beads and other materials that were similar to those used in the Harappan civilisation.

However, a chariot near a coffin is not seen anywhere in the Harappan sites,” Dr Sanjay Kumar Manjul, director of the ASI’s Institute of Archaeology and in-charge of the excavation, told Outlook.

Further, the bricks found on the in-situ site are different as well, “The Harappan bricks are smaller than Sanauli, but excavators could not identify the alignment or make sense of the structure. This has left many questions unanswered,” says Disha.  

Explaining the process of identifying the bricks and discovering a new element with Dr Manjul, she says, “After days of strenuous work, we noticed one brick in the structure was perfectly horizontal, and others which were falling.

This one brick gave the impression that it is supported by some sort of structure or more bricks underneath. I decided to undercut the section and we found the fourth side of the collapsed wall.

We understood that there are two layers to this structure and that it’s not a platform, but instead a walled structure. What was interesting was that two sides of the structure had collapsed inwards, whereas the third wall that I found after undercutting the section was outwards.

As the level of the base was the same as that of the burial pits, it suggested that this was a structure built in a pit, where the two sides that collapsed inwards were supported by the natural sediment and then the rest of the structure was above the ground with a wooden superstructure. We could see the heavy use of wood everywhere.”

Of royalty & warfare

In 2018’s digging, the ASI team unearthed other items that gave further insight into the culture of Sanauli including warfare and the royal borough.

The fresh evidence, comprising eight burials, screams for evidence of an elite class. A decorated horn comb with a peacock motif, a copper mirror, an armlet made of agate beads, vases, and bowls are a few examples of this.

One royal coffin had a decorated lid with eight anthropomorphic figures such as headgear, and pipal leaf. A copper armour shaped like a torso was another item. Besides, ceramic pots were found next to the coffins, suggesting the possibility of rituals that were performed before the person was buried. 

The burials also hinted that the tribe consisted of warriors who used technologically advanced weaponry. For example, the antenna sword was placed in an upright position next to the skeletons of both, males and females (yes, women also may have fought wars as per Dr Manjul). Additionally, the swords have copper-covered hilts and medial ridges, which are sturdy enough for war. 

The three chariots made of wood and covered with thick copper sheets also denote wars. Unlike the ones found in Harappan culture, these chariots were smaller in size with thinner carts.

This means that they could accommodate a maximum of two people according to Dr Manjul. Hence, they weren’t used as carriers. The chariots are two-wheeled and are fixed on an axle. This was supposedly linked to the yoke of a pair of animals by a long rope. 

Helmets and shields further affirm the possibility. Interestingly, the ASI team believes that the helmet could be the world’s oldest. “If you see the documentary, the excavator says ‘helmet’ or ‘copper pot’. But earlier, the excavator suggested that it was a copper helmet.

We are yet to be sure. It could be the earliest, because if it is a helmet, then no other such object predates Sanauli. The ones in the West are of later dates. But in my opinion, we should conduct more analysis,” says Disha. 

Meanwhile, the shields had two gender-specific designs. The ones found next to women had steatite inlay work and men’s burials had ones with copper designs. 

According to Dr Manjul, the ASI team used modern and scientific techniques such as X-Ray, Handheld XRF, 3D scanning, CT scan and drone and Magnetometer surveys to analyse the startling findings. Both Dr Manjul, as well as Disha, reiterate that more studies will be conducted to unearth specific historic events and significance in future. 

CANADA, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

The emergence of life on Earth could have occurred 300,000 million years earlier.

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The emergence of life on Earth could have occurred 300,000 million years earlier.

An international team of scientists has identified mysterious filaments and tubes in fossils that were discovered several years ago in a fist-sized piece of ancient rock.

It is established that these traces were left by a biological form of life about 300 million years before life appeared on Earth, at least according to the generally accepted theory.

Initial discovery: Samples did not fit the generally accepted theories

These stone was discovered in 2008 in Quebec, Canada. Inside it, scientists found clearly visible comb-branched and parallel centimetre-sized filaments, consisting of red hematite. Some of them have curves, tubes, and various kinds of spheroids.

Initially, it was stated that the piece of rock contains the oldest fossils on Earth of microorganisms that lived on the seabed near hydrothermal vents and metabolized iron, sulfur, and carbon dioxide.

However, this statement immediately had opponents, since the age of the traces found did not fit into the generally accepted theory of the origin of life.

Age of the samples: When did life appear on Earth?

Already a preliminary analysis showed that these traces were left in the period from 3.75 to 4.28 billion years ago. And in itself, this conclusion challenges the generally accepted idea of ​​when life began.

After all, if this is true, then complex life on our planet appeared about 300 million years earlier than previously thought. In addition, it turns out that it appeared about 300 million years after the Earth itself was born.

“For more than 40 years, microbiologists have told us that the origin of life most likely occurred in hydrothermal vent environments, with microorganisms eating iron and probably sulfur, as we can infer from our own observations.”

Subsequent research concluded that this is the oldest evidence of life on Earth

Speaking of traces, opponents of the new theory argued that traces like biomarkers could also be created by non-biological materials. This is indeed possible. Therefore, the aim of the new study was to determine whether the disputed filaments and tubes are biological or not.

The conclusions made by the new research team suggest that traces were probably left by the most ancient bacteria ever discovered to date.

Certain structures could have been created by natural chemical reactions but the majority of the patterns should be the result of prehistoric iron-eating microbes.

The filaments you see in this microscope image indicate evidence of the oldest life forms on Earth.

In their work, the team also provides evidence that these ancient bacteria received their energy in different ways.

Apparently, they could do absolutely without oxygen and lived only at the expense of iron, sulfur, carbon dioxide, and light, which participated in biological processes in the form of photosynthesis.

In short, the new results, according to the researchers, suggest that diverse microbial life could have appeared on Earth as little as 300 million years after the formation of the planet. Geologically, it’s not just fast, it’s incredibly fast.

EUROPE, WORLD

Mass Grave Of The Viking Army Contained Slaughtered Children To Help Dead Reach Afterlife, Experts Believe

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Mass Grave Of The Viking Army Contained Slaughtered Children To Help Dead Reach Afterlife, Experts Believe


A mass grave of Viking warriors found in Derbyshire was accompanied by slaughtered children in a burial ritual enacted to help the dead reach the afterlife, archaeologists believe.

Experts from the University of Bristol have reexamined a huge pit of bones uncovered in the 1970s and 80s in Repton.

Examinations at the time suggested the grave spanned centuries, but new radiocarbon analysis has revealed the skeletons actually belong to soldiers from the Great Viking Army, which drove Burgred, the king of Mercia into exile in 873 AD.

The grave of the four youngsters who may have been killed in a burial ritual

The excavators also found four youngsters aged between eight and 18 buried together in a single grave with a sheep jaw at their feet, which they dated to the same period. At least two showed signs of traumatic injury suggesting they may have been sacrificed in a ritual to accompany the dead.

Bristol archaeologist Cat Jarman said: “The grave is very unusual. I don’t know of any examples of four young people buried in a single grave like this from anywhere else in England in this period.

“They are also placed in unusual positions – two of them back-to-back – and they have a sheep jaw placed at their feet.

“There are historical accounts from elsewhere in the Viking worlds suggesting human sacrifice may have formed part of Viking funeral.”

In the 10th century, an Arab Muslim writer named Ahmad ibn Fadlan described the funeral of a Swedish chieftain, in which a female servant volunteered to join him in the afterlife. She was given ‘intoxicating drinks’ before being stabbed to death and laid to rest by her master.

The Great Viking Army, which was known to the Anglo-Saxons as The Great Heathen Army, was a coalition of warriors from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway who came together to invade the four kingdoms of England in 865 AD.

The grave contained the bodies of hundreds of men and women pic

They landed in East Anglia where they made peace with Edmund the Martyr in return for horses, before marching north to take York the following year.

Over the next decade, the Viking army spread to Wessex, where they were paid to leave by Alfred the Great, before marching on London and Northumbria.

By 873AD they had reached Mercia and overwintered at Repton where they drove King Burgred out of the country and installed Cleowulf to govern the kingdom.

The grave containing 300 people was first found by archaeologists Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle at St Wystan’s Church in Repton underneath a shallow mound in the vicarage garden.

Among the bones were Viking weapons and artifacts, including an ax, several knives, and five silver pennies dating to the period 872-875 AD. 80 percent of the remains were men, mostly aged 18 to 45, with several showing signs of violent injury.

Nearby a second double grave from the site contained two men, the older of whom was buried with Thor’s hammer pendant and a Viking sword. He had received numerous fatal injuries including a large cut to his left femur.

A boar’s tusk had been placed between his legs, and it has been suggested that the injury may have severed his penis or testicles, and the trust positioned to replace what he had lost in preparation for the afterworld.

The body of a warrior holding a Viking sword and wearing a Thor pendant was also found

But despite the evidence of Viking artifacts, initial radiocarbon dates suggested the bones spanned several centuries and so could not have been the remains of the army.

However, it turned out that the Viking’s high fish diet was responsible for the misleading results.

Mrs. Jarman added: “The previous radiocarbon dates from this site were all affected by something called marine reservoir effects, which is what made them seem too old.

“When we eat fish or other marine foods, we incorporate carbon into our bones that is much older than in terrestrial foods.”This confuses radiocarbon dates from archaeological bone material and we need to correct for it by estimating how much seafood each individual ate.”

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

518 Million-Year-Old-Rocks Suggest Animal And Human Life May Have First Emerged In China

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518 Million-Year-Old-Rocks Suggest Animal And Human Life May Have First Emerged In China

A new study based on an analysis of 518 million-year-old rocks that contain the oldest collection of fossils that researchers have on record. The researchers believe that Chengjian, a city in the mountainous Yunnan Province of China, is the origin of many of today’s species, including humans.

This site is where complex organisms first developed, an event known as the ‘Cambrian Explosion’, a major time period in the history of the Earth.

The ancestors of many animal species alive today may have lived in a delta in what is now China, new research suggests.

Arthropod (Naroia)

The Cambrian Explosion, more than 500 million years ago, saw the rapid spread of bilaterian species—symmetrical along a central line, like most of today’s animals (including humans).

The 518-million-year-old Chengjiang Biota—in Yunnan, southwest China—is one of the oldest groups of animal fossils currently known to science and a key record of the Cambrian Explosion.

Fossils of more than 250 species have been found there, including various worms, arthropods (ancestors of living shrimps, insects, spiders, scorpions), and even the earliest vertebrates (ancestors of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals).

The Cambrian seas teemed with new types of animals, such as the predator Anomalocaris (center)

The new study finds for the first time that this environment was a shallow -marine, nutrient-rich delta affected by storm floods. The area is now on land in the mountainous Yunnan Province, but the team studied rock core samples that show evidence of marine currents in the past environment.

“The Cambrian Explosion is now universally accepted as a genuine rapid evolutionary event, but the causal factors for this event have been long debated, with hypotheses on environmental, genetic, or ecological triggers,” said senior author Dr. Xiaoya Ma, a palaeobiologist at the University of Exeter and Yunnan University.

“The discovery of a deltaic environment shed new light on understanding the possible causal factors for the flourishing of these Cambrian bilaterian animal-dominated marine communities and their exceptional soft-tissue preservation.

“The unstable environmental stressors might also contribute to the adaptive radiation of these early animals.”

Co-lead author Farid Saleh, a sedimentologist and taphonomic at Yunnan University, said: “We can see from the association of numerous sedimentary flows that the environment hosting the Chengjiang Biota was complex and certainly shallower than what has been previously suggested in the literature for similar animal communities.”

Changshi Qi, the other co-lead author, and a geochemist at Yunnan University added: “Our research shows that the Chengjiang Biota mainly lived in a well-oxygenated shallow-water deltaic environment.

“Storm floods transported these organisms down to the adjacent deep oxygen-deficient settings, leading to the exceptional preservation we see today.”

Fish (Myllokunmingia)

Co-author Luis Buatois, a palaeontologist and sedimentologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said: “The Chengjiang Biota, as is the case of similar faunas described elsewhere, is preserved in fine-grained deposits.

“Our understanding of how these muddy sediments were deposited has changed dramatically during the last 15 years.

“Application of this recently acquired knowledge to the study of fossiliferous deposits of exceptional preservation will change dramatically our understanding of how and where these sediments accumulated.”

The results of this study are important because they show that most early animals tolerated stressful conditions, such as salinity (salt) fluctuations, and high amounts of sediment deposition. This contrasts with earlier research suggesting that similar animals colonized deeper-water, more stable marine environments.

“It is hard to believe that these animals were able to cope with such a stressful environmental setting,” said M. Gabriela Mángano, a palaeontologist at the University of Saskatchewan, who has studied other well-known sites of exceptional preservation in Canada, Morocco, and Greenland.

Lobopodian worm (Luolishania)

Maximiliano Paz, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan who specializes in fine-grained systems, added: “Access to sediment cores allowed us to see details in the rock which are commonly difficult to appreciate in the weathered outcrops of the Chengjiang area.”

This work is an international collaboration between Yunnan University, the University of Exeter, the University of Saskatchewan, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Lausanne, and the University of Leicester.

The research was funded by the Chinese Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the George J. McLeod Enhancement Chair in Geology.

ASIA, EUROPE, GEORGIA, WORLD

A 1.8-million-year-old skull reveals information about our evolutionary history

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A 1.8-million-year-old skull reveals information about our evolutionary history

The discovery of a 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor buried under a medieval Georgian village provides a vivid picture of early evolution and indicates our family tree may have fewer branches than some belief, scientists say.

The fossil is the most complete pre-human skull uncovered. Other partial remains previously found at the rural site, give researchers the earliest evidence of human ancestors moving out of Africa and spreading north to the rest of the world.

The skull and other remains offer a glimpse of a population of pre-humans of various sizes living at the same time-something that scientists had not seen before for such an ancient era. This diversity bolsters one of two competing theories about the way our early ancestors evolved, spreading out more like a tree than a bush.

Nearly all of the previous pre-human discoveries have been fragmented bones, scattered over time and locations-like a smattering of random tweets of our evolutionary history. The findings at Dmanisi are more complete, weaving more of a short story. Before the site was founded, the movement from Africa was put about 1 million years ago.

When examined with the earlier Georgian finds, the skull “shows that this special immigration out of Africa happened much earlier than we thought and a much more primitive group did it,” said study lead author David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum. “This is important to understanding human evolution.”

For years, some scientists have said humans evolved from only one or two species, much like a tree branches out from a trunk, while others say the process was more like a bush with several offshoots that went nowhere.

Even bush-favoring scientists say these findings show one single species nearly 2 million years ago at the former Soviet republic site. But they disagree that the same conclusion can be said for bones found elsewhere, such as in Africa. However, Lordkipanidze and colleagues point out that the skulls found in Georgia are different sizes but are considered to be the same species.

So, they reason, it’s likely the various skulls found in different places and times in Africa may not be different species, but variations in one species. To see how a species can vary, just look in the mirror, they said.

“Danny DeVito, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal are the same species,” Lordkipanidze said.

The adult male skull found wasn’t from our species, Homo sapiens. It was from an ancestral species—in the same genus or class called Homo—that led to modern humans. Scientists say the Dmanisi population is likely an early part of our long-lived primary ancestral species, Homo erectus.

Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley wasn’t part of the study but praised it as “the first good evidence of what these expanding hominids looked like and what they were doing.”

Fred Spoor at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, a competitor and proponent of a busy family tree with many species disagreed with the study’s overall conclusion, but he lauded the Georgia skull discovery as critical and even beautiful.

“It really shows the process of evolution in action,” he said.

Spoor said it seems to have captured a crucial point in the evolutionary process where our ancestors transitioned from Homo habilis to Homo erectus—although the study authors said that depiction is going a bit too far.

The researchers found the first part of the skull, a large jaw, below a medieval fortress in 2000. Five years later—on Lordkipanidze’s 42nd birthday—they unearthed the well-preserved skull, gingerly extracted it, put it into a cloth-lined case and popped champagne.

It matched the jaw perfectly. They were probably separated when our ancestor lost a fight with a hungry carnivore, which pulled apart his skull and jaw bones, Lordkipanidze said.

The skull was from an adult male just shy of 5 feet (1.5 meters) with a massive jaw and big teeth, but a small brain, implying limited thinking capability, said study co-author Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich. It also seems to be the point where legs are getting longer, for walking upright, and smaller hips, she said.

“This is a strange combination of features that we didn’t know before in early Homo,” Ponce de Leon said.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Magnificent Mosaics Discovered in “Lost” Roman City

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Magnificent Mosaics Discovered in “Lost” Roman City

Hidden for centuries, mosaic floors from the lost Roman city of Ucetia have been uncovered in France.

A large excavation is underway in the town of Uzès in southern France to unearth more of the remains of this ancient Roman settlement, the existence of which archaeologists had only hints of until the dig.

The nearby city of Nîmes is more famous for its Roman history, largely thanks to the A.D. 70 amphitheater, where events, including bullfights, still take place. Less is known about Uzès, once called Ucetia.

But before the construction of dormitories for a high school there, archaeologists were brought in to investigate a 43,000 square-foot (4,000 square meters) area for pieces of the city’s history.

The French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) announced that the dig has so far been very fruitful.

Some of the walls and structures that were uncovered date to just before the Roman conquest of present-day France (called Gaul at the time).

But the most visually stunning finds are the well-preserved Roman-era mosaic floors with richly colored patterns and figures.

The archaeologists found one large structure, 2,700 square feet (250 square meters) in area, with a colonnade that suggests it was a public building, and four rooms in a row.

One of those large rooms contains a complex mosaic pavement with geometric patterns like meanders and swastikas, as well as symbols like crowns and chevrons, and animals like an owl, duck, eagle and fawn.

The archaeologists think this building dates to the first century B.C. and was maintained until the first century A.D.

In another area at the site, the archaeologists unearthed a”domus,” or a large house belonging to a wealthy Roman family. This building sprawls over 5,380 square feet (500 square meters) and dates to the early Roman Empire (first century B.C.).

A room in this family home has a mosaic floor with a geometric pattern, accompanied by stylized dolphins in the four corners.

The home also had a type of central heating system; archaeologists found a “hypocaust,” or a crawl space supported by brick columns where hot air would have circulated. And several “dolia,” or huge ceramic wine vessels, were found there, suggesting the inhabitants might have drunk homemade wine.

The 1.5 million euro ($1.6 million) dig is ongoing, and, according to INRAP, the archaeologists have recently begun excavating another large area of ancient and medieval ruins, including two roads and an intersection.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Two Ancient Egyptian Kingdom Tombs in Luxor, Egypt, Are Now Open

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Two Ancient Egyptian Kingdom Tombs in Luxor, Egypt, Are Now Open

Two tombs of unidentified officials dated to Egypt’s New Kingdom era have been opened at Luxor’s Draa Abul-Naglaa necropolis years after they were initially discovered by German archaeologist Frederica Kampp in the 1990s.

The opening of the tombs was announced at an international conference attended by the governor of Luxor, the minister of social solidarity, the director-general of the International Monetary Fund, members of the international media, foreign ambassadors, members of parliament, and the Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany.

“It is a very important discovery because both tombs contain very rich funerary collections, and one of them has a very distinguished painted statue of a lady in the Osirian shape,” with this most recent discovery being the third Draa Abul-Naga alone.

“It seems that our ancient Egyptian ancestors are bestowing their blessing on Egypt’s economy as these discoveries are good promotion for the country and its tourism industry,” El-Enany told Ahram Online.

Mostafa Waziri, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and head of the Egyptian excavation mission, explains that both tombs were given special numbers by German archaeologist Frederica Kampp in the 1990s.

The first tomb, named “Kampp 161,” was never excavated, while excavation work on the second, “Kampp 150,” was undertaken by archaeologist Kampp short of entering the tomb itself.

The tombs had been left untouched until excavation started during the recent archaeological season. Most of the items discovered in Kampala 161 are fragments of wooden coffins.

The most notable discoveries are a large wooden mask that was originally part of a coffin, a small painted wooden mask, a fragment of a gilded wooden mask in poor condition, four legs of wooden chairs that were among the deceased’s funerary equipment, as well as the lower part of a wooden Osirian shaped coffin decorated with a scene of goddess Isis lifting up her hands.

“The owner of Kampp 150 is not yet known, but there are two possible candidates,” Waziri told Ahram Online.

He said that the first possibility is that the tomb belongs to a person named Djehuty Mes, as this name is engraved on one of the walls.

The second possibility is that the owner could be the scribe “Maati,” as his name and the name of his wife “Mehi” are inscribed on 50 funerary cones found in the tomb’s rectangular chamber.

The tomb has only one inscription on one of its northern pillars. It shows a scene with a seated man offering food to four oxen, with the first kneeling in front of the man, who is giving it herbs. The scene also depicts five people making funerary furniture.

The entrance of the long hall is inscribed with hieroglyphic text with the name “Djehuty Mes.” The ceiling of the chamber is inscribed with hieroglyphic inscriptions and the cartouche of King Thutmose I.

The objects uncovered inside include 100 funerary cones, painted wooden masks, a collection of 450 statues carved in different materials such as clay, wood and faience, and a small box in the shape of a wooden coffin with a lid.

The box was probably used for storing an Ushabti figurine 17 cm tall and 6 cm large. Also found was a collection of clay vessels of different shapes and sizes, as well as a mummy wrapped in linen with its hands on its chest in the Osirian form studies, suggest that the mummy, which was found inside the long chamber, could be of a top official or another powerful person.

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Researchers Discover The “Decapitated” Skeleton Of An Extinct “Creature” More Than 200 Years Ago

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Researchers Discover The “Decapitated” Skeleton Of An Extinct “Creature” More Than 200 Years Ago

During a routine survey of the coastline of Komandorsky Nature Reserve in Russia, researchers came across a rather bizarre discovery.

While performing excavations at the Kamchatka peninsula, Russian researchers found a headless skeleton of a 6-meter-long creature that has been extinct for more than two centuries.

Researcher Marina Shitova from the Komandorsky Nature Reserve noticed the dead creature’s ribs poking out from the sand and pebbles. However, they weren’t sure what they had come across until excavations revealed 45 vertebrae, 27 ribs, a left scapula and other bones of an ancient—now-extinct—creature referred to as the Sea Cow.

“The discovery of such a sufficiently complete skeleton of Steller’s sea cow is an extremely important event not only for the Komandorsky reserve but for science in general,” read a statement by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources.

Despite the fact that the Sea Cow’s head is missing, the specimen is relatively well-preserved.

After excavating for four hours, the headless skeleton of the sea cow, a mammal endemic to this region that became extinct in the 18th century, was eventually revealed to the surprise of researchers.

This discovery could help researchers understand more about the extinct animal as researchers do not know how many vertebrae the Se Cow had, and what its flippers looked like, said Daryl Domning, a professor of anatomy and a Steller’s sea cow expert at Howard University in Washington, D.C in an interview with Live Science.

The sea creature was hunted in great numbers until its extinction in 1768.

“According to historical records, in the eighteenth century the species had declined to remain populations only around Bering and Medni Island, Russia,” said researchers from George Mason University years ago, in the scientific journal Biology Letters.

The species was named after the German explorer George Steller, who first documented its existence during a voyage through the North Pacific in 1741, according to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

According to statements, the skeleton will go on display at the Komandorsky Nature Reserve visitor center.

The animal was huge in terms of weight. According to experts, the specimen could grow in weight to 10 metric tons, which eventually allowed it to survive without problems in the ‘frozen’ environment.

However, its incredible weight also made it ‘easy’ prey for predators and hunters, according to experts.

The last specimen—prior to this one—was discovered more than 30 years ago on Bering Island, in Russia.

What exactly happened to the head of the recently found Sea-Cow remains a mystery.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Wooden Roman Defenses Uncovered in Germany

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Wooden Roman Defenses Uncovered in Germany

Archaeologists have discovered wooden defenses surrounding an ancient Roman military base for the first time in Bad Ems, western Germany.

The fence, which is topped with sharpened wooden stakes similar to barbed wire, is the type of fortification mentioned in ancient writings, including by Caesar, but no surviving examples had previously been discovered.

The ancient Romans erected a fence topped with these wooden spikes in a effort to defend a silver mining operation that ultimately ran dry

The spikes were mounted in a v shape onto a central post and were preserved in the water-logged soil of Blöskopf hill. Enemies who fell into the defensive ditch would come face to face with the business ends of this razor-sharp structure.

The work of the Frankfurt archaeologists and Dr. Peter Henrich of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate uncovered two previously unknown military camps in the vicinity of Bad Ems, situated on both sides of the Emsbach valley.

The excavations were triggered by observations made by a hunter who, from his raised hide, spotted color differences in the grain field, indicating the existence of sub-surface structures. 

Drone photography and geomagnetic scans confirmed the presence of large double ditches beneath the grain, which formed the defensive perimeter of a Roman camp.

It would have been a massive Roman camp: eight hectares with 40 wooden towers — much larger than the known Bad Ems camp. It was supposed to be permanent, but it was never finished. Only a warehouse was built in the end, and the camp was burned down a few years later.

A second, much smaller camp, was unearthed a mile away. The stake structure was part of the defenses of this second camp.

The ancient Romans erected a fence topped with these wooden spikes in an effort to defend a silver mining operation that ultimately ran dry. 

It appears that the ancient Romans were tunneling into the earth in search of silver deposits. Archaeologists initially thought that fire remains and melted slag proved that the Romans had established smelting works to process silver ore.

The Roman governor Curtius Rufus attempted to mine silver in the region in the year 47 A.D., but his efforts were unsuccessful, according to the writings of the ancient historian Tacitus.

The Romans had built a heavily fortified base with a military presence because they anticipated untold riches; this accounts for the defenses that resemble barbed wire and were intended to thwart sudden raids.

Unfortunately for them, it would take millennia for archaeological excavations in 1897 to find a rich vein of the precious metal in the region.

If the Romans had only kept digging, they could have kept mining for two centuries because there was enough silver there. It appears that the ancient fire remnants came from a watch tower rather than a successful smelting operation.

Excavations and research are set to continue, led by Markus Scholz, a professor of archaeology and ancient Roman history at Goethe University; archaeologist Daniel Burger-Völlmecke; and Peter Henrich of Rhineland-General Palatinate’s Directorate for Cultural Heritage.

The ancient wooden spikes are now at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz.

Frederick Auth, who has been in charge of the excavations since 2019, won first place for his description of the history of the site at the 2022 Wiesbaden Science Slam. These futile ancient efforts make for a fascinating story.