24,000-Year-Old Butchered Bones Found in Canada Change Known History of North America
Archaeologists have found a set of butchered bones dating back 24,000 years in Bluefish Caves, Yukon, Canada, which are the oldest signs of human habitation ever discovered in North America. Until recently, it was believed that the culture that represented the continent’s first inhabitants was the Clovis culture.
However, the discovery of the butchered bones challenges that theory, providing evidence that human occupation preceded the arrival of the Clovis people by as much as 10,000 years.
For decades, it has been believed that the first Americans crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia about 14,000 years ago and quickly colonized North America.
A hallmark of the toolkit associated with the Clovis culture is the distinctively shaped, fluted stone spear point, known as the Clovis point. These Clovis points were from the Rummells-Maske Cache Site, Iowa
Artifacts from these ancient settlers, who have been named the Clovis culture after one of the archaeological sites in Clovis, New Mexico, have been found from Canada to the edges of North America.
However, the recent discovery of bones in Canada that show distinctive cut marks supports the perspective that there were other inhabitants of America that preceded the Clovis.
The finding was made in the Bluefish Caves in Yukon, which consists of three small caves that are now considered to hold the oldest archaeological evidence in North America.
Researchers have found the bones of mammoths, horses, bison, caribou, wolves, foxes, antelope, bear, lion, birds and fish, many of which exhibit butchering marks made by stone tools.
Cut marks in the jaw bone of a now-extinct Yukon horse serve as evidence that humans occupied the Bluefish Caves in Yukon, Canada, up to 24,000 years ago.
The site was first excavated by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars between 1977–87, and initial dating suggested an age of 25,000 before present. This was dismissed at the time as it did not fit with the well-established Clovis-First theory.
However, a new study published in the journal PLOS One supports the initial dating, demonstrating that humans occupied the site as early as 24,000 years ago.
As part of the study, the research team analysed 36,000 mammal bones found in the caves. Carnivore tooth marks were observed on 38 to 56% of the bone material.
A total of fifteen bone samples with cultural modifications confidently attributable to human activities were identified, while twenty more samples with “probable” cultural modifications were also found.
“The traces identified on these bones are clearly not the result of climato-edaphic factors or carnivore activity,” the researchers report. “The presence of multiple, straight and parallel marks with internal microstriations observed on both specimens eliminates carnivores as potential agents.”
Bone sample from Bluefish cave showing cut marks made by humans.
The findings support the hypothesis that prior to populating the Americas, the ancestors of Native Americans spent considerable time isolated in a Beringian refuge during the Last Glacial Maximum [LGM], the last period in the Earth’s climate history during the last glacial period when ice sheets were at their greatest extension. As the researchers of the study concluded:
“In addition to proving that Bluefish Caves is the oldest known archaeological site in North America, the results offer archaeological support for the “Beringian standstill hypothesis”, which proposes that a genetically isolated human population persisted in Beringia during the LGM and dispersed from there to North and South America during the post-LGM period.”
16,000-yr-old Ice Age Horse Found During Utah Family’s Backyard Renovation
You never know what you might turn up when you dig in your backyard, aside from bits of glass, rusty nails, and tulip bulbs. One couple in Utah undertaking a renovation project discovered what they thought was the skeleton of a cow. But it turned out to be a 16,000-year-old horse. Talk about a buried treasure!
Horses are of course associated with the Wild West, but their lineage is not continuous. Horses lived in North America from 50 million years ago to 11,000 years ago, when they went extinct for reasons not fully understood.
Million-year-old fossils of direct ancestors to modern-day horses have been discovered in Wyoming and Idaho, among other U.S. regions. Europeans re-introduced domesticated horses to the continent in the 15th and 16th centuries.
And though today we think of Utah as a dry state, much of the region was buried under water until 14,000 years ago. From around 500 million years ago, Lake Bonneville covered Utah and parts of surrounding Idaho and Nevada, at a depth of more than 1,000 feet, until it released through the Red Rock Pass in Idaho during a period of climate change. Great Salt Lake is a remnant of Lake Bonneville.
Evolution of horse.
Laura and Bridger Hill came across the skeleton in their yard in Lehi, Utah, in September 2017, when landscapers unearthed it during their backyard renovation.
The bones had been preserved beneath seven feet of sandy clay. At first, the Hills thought it was the skeleton of a cow, as the area used to be farmland around the edges of Utah Lake.
For months, they left the uncovered bones, which were exposed to air, the prodding of curious children, and the abuse of landscaper equipment.
But eventually, the Hills showed the bones to their neighbor, who happens to be a geologist at nearby Brigham Young University. He told them he suspected the skeleton was from the Pleistocene Age. The Hills then turned to bones over to the Museum of Ancient Life, also in Lehi.
Rick Hunter, a paleontologist at the museum who is making a study of the bones, said the horse bones were well preserved, which indicates it was buried soon after it died.
Hunter speculated that the horse may have been trying to escape a predator or may have drowned in an upstream river and floated down to the lake. Because the bones were in a former lake bed, they remained moist for thousands of years.
Skeletal evolution of horses.
Hunter visited the site and fascinated local children with impromptu talks about fossils, paleontology, and the study of old bones. He told news outlets that it is unclear whether the horse was male or female but that based on arthritic-looking formations on its spine, it was likely older.
A bone on one ankle has evidence of cancer. It was shorter and stockier than a modern-day horse, around the size of a Shetland pony. Its skull had been shattered and moved by the landscapers.
Illustration of extinct horses. From left to right: Mesohippus, Neohipparion, Eohippus, Equus scotti and Hypohippus.
Arid Utah is home to many sites where fossils of dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, and mammoths have been discovered. Several sites have hundreds of well-preserved dinosaur footprints; there are dinosaur quarries where visitors can see hundreds of bones.
The Museum of Ancient Life itself has 60 complete dinosaur skeletons, a mock quarry dig, and a functioning paleontology lab, where workers are uncovering real dinosaur bones.
Anatolian Neolithic Weavers At Çatalhöyük Used Trees to Make The Oldest Cloth
A new study published in the journal Antiquity has revealed some surprising information about the inhabitants of the ancient city of Çatalhöyük, an early Neolithic settlement located in southern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).
It seems these industrious people found a way to convert fibers from oak trees into textiles that were used to make clothes. Based on the study’s results, the oak fiber textiles of Çatalhöyük are the oldest cloth artifacts, or the oldest preserved woven fabrics in the world.
This is just the latest discovery that highlights the accomplishments of the residents of this famous Stone Age city, which was founded around 9,500 years ago and remains one of the oldest urban enclaves found in the archaeological record.
Çatalhöyük Weavers Made The Oldest Cloth Artifacts Ever
Excavations have been ongoing in Çatalhöyük since the 1950s, and at the time was believed to have been the world’s first true city. Originally settled in about 7,500 BC, in the early Neolithic ( Chalcolithic) era, shortly after the end of the last ice age, Çatalhöyük may have been home to as many as 10,000 people at its peak of population.
Over the approximately 1,100 years the city was occupied, its residents built a culture that was quite sophisticated for the time.
Çatalhöyük after the first excavations by James Melaart and his team.
Among other capacities, the people of Çatalhöyük were skilled and accomplished weavers. They produced ample supplies of baskets, ropes, mats, and clothing made from finely-woven materials, examples of which were recovered during excavations that tracked centuries of activity within the city’s confines. These woven artifacts are considered to be the oldest cloth artifacts ever found so far on Earth.
What was this Oldest Cloth Made From?
Archaeologists learned a lot about the Çatalhöyük weaving industry from studying such items. There was one thing they didn’t know about the weavers of Çatalhöyük, however, and that was about the type of material they used to make their clothing fabric.
In other ancient textile samples, scholars had identified wool from sheep and linen made from plant fibers harvested from flax, as the top candidates, based on the clothes-making practices of other ancient peoples.
To obtain a definitive answer for the material used to make the cloth at Çatalhöyük, a team of archaeologists with expertise in this area collaborated on a study of pieces of clothing fabric recovered during 1993—2017 excavations led by Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder. These fabrics were made between 8,700 and 8,500 years ago and were still quite well preserved despite the immense passage of time.
As they detail in their Antiquity article, archaeologists Lise Bender Jørgensen from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Antoinette Rast-Eicher from the University of Bern (Switzerland) used a scanning electron microscope to closely examine the fabric samples. When they undertook their study, the archaeologists expected to find evidence that would confirm either the wool or the linen hypothesis.
The world’s oldest cloth artifact ever from ancient Turkey up close under a scanning electron microscope.
But their research findings revealed an unexpected truth. Neither of those common choices for fabric making had been used, despite previous determinations that it must have been one or the other. The clever and inventive weavers of Çatalhöyük had instead used a substance obtained from oak trees , which were grown and harvested as a construction material.
This is bast fiber and it turns out this material form was in use in the Stone Age too and it can be made from various sources, including flax, hemp, willow, oak, wisteria, and mulberry. The Çatalhöyük textile artifacts, the oldest cloth artifacts in the world, were made from oak bast based on the recently-published Antiquity journal study results.
“These findings shed new light on early textile production in the Neolithic, suggesting that tree bast played a more significant role than previously recognized,” the scientists wrote in their Antiquity article.
Tree bast is a fibrous substance that can be found coating the inside of tree bark. It forms an extra protective layer between the bark and the tree’s wooden interior. Like the oak tree itself, oak bast is durable and strong, which would have made it an ideal choice for Stone Age and Neolithic textile weavers.
“In the past, researchers largely neglected the possibility that the fabric fibers could be anything other than wool or linen , but lately another material has received more attention,” Bender Jørgensen told Norwegian SciTech News . “Bast fibers were used for thousands of years to make rope, thread, and in turn also yarn and cloth.”
All the oak used would have been sourced locally, and the bast would have been collected as a waste product following the harvest of the trees.
The Communal Society of Çatalhöyük
Ancient Çatalhöyük was a unique city , in that it appears to have resembled a vast housing development project more than anything else.
All the structures unearthed there seem to have been used as homes, and there is no sign that larger public buildings were ever built. Homes were constructed from mudbrick, and they were built so close together that it would have been easy for people to travel from one location to another by simply walking across the roofs. Archaeologists believe they likely did that, since ground pathways have not been found at Çatalhöyük.
Oak wood was used to add various features to these homes, including doors and ladders. The construction industry in Çatalhöyük would have been incredibly busy and resource-intensive, meaning weavers in the city would have had no problem collecting an enormous amount of oak bast for the manufacture of clothing and other fiber-based items.
Taken as a whole, the artifacts and ruins found over 70 years of excavations at Çatalhöyük suggest the city was built and occupied by a highly egalitarian culture, one that recognized few if any distinctions rooted in class or gender.
Houses were uniform and modest in size and architectural design. Tools, clothes, and other artifacts were equally distributed between homes, and it appears many of these items were widely shared rather than being privately owned and used. Large communal ovens have been discovered, showing that food preparation was a shared experience involving multiple families.
Agricultural activity was most certainly a communal affair as well, as crops were grown, and animals raised in the fields that surrounded the vast city housing complex. The inhabitants of Çatalhöyük lived during a time when people were transitioning from the hunter-gather to a farming-centered lifestyle, and animal remains found in the city show its residents relied on a combination of both to acquire adequate food supplies.
The people of Çatalhöyük buried their dead within the confines of the village. The arrangement of the skeletons plus the evidence of burial rites shows no sign of aristocratic privilege or any difference in the treatment of the bodies of men and women . Religious figurines and statues have been found in the ruins at Çatalhöyük that portray both male and female deities, with the latter being far more common.
No one knows exactly why the city of Çatalhöyük was abandoned around 6,400 BC. But while they were around, the residents of Çatalhöyük seemed to have lived peacefully, cooperatively, and productively – and they have left us the oldest cloth artifacts ever found so far by archaeologists.
5,000-Year-Old Toy Chariot Unearthed in Child Tomb in Turkey
Archaeologists have unearthed a 5,000-year-old toy chariot and rattle while excavating an ancient city in Turkey. Experts suggest that the recent discovery could shed light on how children in the Bronze Age used to play.
Ancient City of Sogmatar Yields Interesting Finds
IBTimes reports that the toys were unearthed as part of ongoing excavations in the ancient city of Sogmatar in the south east of Turkey. Previously believed to be one of the oldest known settlements on Earth, Sogmatar is also considered to be the region that Prophet Moses escaped from pharaoh and later engaged in farming there.
The hill town at the Centre of the village, points out that Sogmatar could have been established before Common Era . The remnants of walls and towers at the hill reveal that the hill town was used as a castle in the second century AD.
Assistant Professor Yusuf Albayrak of Turkey’s Harran University and member of the team of archaeologists that are digging in the area, said that Sogmatar was a Pagan religious center dating back to the second century AD.
Albayrak explained that after conducting a surface survey in the ancient city in 2012, he discovered that it was dedicated to the god of the moon, Sin.
Speaking about the historical importance of Sogmatar, Albayrak noted that the ancient city didn’t include just a temple but also a necropolis. “We found some 120 tombs in 2012. Seven in particular were really remarkable and almost all of the 120 tombs had a view of the mound.
We carried out searches in the mound and ceramic findings showed that this place was a settlement until recently. The tombs date back to the early Bronze Age, 5,000 years ago.
They are almost unique, in the shape of a well and reflecting the characteristics of this era. When the Romans arrived here they changed the architecture,” Albayrak said as IBTimes reports .
The temple of the Seven Planets at Sogmatar, Turkey
For the Children of Kings
The excavation works were launched in the area in May 2017, and since then archaeologists have unearthed many tombs, including the one containing the recently found toys. “We have so far obtained important findings in the excavation field,” Celal Uludag, the director of the Sogmatar excavations, told Turkish news agency Anadolu as IBTimes reported .
Uludag adds, “In a tomb in the necropolis area we found an earthenware toy horse carriage and its wheels. The toy dates back to the Bronze Age and is thought to have been produced for the children of kings or administrators in the city.
It shows us the sense of art and children’s sense of play 5,000 years ago,” highlighting the cultural and archaeological significance of this discovery.
Recent Discoveries of Ancient Toys Inside Greek Tombs
Two weeks ago, we reported another important discovery of ancient Greek toys in Turkey. Archaeologists found several ancient toys inside the tombs of children in the ancient Greek seaport city of Parion, now in modern-day Turkey.
Founded in 709 BC, the ancient city of Parion was a Greek colony that belonged to the Delian League. During the Hellenistic period it came under the domain of Lysimachus, and subsequently the Attalid dynasty. In Roman times, it was a settlement within the province of Asia. After that province was divided in the 4th century, it was in the province of Hellespontus.
Toys discovered inside the ancient child tombs in Parion.
Excavations of several ancient graves there revealed a number of children’s toys, which are believed to have been offered as gifts for the dead children to accompany them on their journey to the afterlife.
Professor Hasan Kasaoğlu from Atatürk University and director of the excavation works at Parion, stated that female figurines were discovered in tombs belonging to girls, while male figurines were unearthed in boys’ tombs. Kasaoğlu said that the new findings could provide valuable information about the sociocultural structure of the period, explaining that despite toys changing drastically throughout the centuries, the need of humans to play and be entertained has remained the same to this day.
Fossilized Footprints Found in New Mexico Track Traveler With Toddler in Tow
A small woman—or perhaps an adolescent boy—walks quickly across a landscape where giant beasts roam. The person holds a toddler on their hip, and their feet slip in the mud as they hurry along for nearly a mile, perhaps delivering the child to a safe destination before returning home alone.
The footprints found at White Sands National Park are more than 10,000 years old.
Despite the fact that this journey took place more than 10,000 years ago, a new paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews manages to sketch out what it might have looked and felt like in remarkable detail.
Evidence of the journey comes from fossilized footprints and other evidence discovered in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park in 2018, reports Albuquerque TV station KRQE.
Toward the end of the late Pleistocene epoch—between 11,550 and 13,000 years ago—humans and animals left hundreds of thousands of tracks in the mud along the shore of what was once Lake Otero.
The new paper investigates one specific set of tracks, noting details in the footprints’ shapes that reveal how the traveler’s weight shifted as they moved the child from one hip to the other.
“We can see the evidence of the carry in the shape of the tracks,” write study co-authors Matthew Robert Bennett and Sally Christine Reynolds, both of Bournemouth University in England, for the Conversation.
“They are broader due to the load, more varied in morphology often with a characteristic ‘banana shape’–something that is caused by outward rotation of the foot.”
At some points along the journey, the toddler’s footprints appear as well, most likely because the walker set the child down to rest or adjust their position. For most of the trip, the older caretaker carried the child at a speed of around 3.8 miles per hour—an impressive pace considering the muddy conditions.
“Each track tells a story: a slip here, a stretch there to avoid a puddle,” explain Bennett and Reynolds. “The ground was wet and slick with mud and they were walking at speed, which would have been exhausting.”
In this artist’s depiction, a prehistoric woman holding a child leaves footprints in the mud.
On the return trip, the adult or adolescent followed the same course in reverse, this time without the child. The researchers theorize that this reflects a social network in which the person knew that they were carrying the child to a safe destination.
“Was the child sick?” they ask. “Or was it being returned to its mother? Did a rainstorm quickly come in catching a mother and child off guard? We have no way of knowing and it is easy to give way to speculation for which we have little evidence.”
The fossilized footprints show that at least two large animals crossed the human tracks between the outbound and return trips. Prints left by a sloth suggest the animal was aware of the humans who had passed the same way before it.
As the sloth approached the trackway, it reared up on its hind legs to sniff for danger before moving forward. A mammoth who also walked across the tracks, meanwhile, shows no sign of having noticed the humans’ presence.
White Sands National Park contains the largest collection of Ice Age human and animal tracks in the world. As Alamogordo Daily News reports, scientists first found fossilized footprints at the park more than 60 years ago. But researchers only started examining the tracks intensively in the past decade, when the threat of erosion became readily apparent.
The international team of scientists behind the new paper has found evidence of numerous kinds of human and animal activity. Tracks testify to children playing in puddles formed by giant sloth tracks and jumping between mammoth tracks, as well as offering signs of human hunting practices.
Researchers and National Park Service officials say the newest findings are remarkable partly for the way they allow modern humans to relate to their ancient forebears.
“I am so pleased to highlight this wonderful story that crosses millennia,” says Marie Sauter, superintendent of White Sands National Park, in a statement. “Seeing a child’s footprints thousands of years old reminds us why taking care of these special places is so important.”
Sweden’s Mysterious Shipwrecks Found Full of Medieval Household Goods
When underwater archaeologists discovered the sunken ruins of two medieval-era ships in Sweden’s Baltic Sea coastal waters last spring, they knew it would take some time to find answers explaining what the ships were and where they’d come from.
Those answers have perhaps come more quickly than expected, as the researchers examining the remains of the ships have now determined the ages of the vessels. These ships date to the 14th century, a time when the maritime-oriented Hanseatic League dominated the region commercially and politically.
According to a press release from the Scandinavian archaeological consulting company Arkeologerna, the key factor allowing for the discovery of this information was an analysis of wood samples taken from the wreck.
Dating procedures have revealed that the largest of the two vessels, which has been labeled Varbergskoggen 1, was constructed from wood that was harvested in the year 1346, or 676 years before the present.
The timber used to make the vessel was collected from quite a distance away, having been sourced from forests in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
Why did the medieval ships sink?
Meanwhile, the second and smaller of the two ships, labeled the Varbergskoggen 2, was built from wood harvested in northern Poland sometime between the years 1355 and 1357.
Needless to say, the archaeologists were quite intrigued to find two ships sunk side by side that had come from entirely different places. It seems they sunk at the same time, victims of what at this time is an unknown event.
Why Did the Ships Sink? The Mystery is Still Open
The two merchant vessels were discovered during the construction of a rail tunnel near Varberg, approximately 120 miles (193 kilometers) north of Copenhagen, Denmark.
They are a common type of medieval ship known as cogs, which the Estonian Mere Museum website identifies as “large, with a spacious cargo space, and were mostly equipped with one mast and one large square sail.”
The Varbergskoggens 1 and 2 were located only 30 feet (nine meters) apart on the shallow coastal sea bottom, and that is something that archaeologists say almost never occurs. One of the wrecked ships had a nearly intact port site, and as of now is the most complete cog wreck ever found in Swedish waters.
Inside the wrecked ships underwater explorers found significant quantities of household goods. Among these discoveries were wooden spoons, engraved wooden kegs, and pairs of leather shoes.
All the items would have been moved to be sold or traded, and the researchers involved in studying the wrecks are hoping these goods will provide some clues to the ships’ destinations and missions.
Figurine, wooden spoon, and sheave recovered from the cogs.
Soil samples taken from the wrecked vessel may show what types of food were stored on the vessel. This information could also help researchers pin down the exact location where the ships were before they met their tragic demise.
Up to this point, the Arkeologerna archaeologists have been unable to determine exactly why the two ships sunk from examining their remains. Presumably both ships went down at the same time, if indeed they were traveling together at the time of the disaster.
The primary reasons why medieval ships sank would have been bad weather accompanied by high seas, collisions with other vessels or with submerged rocks along shorelines, flooding and shifting of poorly stored cargo, and possibly attacks by pirates (the latter was unlikely to have occurred in this instance).
In Swedish Waters, Shipwrecks Abound
This is just one of several ancient shipwrecks recovered off the coast of Sweden.
In 2012 in southern Swedish waters explorers found the remains of a 500-year-old ship that had been carrying soldiers and the Danish nobles they were guarding.
In October of this year, archaeologists announced that scuba divers had discovered yet another Swedish shipwreck. Timber samples revealed this to be the wreck of a 17th century warship known as the Äpplet, commissioned for battle by the king of Sweden.
Many of the sunken ships still undiscovered in this region are likely cogs, which adds to the urgency to find the ones that remain. From the 13th through the 17th centuries, the Hanseatic League, which consisted of cities from Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Livonia, was active in trade throughout the Baltic Sea region.
Trading ships moved back and forth across the Baltic, connecting Hanseatic cities and settlements, and cogs were frequently the ship of choice for the members of the League.
Examining Varbergskoggen 1, one of the medieval Swedish ships.
Were flexible enough to be used as cargo vessels or warships. These sailboats were distinctive in appearance, with their giant square sales and single mast styling. They featured multiple structural anomalies that set them apart from other medieval sailing vessels.
Unfortunately, medieval vessels of this type were seldom preserved for long once they were off the water. That is why the shipwrecks found off the coast of Sweden have generated so much attention among archaeologists and historians who specialize in medieval Scandinavian history.
The largest hoard of Viking silver was found accidentally while filming a news report about illegal treasure hunting
The Spillings Hoard is the world’s largest Viking silver treasure, found on Friday 16 July 1999 in a field at the Spilling farm northwest of Slite, on northern Gotland, Sweden.
The silver hoard consisted of two parts with a total weight of 67 kg (148 lb) before conservation and was made up of, among other things, 14,295 coins most of which were Islamic and from other countries. A third deposition containing over 20 kg (44 lb) of bronze scrap-metal was also found. The three caches had been hidden under the floorboards of a Viking outhouse sometime during the 9th century.
On Friday 16 July 1999, a team of reporters from the Swedish television TV4 were in the socken of Othem on Gotland to film a cultural feature from Almedalen Week.
They chose to do a segment on the problem with looting of archaeological sites with archaeologist Jonas Ström acting as their guide along with Kenneth Jonsson, a professor of numismatics, who happened to be on the island at that time. Spillings farm was selected for the filming since about 150 silver coins and bronze objects had been found there earlier by the landowner Björn Engström.
Closeup of silver coins from hoard No 2.
With filming complete, Ström and Jonsson decided to continue their survey of the field. Twenty minutes after the TV-crew had left, they heard a strong signal from their metal detector, which led them to the smaller of the two silver caches.
A couple of hours later and only 3 metres (9.8 ft) from the first find, they received another signal from the detector:
Closeup of silver hoard No 2 from the Spillings Hoard at Gotland Museum.
The site was hurriedly cordoned off, back-up crew from the museum was sent for, permission for an archaeological excavation was immediately sought at the County Administrative Board and guards were posted.
However, instead of keeping the find a secret, the Gotland Museum decided to go public with the find immediately. During the first weekend, over 2,000 people visited the excavation site.
Some days later, the metal detector indicated a third metal cache approximately 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) from the first find. The archaeologists concentrated on uncovering the two first finds before starting with the third. Due to the size of the hoards and the fragility of the objects, the bottom layers of the depositions were encapsulated in plaster.
Only when they tried to lift the finds out of the soil did the archaeologists realize how heavy the hoards were. The smaller weighed 27 kg (60 lb) and the larger one 40 kg (88 lb). An attempt to X-ray the finds at the local hospital failed because they contained so much silver that the X-ray plates remained blank.
Iron fittings from the chest in the bronze cache.
The larger find was intact but the smaller had been damaged by a plough. A previous landowner who visited the excavation commented that he had found metal wires around the find-spot several years earlier, but thinking that they were only steel wire, he had thrown them away. It was therefore concluded that the treasure had originally been even larger.
With the two first caches taken care of, the third deposition was excavated almost a year after the first discovery. It contained over 20 kg (44 lb) of bronze scrap-metal, most of which had been partially melted into a ‘cake’. This find was deemed even more valuable since very few finds contain such large amounts of bronze intended for smelting.
Additional excavations were conducted in the summer of 2000 and in 2003-06. Remnants of wood, iron rivets and mounts as well as a lock mechanism were found, leading to the conclusion that the caches had been stored in chests.
An extended survey and excavation revealed the foundations of a building and indicated that the hoards had been placed under the floorboards of what would probably have been a warehouse, shed or storage rather than a dwelling since it had no hearth. Carbon dating showed that the building had been in use between 540 and 1040.
The foundations and the remaining postholes indicated a regular Viking Age structure, about 10 by 15 m (33 by 49 ft) with a slanting sedge-covered roof, much like other similar finds on Gotland. It had been built on an older Iron Age foundation.
Location of depositories in the stone foun dation at Spillings
The silver deposits were roughly square-shaped with rounded corners, about 40 cm to 45 cm × 50 cm (16 in to 18 in × 20 in), suggesting that they had been in sacks of cloth, leather or pelt, inside boxes or chests of wood.
In the bronze deposit were found substantial pieces of wood and iron, such as fittings, ironwork, nails and a lock-device, showing that the bronze had been kept in a sturdy chest. A carbon dating of the chest dated it to approximately 675, making it older than the objects stored inside it.
Although silver hoards and treasures are not unusual on Gotland, this was an exceptionally large find. One explanation may be found in the location near some of the island’s best and most significant harbours during the Viking Age. The silver in the caches would have been enough to pay the tax to the Swedish king for all of Gotland for five years.
Silver melted into bars from hoard No 2.
The following surveys and excavations of the fields surrounding the find-site showed that the site had been inhabited continuously over 1,000 years up until the 19th century. Over 700 more objects were retrieved, such as objects of bronze and copper, fired clay, clothes pins, a piece of glass, tile pieces, chains, needles, glass beads, slag, iron nails, polished semi-precious stones and brick.
The Spillings Hoard is the world’s largest Viking silver treasure. A finder’s fee of SEK 2,091,672 (approx. US$242,400) was paid to the landowner for the treasure, although the real value of it is much higher. It was the largest amount of money ever paid for a find in Sweden, according to director of the Swedish National Heritage Board Sven Göthe. The hoard was dated to have been hidden some time after 870–71.The treasure is on permanent display in the Gotland Museum.
As of 2015, more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) silver from over 700 caches deposited between the 9th and 12th centuries have been found on Gotland. This includes 168,000 silver coins from the Arab world, North Africa and Central Asia.
Silver melted into bars from hoard No 2.
The caches contained silver objects ranging from coins, bars, thread and hacksilver to be used as raw material, to jewelry such as fingerings, bangles and pendants. Much of the material had been bundled up to correspond with the mark-weight system of the Viking Age, in which 200 grams (0.44 lb) made one mark.
Enormous Skull Found in Alaska May Belong to the Legendary King Bear of Inuit Mythology
An enormous, elongated polar bear skull emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site southwest of Utqiaġvik in Alaska. Experts claim that it is quite different from most modern polar bear skulls and reassure that it is one of the biggest polar bear skulls ever found.
Inuvialuit Hunters and the “Weasel Bear”
Inuvialuit have been hunting polar bears – nanuq – in Canada’s Western Arctic for many decades. Passing knowledge and understanding of polar bear hunting from one generation to the next, based on experience, is the very foundation of Inuvialuit wisdom and tradition.
A polar bear.
Inuvialuit hunters have seen hundreds of bears during their lifetime and have taken high risks, since polar bear hunting is an extremely dangerous endeavor. However, their passion and need for survival doesn’t leave them many other choices.
If you get a chance to be around them, you will definitely hear them talking about “tiriarnaq” or “tigiaqpak” (meaning weasel bear), an incredibly unique polar bear that is enormous, narrow-bodied and moves fast like a demon.
Oral history and traditional knowledge in Inuit culture talks about “weasel” or “king” bears, and the huge, fully intact and unusually shaped polar bear skull that emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site near Utqiaġvik has added more fuel to the fire.
Photo of 2014 excavations at the Walakpa site near Utqiaġvik, Alaska.
One of the Biggest and Most Distinct Polar Bear Skulls Ever Found
According to Anne Jensen, an Utqiaġvik-based archaeologist and leader of the excavation and research programs in the region, this is one of the biggest polar bear skulls ever found, and it appears to be different from most modern polar bear skulls. It is slender, elongated in the back and has uncommon structural features around the nasal and other areas.
“It looks different from your average polar bear,” said Anne Jensen , and added that after radiocarbon dating she and her colleagues estimate that the big bear skull comes from the period between the years 670 and 800 AD.
Despite looking different, scientifically it’s not determined yet what makes this skull differ from other found polar bear skulls and genetic testing is needed at this point to provide the scientists with more details.
“It could have been a member of a subspecies or a member of a different “race” in genetic terms — similar to the varying breeds that are found among dogs — or possibly something else entirely,” said Jensen as adn.com reports.
The large, unusually shaped polar bear skull [left] was found at the Walakpa site near Utqiaġvik, Alaska.
The Skull is Just One of the Many Newly Found Treasures
Even though the majority of the scientific world has focused almost entirely on the curiously enormous polar bear skull, the excavation of the now-eroding site, which is called Walakpa, has been successful in spotting a number of other archaeological treasures.
The excavation of the site uncovered another first for Alaska, four mummified seals, naturally preserved in an old ice cellar. Jensen’s team was able to recover one of them last summer, an adult female that was named Patou.
Jensen said , “The excavated seal was much more modern than the polar-bear skull, dating back to only the mid-1940s. Still, it and the other seals amounted to a startling find: They are the only mummified seals ever discovered outside of Antarctica’s Dry Valley.”
A mummified seal, named “Patou”, found during excavations at an eroding bluff at the Walakpa site last summer.
Jensen also expressed her satisfaction with the new finds, since she was one of the many people who believed the Walakpa site had already been thoroughly excavated back in the late 1960’s, when Smithsonian anthropologist Dennis Stanford excavated the area for the first time.
As she says, “Everyone had the opinion — I was one of them — that he had pretty well excavated the site and there was nothing left to be done.”
Finally, the closed-up site was also considered to be intact and pretty much safe from erosion and thaw, which wasn’t the case at all – as Jensen and her colleagues told adn.
A panoramic image showing erosion at the Walakpa site
Archaeologists Find 24 Bronze Statues, Preserved in Tuscan Spa for 2,300 Years
Archaeologists have been excavating ancient thermal baths outside Siena, Italy, since 2019. But just last month, peeking out through the mud and water, small unidentified fragments slowly began to appear: a hand, an elbow, a glimmering coin.
The thermal baths helped preserve the ancient statues.
Since then, researchers have unearthed 24 perfectly preserved bronze statues dating back some 2,300 years, as well as a cache of thousands of coins and other significant artifacts.
The discovery in San Casciano dei Bagni, a small hilltop town in the Siena province known for its thermal baths, is nothing short of groundbreaking, experts say.
The find is “the largest deposit of bronze statues of the Etruscan and Roman age ever discovered in Italy and one of the most significant in the whole Mediterranean,” says excavation leader Jacopo Tabolli, a historian at the University for Foreigners in Siena, in a statement, per Google Translate.
One of the sculptures discovered in the ancient thermal baths
A sculpture in the mud at the excavation site
The statues date back to between the second century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., which was a time of great upheaval in Tuscan history: The transition from Etruscan to Roman rule was taking place, through hard-fought battles over towns such as this one.
After the Romans eventually prevailed, they led a concentrated campaign to redefine and minimize Etruscan culture, burying or destroying historical items.
Among the statues are likenesses of Hygieia, Apollo and other Greco-Roman gods. Some of them bore Latin and Etruscan inscriptions with the names of prominent Etruscan families.
“This discovery rewrites the history of ancient art,” Tabolli adds. “Here, Etruscans and Romans prayed together.”
Tabolli thinks that the statues were immersed in thermal waters in a sort of ritual. “You give to the water because you hope that the water gives something back to you,” he tells Reuters’ Alvise Armellini.
Experts clean one of the sculptures.
The excavation site in San Casciano dei Bagni in the Siena region of Italy
Two bronze busts dating back about 2,300 years
Researchers can’t know for certain why the statues were drowned in the thermal waters, but they do know that the waters helped keep them in such good condition.
The mud creates an atmosphere without oxygen, which helps keep the bronzes safe from bacteria, says Helga Maiorano, an archaeologist at the University of Pisa, to la Repubblica’s Azzurra Giorgi.
“One of the last ones [of the statues] particularly struck me for the quality of the details,” Chiara Fermo, an archaeologist at the University of Siena, tells La Repubblica, per Google Translate.
“It is a female statue, entirely bejeweled, with very detailed necklaces and earrings. An example of what a woman of the time must have been like.”
The area’s thermal baths were used until the fifth century C.E., when public bathing practices were banned under new Christian regulations.
The statues and other discoveries have been taken to a restoration lab in nearby Grosseto. Eventually, they’ll go on display in a new museum opening in San Casciano.
Mysterious Mass Grave Found in Wales May Contain Bodies of Vikings’ Slaves
Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious mass grave dating back 1,600 years in Wales containing the remains of 86 individuals. Researchers are now attempting to explain strange characteristics regarding the people’s age, gender and race. Could these remains be those of slaves brought there by the Vikings?
The discovery was made by experts from Archaeology of Wales on the island of Anglesey. While carrying out a survey of a local college, the Coleg Menai in Llangefni, they found 32 skeletons in 2016. According to Wales Online , a further 54 were unearthed when a link road was built next to the college between the town in 2017.
Enigmatic Burial Grounds
The skeletons were taken away from the site for further tests and it was determined that the graves dated from approximately 1,600 years ago. The Daily Mail reports that ‘‘They were likely buried in the early medieval period after the Romans left Britain’’.
This is the period known as the Dark Ages when civilization virtually collapsed in Europe. In the British Isles, it was a period of endemic warfare and when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex, Northumberland, and Mercia started to emerge.
Researchers carried out an isotope analysis of the remains in order to identify their origins. They expected to find that the remains were of local people who had died in the Dark Ages. Instead, they found that the skeletons included those of people who came from across Europe.
“Some individuals came from western Britain, where the border is today between England and Wales, a couple from Scandinavia and a couple from Mediterranean places like Spain,” said Dr. Irene Garcia Rovira of Archaeology Wales [via Wales Online].
Some of the bones from the ancient burial ground.
Vikings and slaves
This was remarkable because in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire, long-distance travel was believed to have been virtually impossible because of war and a breakdown in the trade network.
The experts were baffled as to how so many people from so far away came to rest in an island off the North coast of Wales, and why.
In the period when the individuals were interred in the cemetery, the island of Anglesey was controlled by the Viking kingdom of Dublin. It appears that many Irish settlers migrated to the island. Dublin at this time was one of the centers of the slave trade in Europe.
Those who were buried in the graves were possibly slaves that had been brought to Anglesey by the Vikings based in Ireland. However, it appears that Anglesey was only under the control of the Dublin Norse for a few years and why so many people from so far away were buried at the site is still a mystery.
Could the bodies belong to slaves captured by the Vikings?
Enigmatic Skeletons
The origin of the dead was not the only peculiarity about the skeletons. The Daily Mail reports that the ‘‘experts were puzzled to find the mass grave included more females than males’’. Why this is the case is unknown.
The majority of the remains came from people who died in their mid-forties. Dr. Rovira stated that ‘‘though young by today’s standards, was relatively long-lived for the time’’ reports the World News Net .
To add to the mystery of the cemetery, not many grave goods were found. A 2 nd century AD Celtic brooch was among the few items retrieved. A Roman coin was also uncovered. These items date to a period much earlier than when the dead were buried in the cemetery.
The CEO of the college, Dafydd Evans has pledged to collaborate with the authorities to put any artifacts uncovered on display at the local Oriel Ynys Mon museum.
There is expected to be more work carried out at the site. This may help to solve the mystery of burial grounds and its skeletons, which could potentially radically change our knowledge about the Dark Ages. However, it seems that the remarkable and peculiar graves will remain a mystery for some time to come.
