Ancient Necropolis Discovered in 17th-Century Croatian Palace’s Garden
An individual buried in an amphora on the Croatian island of Hvar
Archaeologists on the Croatian island of Hvar have unearthed an ancient necropolis, or vast burial ground, dated to between the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.
As local news outlet Croatia Week reports, the team found the burial ground in the front garden of the Radošević Palace, a 17th-century Baroque building on the western end of the island.
Archaeological consulting company Kantharos spearheaded the dig and has spent the past two months examining the site ahead of construction of a new library and reading room.
According to a statement, the researchers discovered 20 graves containing the skeletal remains of 32 people in an area spanning some 700 square feet.
They also found a fragment of a stone wall dated to the second century A.D. and a city gate dated to the late fifth century.
Other highlights included amphorae (jars used mainly for transporting wine and olive oil), ceramic jugs and lamps, glass bottles and containers, and coins.
These discoveries, says Kantharos in the statement, per Google Translate, have prompted researchers to call the palace “the most important and richest site” on Hvar.
Researchers have dubbed the Baroque Radošević Palace “the most important and richest site” on Hvar.
Broken amphoras found on the island of Hvar
As per Encyclopedia Britannica, Hvar has been inhabited continuously since the early Neolithic period. Greek settlers founded colonies on the island in 385 B.C., but by 219 B.C., the Romans had seized control of the area. Slavic groups fleeing the European mainland arrived on Hvar in the seventh century A.D.
Built between 1670 and 1688, the palace itself served as the local seat of the wealthy Radošević family, wrote scholar Ambroz Tudor, who was part of the Kantharos team, in a 2022 study.
Its accentuated balconies and “lavishly decorated façade openings” make the estate a stunning example of Baroque architecture, Tudor added.
nside the newly excavated necropolis, experts found burials ranging from simple structures to elaborate tombs outfitted with roof tiles, writes Jesse Holth for ARTnews. Per the statement, the remains were exceptionally well preserved, with some of the skeletons interred in large jars alongside grave goods.
This unusual funerary ritual appears regularly in the archaeological record, but scholars remain unsure of the practice’s purpose. Reporting on a similar find made on the Mediterranean island of Corsica earlier this year, Amanda Morrow of Radio France Internationale (RFI) noted that such burials were generally reserved for infants or children. (The ages of the individuals buried in amphorae on Hvar remain unclear.)
A vessel found at the excavation site
Vessel uncovered during excavations
Some of the amphorae held grave goods.
“You might go to the practical thing and say that the bodies were so fragile, [maybe] they felt the need to protect it from the environment, even though it is dead,” Yoav Arbel, an archaeologist who was part of a team that discovered a baby buried in a jar in the Israeli city of Jaffa, told Laura Geggel last December.
“But there’s always the interpretation that the jar is almost like a womb, so basically the idea is to return [the] baby back into Mother Earth, or into the symbolic protection of his mother.”
As Croatian news outlet Dalmacija Danas notes, one of the last finds made during the dig was the second-century wall, which was hidden at the deepest layers of the site.
Though Kantharos plans to conduct additional research to learn more about local funerary customs, the statement notes that the preliminary findings offer new insights on ceramic production and trade networks.
Researchers have previously made similar finds in the region. In 2022, for instance, archaeologists unearthed a Roman necropolis containing at least 18 graves in the Croatian harbor town of Trogir.
And last year, a separate team discovered two well-preserved, 2,000-year-old shipwrecks containing amphorae and pottery off the coast of Hvar.
Scientists just found velociraptor’s feathered Chinese cousin
A new species of feathered dinosaur has been discovered in China that is the largest ever found with wings on its arms.
The Zhenyuanlong, as it has been dubbed, is covered in feathers and looks just like a bird of today, complete with three layers of quill features.
This new creature is one of the closest cousins of the well-known velociraptor and is thought to have lived around 125 million years ago.
The Liaoning Province of China, where the Zhenyuanlong was found, is famous for the thousands of feathered dinosaurs that have been found there, and this latest discovery adds even more diversity to the area’s fauna.
Just like other specimens, the fossil of the Zhenyuanlong is a perfectly preserved example of dinosaur life from the Early Cretaceous period.
The etymology of the Zhenyuanlong’s name comes from a combination of the word “long”, which means dragon in Chinese, and “Zhenyuan”, the surname of the man who secured the specimen for study.
Like other creatures discovered in the region the dinosaur “has broad wings on its arms comprised of multiple sets of pennaceous feathers and large pennaceous feathers on the tail”, according to a paper published today in the journal Scientific Reports.
Paleontologists note that unlike its close relatives, the raptor “appears to lack vaned feathers on the hindlimb”.
But it is not these factors that make this dinosaur especially unique. The researchers explain the Zhenyuanlong is “an aberrant and rare animal compared to the vast majority of other Liaoning dromaeosaurids, due to its large body size and proportionally tiny forearms”.
The dino’s relatives are, for the most part, the size of a domestic house cat. The Zhenyuanlong is bigger and has short forearms with large, complex wings.
Another interesting observation about the Zhenyuanlong is that despite the presence of these wings, they do not necessarily seem to be optimised for flight.
The researchers have their suspicions as to why a short-armed creature like the Zhenyuanlong might have evolved with wings, even if it did not fly.
“It may be that such large wings comprised of multiple layers of feathers were useful for display purposes, and possibly even evolved for this reason and not for flight, and this is one reason why they may have been retained in paravians that did not fly,” the researchers claimed.
Melting Ice Has Uncovered Hundreds of Ancient Viking Artifacts and a Previously Unknown Trade Route in Norway
A trove of Viking artifacts have come to light thanks to a warming climate, proving that a mountain pass served as an important trade network.
Members of the Secrets of the Ice team surveying the Lendbreen pass
A trove of about 800 Viking artifacts, some frozen in an icy mountain range in Norway for more than 1,000 years, have come to light as a result of global warming.
The revelations prove that the mountain pass served as an important part of a trade network with the rest of the Viking world and that it was likely used to transport goods such as cheese, butter, reindeer pelts, and antlers between farms.
“The Viking age is one of small-scale globalization: They’re sourcing raw materials from all over,” Søren Michael Sindbæk, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, who was not involved in the study, told Science. “This is the first site where we have good chronology and the finds to illustrate that.”
In a melted ice patch on the mountain slopes of Norway’s Innlandet County, archaeologists found a leather shoe, a woolen mitten, and a tunic. There were also feathered arrowheads, horseshoes—and a horse snowshoe—walking sticks, a piece of a sled, kitchen utensils, and even droppings from Viking packhorses.
Along the path they found stone cairns that would have marked the way, with a stone shelter built near the top of the ice patch. Collectively, these artifacts suggest that travelers were commonplace in the mountains, despite their remoteness and the harsh weather conditions.
Horseshoe from the 11th to mid-13th century, found at Lendbreen in 2022.
“It may seem counterintuitive, but high mountains sometimes did serve as major communications routes, instead of major barriers,” study co-author James Barrett told Science. “It’s easy to travel at high elevations, once you get up there and there’s snow on the ground.”
The discoveries are part of the burgeoning field of glacial archaeology, made possible as climate change shrinks ice flows around the world. Norway’s Glacier Archaeology Program, led by Innlandet County Council and the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, began research in the area in 2022, joining similar programs in other countries in researching the field.
The Norwegian “Secrets of the Ice” findings were published last week in the scientific journal Antiquity. The paper declared the Lendbreen ice patch on the Lomseggen ridge, which has been melting rapidly since 2022, to be the “first such ice site discovered in Northern Europe.” Previous finds of a similar nature had only been made in the Alps.
An archaeologist with one of the stone cairns marking the mountain pass at Lendbreen. The light-colored rocks in the background were covered with snow and ice until recently.
“Past travelers left behind lots of artifacts, frozen in time by the ice,” wrote the lead archaeologist, Lars Pilø, on the project website.
“These artifacts can tell us when people traveled, when travel was at its most intense, why people traveled across the mountains and even who the travelers were.”
“It was clearly a route of special significance,” the journal noted. The pass was in use between the years 300 and 1500 AD, and most active around the year 1000. Its use declined with the Little Ice Age, around 1300, and the Black Death, around 1400.
The Lendbreen tunic, which dates to the year 300, is the oldest piece of clothing ever found in Norway.
The first major evidence that humans ventured across inhospitable mountain passes was the discovery of Ötzi the Tyrolean Iceman in the Italian Alps in 1991. The snow and ice had preserved the man’s body for 5,300 years, allowing scientists to study the bacteria in his gut. What they found helped track the movements of pathogens, and by extension, human migration.
The find “really flipped a switch,” Stephanie Rogers, a geoscientist at Auburn University, told the New York Times. “What was that person doing up there?… if we found something in this place, we are going to find something in other places.”
7,500-year-old Spanish ‘Stonehenge’ discovered on future avocado farm
It’s one of Europe’s largest Neolithic standing stone complexes.
One of the 526 standing stones unearthed at the site of La Torre-La Janera, near Huelva in southwestern Spain. (Image credit: Linares-Catela
Archaeologists have unearthed one of Europe’s largest Neolithic standing stone complexes near the city of Huelva in southwestern Spain, ahead of plans to grow avocados there.
The oldest upright stones — called “menhirs” in many parts of Europe, possibly from a Celtic word for “stone” — could be up to 7,500 years old, and the entire complex consists of thousands of individual stones spread out over 1,500 acres (600 hectares) of the sides and top of a small hill.
Some of the largest stones stand alone, but others were positioned to form tombs, mounds, stone circles, enclosures and linear rows. The diversity of the structures is part of the puzzle of the site.
“This pattern is not common in the Iberian Peninsula and is truly unique,” said José Antonio Linares, a geoarchaeologist at Huelva University and the lead author of a new study in the issue of Trabajos de Historial.
The site, known as La Torre-La Janera, was discovered in 2022, but archaeologists only recently learned about the full extent of the Neolithic, or New Stone Age complex, Antonio Linares Catela .
It now seems that the functions of the Neolithic monuments were as varied as their construction. “Territorial, ritual, astronomical, funerary… the whole constituting a mega-site of the recent prehistory of southern Iberia,” he said. This was a “megalithic sanctuary of tribute, worship, and memory to the ancestors of long ago.”
Megalithic monuments
The landowner, a farmer, had wanted to establish an avocado plantation at the site, near the border of Portugal about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Huelva, Linares said.
But there were local rumors that menhirs had once stood on the hill, so it wasn’t a complete surprise when an initial archaeological survey in 2018 confirmed there were several standing stones there. A full study in 2020 and 2022 revealed the site’s importance, and the universities of Huelva and Alcalá are now funding an archaeological investigation until at least 2026, he said.
Neolithic people constructed the complex on a prominent hill not far from the mouth of the Guadiana River and the Atlantic Ocean, with good visibility over the surrounding territory.
Archaeologists think the site was in use for more than 3,000 years during the Neolithic period. The structures include standing stones, tombs and stone circles.
So far, archaeologists have found more than 520 standing stones at the site, and some of the earliest may have been erected as long ago as the second half of the sixth millennium B.C., or about 7,500 years ago, while the latest Neolithic structures were built in the second millennium B.C., or between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, he said.
Several of the standing stones created prominent roofed tombs known as “dolmens,” while others formed coffin-shaped structures known as “cists,” which the archaeologists expect were used to bury the remains of the dead.
But no human remains have yet been verified at the site. “We have not carried out extensive excavations of the tombs,” Linares said; and while such structures must have contained skeletal remains at some point, bones may not have been preserved in the acidic soil.
Neolithic peoples and megaliths
Standing stones and other Neolithic monuments — known as “megaliths,” from the ancient Greek words for “giant stone” — abound throughout Europe, from Sweden to the Mediterranean. Many megalithic sites have also been found in Spain, including in the region near La Torre-La Janera.
Some of the most famous, such as Stonehenge, are found in Britain, but even larger “megalithic” structures are found elsewhere — such as at Carnac in France’s Brittany region, where there are more than 10,000 menhirs aligned in rows.
Archaeologists think the earliest standing stones were erected in the second half of the sixth millennium
The precise dates of such megalithic structures can be hard to ascertain because rock itself cannot be reliably dated. But the indirect evidence of other materials buried at the same sites suggest that most of them date to the Neolithic period from about 6,500 years ago, according to Smithsonian magazine(opens in new tab) — which would make the oldest standing stones at La Torre-La Janera more ancient than most.
Archaeologists suspect that the practice of building megalithic monuments spread over Europe during the Neolithic with successive waves of settlers, perhaps from the Near East, who seem to have assimilated the indigenous hunter-gather peoples, according to a 2003 study in the journal Annual Review of Anthropology.
Many megaliths seem to be aligned with certain astronomical events, such as the midwinter sunrise, and it seems many of those at the La Torre-La Janera complex may be, too.
The roofed tombs, or dolmens, “are generally oriented to the solstices and equinoxes, but there are also solar orientations in the alignments [rows of stones] and the cromlechs [circles of stones],” project leader Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, a professor of prehistory at Alcalá University near Madrid and a co-author of the new research.
She stressed that only the surface of the La Torre-La Janera site had been investigated so far, and archaeologists expect to find much more there.
One clue that more stones are yet to be found is the “magnificent preservation” of the structures, which may help the scientists recover information about the “occupations, chronologies, uses, and symbolism of these monuments.”
A New geological study shows that the great sphinx of Giza is 800,000 Years old
One of the most mysterious and enigmatic monuments on the planet’s surface is undoubtedly the Great Sphinx at the Giza plateau in Egypt. It is an ancient construction that has baffled researchers ever since its discovery and until , no one has been able to accurately date the Sphinx, since there are no written records or mentions in the past about it.
Now, two Ukrainian researchers have proposed a new provocative theory where the two scientists propose that the Great Sphinx of Egypt is around 800,000 years old. A Revolutionary theory that is backed up by science.
The authors of this paper are scientists Manichev Vjacheslav I. (Institute of Environmental Geochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and Alexander G. Parkhomenko (Institute of Geography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine).
The starting point of these two experts is the paradigm shift initiated by West and Schoch, a ‘debate’ intended to overcome the orthodox view of Egyptology referring to the possible remote origins of the Egyptian civilization and, on the other, physical evidence of water erosion present at the monuments of the Giza Plateau.
According to Manichev and Parkhomenko:
A strong argument was made by Ukrainian scientists in regards to the Sphinx, arguments based upon geological studies which support Schoch’s view regarding the Sphinx and its age.
The western wall of the Sphinx enclosure, showing erosion consistently along its length. Courtesy and copyright of Colin Reader.
Manichev and Parkhomenko focus on the deteriorated aspect of the body of the Sphinx, leaving aside the erosive features where the Sphinx is located, which had been studied previously by Schoch. Ukrainian scholars focused on the undulating terrain of the Sphinx which displays the mysterious pattern.
Mainstream scientists offer explanations for this sharp feature and state that it is based on the abrasive effect of the wind and sand, the undulations were formed because the harder layers of rock are better at withstanding the erosions while the softer layers would have been more affected, forming voids.
However, as noted by Manichev and Parkhomenko, this argument does not explain why the front of the Sphinx’s head lacks such features. In regards to the argument made by Schoch about the heavy rain period which occurred around 13,000 BC, the Ukrainian scientists recognized Schoch hypothesis partially suggesting that the erosive features of the Sphinx go further back than 13,000 BC.
Manichev and Parkhomenko argue are that the mountainous and coastal areas of the Caucasus and Crimea, which they know well, have a type of wind erosion that differs morphologically from the erosive features noted on the Sphinx. Essentially, they argue that such wind erosion has a very soft effect, regardless of the rocks’ geological composition.
“In our geological field expeditions in different mountains and littoral zones of the Crimea and Caucasus we could often observe the forms of Eolian weathering which morphology differs considerably from the weathering taking place on the GES. Most natural forms of weathering are of smoothed character, independent of the lithological composition of the rocks.”
They continue further and explain:
Manichev and Parkhomenko propose a new natural mechanism that may explain the undulations and mysterious features of the Sphinx. This mechanism is the impact of waves on the rocks of the coast. Basically, this could produce, in a period of thousands of years the formation of one or more layers of ripples, a fact that is clearly visible, for example, on the shores of the Black Sea. This process, which acts horizontally (that is when the waves hit the rock up to the surface), will produce a rock’s wear or dissolution.
The fact is that the observation of these cavities in the Great Sphinx made the Ukrainian scientists think that this great monument could have been affected by the above-said process in the context of immersion in large bodies of water, not the regular flooding of the Nile.
Manichev and Parkhomenko suggest that the geological composition of the body of the Sphinx is a sequence of layers composed of limestone with small interlayers of clays.
Manichev and Parkhomenko explain that these rocks possess a different degree of resistance to the water effect and say that if the formation of the hollow were due to sand abrasion only, the hollows had to correspond to the strata of a certain lithological composition. They suggest that the Great Sphinx hollows are formed in fact within several strata, or occupy some part of the stratum of homogeneous composition.
The Back of the Great Sphinx of Egypt
Manichev and Parkhomenko firmly believe that the Sphinx had to be submerged for a long time underwater and, to support this hypothesis, they point towards existing literature of geological studies of the Giza Plateau.
According to these studies at the end of the Pliocene geologic period (between 5.2 and 1.6 million years ago), seawater entered the Nile valley and gradually creating flooding in the area. This led to the formation of lacustrine deposits which are at the mark of 180 m above the present level of the Mediterranean Sea.
According to Manichev and Parkhomenko, the sea level during the Calabrian phase is the closest to the present mark with the highest GES hollow at its level. A high level of seawater also caused the Nile to overflow and created long-living water-bodies. As to time it corresponds to 800000 years.
What we have here is evidence that contradicts the conventional theory of deterioration caused by Sand and Water, a theory already criticized by West and Schoch, who recalled that during many centuries, the body of the Sphinx was buried by the sands of the desert, so Wind and Sand erosion would not have done any damage to the enigmatic Sphinx.
However, where Schoch clearly saw the action of streams of water caused by continuous rains, Ukrainian geologists see the effect of erosion caused by the direct contact of the waters of the lakes formed in the Pleistocene on the body Sphinx.
This means that the Great Sphinx of Egypt is one of the oldest monuments on Earth’s surface, pushing back drastically the origin of mankind and civilization.
Some might say that the theory proposed by Manichev and Parkhomenko is very extreme because it places the Great Sphinx in an era where there were no humans, according to currently accepted evolutionary patterns.
Furthermore, as it has been demonstrated, the two megalithic temples, located adjacent to the Great Sphinx were built by the same stone which means that the new dating of the Sphinx drags these monuments with the Sphinx back 800,000 years. In other words, this means that ancient civilizations inhabited our planet much longer than mainstream scientists are willing to accept.
Ancient mummy ‘with 1,100 year old Adidas boots’ died after she was struck on the head
Intriguing new details have emerged about a medieval mummy known for her ‘Adidas’ boots – which she wore more than a millennia ago. The body of the woman was discovered a year ago this week in the Altai mountains region of Mongolia.
And her body and possessions remained so remarkably preserved that experts are still uncovering some of the secrets they keep. Now, scientists have discovered that the mummy suffered a significant blow to the head before her death.
The Mongolian woman – aged between 30 and 40 – hit headlines in 2022 thanks to her modern-looking footwear, which some likened to a pair of trainers. In the intervening 12 months, scientists have been working to find out more about the mysterious Mongolian mummy.
Scientists believe the body of a woman (pictured) found in April last year, died up to 1,100 years ago from a blow to the head
And her trademark felt boots – boasting red and black stripes – have been carefully cleaned, with new pictures revealed today by The Siberian Times. Experts from the Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia now believe the woman died up to 1,100 years ago after suffering a serious head wound.
Initial examinations found that ‘it was quite possible that the traces of a blow to the mummy’s facial bones were the cause of her death.
They are still seeking to verify the exact age of the burial, but they estimate it took place in the tenth century – more recently than originally thought. About the boots, Galbadrakh Enkhbat, director of the Centre, said: ‘With these stripes, when the find was made public, they were dubbed similar to Adidas shoes.
New pictures of the leather boots – which feature red and black stripes and metal buckle work (pictured) – have been released
‘In this sense, they are an interesting object of study for ethnographers, especially so when the style is very modern.’
And one local fashion expert. quoted by Siberian Times, said: ‘Overall they look quite kinky but stylish – I wouldn’t mind wearing them now in a cold climate.
‘Those high-quality stitches, the bright red and black stripes, the length – I would buy them now in no time.’
The high altitude and cold climate helped to preserve both the woman’s body and her belongings.
And a coating of Shilajit – a thick, sticky tar-like substance with a colour ranging from white to dark brown – that covered her body aided this process. Some skin and hair can be seen on her remains, which were wrapped in felt. The woman was buried alongside a number of her possessions – including a handbag and four changes of clothes.
Experts from the Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia (pictured) have worked for the past 12 months to restore the times they found buried
This included a handbag, four changes of clothes, the ‘Adidas’ boots, and numerous practical and everyday objects (pictured)
The items of clothing found, like this jacket (pictured), were decorated with fine embroidery patterns
A comb and a mirror from her beauty kit were also found, along with a knife. Her horse and a saddle with metal stirrups in such good condition that it could be used today were buried as well. But despite her seemingly lavish possessions archaeologists believe she was an ‘ordinary woman of her time, rather than an aristocrat or royal.
The Mongolian woman (pictured) is believed to have been aged between 30 and 40 when she died. Some skin and hair can be seen on her remains, which were wrapped in felt.
Despite her, seemingly lavish possessions (pictured) archaeologists believe she was an ‘ordinary’ woman of her time, rather than an aristocrat or royal
Experts believe she may have been a seamstress, due to a variety of sewing equipment that was found inside her bag (pictured), as well as the embroidery on her clothing
‘Judging by what was found inside the burial, we guess that she was from ordinary social strata,’ added Mr Enkhbat.
‘Various sewing utensils were found with her.
The preserved remains of a horse (pictured) were uncovered at the burial site
A saddle with metal stirrups (pictured) in such good condition that it could be used today was found alongside it
‘This is only our guess, but we think she could have been a seamstress.’
‘Inside (her bag) was the sewing kit and since the embroidery was on both the bag and the shoes, we can be certain that the embroidery was done by locals.’
The grave was unearthed at an altitude of 9,200ft (2,803 metres) and the woman is believed to be of Turkik origin. It appears to be the first complete Turkic burial in Central Asia. At the time of the discovery, commenters on Twitter and Facebook made a number of tongue-in-cheek claims that a woman must be a time traveller.
One Twitter user jokingly quipped: ‘Must be a time traveller. I knew we would dig one up sooner or later, another added: ‘Huh? Time-travelling Mummy? Corpse interfered with?.’
Meanwhile, Facebook users said: ‘Loooooool he’s wearing a pair of gazelles’, and ‘Well I must admit, I’ve got a few pair but I ain’t had them that long.’
SEE ALSO: ANCIENT WARES WITH CLOTTED CREAM CLARIFIED BUTTER FOUND IN MONGOLIA
A host of possessions were found in the grave, offering a unique insight into life in medieval Mongolia. These included a saddle, bridle, clay vase, wooden bowl, trough, iron kettle, the remains of an entire horse, and ancient clothing.
The discovery also appears to be the first complete Turkic burial in Central Asia and the remains were found at an altitude of 9,200 feet. An elaborately embroidered bag is pictured
There were also pillows, a sheep’s head and a felt travel bag in which were placed the whole back of a sheep, goat bones and a small leather bag designed to carry a cup. Archaeologists from the city museum in Khovd were alerted to the burial site by local herdsmen.
The Altai Mountains – where the burial was discovered – unite Siberia, in Russia, and Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan.
Ancient Siberian grave holds ‘warrior woman’ and huge weapons stash
Archaeologists in Siberia have unearthed a 2,500-year-old grave holding the remains of four people from the ancient Tagar culture — including two warriors, a male and female — and a stash of their metal weaponry.
The experts from the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have yet to determine a clear cause of death. They’re currently theorizing that illness may have sealed the fate of these Scythian warriors, while the uncovered artifacts are just as intriguing.
From bronze daggers, knives, and several axes to bronze mirrors and a comb made from an animal horn — the excavation has proven invaluable.
As is often the case with discoveries such as this, the dig site in southern Khakassia, Siberia was found out of sheer luck. Preparatory construction work on a new railroad exposed the grave which now promises to shed new light on a civilization long gone.
The older woman was buried at the couple’s feet, with chunks of the infant’s skull scattered across the grave.
The Tagar culture is very much historical, and not to be confused with the Targaryens from Game of Thrones. Part of the Scythian civilization — which was comprised of nomadic warriors inhabiting the southern region of modern-day Siberia — the Tagars often buried their dead with personal items.
However, burials were typically done using miniature versions of real-life objects. The Tagar culture was confident things could be taken to the afterlife, and thus commonly buried its dead with smaller versions of real possessions they thought they would need. The items found in this grave set it apart.
The Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography team found that both the weapons and personal items were full-sized. For Yuri Vitalievich Teterin who spearheaded the excavation, the fact that they found anything at all has been the most shocking.
Though weapons within a Tagarian woman’s grave are common, they’re typically long-range weapons — unlike the daggers and axes found here.
It’s generally believed by experts like Teterin that grave robbers have looted most known Tagarian graves.
The Tagar culture lasted from around 800 B.C. to 300 B.C., with populations spread across the Minusinsk Basin — a landscape combining steppe, forest-steppe, and foothills.
Analysis of the remains of the male and female warrior couple showed that they likely died in their 30s or 40s. Placed on their backs, each person had large ceramic vessels next to them.
While the man had two bronze daggers and two axes by his side, the woman had one of each.
Last year’s survey work showed that nine out of 10 newfound archaeological sites are directly in the railroad’s development zones.
Once again, a slight variation on typical Tagar burials met the experts. Tagarian women being buried with weapons has been a common encounter, but not of this sort.
In the past, they were typically long-range weapons like arrowheads — whereas these are meant for combat in close quarters.
“The remains of a newborn baby, no more than a month old, were also found in the burial, but fragments of its skeleton were scattered throughout the grave, possibly as a result of the activity of rodents,” said Olga Batanina, an anthropologist at the Paleodata laboratory of natural scientific methods in archaeology.
As for the older woman, she was buried on her right side with knees bent by the couple’s feet. While forthcoming DNA analysis should confirm whether or not these people were related, researchers estimate that the elder individual was around 60 years old.
The site was found in southern Khakassia, Siberia, at the foot of Mount Aar-tag.
The fortuitous discovery is certainly cause for celebration at the Russian Academy of Sciences, though it isn’t the only one.
Survey work in preparation of the railroad project last year revealed that there are at least 10 archaeological sites nearby, with nine directly in the way of development zones.
Archaeologists Find Evidence for 40,000-year-old Modern Culture in China
No sapiens bones were found at Xiamabei, but archaeologists found a pigment-processing industry and miniaturized stone tools far in advance of their broad adoption in prehistoric China
Nihewan Basin, site of early modern human activity in China
Archaic humans began reaching Eurasia at least 2 million years ago, but the timeline of anatomically modern types spreading out of Africa is not known. In any case, by 40,000 years ago modern humans had reached northern Asia, replacing the archaic populations.
Some modern remains from that time have been found, albeit few, but what their cultural adaptations were like was a mystery. Now an international team of archaeologists reports in Nature on indirect but compelling evidence for Homo sapiens’ presence at Xiamabei, a site in northern China by the Huliu River that dates to at least 40,000 years ago.Moreover, it seems they developed a unique stone technology culture that would only emerge broadly more than 10,000 years later.
The evidence found at Xiamabei includes the earliest discovery of ocher processing in the region – as distinct from ocher use, which has been found even among Neanderthals.
Another aspect is finely wrought stone bladelets of a type not found in China before, some of which bear traces of hafting, write Fa-Gang Wang of China’s Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Prof. Michael Petraglia of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and colleagues.
Supporting evidence is the separate discovery of modern human remains dating to about 40,000 years ago at nearby Tianyuan Cave and Zhoukoudian Cave. Also a modern skullcap was unearthed at Salkhit and dated to about 34,000 years ago. These discoveries support the theory that the Xiamabei manufacturers were sapiens.
Theoretically, since no bones have been found in the context of Xiamabei, the finds could be associated with other hominin types such as late Denisovans, or even their cousins the Neanderthals, the team admits.
Field work in the Nihewan Basin, northern China
Excavation of 40,000 year old surface at Xiamabei, showing distribution of stone tools and bone fragments
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But given the unique qualities of the finds in the context of China, and the fact that modern human remains from the same period were discovered in the area, the most parsimonious explanation is that the Xiamabei occupants were Homo sapiens, the authors conclude.
“As soon as I saw the archaeological collections, I knew immediately that this was a significant site,” says Petraglia on how he got involved. He didn’t participate in the excavation, which was in 2013, but is part of the international team analyzing the artifacts.
Spoor of sapiens
Homo sapiens, it seems, had been roaming beyond Africa shortly after our evolution began perhaps 300,000 years ago. Recent discoveries in Israel and Greece indicate that by 200,000 years, early modern humans were out of Africa and about.
Genetic analyses show these early modern humans evidently met and made merry with other human species beyond Africa. But the early modern exiters went extinct, and the Neanderthals and Denisovans and heaven knows who else continued to rule the Eurasian roost – until some point in time.
The exit that succeeded, in the sense that sapiens broke through to Eurasia and survived, was only about 50,000 years ago, give or take quite a few thousand years. Some surmise that sapiens had evolved to another level, which gave it crucial advantages compared with its equally big-brained cousin species.
In the current paper, the team points to three lines of evidence indicating innovations that may have helped sapiens expand, and suggests these are “spoor” of modern sapiens in Xiamabei 40,000 years ago: the micro-blades and their hafting (at least in some cases), the ocher processing, and a finely fashioned tool made of bone.
Pioneers of miniaturization
The stone tool assemblage at this site is generally small, the professor explains. The team found 382 micro-blades, made of local chert and quartz. Almost all measured less than 4 centimeters, or 1 and a half inches; over half were smaller than 2 centimeters: In Petraglia’s view, the inhabitants were intending to create exactly that – small, blade-like pieces.
Blade-like stone tools from Xiamabei
Seven of the blades show signs of hafting, probably into wood handles or possibly bone. It is even possible that they were affixing these wee blades into a handle to create a sort of prehistoric serrated implement. “These people really seem to be tooling up their industries and doing some very sophisticated things in order to process meat or plants or kill game much more efficiently,” he says.
And they were way ahead of their time. The types of stone tools in China before Xiamabei and even contemporary with it are core and flake, meaning simple, amorphous industries, Petraglia says. Microlithic technology – tiny stone blades – would only become the predominant technology in eastern Asia 29,000 years ago.
“There is no stone tool assemblage like it at the time, approximately 40,000 years ago,” Petraglia says. “Its appearance, therefore, is innovative. We have nothing like this technology beforehand, and there is no precedent. … The hafting evidence is also novel [for that time and place], and no earlier assemblage has shown the same.”
Possibly, the manufacture of microlithics at Xiamabei was a precedent to the broader phenomenon over 10,000 years later. “That said, we do not have a connection between Xiamabei to later microlithic sites. So, it seems that we have a wave of advance of people using innovative technologies at 40,000 years ago, only to disappear and be replaced by another population using microlithics at 29,000 years ago,” he suggests.
What were these fine tools, so ahead of their time, used for? The use-wear analysis of non-hafted pieces runs the gamut from cutting, boring and even use as wedges, the authors contend. Use-wear analysis of the hafted pieces indicates several purposes, including to scrape hides, to scrape and bore into hard matter, probably wood, to whittle wood, and likely use in the course of processing and/or consuming animals.
Which animals? Pollen analysis indicates that Xiamabei was a piney steppe at the time. That environmental characterization fits with the evidence for the occupants’ meals. They ate copiously of the deer – as did all human species, it seems; venison is widely appreciated to this day. The Xiamabei people also doted on roast horse and zokor, that being a relatively large subterranean rodent somewhat like our friend the mole rat. Zokors were probably easy to hunt.
A zokor having lunch
The degree to which animal bones were burned suggests the occupants may have been burning bones for fuel. Apropos of the bones, the archaeologists also found a bone tool – just one, but believe it shows evidence of advanced technique.
Also, ocher residue was found on 10 of the tools. In two cases, the ocher was on the tool’s active edge, suggesting ocher in the glue, or its use in hide processing. But the intriguing aspect isn’t the use made of ocher – it’s the processing.
The earliest paint factory in China
Ocher use has been a hallmark of the Homo line predating our species, it seems. Especially red ocher. The friable colorful stone may have been used by Homo erectus in Kenya 285,000 years ago. There is somewhat more confident identification of its use at an early Neanderthal site in the Netherlands a quarter-million to 200,000 years ago.
But a prehistoric ocher processing facility is another level. The archaeologists believe that at Xiamabei, the occupants were hauling various kinds of ocher to the cave, and grinding and pounding them to produce paints.
What they did with those paints is anybody’s guess – decorate their environs, their bodies, their clothes, their utensils and weapons – but the amount they produced was enough to impregnate the floor where they worked, the team writes.
A, B: Artifacts on red-stained floor C: Ocher modified by grinding D: Ocher fragment from crushing E: Stained slab
Piece of ochre from Xiamabei.
The archaeologists identified one piece of iron-rich ocher that had been repeatedly abraded to produce a bright dark red ocher powder; one small piece of a different kind of ocher seemingly generated by the crushing of a big piece; and an elongated limestone slab stained with ocher. “A workshop for the production and use of mineral pigments at Xiamabei constitutes a second new cultural element in comparison with earlier and contemporary sites,” the team explains.
“The preservation of this floor [where the ocher facility was found] is literally unprecedented – it’s Pompeii-like, if you will. So we can say a lot about hominin activities. We actually saw an activity area of ocher processing, which is unprecedented for China,” Petraglia explains.
While the habitation floor was infused with different shades of ocher, red predominated. That is in keeping with precedent from other areas, times and sites: hunter-gatherers the world wide use red ocher to daub their selves, garb and adornments, Petraglia points out.
So the bottom line is that others used ocher and small tools, but the pigment-processing industry and the small tools of this sort were firsts of their kind in the region, he underlines.
We repeat that the identification of the species-at-large at Xiamabei is inferred. Tianyuan Cave is just 150 kilometers, or 93 miles, away and housed Homo sapiens specimens showing genetic evidence of cross-breeding with Neanderthals.
Did the people who lived at Xiamabei 40,000 years ago survive? Which means, do they have descendants – or is this another lineage that went extinct? We don’t know, but separate work showed that the lineage of their neighbors at Tianyuan 40,000 years ago may have survived in some Asian and Native American populations – chiefly in South America.
How much light does this shed on modern human development? The archaeological record argues against the notion of linear, continuous cultural innovation, or of a fully formed set of adaptations that enabled early humans to expand out of Africa and conquer the world. It fits with a pattern of mosaic innovations.
Everyday Life In A Bronze Age Village Emerges In U.K. Excavation
Wood specialist Mike Bamforth examines the base of a Bronze Age wooden bucket at the excavation site.
What did villagers in England eat for dinner 3,000 years ago? And what were they wearing?
These are the kinds of questions that archaeologists believe they can answer with a Bronze Age-era discovery at the Must Farm Quarry, some 80 miles north of London.
“What’s special about this is, it’s not the archaeology of the important people. It’s not burial mounds. This is the archaeology of the home,” David Gibson from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit says in an interview with All Things Considered.
Remains of a Bronze Age circular house show inner and outer post rings and collapsed roof timbers “like spokes in a wheel.”
The research team says say these circular Bronze Age homes were perched on stilts above a river. Archaeologists believe that when a fire started, the residents fled, and their dwellings sunk into the river where they were preserved by the silt, creating a unique snapshot of everyday life thousands of years ago.
Among this treasure trove are whole pots with food inside, textiles made from plant fibers, a longboat, weapons and colorful beads.
Gibson says they’re sending off pots for analysis. “It might even tell us exactly what their last meal was before the fire struck,” he says. And somewhat chillingly, “we know it was sudden because one of the pots with the food still had its wooden spoon stuck in it.”
He adds that they’ve found 29 complete food vessels and pots, ranging in size from 2 feet high to 2 inches.
“It’s almost like someone has gone to the department store and ordered the full set for their house,” Gibson says.
It’s the “best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain,” preservation group Historic England says in a statement.
Whole pots were preserved inside timber dwellings destroyed by fire. Archaeologists discovered there was still food in some of them.
Historic England and the Forterra Quarry are funding this $1,588,000 project over four years.
“Normally, when we do archaeology, we see the decay of a settlement, we see it going out of use, and we see the slow back-fill over time of the ditches and the pits. We don’t see a snapshot.
So this is almost like, you get the opportunity to peek through the curtains and see people actually in their daily moment,” archaeologist Selina Davenport told the BBC.
Archaeologists are still excavating the site. They say the findings will eventually be displayed at nearby museums.
Spectacular Ancient tomb treasures from the Republic of Georgia kingdom of Colchis
This exhibition is the first showing in Britain of spectacular tomb treasures from the Republic of Georgia, known in ancient classical times as Colchis and familiar to every schoolchild as the land to which the Greek hero Jason led the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece.
Recent archaeological excavations have thrown much new light on the rich culture of this region, including their lavish gold-adorned burials and ritual practices in which the local wine played a central role. These finds offer a unique insight into a fascinating and little-known ancient culture on the periphery of the classical world.
The magnificent gold and silver jewellery, sculpture and funerary items displayed here derive from tombs and sanctuaries of the 5th to the 1st centuries BC at the site of Vani.
EPSON DSC picture
Most of the more than 140 treasures have never been seen outside Georgia before this exhibition tour. They offer both a spectacular array of exquisite works of art and a valuable window onto the interaction of indigenous Georgian and classical Greek culture in antiquity.
Land of the Golden Fleece
The region known to the ancient Greeks as Colchis now lies within modern Georgia. This placed it to the east of the ancient Greek world, north of the Assyrian and Persian empires and south of the nomadic Scythians.
This region is protected on the north by the Caucasus Mountains and formed a natural trade route, which ran from the eastern edge of the Black Sea to Central Asia, as far as India.
It was rich in natural resources, especially metals, and was known to the Greek world as an area ‘rich in gold’. According to legend, this was the place to which Jason set out with his Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece.
Archaeological evidence shows that as early as the 8th century BC the Greeks had begun establishing colonies along the shores of the Black Sea, and several trading posts (known as emporia) thrived on Colchian shores.
While the Achaemenid Persians do not appear to have been actively present in Colchis, the Greek historian Herodotos (Histories III, §97, 3-4) records that the Colchians paid a tribute of one hundred men and one hundred women to the Persian empire every four years, presumably as slaves.
By the 6th century BC, the various regions of Colchis united formally into one kingdom made up of a network of culturally and politically connected cities.
Vani
Vani is one of the best-known sites in Colchis. It is located on a hilltop in the fertile region between the Sulori and Rioni Rivers.
The Vani archaeological site is a multi-layer archaeological site in western Georgia, located on a hill at the town of Vani in the Imereti region. It is the best-studied site in the hinterland of an ancient region, known to the Classical world as Colchis, and has been inscribed on the list of the Immovable Cultural Monuments of National Significance.
The ancient name of the city is still unknown, but archaeological evidence shows that there was already a small settlement here by the 8th century BC. From the 6th to the end of the 4th century BC, Vani’s size and wealth increased dramatically.
During this period, the city became the political and administrative center of the area, managing the cultivation of grapevines and the harvesting of wheat in the surrounding hills and plains. By about 250 BC, it appears that Vani had been transformed into a sanctuary city with its inhabitants moving outside the city walls.
The unstable political environment of the Hellenistic period (3rd-1st centuries BC) affected Colchis a great deal. Fortifications at Vani, including defensive walls and towers, indicate an increased threat of attack.
The city came to a violent end around 50 BC when it was destroyed by two successive invasions within a few years, the first probably by the Bosporans from the northwest under their leader Pharnaces, and the second by Mithridates VII from Pontus (southwest of Colchis).
