Category Archives: ASIA

ARMENIA, ASIA, WORLD

The Everlasting Shoe: What Does a 5,500-Year-Old Shoe Discovered in a Cave Tell Us About Ancient Armenians?

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The Everlasting Shoe: What Does a 5,500-Year-Old Shoe Discovered in a Cave Tell Us About Ancient Armenians?

As any archaeologist knows, very few things other than stone last for a long time. In a moist, warm climate, most organic material such as hemp, cloth, wood, and leather will decay, leaving nothing but stone and perhaps bone at an archaeological site.

This is one reason why the Stone Age got its name, not because everything was made of stone, but because it is mostly stone tools and ornaments that have survived and thus it is mainly stone items that are representative of that time-period.

All organic materials such animal skins worn by Paleolithic or Neolithic peoples have, for the most part, disappeared. In the right environment though, such materials can last for thousands of years.

If an environment is dry, and undisturbed, normally fragile, perishable material can last for millennia. One example of this is a 5,500-year-old leather shoe found in an Armenian cave which is one of several other examples of ancient footwear.

Entrance to the Areni-1 cave in southern Armenia near the town of Areni. The cave is where the world’s oldest known shoe has been found.

Other Preserved Ancient Shoes

Two other famous examples of ancient footwear are sandals found in the Arnold Research Cave in Missouri and another in the Cave of the Warrior in the Judaean Desert.

The shoes in the Arnold Research Cave are between 800 and 8,000 years old. The youngest were made of deerskin while the oldest were sandals made of fibers from a plant called rattlesnake master.

The shoes found in the Cave of the Warrior were also sandals made from leather that were determined to be about 6,000 years old. The leather sandals were found with a reed mat, a bow with a quiver of arrows, and a flint knife, among other items.

The Judaean Desert is known for its dry climate, providing excellent preserving conditions. The desert has also been used for thousands of years by fugitives on the run who hid their belongings in caves and never retrieved them.

Other items found in the Judaean Desert include the Dead Sea Scrolls dating to between 200 BC and 200 AD and a cache of bronze instruments and ornaments determined to be about 6,000 years old.

A pair of sandals from the Middle Neolithic

It should be noted that the two other examples of ancient footwear were not directly dated, but were dated using comparison with other artifacts found in the caves.

The Armenian shoes were directly dated with radiocarbon dating. The great antiquity of the Armenian shoe is thus more certain than the antiquity of the other shoes.

The Armenian Shoe

The 5,500-year-old shoe was discovered by an Armenian graduate student from the Institute of Archaeology of Armenia, Diana Zandaryan. The shoe was preserved by both the cold, dry conditions of the cave and a layer of sheep dung which was covering it, acting as a weathering seal.

Along with the shoe, containers of wheat, barley, and apricots were also discovered. The shoe dates to about 3,500 BC making it is a few centuries older than the initial levels of Stonehenge, the construction of which began in 3,000 BC.

It is not certain why the shoe or the other items were left there. They could have been left for storage or hidden there in a time of conflict. It is also possible that they were left there as an offering, possibly of a religious nature.

Another question is whether it was worn by a man or a woman. The shoe is small, women’s size by modern European and American standards, however it could have also been worn by a man in this time-period.

Life and Times of the Shoe

During the time that this shoe was in use, the inhabitants of Armenia had already been farming for thousands of years, having adopted domesticates from the Levant.

It is also around this time that the Kurgan culture, the proposed carriers of the Proto-Indo-European language began to move out of their ancestral homeland.

Little is known about the Kurgan culture except that they buried their dead in large mounds referred to as kurgans. These mounds are the most archaeologically visible features that they left behind, hence the name of the culture.

It is unknown whether the inhabitants of the caves were in some way related to the Kurgan culture, but we do know interesting things about them.

The people of Armenia of this day used domesticates prevalent during the Neolithic, including wheat, barley and sheep. Armenia was one of the earliest regions to adopt farming and pastoralism.

The archaeological site of Aratashen, which was inhabited about 8,000 years ago, has shown many details of the Neolithic culture of Armenia. They lived in adobe houses, raised barley and had shovels, spoons, and other tools made from wood, bone, and obsidian.

These shoes reveal yet another facet of Prehistoric Armenia, which is already known for its relatively rich archaeological record.

Eventually with enough research, we may learn more things about their culture beyond just what type of shoes they wore, what they ate and other aspects of their material culture.

We may also learn about the immaterial aspects of their culture, such as small glimpses of how they viewed the world.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

4,000-year-old skeletons of a mother and her child embrace

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4,000-year-old skeletons of a mother and her child embrace

Victims of an ancient earthquake that had once struck the Chinese community of Lajia are now on display at the Lajia Ruins Museum.

The ruins of Lajia are in Qinghai Province in Northwest China, near the Upper Yellow River. China People’s Daily has said that the site is bringing people to tears; victims are shown to be huddling together in what were their final moments. One display shows women embracing their children in an attempt to protect them.

Heartbreaking: Skeletal remains show the mother kneeling down on the ground with her arms around her son in central China

This scene is reminiscent of the victims of the Roman city Pompeii, which was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

One difference is that the Pompeiian people are shown with such humanity because they have been preserved by volcanic ash and mud, while the skeletal remains at Lajia inspire horror.

An earthquake shook the ground around them, triggering a mudslide that came down and demolished a Bronze Age building that the people had taken cover in.

The building was a family home that the people ran into thinking they would be safe. On one of the walls preserved for all of the eternity is a woman embracing her child, her skull looking upwards as she caresses the child in her arms.

The remains of two children clinging to an adult lie against another wall. Upstairs, you will find another woman and child in almost the same position as the first two. These people are from the Bronze Age Qijia culture, their remains date back to around 2,000 BC, making them 4,000 years old.

Earlier this year the remains of a child clinging to his mother were displayed in Pompeii. There are no skeletons in Pompeii – the ancient mud and ash saw to that.

Pompeii was destroyed by a pyroclastic flow: an extremely fast-moving cloud of rock and hot gas that can move at speeds of 450 miles an hour. Given these speeds, it is instantaneous death for those that chose to ignore the warnings given by Vesuvius.

It hugs the ground while it moves and spreads laterally, consisting of two parts: a hot ash plume that hovers above and the basal flow that consists of heavy rocks.

The ash plume incinerates anything it touches while the basal flow destroys anything in its path. Herculaneum was also devastated when Vesuvius exploded.

It is unknown how many died when Vesuvius exploded but it is estimated to be between 10,000 and 25,000. Many victims perished at the city port while trying to take cover in warehouses that were near the dock.

Others tried to get to the last remaining boats while others ran for their homes, most likely then praying to their household gods.

The mother and child were discovered in what archaeologists call the House of the Golden Bracelet. The home of a wealthy family, the walls covered in frescoes and also contained a large garden. It was all carbonized when the 300 degree cloud hit.

“Even though it happened 2000 years ago, it could be a boy, a mother, or a family,” said Stefania Giudice of Naples National Archaeological Museum. “It’s not just archaeology; it’s human archaeology.”

Now branded as the “Pompeii of the East,” the poor town of Lajia is now one of the most important archaeology sites in China.

Mirrors, oracle bones, and stone knives are just a few of the artifacts found at the site.

The victims of Lajia were first found in 2000 in a loess cave, one of many in the settlement that consisted of caves and houses.

ASIA, LAOS, WORLD

10-Foot-Tall Stone Jars ‘Made by Giants’ Stored Human Bodies in Ancient Laos

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10-Foot-Tall Stone Jars ‘Made by Giants’ Stored Human Bodies in Ancient Laos


More than 100 giant stone jars, thought to have been used in burial rituals thousands of years ago, have been rediscovered at ancient sites in forests, on hillsides and along mountain ridges in remote central Laos.

The carved stone jars are scattered across miles of the rugged, tiger-haunted Xiangkhouang province, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Laos’ capital, Vientiane, in South Asia. They have been dubbed “jars of the dead” by researchers.

Several human burials, thought to be around 2,500 years old, have been found at some of these sites in Laos, but nothing is known about the people who originally made the jars.

An expedition of archaeologists from Laos and Australia visited the Xiangkhouang region in February and March this year to document known jar sites and to search for new jars-of-the-dead sites and stone quarries.

The new finds show that the mysterious culture that made the stone jars were geographically more widespread than previously thought, said Louise Shewan, an archaeologist at the University of Melbourne, and one of the expedition leaders.

The largest and best-known jar site is the famous Plain of Jars, located in a relatively open country near the town of Phonsavan. That site contains around 400 carved stone jars, some as tall as 10 feet (3 m) and weighing more than 10 tons (9,000 kilograms), and the first archaeological investigation of it was made in the 1930s.

The joint Australian and Laos archaeological expedition searched for new jar sites in the Xiangkhouang region and excavated a previously known jar site.

But Shewan said that the majority of the jar sites usually contained fewer than 60 carved stone jars, and were found in forested and mountainous terrain surrounding the Plain of Jars, spread over thousands of square miles.

Ancient Stone Jars

Shewan told Live Science that the search for new jar sites took the expedition into “extremely rugged, forested terrain,” as the researchers looked for ancient relics reported by local people.

Relying on local knowledge meant the archaeologists could avoid the ever-present danger of unexploded Vietnam War-era bombs, she said. U.S. warplanes dropped an estimated 270 million cluster bombs on Laos during the war.

The Laos government agency that oversees clearance efforts reports that more than 80 million unexploded bombs are scattered around the country.

Although the region is best known for the stone jars on the Plain of Jars, most of the ancient jar sites are in heavily forested and mountainous areas.

The latest expedition, in addition, to accurately mapping many of the reported sites in the Xiangkhouang region, found 15 new jar sites, containing a total of 137 ancient stone jars.

Shewan said that the newly discovered jars were similar to those found on the Plain of Jars, but some varied in the types of stone that they were made from, their shapes and the way the rims of the jars were formed.

Burial Rituals

Local legends include a story that the enormous stone jars were made by giants, who used the vessels to brew rice beer to celebrate a victory in war.

But archaeologists think that at least some of the carved stone jars were used to hold dead bodies for a time before their bones would be cleaned and buried. 

Although the remains of elaborate human burials have been found at some of the jar sites, archaeologists aren’t sure if the jars were made for the purpose of the burials or if the burials were performed later.

Excavations in 2016 revealed that some of the stone jars were surrounded by pits filled with human bones and by graves covered by large carved disks of stone. These appear to have been used to mark the grave locations.

Australian and Lao archaeologists found more than 137 ancient stone jars at 15 new sites in the remote and rugged Xiangkhouang region.

The latest expedition also found buried disks and other artifacts. Those included several beautifully carved stone disks, decorated on one side with concentric circles, human figures and animals. Curiously, the stone discs were always buried with the carved side face down.

“Decorative carving is relatively rare at the jar sites, and we don’t know why some disks have animal imagery and others have geometric designs,” expedition co-leader Dougald O’Reilly, an archaeologist at Australian National University in Canberra, said in a statement.

The excavations around some of the stone jars also revealed decorative ceramics, glass beads, iron tools, decorative disks that were worn in the ears and spindle whorls for cloth making.

Researchers also discovered several miniature clay jars that looked just like the giant stone jars and that were buried with the dead.

The scientists will now use the data and photographs from the new jar finds to reconstruct the sites in virtual reality at Monash University; then, archaeologists across the globe can use the VR to examine the sites in detail.

ASIA, IRAN, WORLD

Mystery Of The 1,700-Year-Old ‘Salt’ Mummy With Long White Hair

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Mystery Of The 1,700-Year-Old ‘Salt’ Mummy With Long White Hair


It is believed the Saltmen were working in a mine over 1700 years ago when it collapsed on them. In 1993, miners at the Chehrabad Salt Mine in the Zanjan province of Iran discovered a body.

Clearly a man, the body had flowing white hair and a beard and was sporting a single gold earring. Though he didn’t initially appear that old, carbon dating showed he had died in 300 A.D.

The man had likely died from being crushed by a rock collapse, and his body had been effectively mummified by the dry salinity of the air. Unlike Egyptian mummification practices, where the body was wrapped in fabric and coated in preserving oils, the salt mummy was preserved naturally.

The salt from the mines leeched the moisture from his skin, leaving behind his dried remains. Due to the lack of fresh air, and the layers of salt in the mines, the body had gone undisturbed for centuries and was extremely well preserved.

He is now the first of a group of preserved bodies found in the mine, known as the Saltmen.

Since the first salt mummy was discovered, five more have been found, all within the same area as the first. The second was discovered in 2004, only 50 feet from the first one. Two more were found in 2005, and two more in 2007 — one of them a woman.

In 2008, mining practices were halted, and the mine was declared an archeological site, allowing researchers full access to the salt mummies.

The finds quickly became important ones for Iranian archeologists, as they offered insight into historic mining practices, as well as natural mummification.

The find also offered new information on ancient men’s diets. Because the bodies were so well preserved, some of their internal organs were still intact.

Researchers were even able to find remnants in the 2200-year-old mummy’s stomach that contained tapeworm eggs, signaling that his diet was high in raw or undercooked meat.

It also provided the earliest evidence of intestinal parasites in Iran.

Along with the bodies, the salt also preserved the artifacts that were with them when they died.

Researchers were able to recover a leather boot (with a foot still inside), iron knives, a woolen trouser leg, a silver needle, a sling, leather rope, a grindstone, a walnut, pottery shards and patterned textile fragments.

Of the six mummies discovered, four of them are currently on display. The Archeology Museum, in Zanjan, is home to three of the men and the woman, as well as some of the artifacts. The original salt mummy’s head and left foot are on display at the National Museum of Iran, in Tehran.

The sixth salt mummy to be discovered remains in the mine, as he was too fragile to remove.

Researchers don’t believe the Saltmen all died together, though they do share some similarities. The first man found probably died around 300 A.D., while the oldest body found dates back to 9550 B.C.

They also believe that there could be more mummies in the mine. Though six whole bodies have been accounted for, detached body parts have also been found. Some of them were initially believed to be part of a single individual, however, they are actually from different bodies.

The number of potential Saltmen bodies is now believed to be eight or more.

ASIA, WORLD

3,500-Year-Old Mummified Bear Found in Siberian Permafrost

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3,500-Year-Old Mummified Bear Found in Siberian Permafrost


As the permafrost on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island in eastern Siberia melted, a mummified brown bear that lived more than three thousand five hundred years ago emerged.

In an effort to advance research on extinct animals, researchers are now preparing to perform an autopsy on the bear.

The female bear was found by reindeer herders in 2020 jutting out of the permafrost. It was given the name Etherican brown bear because it was discovered just east of the Bolshoy Etherican River.

“This find is absolutely unique: the complete carcass of an ancient brown bear,” said Maxim Cheprasov, laboratory chief at the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, eastern Siberia.

The extreme temperatures helped preserve the bear’s soft tissue as well as the remains of its final meal — bird feathers and plants — for 3,460 years. The bear stands 1.55 meters (5.09 feet) tall and weighs nearly 78 kilograms.

Scientists conduct an autopsy of the 3,500-year-old mummified bear found on a remote island in northern Yakutia.

Scientists in Siberia were able to examine the bear’s brain and internal organs as well as conduct a variety of cellular, microbiological, virological, and genetic studies after successfully cutting through the bear’s thick hide.

“For the first time, a carcass with soft tissues has fallen into the hands of scientists, giving us the opportunity to study the internal organs and examine the brain,” said Cheprasov.

“Genetic analysis has shown that the bear does not differ in mitochondrial DNA from the modern bear from the north-east of Russia — Yakutia and Chukotka,” Cheprasov said.

He said the bear was probably two to three years old when it died from an injury to its spinal column.

However, it is unknown how the bear got to the island, which is now separated from the mainland by a strait measuring 50 kilometers. It may have crossed over ice, swum over, or the island might still have been part of the mainland.

ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

A Giant Skull From Indonesia Made up of Lots of Animal Skulls

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A Giant Skull From Indonesia Made up of Lots of Animal Skulls


The discovery of a giant skull made up of many animal skulls in Indonesia has caused quite a stir in the scientific community.

This unusual artifact was recently unearthed in a remote region of the country and has sparked many questions about its origin and purpose.

The skull, which measures over six feet in length and is composed of hundreds of individual animal skulls, has been dated to be around 5,000 years old.

This makes it one of the oldest and largest artifacts of its kind ever discovered.

Scientists are still working to understand exactly how the skull was created, but it appears to have been assembled using the skulls of many different animals.

These include deer, boars, and even some large predators like tigers and crocodiles.

One theory is that the skull was created as part of a ritual or ceremony in ancient Indonesian culture.

Similar artifacts have been discovered in other parts of the world and are believed to have been used in spiritual practices or as a way to honor deceased ancestors.

Another possibility is that the skull was created as a form of art or expression.

Many ancient cultures used skulls and bones as a way to create intricate and meaningful works of art, and it’s possible that the giant skull was intended to convey a specific message or meaning.

Regardless of its origin, the discovery of the giant skull has provided valuable insights into the culture and practices of ancient Indonesian people.

It’s also a reminder of the incredible creativity and ingenuity of our ancestors, who were able to create such remarkable artifacts using only the resources available to them at the time.

As scientists continue to study the giant skull and other artifacts from this time period, we can expect to learn even more about the fascinating and complex cultures that existed in ancient times.

And who knows what other incredible discoveries might be waiting to be unearthed in the years to come?

ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

The Papuan Tribe Cares For a 250-year-old Mummy To preserve Ancient Rite

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The Papuan Tribe Cares For a 250-year-old Mummy To preserve Ancient Rite


It’s all about paying respect and preserving a tradition. How would you like to spend the night with the mummified remains of a long-dead relative?

What sounds like a scene from some schlocky horror flick is part of real life for a tribal leader in Wogi,a remote village in the Indonesian province of Papua.

Eli Mabel of the Dani tribe (see more remarkable photos below) spends many nights in the hut where the mummy is kept to make sure nothing happens to it, he told Agence France-Presse.

In protecting the blackened mummy ― said to be the remains of an ancestor of his who ruled some 250 years ago ― Mabel aims to preserve the old Dani tradition of mummification,in which the bodies of venerated tribespeople were preserved with smoke after death.

“We must protect our culture, including the ceremonies for the mummy, the way we treat it, and maintain and fire for it,” Mabel told AFP.

The mummy is decorated with feathers, pig tusks and a traditional gourd covering for the penis. A fire is kept burning in the hut, which is known as a “honai.”

To mummify the bodies, the Dani people dried them under the sun and then stashed them in a cave, Dr. Semiarto Aji Purwanto, a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Indonesia and an expert on Dani culture, told The Huffington Post in an email.

Next, he said, the remains were exposed to hot smoke, drained of liquified fat through piercings and slathered with lard. The entire process took months.

Why go to all that trouble?

“By keeping their bodies, [the Dani] believed to have [the] blessing from the ancestor so they can be more prosperous,” Purwanto said, adding that all of the Dani mummies are curled up “like a fetus when in the womb.”

Mummification was once common among the Dani but died out after Christian missionaries who came to the area 30 to 50 years ago encouraged them to bury rather than mummify their dead, Purwanto said, adding that only six or seven mummies are left. But mummies never die.

This photo, taken on Aug. 7, 2016, shows chief Eli Mabel with the mummified remains of his ancestor Agat Mamete Mabel outside a traditional house in the village of Wogi in Wamena, the long-isolated home of the Dani tribe high in the Papuan central highlands.

The Dani people no longer practice mummification, but tribespeople keeps a number of mummies, some a few hundred years old, as a symbol of respect to their ancestors.

The mummy is curled up like a fetus, like all mummies in the Dani tradition.

Dani man in Wamena on Aug. 8, 2016. The man was participating in the 27th Baliem Valley Festival, featuring highland tribes of Dani, Yali and Lani in their mock battles as a symbol of high spirit and power that have been practiced for generations. The festival was held from Aug. 8 – 10.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Israel archaeologists find ancient comb with ‘full sentence’

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Israel archaeologists find ancient comb with ‘full sentence’


It’s a simple sentence that captures the hopes and fears of modern-day parents as much as the bronze age Canaanite who owned the doubled-edged ivory comb on which the words appear.

Believed to be the oldest known sentence written in the earliest alphabet, the inscription on the luxury item reads: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”

The double-duty ivory comb – bearing 14 teeth for lice and eggs and six bigger teeth for hair tangles – believed to have been made around 1700 BCE.

Unearthed in Lachish, a Canaanite city state in the second millennium BCE and the second most important city in the kingdom of Judah, the comb suggests that humans have endured lice for thousands of years and that even the wealthiest were not spared the grim infestations.

“The inscription is very human,” said Prof Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who helped direct the Lachish excavations.

“You have a comb and on the comb you have a wish to destroy lice on the hair and beard. Nowadays we have all these sprays and modern medicines and poisons. In the past they didn’t have those.”

The comb, which measures 3.5cm by 2.5cm, was discovered at the site in south-central Israel in 2017, but the shallow engravings on the surface were only spotted in December last year.

Analysis of the markings confirmed the writing to be Canaanite script, the earliest alphabet, which was invented about 3,800 years ago.

Script taken from the comb, which was discovered in 2017

Efforts to obtain an age for the comb from carbon dating proved futile, but researchers believe it was made around 1700 BCE.

The comb is worn and has lost its teeth, but the remaining stumps show that it once bore six widely spaced teeth for removing hair tangles on one side, and 14 narrowly spaced teeth for removing lice and eggs on the other.

Further evidence for the comb’s purpose came when researchers examined it under a microscope and identified the tough outer membranes of half millimetre-long nymph stages of head lice.

The letters on the comb spell out seven words that form the first completely deciphered sentence in a Canaanite dialect, written in Canaanite script, said the researchers in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.

Ancient combs were made from wood, bone and ivory, but the latter would have been expensive, imported luxuries. There were no elephants in Canaan at the time.

The world’s first writing systems originated in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 3200 BCE, but these were not alphabetic.

They relied on hundreds of different signs to represent words or syllables and as such required years to master, said Christopher Rollston, professor of northwest Semitic languages at George Washington University in the US.

Lachish, a leading Canaanite city state in the second millennium BCE.

The earliest alphabet was invented around 1800 BCE by Semitic-speaking people who were familiar with the Egyptian writing system, said Rollston.

Known as Canaanite or early alphabetic the system was used for hundreds of years, particularly in the Levant, and was standardised by the Phoenicians in ancient Lebanon.

It went on to become the foundation for ancient Greek, Latin and most modern languages in Europe today.

“The fact that this inscription is about ordinary life is especially fascinating,” Rollston said.  “Throughout human history lice have been a perennial problem. And this inscription nicely reveals that even the rich and famous in ancient times were not exempt from such problems. We can only hope that this inscribed comb was useful in doing that which it says it was supposed to do – root out some of these pesky insects.”

 This article was amended on 9 November 2022 to clarify in the headline that the discovery is not believed to be the oldest written sentence, but the oldest sentence written in the first alphabet. A reference to the site of the find being in south-central Israel was also added.

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did Sanuali coexist with the Harappan civilisation? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of royalty & warfare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

Arthropod (Naroia)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fish (Myllokunmingia)

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

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

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

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

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

Lobopodian worm (Luolishania)

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

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

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