Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, TURKEY, WORLD

Ancient Aramaic Incantation Describes ‘Devourer’ that Brings ‘Fire’ to Victims

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Ancient Aramaic Incantation Describes ‘Devourer’ that Brings ‘Fire’ to Devourer’ that Brings ‘Fire’ to Victims

A 2,800-year-old incantation, written in Aramaic, describes the capture of a creature called the “devourer” said to be able to produce “fire.”

Discovered in August 2022 within a small building, possibly a shrine, at the site of Zincirli (called “Sam’al” in ancient times), in Turkey, the incantation is inscribed on a stone cosmetic container.

The ancient incantation had illustrations of animals such as scorpions on the front and back

Written by a man who practiced magic who is called “Rahim son of Shadadan,” the incantation “describes the seizure of a threatening creature [called] the ‘devourer,'” wrote Madadh Richey and Dennis Pardee in the abstract of a presentation they gave recently at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting. That event took place in Denver between Nov 17 and 21.

The blood of the devourer was used to treat someone who appears to have been suffering from the “fire” of the devourer, said Richey, a doctoral student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

It’s not clear whether the blood was given to the afflicted person in a potion that could be swallowed or whether it was smeared onto their body, Richey told . [Cracking Codices: 10 of the Most Mysterious Ancient Manuscripts]

“Accompanying the text are illustrations of various creatures, including what appears to be a centipede, a scorpion and a fish,” wrote Richey and Pardee, who is the Henry Crown professor of Hebrew studies at the University of Chicago, in the abstract. The illustrations are found on both sides of the cosmetic container.

The vessel would have originally stored makeup, and it appears to have been reused for the purpose of writing this incantation, said Virginia Herrmann, who is co-director of the Chicago-Tübingen Expedition to Zincirli, the team that uncovered the incantation.

What is the “devourer?”

The illustrations suggest that the “devourer” may actually be a scorpion or centipede; as such, the “fire” may refer to the pain of the creatures’ sting, Richey .

The front of the incantation (part of which is shown here) included an illustration of a scorpion, a centipede and Aramaic writing.

In fact, scorpions pose a hazard to archaeologists working at the site. “We always have to check our shoes and bags for scorpions on the excavation, even though most of the local scorpions do not have a very dangerous venom,” said Herrmann, noting that shortly after the incantation was removed from the site, “one of our local workers was stung by a scorpion that had crawled onto his backpack that was sitting on the ground,” and the archaeological team rushed to apply first aid.

Long life

Analysis of the incantation’s writing indicates that it was inscribed sometime between 850 B.C. and 800 B.C., said Richey, adding that this makes the inscription the oldest Aramaic incantation ever found. However, the small building where the incantation was found appears to date to more than a century later, to the late eighth or seventh century B.C., Herrmann .

This suggests that the incantation was considered important enough that it was kept long after Rahim would have inscribed it, Herrmann said. [5 Ancient Languages Yet to Be Deciphered]

The incantation “had a significance that long outlived its original owner,” Herrmann said. It was not the only artifact found in the small building that was kept long after it was created, she said, noting that a “statuette base of a crouching lion made of polished black stone with red inlaid eyes” was also discovered there.

That lion figure appears to have been made in the 10th or ninth century B.C. The statuette base may have “once supported a metal figurine of a striding deity,” Herrmann added.

Sam’al, where the building is located, was the capital of a small Aramaean kingdom that flourished between roughly 900 B.C. and 720 B.C., said Herrmann, noting that the city was seized by the Assyrians around 720 B.C.

ASIA, SAUDI ARABIA, WORLD

Human footprints dated to roughly 85,000 years ago revealed in Saudi Arabia

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Human footprints dated to roughly 85,000 years ago revealed in Saudi Arabia

In some of the earliest important migrations that took place, it is likely that humans used the Sinai route to exit Africa and arrive in Asia, making the region now known as Saudi Arabia quite crucial to understanding these routes, according to new research.

Humans footprints dated to roughly 85,000 years ago have been found in the northwest part of Saudi Arabia, providing fresh evidence on how humans migrated outside the African plateau.

The newly collected archaeological clues strengthen the belief that the Arabian Peninsula may have played a key role in facilitating the first migrations from Africa.

According to archaeologists who are working in the field in the country, plus already available evidence obtained from the region, these early major migrations may have unfolded much earlier than previously believed.

Earlier research suggests that mass migrations to other continents from Africa happened some 60,000 years ago. With the evidence mounting, including the recent footprint finds, paleo-anthropologists might consider pushing back the timeline.

Likewise, there may need to be changes in the estimate of when the first humans appeared in Africa, which is traditionally said to be around 200,000 years ago. J

ust in 2022, a human fossil unearthed in Morocco was, to widespread surprise, found to be 100,000 years older than fossils found in Ethiopia, a find that by itself challenges the human evolution narrative regarding when and where the first humans appeared.

Tabuk, Saudi ArabiaMountain

Regarding the newly found footprints, they were identified close to the city of Tabuk, the capital of the Tabuk Region in the northwest of the Middle East country. Though it is a desert region today, back in the time of the early migrants who left their traces, the place would have thrived with vegetation and wildlife.

The news on the findings was shared in a press release on May 14, 2018, by the Saudi’s Ministry of Culture and Information. The foot traces were found in various directions, all associated with the site of an ancient freshwater lake. The prehistoric humans could have used the lake as a potential food resource, catching fish.

As the National Geographic writes, it was Prince Sultan bin Salman, who presides over the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, who announced the news while visiting the National Museum of Tokyo; the institution was hosting an exhibition of ancient artifacts belonging to Saudi Arabia.

Prince Salman commented, “This is a wonderful and very rare discovery that shows man’s arrival in the Arabian Peninsula from Africa alongside other human migrations,” according to Gulf News.

He suggested that the footprints might be as old as 85,000 years. According to archaeologists, further analysis is still needed, and plans are due for producing a scientific paper in the upcoming period, reports National Geographic.

Saudi Arabia might be indeed the next hotbed of archaeological excavations. The country has only recently opened its doors to scientists and researchers from abroad, inviting top-notch institutions to investigate ancient sites which can provide knowledge on key subjects such as the earliest human migrations.

The latest footprint find was due to an effort carried out by a group of researchers, both from institutions based in Saudi Arabia and from internationals such as Germany’s Max Planck Foundation for Human History, the U.K.’s Cambridge University and Oxford University, and Australia’s University of New South Wales as well as Australia National.

Saudi Arabia

While hundreds of sites have been inspected thus far, many of which former lakebeds, many more sites of interest are on the list yet. Some of the relics include ancient remnants of stone tools, and others are the recently found fossilized remain of a human finger estimated to be 90,000 years of age.

The finger and the footprint discoveries seem to be of the same period. The first was found not too far away from the latter, just roughly 90 miles away in Tabuk’s province of Tayma. The entire region is noted for already having revealed evidence of two ancient Arabian kingdoms, the Lihyan and Nabataean.

Aramaic inscription from Tayma

Another interesting discovery in the region is a recently identified fossil jawbone collected from Israel and dated to about 180,000 years ago. This is a remnant of the oldest known human outside the boundaries of Africa, according to National Geographic.

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

5,000-YEAR-OLD IRAQI CITY DISCOVERED UNDER A 10 METER-DEEP MOUND

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5,000-year-old Iraqi city discovered under a 10 meter-deep mound

In the Kurdistan province of northern Iraq, an ancient town called ‘Idu’ was discovered. Hidden under a mound of 32 feet (10 meters), it is believed that the city was an entertainment center between 3,300 and 2,900 years ago.

King inscriptions made for walls, tablets, and plinths of the stone show that once it was full of lavish palaces. It is thought the inscription was made by the local kings celebrating the construction of the royal palace.

Archaeologists at the University of Leipzig in Germany spent the next few years excavating the area. They believe the city of Idu spent much of its time under the control of the Assyrian Empire about 3,300 years ago.

The ancient city of Idu is now part of a Tell that rises about 32 feet (10 metres) above the surrounding plain. The modern day name of the site is Satu Qala and a village lies on top of the Tell
This cylinder seal dates back around 2,600 years, to a time after the Assyrians had re-conquered Idu. The seal would show a mythical scene if it was rolled on a piece of clay. It depicts a crouched bowman, who may be the god Ninurta, facing a griffon
The city is thought to have been a hub of activity between 3,300 and 2,900 years ago. The above image shows a living structure, with at least two rooms, that may date to around 2,000 years ago when the Parthian Empire controlled the area in Iraq

But archaeologists also found evidence that it was a fiercely independent city. Its people fought for and won, 140 years of independence before they were reconquered by the Assyrians.

Among the treasures found were artwork showing a bearded sphinx with a human head and the body of a winged lion. Above it was the words: ‘Palace of Ba’auri, king of the land of Idu, son of Edima, also king of the land of Idu.’

They also found a cylinder seal dating back roughly 2,600 years depicting a man crouching before a griffon.

‘We were lucky to be one of the first teams to begin excavations in Iraq after the 2003 war,’ archaeologists Cinzia Pappi told MailOnline.

‘The discovery of ancient Idu at Satu Qala revealed a multicultural capital and a crossroad between northern and southern Iraq and between Iraq and Western Iran in the second and first millennia BC.

‘Particularly the discovery of a local dynasty of kings fills a gap in what scholars had previously thought of as a dark age in the history of ancient Iraq.

‘Together these results have helped to redraw the political and historical map of the development of the Assyrian Empire.’ The city was hidden beneath a mound, called a tell, which is currently home to a village called Satu Qala.

The left image shows a clay model of a bed something which has been found at other sites in the Middle East. On the right is a work of art showing a bearded sphinx with a human male head and the body of a winged lion
On the left is a plaque that reads ‘Palace of Assurnasirpal’. Researchers claim that it was created for Assurnasirpal II and that he must have had a palace built or rebuilt after the Assyrians had re-conquered Idu. On the right is a work of art showing a horse wearing a headstall being led by a man in a short robe

‘For wide-scale excavations to continue, at least some of these houses will have to be removed,’ said archaeologists Cinzia Pappi.

‘Unfortunately, until a settlement is reached between the villagers and the Kurdistan regional government, further work is currently not possible.’

Archaeologists plan to continue excavating the site once they reach an agreement. In the meantime, a study on the materials from the site, now stored in the Erbil Museum of Antiquities, has just been completed in co-operation with the University of Pennsylvania.

Together, the researchers will explore the surrounding area to determine the extent of the kingdom of Idu in its regional context. The findings have been reported in the journal Anatolica.

ASIA, TURKEY, WORLD

2,000-Year-Old Terracotta Figurines of Deities, Mortals, Animals Found in Turkey

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2,000-Year-Old Terracotta Figurines of Deities, Mortals, Animals Found in Turkey

Some of the petite sculptures still bear traces of the pigments used to decorate them.

A number of terracotta heads were found separated from the rest of their bodies.

Turkish archaeologists studying the ruins of the ancient town of Myra have found more than 50 terracotta figurines depicting humans, gods and animals.

The team, working on behalf of Akdeniz University and Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, excavated the town’s 12,000 seat Roman-era theater and an older, smaller theater located below it this past summer.

They found the figurines in the older structure, which dates to the Hellenistic period (spanning Alexander the Great’s death in 323 B.C to the rise of the Roman Empire around 31 B.C.).

Dig leader Nevzat Çevik, an archaeologist at Akdeniz, tells  Yasemin Saplakoglu that the art’s discovery was “an unexpected big surprise.”

He adds, “It is as if the people of ancient Myra were resurrected and ran through the time tunnel all together and came to our day.”

The statuettes, each standing just a few inches tall, include rams, horsemen, women with children and a boy carrying fruit, as well as mythic figures like Leto, Artemis, Apollo and Heracles.

Çevik tells the Demirören News Agency that some of the figures still bear traces of the red, blue and pink pigments used to paint them.

“The fact that the dyes on them are partially preserved shows us the color of clothes they wore in their time,” he says.

In addition to the terracotta figures, the team found ceramic, bronze, lead and silver artifacts scattered around the Hellenistic theater.

The figurines depict gods, humans and animals.
Rock-cut tombs in Myra

Myra, located near the mouth of the Andriacus River on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey, was an important Mediterranean port city for thousands of years, falling under the control of different regional forces over the centuries.

Per Encyclopedia Britannica, it was one of the most important towns in ancient Lycia, a confederation of maritime cities dating back in some form to the 14th century B.C. In the sixth century B.C., Persian forces conquered Lycia, which later came under Roman control before becoming its own Roman province around the fourth century A.D.

Among Myra’s best-known features are rock-cut tombs, many of which look like wooden houses and shrines, carved into its hills between the fifth and third centuries B.C. The city’s huge Roman theater, built in the third century A.D., is known as one of the most impressive in Anatolia.

The Hurriyet Daily News notes that excavations at the site have been ongoing for more than a decade. Over the summer, project coordinators brought dozens of researchers and workers to the site in Antalya’s Demre district.

“I can say that the excavations we carried out in the Myra Ancient City Theater this summer gave one of the most important gifts of the year to Anatolian archaeology,” Çevik tells Hurriyet.

In addition to many complete figurines, Live Science reports that the team found more than 50 heads without bodies—discoveries that suggest more artifacts are still waiting to be discovered.

For now, the team is continuing to piece together remnants of additional figurines. It plans to share them with the Museum of Lycian Civilizations in Demre.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Archaeologists in Israel Unearth 3,800-Year-Old Skeleton of Baby Buried in a Jar

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Archaeologists in Israel Unearth 3,800-Year-Old Skeleton of Baby Buried in a Jar

Researchers are unsure of the unusual funerary practice’s purpose, but one theory posits that the vessel serves as a symbolic womb

Researchers found the jar while conducting excavations in the ancient city of Jaffa.

Archaeologists excavating a site in Jaffa, Israel, recently made a macabre discovery: a 3,800-year-old jar containing the skeleton of a baby.

As Ariel David reports for Haaretz, researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) uncovered the poorly preserved remains, which were buried in a shallow pit about ten feet below street level, while surveying the ruins of the 4,000-year-old city ahead of construction.

The practice of burying babies in jars dates back to the Bronze Age and continued until as recently as the 20th century, IAA archaeologist Yoav Arbel tells Live Science’s Laura Geggel. But while evidence of such funerary rituals regularly appears in the archaeological record, scholars remain unsure of the practice’s purpose.

“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,” says Arbel. “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.”

Speaking with Ashley Cowie of Ancient Origins, archaeologist Alfredo Mederos Martin, who was not involved in the IAA research, notes that people across the ancient world entombed children in jars as early as 4,500 B.C. Methods varied from place to place, with civilizations adapting the process to reflect their unique conceptions of death.

In a 2019 article published in the Biblical Archaeology Review, scholar Beth Alpert Nakhai suggested that the jars’ burial beneath the home signified “a desire on the part of [the] dead infant’s mother to care for her child in death, as she would have cared for that child in life.”

These kinds of burials could also reflect a change in ancient societies’ attitude toward the young; previously, prehistoric humans had only buried adults in jars, “indicating that children were [thought] to be of little importance,” as Ruth Schuster pointed out for Haaretz in 2022.

A map of the streets in Jaffa where the digs took place

Over the past decade, officials have conducted digs at five locations across Jaffa. They detailed their impressive array of discoveries in the IAA’s journal, ‘Atiqot, last month.

Highlights of the finds include 30 Hellenistic coins; the remains of at least two horses and pottery dated to the late Ottoman Empire; 95 glass vessel fragments from the Roman and Crusader periods; 14 fifth-century B.C. rock-carved burials featuring lamps, juglets and other funerary offerings; and the strangely interred infant.

Jaffa has a storied history that spans some four millennia. One of the world’s earliest port cities, the ancient settlement is now part of Tel Aviv, Israel’s second-most populated metropolis.

According to Haaretz, Jaffa experienced at least three periods of major expansion. The first took place in Hellenistic times, while the second stretched across the Byzantine, Islamic and Crusader eras.

Finally, Arbel tells Haaretz, “[f]rom the mid-19th century to the end of the Ottoman era there was huge population growth. Jaffa grew exponentially and became a cosmopolitan city.”

The researcher adds that experts hadn’t realized the full extent of the city’s archaeological wealth until recently.

“There were those who told us there was no point to excavate around the mound,” or central stretch of high ground on which Jaffa is situated, he says.

But subsequent archaeological work revealed that Jaffa, like many other ancient cities, expanded into the surrounding lowlands during periods of prosperity and tightened up its boundaries in times of strife.

Though researchers covered up many of the archaeological sites after recording their overlooked histories, several—from Crusader-era walls preserved in a hospital-turned-hotel to the ruins of an Ottoman-era soap factory—remain accessible to the public.

ASIA, EGYPT, WORLD

2,400-Year-Old Baskets Still Filled With Fruit Found in Submerged Egyptian City

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2,400-Year-Old Baskets Still Filled With Fruit Found in Submerged Egyptian City

Wicker vessels recovered from the ruins of Thônis-Heracleion contain doum nuts and grape seeds

Researchers excavating the sunken ruins of Thônis-Heracleion have discovered an array of archaeological treasures.

Researchers investigating the submerged metropolis of Thônis-Heracleion, in the Egyptian bay of Abū Qīr, have discovered wicker fruit baskets dated to the fourth century B.C.E.

Incredibly, the vessels still contain doum nuts—the fruit of an African palm tree considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians—and grape seeds.

“Nothing was disturbed,” marine archaeologist Franck Goddio tells Dalya Alberge of the Guardian. “It was very striking to see baskets of fruits.”

Goddio and his colleagues at the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) uncovered the containers in collaboration with Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Researchers have been surveying the ancient Mediterranean port city of Thônis-Heracleion since its rediscovery in 2001, according to Egypt Independent.

The baskets were stored in an underground room and may have been funerary offerings, reports the Greek City Times. Nearby, the researchers found a 197- by 26-foot tumulus, or burial mound, and an extravagant array of Greek funerary goods likely left by merchants and mercenaries living in the area.

“Everywhere we found evidence of burned material,” says Goddio in a statement, as quoted by CNN’s Radina Gigova. “Spectacular ceremonies must have taken place there. The place must have been sealed for hundreds of years as we have found no objects from later than the early fourth century B.C.E., even though the city lived on for several hundred years after that.”

Other objects found on or surrounding the tumulus included ancient pottery, bronze artifacts and figurines depicting the Egyptian god Osiris.

“We found hundreds of deposits made of ceramic,” Goddio tells the Guardian. “One above the other. These are imported ceramic, red on black figures.”

Thônis-Heracleion was founded around the eighth century B.C.E. According to Goddio’s website, the city served as the “obligatory port of entry to Egypt for all ships coming from the Greek world” prior to the establishment of Alexandria around 331 B.C.E.

An Egyptian-French mission found the 80-foot-long ship beneath roughly 16 feet of hard clay.

The bustling trade hub reached its peak sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C.E. Buildings radiated around a central temple, with a system of canals connecting different parts of the city. Homes and other religious structures stood on islands near the heart of Thônis-Heracleion.

Once an epicenter for maritime commerce, the city sank into the Mediterranean in the eighth century C.E. Some historians attribute the metropolis’ downfall to rising sea levels and collapsing, unstable sediment, as Reg Little wrote for Oxford Mail in 2022. Others posit that earthquakes and tidal waves caused a 42-square-mile segment of the Nile Delta to collapse into the sea, per CNN.

As the Art Newspaper’s Emily Sharpe reported in 2022, experts once thought that Heracleion—referenced by Greek historian Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.E.—was a separate city from Thônis, which is actually the site’s Egyptian name. A tablet found by Goddio’s team in 2001 helped researchers conclude that the two locations were one and the same.

Recovering objects from the ruins of Thônis-Heracleion is a grueling task due to the layers of protective sediment covering them.

“The goal is to learn as much as possible from our excavation without being intrusive,” Goddio told the Art Newspaper in 2022.

Previous discoveries at Thônis-Heracleion include more than 700 ancient anchors, gold coins and weights, and dozens of tiny limestone sarcophagi containing the remains of mummified animals, according to Oxford Mail. Last month, archaeologists found a well-preserved, second-century B.C.E. military vessel in a different part of the city.

Experts expect to unearth more artifacts at the site in the future. Speaking with the Guardian, Goddio estimates that just 3 percent of the sunken city has been studied in the 20 years since its rediscovery.

ASIA, SAUDI ARABIA, WORLD

Archaeologists Discover 2,550-Year-Old Carving of the Last King of Babylon

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Archaeologists Discover 2,550-Year-Old Carving of the Last King of Babylon

Found in northern Saudi Arabia, the inscription depicts sixth-century B.C.E. ruler Nabonidus holding a scepter

The four symbols seen in front of the king—a crescent moon, the sun, a snake and a flower—may hold religious significance.

As Arab News reports, archaeologists from the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage spotted the 2,550-year-old inscription engraved on a basalt stone in the Al-Hadeed Governorate, in the country’s northern Hail region.

Per a statement, the carving contains 26 lines of cuneiform writing, making it the longest cuneiform inscription discovered in Saudi Arabia to date. The find could shed light on the history of the Arabian Peninsula and its ancient residents’ ties to neighboring Mesopotamia.

The etching shows the Babylonian king standing with a scepter in his hand. Four symbols—a crescent moon, the sun, a snake and a flower—hover in front of him.

Scholars suspect that these images hold religious significance but are still comparing the carving with similar ones to determine its meaning, notes Arab News. 

According to the History Blog, the markings may be linked to deities in the Mesopotamian pantheon, representing the star of Ishtar, the winged disc of the sun god Shamash and the crescent of the moon deity Sin.

Experts found the inscription in the town of Al Hait. Known as Fadak in ancient times, Al Hait is home to the ruins of fortresses, rock art and water installations, writes Owen Jarus .

The site holds “great … significance,” boasting an early history that spans the first millennium B.C.E. through the beginning of the Islamic era, notes the commission on Twitter.

Researchers in the area have previously discovered inscriptions and obelisks mentioning Nabonidus, who ruled Babylonia from 556 to 539 B.C.E., when the kingdom fell to Cyrus of Persia, reports Arab News.

At its height, the Babylonian Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. When Nabonidus began his reign, he conquered portions of what is now Saudi Arabia.

Four years after assuming power, the king named his son Belshazzar coregent and went into exile in Tayma, a city some 160 miles north of Al Hait. He remained there until around 543 B.C.E.

Historians are unsure why Nabonidus left Babylon, but as Arkeonews points out, his “self-imposed exile from political and religious authority” may have been the result of a coup.

Disputes between the clergy and Babylon’s elite could also have led to the king’s departure. According to the History Blog, Nabonidus attempted to change his people’s religious hierarchy by declaring the moon god superior to all other deities—a move that may have aggravated the nobility.

Much about the last Babylonian king—including his fate following the fall of Babylon—remains unknown. Enyclopedia Britannica suggests that he was captured by one of Cyrus’ generals and exiled.

ASIA, WORLD

Archaeologists Discover 200,000-Year-Old Hand & Footprints That Could Be the World’s Earliest Cave Art

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Archaeologists Discover 200,000-Year-Old Hand & Footprints That Could Be the World’s Earliest Cave Art

Researchers discovered the impressions on the Tibetan Plateau in 2018.

A group of fossilized handprints and footprints found in Tibet, dating back roughly 200,000 years, could be the earliest examples of human art. And they were made by children.

Every parent knows that children love to get their hands and feet into mud. Such seems to be the case long ago at what used to be a hot spring at Quesang, high on the Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of 4,269 metres (14,000 feet) above sea level.

A report in the journal Science Bulletin suggests these impressions were intentionally placed, not just the result of wandering in the area. The foot and hand prints fit exactly within a space, arranged close together like a mosaic. Their size indicates they were made by two children, one the size of a 7-year-old, and the other the size of a 12-year-old. 

Researchers discovered what is possibly the world’s oldest artwork, rendered here in a 3D scan, on a rocky promontory at Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau in 2018.

During that time, travertine, which is a type of limestone formed by hot mineral springs, formed a pasty mud which was perfect for making handprints. Later, when the hot spring dried up, the mud hardened into stone, preserving the prints over time. 

The rocks have been dated to between 169,000 and 226,000 years ago. It is not known exactly who the people were that lived on the Tibetan Plateau at that time, but one possibility is the Denisovans, a branch of our early ancestors who lived in Asia and resembled modern humans. Tibetans living today still carry Denisovan genes.

Two ethnic Tibetan children play chess at a Tibetan village at the feet of Kalong Mountain in Tongren County.

Whether the imprints can be considered art or just kids playing in the mud is up for interpretation, although the authors of the paper  it may be art in the same way that parents hang scribbles from children on their refrigerators and call it art.

The authors describe the medium the prints are in as intentionally altered, which they suggest could have been a kind of performance to show like, “Hey, look at me, I’ve made my handprints over these footprints.”

Or perhaps these impressions represent the human desire to leave marks behind on the landscape that say, “I was here.”

It’s a tradition that continues today with graffiti on walls in back alleys and famous actors and actresses who leave impressions of their hands and feet in cement along Hollywood Boulevard.

A makeshift memorial appeared for late comedian, actor and legendary entertainer Jerry Lewis around his hand and feet prints on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles when he died in 2017.

Little did these prehistoric kids know their handiwork would be preserved for hundreds of thousands of years.

If the carefully made prints are considered art, it pushes the history of rock art back more than 100,000 years. The oldest stencil-type handprints, where a hand is placed on a wall and coloured powder is blown around it to make an outline, have been found along with other cave paintings in Sulawesi, Indonesia and El Castillo, Spain dating back between 40,000 to 45,000 years ago.

This is known as parietal art because it is not meant to be moved, unlike paintings or statues that can be displayed anywhere and traded. And the oldest statues also only go back to about the same time period.

The children of ancient Tibet could be considered among the world’s first artists, or maybe they were just playing in the mud like all kids do. But the question of whether the impressions are art or not is almost moot because handprints and footprints from the deep past provide valuable scientific information.

An international team of researchers describe ancient hand and footprints made deliberately which they argue represent art.

Archeology usually deals with fragments from past cultures, such as pieces of pottery, building foundations, monuments and bones. It is up to the scientists to infer, to fill in the gaps and try to determine what the people were actually like. But handprints are the direct signature of a person.

Tourists on Hollywood Boulevard squat down to place their hands in the prints of their favourite actors to get a sense of what it might be like to shake their hand, sort of a virtual handshake. Imagine a handshake that reaches across millennia into an actual moment in time, to a couple of kids who were just messing in the mud.

ASIA, SAUDI ARABIA, WORLD

4,500 year-old avenues lined with ancient tombs discovered in Saudi Arabia

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4,500 year-old avenues lined with ancient tombs discovered in Saudi Arabia

Archaeologists have discovered a 4,500-year-old highway network in Saudi Arabia lined with well-preserved ancient tombs.

Researchers from the University of Western Australia have carried out a wide-ranging investigation over the past year, involving aerial surveys conducted by helicopter, ground survey and excavation and examination of satellite imagery.

In findings published in the Holocene journal in December, they said the “funerary avenues” spanning large distances in the northwestern Arabian counties of Al-‘Ula and Khaybar had received little examination until quite recently.

A dense “funerary avenue” flanked by Bronze Age tombs, leading out of Khaybar Oasis in northwest Saudi Arabia.

“The people who live in these areas have known about them for thousands of years,” researcher Matthew Dalton told CNN. “But I think it wasn’t really known until until we got satellite imagery that just how widespread they are.”

Dalton said the funerary avenues, which he had seen from a helicopter, stretched for hundreds, “maybe even thousands of kilometers” and that the same routes were often followed by those traveling along the main roads of 2022.

“Often you’ll find main roads tend to follow the same routes as the avenues because they tend to be the shortest route between between the two places they’re going to,” Dalton said. “And actually, in some cases, the the tombs themselves are so dense that you can’t help but walk on the ancient route itself, because you’re sort of hemmed in by the tombs.”

A 3rd millennium BC pendant burial on the southern edge of the Khaybar Oasis in northwest Saudi Arabia.

The tombs themselves are mostly either pendant-shaped or ring burials. Ring tombs involve a cairn surrounded by a wall of up to two meters in height, while pendant tombs have “beautiful tails.”

Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers determined that a concentrated group of samples dated back to between 2600 and 2000 BC, although the tombs continued to be reused until around 1,000 years ago.

“These tombs are 4,500 years old, and they’re still standing to their original height, which is really unheard of,” researcher Melissa Kennedy told CNN. “So I think that’s what particularly marks Saudi Arabia out from the rest of the region — just the level of preservation is unbelievable.”

Kennedy believes either single individuals or small groups were buried in the tombs, and the team have observed around 18,000 tombs along the funerary avenues while 80 of those have been sampled or excavated for research.

An infilled ringed cairn from the Khaybar Oasis in northwest Saudi Arabia.

The researchers think the use of the routes long preceded the tombs, and are still not sure exactly why the tombs were built along the route — although Kennedy pointed to similar customs linked to land ownership in Greece and Rome in later history.

“A way of showing ownership perhaps, could be one reason the tombs were built,” Dalton said. “And there may be an element of, you bury your nearest and dearest alongside the route, because you’ll be passing them frequently, and you have a place to remember them.”

A dense “funerary avenue” flanked by Bronze Age tombs, leading out of al Wadi Oasis near Khaybar in northwest Saudi Arabia.

The next step for the team will be to do more radiocarbon dating and go back out on the field, before analyzing their data. And more discoveries are likely to follow, with Dalton saying the avenues may even stretch across into Yemen, especially as similar tombs are found in both that country and northern Syria.

“The third millennium is such an important period of time,” Kennedy said. “It’s when the Pyramids are built. And it’s where lots of different cultures are interacting with each other for the first time on a wide scale. So to see the appearance of this monumental funerary landscape in this period is really exciting. And huge new avenues of research to basically follow.”

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

REMAINS OF HORSES FROM 2,700 YEARS AGO FOUND IN CHINESE FAMILY TOMB

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Remains of horses from 2,700 years ago found in Chinese family tomb

In central China, a tomb complex containing the remains of horses thought to belong to an ancient royal household was discovered.

Excavation of the surrounding land yielded 21 large tombs, six horse pits, and 500 copper, ceramic, and jade relics.

A 2,700-year-old tomb complex containing the remains of horses believed to belong to a member of an ancient royal household has been unearthed in central China

The tomb, which could date back 2,700 years, is thought to belong to a royal family from the Spring and Autumn Period.

Chinese archaeologist made the discovery in the city of Sanmenxia, in central China’s Henan Province on Saturday, according to Xinhua News.

Skeletons of 28 horses were found in the six pits. The horses were lying on their sides and were accompanied by dogs.

Out of the 21 large tombs, 20 of them contained coffins, according to archaeologists.

According to preliminary analysis, the Shangshihe village tomb complex is thought to be the burial site of nobles from the middle Spring and Autumn Period

According to preliminary analysis, the Shangshihe village tomb complex is thought to be the burial site of nobles from the early to the middle Spring and Autumn Period (771-476 BC).

The tomb was arranged in an orderly manner and all the relics were very well preserved, the experts said. This shows that the household had a clear layout planned and a strict burial system in place.

Other bronzeware, ceramics and anicent food vessels were also unearthed from the complex, indicating the owner’s noble status, according to Yang Haiqing, a researcher at the Sanmenxia Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

Experts say the discovery will provide valuable material for the study of funeral rituals of the period in central China

Four dings (鼎), which were prehistoric and ancient Chinese cauldrons that stand upon legs with a lid and two facing handles were discovered along with four guis (簋), a type of bowl-shaped ritual bronze vessel used to hold offerings of food, usually grain, for ancestral tombs.

Experts said these reveal details about the technology and production methods used by noble households at the time, as well as the social status of the family and funeral customs of the period.

The site was discovered in July last year, when a local chemical enterprise was expanding construction.

Experts said the relics reveal details about the technology and production methods used by noble families at the time

This is not the first time that such burials have been uncovered in China.

Last November, archaeologists discovered a 2,400-year-old tomb in Xinzheng city in the same province, thought to hold the remains of noble families of the Zheng State, who ruled the region intermittently between 770 and 221 BC.

Excavation of the surrounding land had uncovered 18 large pits containing horses and chariots and more than 3,000 tombs.

Around 500 pieces of burial objects such as bronzeware, pottery and jade were excavated from the tomb complex

In 2022, archaeologists uncovered the almost 3,000-year-old remains of horses and wooden chariots in a Zhou Dynasty tomb in Luoyang city, also in Henan province.

The pits also contained well-preserved evidence of bronzeware and ceramics from the Early Western Zhou dynasty.