Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

A “Made in China” Label Solved The Mystery of an 800-Year-Old Shipwreck

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A “Made in China” Label Solved The Mystery of an 800-Year-Old Shipwreck

The practice of branding goods with their country of origin has been going on much longer than you might think – and a “Made in China”-style label etched into a 12th century piece of pottery has helped experts accurately date the cargo haul of a mysterious shipwreck.

Discovered in the 1980s by a fisherman in the Java Sea, off the coast of Indonesia, the wreck has been the subject of several studies since then. Archaeologists originally thought the ship set sail in the 13th century, but the new findings have them thinking again.

By analysing these ceramics and the rest of the goods on board – which include elephant tusks for use in medicine and art, and sweet-smelling resin for producing incense and sealing ships – researchers now have a better idea of how the sunken vessel fits in with the broader picture of China’s rich history.

“Initial investigations in the 1990s dated the shipwreck to the mid to late 13th century, but we’ve found evidence that it’s probably a century older than that,” says one of the team, Lisa Niziolek from the Field Museum in Chicago.

“Eight hundred years ago, someone put a label on these ceramics that essentially says ‘Made in China’ – because of the particular place mentioned, we’re able to date this shipwreck better.”

The inscription doesn’t actually say “Made in China”, though the intent is the same: to brand the ceramics with their place of origin. The label states the pots were made in Jianning Fu in the Fujian province of China.

Crucially though, it was renamed Jianning Lu after a Mongolian invasion dated to around 1278. That means the shipwreck may have happened earlier than that, and maybe as early as 1162, based on other tests.

It’s unlikely that ceramics like this would have been stored for very long, according to the researchers, so something carrying the old name would’ve been shipped off for sale pretty soon after it was made.

The team behind the study also looked at other pottery finds from the same era, and consulted with a variety of experts, to try and get a fix on when the ship might have set sail.

Carbon dating techniques can be applied to the tusks and the resin that were on board the ship, and these were initially used to identify the ship as being around 700-750 years old.

Since that analysis, we’ve got better at carbon dating, which is part of the reason for the re-evaluation. A new accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) test, together with the inscriptions on the the ceramics that we’ve already mentioned, suggests the shipwreck is indeed around 800 years old.

And that makes a big difference for archaeologists – the wreck marks a time when Chinese merchants began to be more active across worldwide maritime trade routes, switching from moving goods along the Silk Road to relying more on shipping. Pinning down that date is important for getting an accurate timeline for this period of transition.

It’s another example of how shipwrecks of any type can prove useful to historians, whether it’s to uncover the reading habits of pirates or the way that 17th-century royalty dressed.

“There’s often a stigma around doing research with artefacts salvaged by commercial companies, but we’ve given this collection a home and have been able to do all this research with it,” says Niziolek.

“It’s really great that we’re able to use new technology to re-examine really old materials. These collections have a lot of stories to tell and should not be entirely discounted.”

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Hoard of 2,150-year-old silver coins found in Modiin, Israel

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Hoard of 2,150-year-old silver coins found in Modiin, Israel


Archeologists in Modiin reached a rare silver cache in an ancient wall gap. During a rescue excavation in central Israel, the garden of silver coins dated from the Hasmonean period(126 BCE) was shown.

“Perhaps the cache belonged to a Jew who hides his money in the expectation of coming back to recover it, but he was disappointed and never came back,” says the Modiin excavation managing director Abraham Tendler.

Aerial photograph of a Hasmonean estate house excavated in Modiin

Shekelles and half-shekels (tetradrachm and didrachm) minted at Tyre City, bearing images of the king, Antiochus VII and his brother Demetrius II are the rare silver caches of the late Hasmonean period.

The treasure was placed in a rock crevice, opposite a wall of an impressive farmyard which was uncovered during the excavation.

The cache of silver coins were found in a rock crevice.

“The cache, which consists of 16 coins, contains one or two coins from every year between 135–126 BCE, and a total of nine consecutive years are represented. It seems that some thought went into collecting the coins, and it is possible that the person who buried the cache was a coin collector.

He acted in just the same way as stamp and coin collectors manage collections today”.  Dr. Donald Tzvi Ariel, the head of the Coin Depart-ment at the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a press statement from the IIA.

Or maybe: “The cache that we found is compelling evidence that one of the members of the estate who had saved his income for months needed to leave the house for some unknown reason.

He buried his money in the hope of coming back and collecting it, but was apparently unfortunate and never returned. It is exciting to think that the coin hoard was waiting here 2,140 years until we exposed it” Tendler said.

He added, “The findings from our excavation show that a Jewish fami-ly established an agricultural estate on this hill during the Hasmonean period. The family members planted olive trees and vineyards on the neighboring hills and grew grain in valleys.

An industrial area that includes an olive press and storehouses where the olive oil was kept is currently being uncovered next to the estate. Dozens of rock-hewn winepresses that reflect the importance of viti-culture and the wine industry in the area were exposed in the culti-vation plots next to the estate.

The estate house was built of massive walls in order to provide security from the attacks of marauding bandits.”

Numerous bronze coins minted by the Hasmonean kings were also discovered in the excavation.

They bear the names of the kings such as Yehohanan, Judah, Jonathan or Mattathias and his title: High Priest and Head of the Council of the Jews.

The finds indicate that the estate continued to operate throughout the Early Roman period.The Jewish inhabitants of the estate meticulously adhered to the laws of ritual purity and impurity: they installed ritual baths ( miqwe’ot) in their settlement and used vessels made of chalk, which according to Jewish law cannot become ritually unclean.

Evidence was discovered at the site suggesting that the residents of the estate also participated in the first revolt against the Romans that broke out in 66 CE: the coins that were exposed from this period are stamped with the date ‘Year Two’ of the revolt and the slogan ‘Free-dom of Zion’.

The estate continued to operate even after the destruction of the Tem-ple in 70 CE. “It seems that local residents did not give up hope of gaining their independence from Rome, and they were well-prepared to fight the enemy during the Bar Kokhba uprising”, said Tendler and continued.

The unique finds revealed in the excavation will be preserved in an archaeological park in the heart of the new neighborhood slated for construction in Modi‘in-Maccabim-Re‘ut.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Archaeologists Just Discovered the Bones, Weapons, and Headdresses of Four Real-Life Amazon Warriors in Russia

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Archaeologists Just Discovered the Bones, Weapons, and Headdresses of Four Real-Life Amazon Warriors in Russia

The burial site of the “Amazon” women in Voronezh.

An archaeological dig in the Eastern region of Voronezh, Russia, has unearthed an incredible discovery: a group of ancient burial pits with four women entombed with spears, headdresses, and other objects pointing to the existence of real-life Amazon warriors.

The women were likely nomadic Scythian warriors who populated the steppes of southern Russia and formed a matriarchal society that has inspired everything from from Xena: Warrior Princess to Gal Godot’s Wonder Woman.

Valerii Guliaev, who led the expedition, shared the group’s findings in December at the Institute of Archaeology at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

A rendering of the headdress discovered in the Amazon tomb.

Although fragments of similar ceremonial headdresses have been found before, the one found in Voronezh is in superb condition and is the first to be located in this precise location near the Don River. It was discovered on the head of one of the women.

The bodies were found in a group of burial mounds that scientists noted had been, at some point, ravaged by robbers.

In the first mound, the skeletal remains of two women—one was aged between 20 and 25, while the other was between 12 and 13—were surrounded by more than 30 iron arrowheads, pieces of a horse harness, iron hooks, knives, and animal bones likely belonging to a horse.

In addition, molded clay vessels and an incense burner dating to the second half of the 4th century BC were found scattered around various levels of the pit.

In another plot, two untouched skeletons were discovered inside wooden graves cushioned by grass, where scientists found a roughly 50-year-old woman wearing a heavily engraved gold-stamped headpiece (known as a kalaf) adorned with floral ornaments and pendants.

A figure buried in the “pose of a rider

A final woman, aged between 30 and 35, was found in “the pose of a rider,” as if she were mounted on a horse, according to the archaeologists.

The woman also had a large bronze mirror, two spears, and wore a glass bead bracelet—one perhaps not dissimilar from the indestructible “Bracelets of Submission” worn by Wonder Woman as cautionary reminders that women should never submit to the charms of men.

Top, a detail of the headdress; below, other objects found in the tomb
The burial site of the Amazon women in Voronezh.
The burial site of the Amazon women in Voronezh

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

MAGICAL NEW 4,500 YEAR OLD FINDS ADD TO ‘OLDEST TOY COLLECTION IN THE WORLD’

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Magical New 4,500 Year Old Finds Add To ‘Oldest Toy Collection In The WORLD’

An ancient doll and a mythical animal were buried with a child from the Okunev culture in the Bronze Age.

The toy animal head is made from antler or horn.

The rare discoveries of the pre-historic toys were made at the Itkol II burial ground in the Republic of Khakassia, southern Siberia. 

The doll had ‘carefully worked out facial features’ and was made of soapstone – a soft rock made mostly of talc, said archeologist Dr Andrey Polyakov, from the Institute of History of Material Culture in St Petersburg. 

The head of the doll is around 5 centimetres tall.

The doll had ‘carefully worked out facial features’ and was made of soapstone.

The toy animal head is made from antler or horn. 

Experts are as yet unsure what animal it depicts but it is perhaps mythical. 

In both cases the bodies of the toys were made from organic material and did not preserve. 

The finds were made in the grave of a ‘common child’ – not an elite burial, said Dr Polyakov.

image description
A figurine of a pagan god pulled out of a Siberian river by an angler was likely a child’s toy or rattle to ward off evil spirits.

The Okunev culture is seen as having links to Native Americans – and this is not the first time their toys have been found. 

Indeed, the latest finds add to an intriguing collection. 

A figurine of a pagan god pulled out of a Siberian river by an angler was likely a child’s toy or rattle to ward off evil spirits. 

It has almond-shaped eyes, a large mouth with full lips,  and a ferocious facial expression. 

On the back is ‘plaited hair with wave like lines. Below the plait there are lines looking like fish scales.’ 

Fisherman Nikolay Tarasov made ‘the catch of a lifetime’, said museum staff.

Eight intricately carved figurines with the faces of humans, birds, elk and a boar lay on the chest of the ancient infant.

Meanwhile a collection of ghoulish figurines discovered with a baby’s remains in a birch-bark cradle two years ago have been hailed as the oldest rattles ever found. 

Eight intricately carved figurines with the faces of humans, birds, elk and a boar lay on the chest of the ancient infant.

Each was up eight centimetres long.

This discovery was made on the northwest short of Lake Itkul.

ASIA, LAOS, WORLD

Two-ton, 1,000 year old stone ‘jars of the dead’ mystery deepens

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Two-ton, 1,000 year old stone ‘jars of the dead’ mystery deepens


An ancient burial practice involving the use of massive stone jars seems to have been more widespread in Southeast Asia than once assumed, owing to a surprising trove of new discoveries in Laos.

A team of archaeologists co-led by Dougald O’Reilly from Australian National University, with help from Lao government officials, have discovered 15 new megalithic sites in Laos containing 137 previously unidentified stone jars that are thought to have been related, in some way, to disposal of the dead.

The sites, which date back 1,000 years, are located in a remote mountainous forest, expanding the geographical area in which these monuments are found in Laos.

“These new sites have really only been visited by the occasional tiger hunter,” said  Ph.D. student Nicholas Skopal, a co-leader of the team, in an  statement. “Now we’ve rediscovered them, we’re hoping to build a clear picture about this culture and how it disposed of its dead.”

A jar found in Laos.

These so-called ‘Jars of the Dead’ have been known since the 19th century, but French archeologist Madeleine Colani was the first to conduct a scientific investigation of the monuments, which she did in the 1930s.

Thousands of the megaliths have been found in the Plain of Jars, an area concentrated along the central plain of Xiangkhoang Plateau in northern Laos. The jars measure a few feet across and date back to Laos’ Iron Age (500 BCE to 500 CE). Colani, and the archaeologists who followed in her footsteps believe they were used during ancient burial practices, either to temporarily hold a deceased individual, or to serve as a secondary gravesite. Or possibly both.

These jars, and others like them in India and Indonesia, are suggestive of a complex set of burial practices involving various stages of decomposition, which ancient peoples may have associated with various spiritual or metaphysical phases of death.

But archaeologists have long puzzled over the exact purpose of the jars. To compound the problem, researchers don’t even know which culture built these megaliths.

“It’s apparent the jars, some weighing several tonnes, were carved in quarries, and somehow transported, often several kilometres to their present locations,” said O’Reilly in the statement. “But why these sites were chosen as the final resting place for the jars is still a mystery. On top of that we’ve got no evidence of occupation in this region.”

As noted, the distribution of the jars appears to be more widespread than previously assumed, which suggests whatever burial practice they were related to was also more common.

Also, some intricately carved discs were found positioned around the jars, possibly serving as burial markers, according to the researchers. The discs, which were placed face down for some unknown reason, were decorated with pommels, concentric circles, animal imagery and human figures.

According to O’Reilly, decorative carvings around these giant jars are quite rare. The researchers aren’t sure why some monuments were decorated and others were not, and why some had geometric designs as opposed to other imagery.

A disc decorated with concentric rings.

Intriguingly, the archaeologists also found miniature jars made of clay, which greatly resembled the larger jars.

O’Reilly said he’d “love to know why these people represented the same jars in which they placed their dead, in miniature to be buried with their dead.”

Other artifacts found near the jars included decorative ceramics, glass beads, iron tools, earrings, and spindle whorls for making cloth.

ASIA, EUROPE, WORLD

A Million-Year-Old Human Skull Has Prompted Scientists To Reconsider Early Human Evolution

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A Million-Year-Old Human Skull Has Prompted Scientists To Reconsider Early Human Evolution


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

The fossil is the most complete pre-human skull uncovered. With other partial remains previously found at the rural site, it gives researchers the earliest evidence of human ancestors moving out of Africa and spreading north to the rest of the world, according to a study in the journal Science.

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

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

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

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

This photo taken Oct. 2022, in Tbilisi, Georgia, shows a pre-human skull, that

Even bush-favoring scientists say these findings show one single species nearly 2 million years ago at the former Soviet republic site. But they disagree that the same conclusion can be said for bones found elsewhere, such as Africa. However, Lordkipanidze and colleagues point out that the skulls found in Georgia are different sizes but considered to be are the same species. So, they reason, it’s likely the various skulls found in different places and times in Africa may not be different species, but variations in one species.

In this photo taken Oct. 2022, ancient skulls and jaws of pre-human ancesto

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

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

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

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

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

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

The researchers found the first part of the skull, a large jaw, below a medieval fortress in 2000. Five years later—on Lordkipanidze’s 42nd birthday—they unearthed the well-preserved skull, gingerly extracted it, putting it into a cloth-lined case and popped champagne. It matched the jaw perfectly. They were probably separated when our ancestor lost a fight with a hungry carnivore, which pulled apart his skull and jaw bones, Lordkipanidze said.

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

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

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Siberian Permafrost Reveals Perfectly Preserved Ice-Age Baby Horse

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Siberian Permafrost Reveals Perfectly Preserved Ice-Age Baby Horse

Frozen in ice for millennia, this Siberian mummy is the best-preserved ancient horse ever found.

The astonishingly intact body of a young foal that died between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago was recently unearthed from melting permafrost in Siberia.

Its mummified remains were so well-preserved by icy conditions that the skin, the hooves, the tail, and even the tiny hairs in the animal’s nostrils and around its hooves are still visible.

Paleontologists found the mummified body of the young horse inside the 328-foot-deep (100 meters) Batagaika crater during an expedition to Yakutia in eastern Siberia. The researchers announced the mummy’s discovery on Aug. 11, The Siberian Times reported.

The foal was likely about two months old when it died and may have drowned after falling into “some kind of natural trap,” Grigory Savvinov, deputy head of the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, Russia, told The Siberian Times.

Remarkably, the body is whole and undamaged and measures about 39 inches (98 centimeters) tall at the shoulder, according to The Siberian Times.

Scientists collected samples of the foal’s hair and tissue for testing, and the researchers will investigate the animal’s bowel contents to determine the young horse’s diet, Semyon Grigoryev, director of the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, Russia, told The Siberian Times.

Wild horses still populate Yakutia today, but the foal belonged to an extinct species that lived in the region 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, Grigoryev told The Siberian Times. Known as the Lena horse (Equus caballus lenensis), that ancient species was genetically distinct from modern horses in the region, Grigoryev said.

Skin, hair and soft tissue of the ancient foal have remained intact for more than 30,000 years.

Siberian permafrost is known for preserving ancient animals for tens of thousands of years, and many superb specimens have emerged as global temperatures continue to rise and permafrost melts.

Recent discoveries include a 9,000-year-old bison; a 10,000-year-old woolly rhino baby; a mummified ice age kitten that could be a cave lion or lynx; and a baby mammoth nicknamed Lyuba who died after choking on mud 40,000 years ago.

Amazingly, one type of animal preserved in Siberian permafrost for tens of thousands of years was recently brought back to life.

Tiny nematodes — a type of microscopic worm — that had been frozen in ice since the Pleistocene were defrosted and revived by researchers; they were documented moving and eating for the first time in 42,000 years.

But sometimes thawing permafrost reveals surprises that are decidedly unpleasant.

In 2022, anthrax spores that had been frozen in Siberia for 75 years revived during a stretch of unusually warm weather; the subsequent “zombie” anthrax outbreak killed more than 2,000 reindeer and sickened over a dozen people.

ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

Archaeologists Have Discovered a Pristine 45,000-Year-Old Cave Painting of a Pig That May Be the Oldest Artwork in the World

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Archaeologists Have Discovered a Pristine 45,000-Year-Old Cave Painting of a Pig That May Be the Oldest Artwork in the World

Archaeologists believe they have discovered the world’s oldest-known representational artwork: three wild pigs painted deep in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi at least 45,500 years ago.

This painting of a wild pig in the Leang Tedongnge cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is thought to be the oldest representational art in the world.

The ancient images, revealed this week in the journal Science Advances, were found in Leang Tedongnge cave. Made with red ochre pigment, the painting appears to depict a group of Sulawesi warty pigs, two of which appear to be fighting. Those two images are badly damaged, but the third, possibly watching the drama unfold, remains in near-pristine condition.

“The world’s oldest surviving representational image of an animal,” the paper noted, the painting “may also constitute the most ancient figurative artwork known to archaeology.”

“I was struck dumb,” Adam Brumm of Griffith University, Australia, the article’s lead author, told NewScientist. “It’s one of the most spectacular and well-preserved figurative animal paintings known from the whole region, and it just immediately blew me away.”

The world’s oldest-known representational art was recently discovered on the back wall of Leang Tedongnge cave.

Archaeologist Basran Burhan, a Griffith University PhD student, discovered the cave and its prehistoric paintings in 2022. It’s only accessible during the dry season, via a long trek over mountains through a rough forest path.

Previously, the oldest-known figurative art was actually from a nearby cave, Leang Bulu’Sipong, discovered by the same team. Announced in late 2022, that 43,900-year-old work depicts eight figures with weapons in hand approaching wild pigs and small native buffaloes. In 2022, the archaeologists also made headlines with the discovery of an animal painting at least 35,700 years old, and hand stencils from some 40,000 years ago.

As for the oldest art in the world, “it depends on what definition of ‘art’ you use,” Griffith University archaeologist Maxime Aubert, one of the paper’s co-authors, told National Geographic.

Some archaeologists believe that red markings found in a South African cave in 2022 represent the world’s first known drawings, created an astonishing 73,000 years ago, and 64,000-year-old Neanderthal cave paintings were discovered in Spain in 2022.

This painting of three pigs, now thought to be the world’s oldest-known representational art, has been damaged over the millennia, leaving only one figure intact.

Such discoveries in Indonesia throw into question long-held beliefs that art originated in Europe, where sites like Spain’s El Castillo cave and France’s Chauvet cave feature work from 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

The newest find “adds further weight to the view that the first modern human rock art traditions probably did not arise in Ice Age Europe as long assumed,” Brumm told Smithsonian magazine.

To date the newly found Sulawesi artwork, Brumm’s team applied uranium-series dating—a somewhat controversial technique—to a calcite mineral crust that covered part of the best-preserved of the three pigs.

Created by water dripping down the cave walls, the mineral formation contains uranium. The theory is that, based on how much of that uranium has decayed, scientists can figure out a minimum date for the painting underneath.

This painting of a wild pig in the Leang Tedongnge cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is thought to be the oldest representational art in the world.

Despite the artworks’ advanced age, “the people who made it were fully modern, they were just like us, they had all of the capacity and the tools to do any painting that they liked,” Aubert told Agence France Presse.

But other experts not involved with the study are less certain that homo sapiens necessarily created the images.

“An anatomically modern human is an anatomical definition. It has nothing to do with cognition, intelligence or behavior,” University of Barcelona archaeologist João Zilhão told the New York Times. “There is no evidence about the anatomy of the people who did this stuff.”

Regardless of the species responsible, the paintings provide clues about what life was like in ancient Sulawesi, suggesting the importance of the warty pig to hunter-gatherer society.

An archaeologist with the prehistoric painting

“These are small native pigs that are endemic to Sulawesi and are still found on the island, although in ever-dwindling numbers,” Brumm told Smithsonian. “The common portrayal of these warty pigs in the Ice Age rock art also offers hints at the deep symbolic significance and perhaps spiritual value of Sulawesi warty pigs in the ancient hunting culture,”

Another newly discovered pig painting from a nearby cave dated with the same method was found to be 32,000 years old, and more similarly significant finds may be forthcoming.

“We have found and documented many rock art images in Sulawesi that still await scientific dating,” study coauthor Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a PhD student at Griffith, told CNN. “We expect the early rock art of this island to yield even more significant discoveries.”

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

3400-year-old palace from a mysterious kingdom surfaces in Iraq during drought

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3400-year-old palace from a mysterious kingdom surfaces in Iraq during drought

Archaeologists are hailing, as very important, the dramatic discovery of a Bronze Age Palace . It was revealed as the waters of a reservoir fell because of a severe drought in Iraq.

The ruin is believed to have been built by the little known Mittani Empire and researchers hope that it will provide more insights into this very important state and society.

The ruined palace was found at a site known as Kemune, on the east bank of the Tigris River, in Iraqi-Kurdistan and it has been named after this location.

It was revealed because the water level of the Mosul Dam, drastically fell because of a serious lack of rainfall. The dam was built in the 1980s and the building was first identified in 2010 but rising water levels meant that it was submerged again, at that time.

Palace Rises From the Waters

The drought, last year, led to the ruins re-emerging and this prompted archaeologists to commence a project to save and record the ruins. There are fears that the palace could deteriorate or become damaged.

The project team consists of German and local Kurdish experts. It is led by “Dr. Hasan Ahmed Qasim and Dr. Ivana Puljiz as a joint project between the University of Tübingen and the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization,” according to Kurdistan 24 .

The two team leaders have also helped to unearth a Bronze Age city in northern Iraq during the height of the war against the Islamic State.

Terrace wall on the western side of Kemune Palace.

The palace is believed to be up to 3,400 years old and archaeologists have been amazed at what it has been revealed.

Based on a preliminary investigation of the site it is estimated that it originally stood 65 feet (22 meters) high. It was constructed out of mud brick, which was widely used in buildings of all kinds during the Bronze Age in the Ancient East.

Some of the walls are over 6 feet (2 meters) thick and the entire building was very well designed. According to Archaeologist , “A terrace wall of mud bricks was later added to stabilize the building, adding to the imposing architecture.”

The Treasures Inside the Palace

The palace had a series of large spacious rooms that were plastered. Most remarkable of all, the team has found a series of wall paintings or murals that have been painted in red and blue and this indicates a high level of sophistication.

These were probably a feature of royal buildings from the Bronze Age , but they have usually been destroyed. Archaeologist quoting Dr. Ivana Puljiz, “Discovering wall paintings in Kemune is an archaeological sensation.”

Large rooms in Kemune Palace were unearthed during excavations.

Archaeologists also found ten clay tablets which contain a form of writing known as cuneiform. This was the most common form of writing in ancient Mesopotamia . These tablets have now been transferred to Germany where they are going to be translated and transcribed by experts.

Mural fragment discovered in Kemune Palace.

The Kemune Palace

The Kemune Palace is believed to be from “the time of the Mittani Empire, which dominated large parts of northern Mesopotamia and Syria from the 15th to the 14th century BC,” according to Kurdistan 24 .

The Mittani were a Hurrian speaking people who became a regional power, mainly because of their expertise in chariot-warfare.

The palace is the subject of an ongoing study by the team. The focus of the research going forward is on the ten clay tablets .

If they can be deciphered they can throw more light on the Mittani Empire. It may reveal more about the religion, administration, politics, and history of this enigmatic ancient Eastern society.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

12,000-year-old funeral feast uncovered in Israeli cave

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12,000-year-old funeral feast uncovered in Israeli cave

The woman’s corpse was set on a bed of gazelle horn cores, fragments of chalk, fresh clay, limestone blocks and sediment.

View of Hilazon Tachtit cave in northern Israel. Photo by Leore Grosman

Eighty-six tortoise shells were placed under and around her body, while seashells, an eagle’s wing, a leopard’s pelvis, a forearm of a wild boar and a human foot were placed atop the 1.5-meter-tall woman. A large stone was added to seal the site.

One of 86 tortoise shells found in a unique burial site analyzed by Hebrew University archaeologists. Photo by Leore Grosman

The Hebrew University archaeologist who discovered the grave in a cave on the bank of the Hilazon River in the Western Galilee in 2022 knew that it was not an ordinary funeral because three other grave pits found in the vicinity since 1995 did not have any of the unusual objects that this one did.

It took eight years for Prof. Leore Grosman from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Natalie Munro from the University of Connecticut to identify the six stages of the mysterious funeral ritual. Their research was published in the journal Current Anthropology.

They believe the deceased may have been a shaman during the Natufian period, 15,000 to 11,500 years ago.

Hebrew University archaeologists uncover 12,000 year old grave inside a cave in northern Israel. Photo by Naftali Hilger

According to their reconstruction, the funeral began with the excavation of an oval pit in the cave floor. A layer of objects was cached between large stones, including seashells, a broken basalt palette, red ochre, chalk and several tortoise shells. These were covered by a layer of sediment containing ashes, flint and animal bones.

About halfway through the ritual, the woman was laid inside the pit in a child-bearing position, and special items including many more tortoise shells were placed on top of and around her.

This was followed by another layer of filling and limestones of various sizes placed directly on the body. The ritual concluded with the sealing of the grave.

The archeologists speculate that the collection of materials and the capture and preparation of animals for the feast, particularly the 86 tortoises, must have been time-consuming.

“The significant pre-planning implies that there was a defined ‘to do’ list, and a working plan of ritual actions and their order,” said Grosman.