Holding hands for 5,000 years, a couple with mysterious jade rings and dagger
An elderly couple who have held hands for the last five thousand years were revealed by archaeologists in a Bronze Age grave. The skeletons, thought an ancient dignitary and his wife or lover, were uncovered at a burial site overlooking Baikal lake in Siberia.
The elderly couple have been holding hands for the past 5,000 years
They were found decorated with unusual rings made of rare white jade, one of which was placed above the man eye socket. It is thought that the couple is from the ancient Bronze Age ‘Glazkov Culture,’ the oldest and deepest lake in the world that lived around Baikal.
Intriguingly, Russian scientists have not yet revealed details of a ‘metal implement’ discovered inside a leather pouch placed between the man’s kneecaps.
The skeletons are believed to be an ancient dignitary and his wife or lover
Three jade rings were found placed on the male’s chest, while a 20-inch jade dagger, made from the same rare stone, was also unearthed inside the grave.
Archaeologist Dr Dmitry Kichigin, of Irkutsk National Research Technical University, said the rings were ‘somehow connected’ with the pair’s ‘ideas about the afterlife’.
They were found decorated with unusual rings made from rare white jade
“In the grave we found male and female skeletons, lying on their backs, heads to the west, hand in hand,” he said.
“It would be very interesting to find out the purposes of the massive jade knife, which we found near the woman, was used for.
“We also found some metal implement in a small leather bag between male’s kneecaps.”
Pendants of red deer and musk deer teeth were found on the man’s skull, and around the feet.
But while the male skeleton is complete, rodents have destroyed the upper part of the female.
While the male skeleton is complete, rodents have destroyed the upper part of the female
Dr Kichigin said he believed the couple could be ‘an owner and his concubine’.
The burial site near the lake is at a ‘sacred place for ancient people’, where Neolithic remains were also discovered.
The couple are thought to be from the ancient Bronze Age ‘Glazkov Culture’
The precise location is being kept secret to avoid it being ransacked by treasure hunters.
“We can expect a lot of interesting discoveries on this archaeological site, so we plan to continue our work next year,” Dr Kichigin told The Siberian Times.
3,000-Year-Old Gold Mask, Silk Linked to Enigmatic Civilization Found in China
Archaeologists have uncovered a trove of 3,000-year-old artifacts—including fragments of a gold mask—at Sanxingdui, an excavation site in China’s Sichuan province.
Fragment of a gold mask unearthed at Sanxingdui, an archaeological site in southwest China
As Stephen Chen reports for the South China Morning Post, the researchers, who began digging at the site in 2022, found more than 500 objects, most of which were crafted out of gold, bronze, jade and ivory.
Experts are unsure who made the artifacts, but they speculate that the cache’s creators belonged to the Shu state, a highly skilled civilization conquered by the neighboring state of Qin in 316 B.C. Because the people of Shu left behind few written records, notes Oscar Holland for CNN, historians’ knowledge of their culture is limited.
A major highlight of the find is a 0.6-pound fragment of a gold mask that may have been worn by a priest during religious ceremonies, reports the Global Times’ Chen Shasha.
About 84 percent pure gold, the piece likely weighed close to one pound in its entirety, making it one of the heaviest gold masks from that time period discovered in China to date. The Sanxingdui team found the mask, along with an array of other ornate items, in six rectangular sacrificial pits.
Bird-shaped gold ornament China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration
According to a statement from China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration, other discoveries made at the site included two kinds of silk. The first was found scattered among the ashes in one of the pits, while the second was found wrapped around bronze objects.
Silk has played an important role in China’s millennia-old history. As the statement points out, the ancient inhabitants of Sanxingdui probably wore silk garments during sacrificial ceremonies.
The fiber was thought to serve “as a carrier and medium for communication between heaven, earth, man and god,” notes the statement, per Google Translate. Outside of these religious rituals, silk was used to make fine clothing, fans, wall hangings and banners, as Mark Cartwright wrote for Ancient History Encyclopedia in 2022.
Civilizations across the ancient world, from Rome to Persia to Egypt to Greece, similarly revered Chinese silk, sending traders along the Silk Road to obtain the highly sought-after fabric.
As Tang Fei, head of the excavation team and chief of the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, tells state-run news agency Xinhua, the presence of silk at Sanxingdui indicates that “the ancient Shu Kingdom was one of the important origins of silk in ancient China.”
Bronzeware found at the site China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration
Other key discoveries included bronzeware adorned with depictions of beasts and birds, ivory carvings, and gold ornaments. Some of the artifacts bear distinct similarities to objects found along the Yangtze River and in Southeast Asia, suggesting that the enigmatic Shu civilization engaged in “broad exchanges with many areas,” says Zhao Congcang, an archaeologist at Northwest University in Xian, to the Post.
A local farmer stumbled onto jade and stone artifacts at Sanxingdui while repairing a sewage ditch in 1929, wrote Tia Ghose for Live Science in 2022. Since then, researchers have uncovered more than 50,000 ancient items at the site: A major excavation in 1986, for example, revealed two ceremonial pits containing more than 1,000 items, including intricate, well-kept bronze masks, according to CNN.
Experts uncovered a third pit in 2022 and five more last year. Scholars posit that ancient people used these ditches for ritual sacrifices, as many of the items were burned before they were interred.
Song Xinchao, deputy director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, tells Xinhau that the findings are poised to “enrich and deepen our understanding of the Sanxingdui culture.”
Though Sanxingdui, which has yielded finds dated as far back as the 12th and 11th centuries B.C., isn’t currently acknowledged as a Unesco World Heritage Site, it remains in consideration on a “tentative list.”
5000-Year-Old Water System Discovered In Western Iran
A 5000-year-old water system has been unearthed during the second season of a rescue excavation project at the Farash ancient historical site at the Seimareh Dam reservoir area in western Iran.
The pipeline of a 5000-year-old water system is seen in a trench dug by anarchaeological team during a rescue excavation project on the beach
An archaeological team led by Leili Niakan has been carrying out a second season of rescue excavation since March after the Seimareh Dam came on stream, the Persian service of CHN reported on 2022.
The team plans to save ancients artifacts and gather information about the ancient sites, which are being submerged by the dam that became operational in early March.
This system, which comprises a small pool and an earthenware pipeline, was discovered on the eastern beach of the dam on the border between Ilam Province and Lorestan Province, Niakan said.
The pipeline of a 5000-year-old water system is seen in a trench dug by an archaeological team during a rescue excavation project on the beach
Part of the water system has been submerged as the water level has risen. However, the team covered that part of the system beforehand to save it for more archaeological excavations while the dam is out of commission.
Each earthenware conduit measures about one meter in length and it is likely that they were made and baked in this region, Niakan stated.
The team is still working on the site to unearth the rest of pipeline, which may lead the archaeologists to the source of pipeline, she added.
An aerial photo of the Seimareh Dam region
Over 100 sites dating back to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Copper Age, Stone Age, Parthian, Sassanid, and early Islamic periods were identified at the dam’s reservoir in 2022.
Afterwards, 40 archaeological teams from the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR) were assigned to carry out Iran’s largest rescue excavation operation on the 40 ancient sites at the reservoirs of the dam in the first season.
Signs of the Mesopotamians’ influence in the region were also identified by studies carried out on the ancient strata at the reservoir.
Most of the sites have been flooded by the dam and the rest will go under water after the filling of the dam is completed.
1,300-year-old fortress-like structure on Siberian lake continues to mystify experts
At first glance, Por-Bajin’s rectangular island, with its regular structure and ruined parts, looks like a foreboding fortress or jail.
what the rectangular island and its labyrinthine ruins, situated in a lake deep in Siberia, were actually used for when it was built 1,300 years ago, But it is unknown for certain.
The mysterious island, Por-Bajin, was found in the centre of a remote lake high in the mountains of southern Siberia
Historians and scientists are divided, but some experts believe that the isolated area may have been constructed to attract people and suggest that it was a summer palace, monastery, or astronomical observatory instead of imprisoning them.
In the Tuvan language, the name Por-Bajin is translated as “clay house,” and the island sits between the Sayan and Altai ranges, near the Mongolian border, about 3,800 km from Moscow.
The location was first discovered in 1891, and the purpose of island has still not been explained over a century later.
Inside the complex of Por Bajin.
More in-depth research took place in 2022 with archaeologists discovering clay tablets of human feet, faded coloured drawings on the plaster of the walls, giant gates and fragments of burnt wood.
Experts say the island was built during the period of the Uighur Khaganate (744-840 AD) but it is not clear what their motive would be for constructing a fortress for in such a solitary place – as it is far from big settlements and trade routes.
The plot thickens as the way it was built, along with the construction materials use, hint at Chinese architectural tradition.
Scientists were able to use laser mapping to create a 3D image of what the 3.5 hectare plot could have been used for.
Por-Bajin reconstruction seen from the east.
Although it is said to be around 1,300 years old, many walls were intact and well preserved with a main structure in the inner courtyard being separated into two parts, covered by a tiled roof walkway supported by 36 wooden columns on stone bases.
Even more confusing than the debate of why it was created is the question of why it was abandoned.
One of the tiles found at Por Bajin.
Researches have noted the lack of heating systems on the island, despite it enduring harsh Siberian weather and being located 7,545 feet above sea level.
Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the island with Prince Albert of Monaco in 2007 and echoed the confusion.
Small yards (left) running along Por-Bajin’s walls each had a building in the center. A digital reconstruction (right) based on excavations shows that each building could have functioned as a dwelling, perhaps for monks if the site were a monastery .
‘I have been to many places, I have seen many things, but I have never seen anything of the kind,’ he said.
Cache of gold coins and 900-year-old gold earring found in Caesarea
During an extensive excavation and conservation work in Caesarea conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and sponsored by The Edmond de Rothschild Foundation IL, a hidden treasure of Caesarea was found.
Hoard of gold coins and an earring found in Caesarea
The treasure contains a combination of coins not yet seen in Israel – 18 Fatimid dinars, well known from previous excavations in Caesarea where it was the standard local currency of the time and a small and extremely rare group of six Byzantine imperial gold coins.
Five of the coins are concave and belong to the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VII Doukas (1071–1079) – Dr. Robert Kool, coin expert at the Israel Antiquities Authority explains.
Inspecting one of the gold coins found in Caesarea
According to the directors of the excavation, Dr. Peter Gendelman and Mohammed Hatar of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The coins in the cache make it possible to link the treasure to the Crusader conquest of the city in the year 1101, one of the most dramatic events in the medieval history of the city.
According to contemporary written sources, most of the inhabitants of Caesarea were massacred by the army of Baldwin I (1100–1118), king of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
It is reasonable to assume that the treasure’s owner and his family perished in the massacre or were sold into slavery, and therefore were not able to retrieve their gold.”
Convex-shaped gold coin of the Byzantine emperor Michael VII Doukas
At the center of the excavation and conservation activity of the multi-year Caesarea project, stands the impressive façade of the city’s ancient central public building.
It was part of a sacred compound first built by Herod more than two millennia ago, as a tribute to his Roman patron, the emperor Augustus, and the goddess Roma. The newly discovered treasure was found in this area.
The gold earring
This important discovery was found close to the location of two other treasures of the same period. The first, a pot consisting of gold and silver jewelry, was discovered in the 1960s. The second, a collection of bronze vessels, was found in the 1990s.
The new finding highlights the notion of Caesarea being a vibrant port city since its establishment 2,030 years ago.
One of the earliest funeral banquets ever to be discovered reveals a preplanned, carefully constructed event that reflects social changes at the beginning of the transition to agriculture in the Natufian period.
Hebrew University archaeologists uncover 12,000 year old grave inside a cave in northern Israel
The woman was laid on a bed of specially selected materials, including gazelle horn cores, fragments of chalk, fresh clay, limestone blocks and sediment.
Tortoise shells were placed under and around her body, 86 in total. Sea shells, an eagle’s wing, a leopard’s pelvis, a forearm of a wild boar and even a human foot were placed on the body of the mysterious 1.5 meter-tall woman. Atop her body, a large stone was laid to seal the burial space.
It was not an ordinary funeral, said the Hebrew University archaeologist who discovered the grave in a cave site on the bank of the Hilazon river in the western Galilee region of northern Israel back in 2022.
Three other grave pits have been found at the site of Hilazon Tachtit since 1995, and most contained bones of several humans. Nevertheless, the unusual objects found inside the grave, measuring approximately 0.70 m x 1.00 m x 0.45 m, point to the uniqueness of the event and the woman at its center.
Eight years after the discovery, Prof. Leore Grosman from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Natalie Munro from the University of Connecticut, have identified the sequence of events of the mysterious funeral ritual that took place 12,000 years ago.
Bones of a mysterious 1.5 metre-tall woman lay in burial site, surrounded by tortoise shells and other objects
“We’ve assigned the event to stages based on field notes, digitized maps, stones, architecture and artifact frequency distributions and concentrations,” said Prof. Grosman, adding that, “The high quality of preservation and recovery of a well-preserved grave of an unusual woman, probably a shaman, enabled the identification of six stages of a funerary ritual.”
The research, published in the journal Current Anthropology, details the order of the six-step sequence and its ritual and ideological importance for the people who enacted it.
It began with the excavation of an oval grave pit in the cave floor. Next, a layer of objects was cached between large stones, including seashells, a broken basalt palette, red ochre, chalk, and several complete tortoise shells. These were covered by a layer of sediment containing ashes, and garbage composed of flint and animal bones.
One of 86 tortoise shells found in a unique burial site analyzed by Hebrew University archaeologists
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 that were placed directly on the body. The ritual concluded with the sealing of the grave with a large, heavy stone.
A wide range of activities took place in preparation for the funerary event. This included the collection of materials required for grave construction, and the capture and preparation of animals for the feast, particularly the 86 tortoises, which 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 Prof. Grosman.
The study of funerary ritual in the archaeological record becomes possible only after humans began to routinely bury their dead in archaeologically visible locations. The Natufian period (15,000-11,500 years ago) in the southern Levant marks an increase in the frequency and concentration of human burials.
Vew of Hilazon Tachtit cave in northern Israel
“The remnants of a ritual event at this site provide a rare opportunity to reconstruct the dynamics of ritual performance at a time when funerary ritual was becoming an increasingly important social mediator at a crucial juncture deep in human history,” the researchers said.
This unusual Late Natufian funerary event in Hilazon Tachtit Cave in northern Israel provides strong evidence for community engagement in ritual practice, and its analysis contributes to the growing picture of social complexity in the Natufian period as a predecessor for increasingly public ritual and social transformations in the early Neolithic period that follows.
The unprecedented scale and extent of social change in the Natufian, especially in terms of ritual activities, make this period central to current debates regarding the origin and significance of social and ritual processes in the agricultural transition.
Half-Billion-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Origin of Comb Jellies
A 520-million-year-old fossil resembling a flower is the great ancestor of modern-day comb jellies, jellyfish-like sea creatures that cast a rainbow-like effect as they propel their way through ocean waters.
This is the holotype specimen of Daihua sanqiong.
The fossil is made up of a cup-shaped organism with 18 tentacles of fine feather-like branches with rows of comb-like hairs surrounding a mouth.
The connection is made in a new study in the science journal Current Biology, which analyzes a fossil found in China’s southern Yunnan province and bumps combjellies to a new branch in the evolutionary tree of life.
Modern comb jellies derive their name from a row of comb-like plates called cilia that covers their tentacles and allows them tomove their egg-shaped bodies through water the same way bacteria swims. Thesecarnivores may look like jellyfish, but are from an entirely different class ofanimals.
Researchers say their newfound understanding of the comb jellies through the lens of the fossil named Daihua casts a new light on two other fossils that were thought be to part of other groups of sea creatures.
Those include a 508-million-year old fossil found in the Canadian Rockies andanother in the Maotianshan Shales in the same province where the Daihua fossilwas found.
Several well-preserved fossils have been found in rice fields and farmlands in the tropical region of China over the last 30 years, accordingto the researchers from University of Bristol, Yunnan University in China and London’s Natural History Museum.
The study posits comb jellies evolved from ancestors that had organic skeletons and lived on the ocean floor where they had polyp-like tentacles.
Over time, their mouths expanded into balloon-like spheres, but their bodies shrunk down so that their tentacles emerged toward the back-end of the animal.
Jakob Vinther, molecular paleobiologist from the University of Bristol, described the discovery as a real breakthrough for the understanding of the comb jellies’ journey from the seafloor.
“We pulled out a zoology textbook and tried to wrap our head around the various differences and similarities, and then, bam!
Here isanother fossil that fills this gap,” said Vinther.
150,000-Year-Old Pipes Baffle Scientists in China: Out of Place in Time?
In a mysterious pyramid in China’s Qinghai Province near Mount Baigong are three caves filled with pipes leading to a nearby salt-water lake. There are also pipes under the lake bed and on the shore. The iron pipes range in size, with some smaller than a toothpick. The strangest part is that they may be about 150,000 years old.
Dating done by the Beijing Institute of Geology determined these iron pipes were smelted about 150,000 years ago, if they were indeed made by humans, according to Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com.
And if they were made by humans, history as it is commonly viewed would have to be re-evaluated.
The dating was done using thermoluminescence, a technique that determines how long ago crystalline mineral was exposed to sunlight or heated. Humans are only thought to have inhabited the region for the past 30,000 years. Even within the known history of the area, the only humans to inhabit the region were nomads whose lifestyle would not leave any such structures behind.
The state-run news agency Xinhua in China reported on the pyramid, the pipes, and the research began by a team scientists sent to investigate in 2022.
Though some have since tried to explain the pipes as a natural phenomenon, Yang Ji, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua the pyramid may have been built by intelligent beings. He did not dismiss the theory that ancient extraterrestrials may be responsible, saying this theory is “understandable and worth looking into … but scientific means must be employed to prove whether or not it is true.”
Another theory is that it was built by prehistoric humans with techniques lost to humans of a later period.
The pipes lead into a salty lake, though a twin lake nearby contains freshwater. The surrounding landscape is strewn with what Xinhua described as “strangely shaped stones.” Rocks protrude from the ground like broken pillars.
The head of the publicity department at the local Delingha government told Xinhua the pipes were analyzed at a local smeltery and 8 percent of the material could not be identified. The rest was made up of ferric oxide, silicon dioxide, and calcium oxide. The silicon dioxide and calcium oxide are products of long interaction between the iron and surrounding sandstone, showing the ancient age of the pipes. Liu Shaolin, the engineer who did the analysis, told Xinhua: “This result has made the site even more mysterious.”
“Nature is harsh here,” he said. “There are no residents let alone modern industry in the area, only a few migrant herdsmen to the north of the mountain.”
To further add to the mystery, Zheng Jiandong, a geology research fellow from the China Earthquake Administration told state-run newspaper People’s Daily in 2022 that some of the pipes were found to be highly radioactive.
Other Theories
Jiandong said iron-rich magma may have risen from deep in the Earth, bringing the iron into fissures where it would solidify into tubes. Though he admitted, “There is indeed something mysterious about these pipes.” He cited the radioactivity as an example of the strange qualities of the pipes.
Others have said iron sediments may have washed into the fissures, carried with water during floods.
Though Xinhua and other publications in China have referred to a pyramid or even a mysterious pyramid in which the pipes were found, some have said it was a pyramid-shaped natural formation.
Another theory is that the pipes are fossilized tree roots. Xinmin Weekly reported in 2022 that scientists found plant matter in an analysis of the pipes, and they also found what looked like tree rings. The article related the finding to a geological theory that in certain temperatures and under certain chemical conditions, tree roots can undergo diagenesis (transformation of soil into rock) and other processes that can produce iron formations.
Reports on the tree-root explanation for the so-called Baigong pipes often lead back to this Xinmin Weekly article or lack citation. It’s unclear exactly how well-supported this theory is in relation to the Baigong pipes.
Archaeologists Unfold World’s Largest Underground City in Turkey
In ancient Cappadocia, now part of modern day Turkey, the people who lived there dug incredible, honeycomb-esque cities into the soft rock—underground complexes that could go stories deep.
The newfound ruins could outshine their neighbor, the underground city of Derinkuyu
The remnants of these underground hives are scattered through the region, and the most recently discovered of these ruins are also some of the most impressive.
In 2022, a crew of demolition workers inadvertently uncovered a network of tunnels near Neveshir, Turkey, and now that archeologists have given this find a deeper look, they think it could turn out to be the most extensive underground city ever known.
Today, one of the area’s biggest attractions is Derinkuyu, a historic subsurface town big enough to have housed 20,000 people, with additional space for livestock and food stores. But the new findings suggest the recently unearthed settlement could be a third larger, suddenly making Derinkuyu look like a humdrum ‘burb.
“Geo-radiation scanning suggests the multilevel settlement is the size of about 65 football pitches, and is likely to include living spaces, kitchens, wineries, chapels, and staircases.” Geophysicists estimate the site is nearly five million square feet (460,000 square meters) and think it contains corridors as deep as 371 feet. The scientists date the ruins back 5,000 years.
The site was found when a crew demolished 1,500 buildings on top of it, as part of an urban renewal project. But now Neveshir’s mayor wants to focus the city’s development efforts elsewhere.
And, who knows—maybe the builders of the new housing complex will have hit upon some fresh inspirations, and soon the people over there will soon be living underground, too.
4,000-Year-Old Hidden Tunnel Discovered in Ancient Castle in Turkey
In Turkey, Central Anatolia, a Hittite castle secret tunnel was excavated. The tunnel is about 4,000 years old and is part of the castle of Geval Castle. Nearly 150 meters of the tunnel was dug and investigated at this point; the rest is sealed off with a vault.
Geval Castle, where the Secret Tunnel of Hittite castle was found, is at the peak of Takkei Mountain, at 1,700 meters , some 7 kilometres west of the modern-days town of Konya, which is Turkey ‘s 7th city in Turkey by population. However, in ancient times, Konya had several civilizations, thanks to its strategic placement and a 360-degree view of the area around it.
Thanks to this, not only Hittites, but also Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and the Ottoman Empire used Geval Castle as an important defensive structure.
The archaeological excavation in Geval castle began in 2022 and has been supervised by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Seljuk, the University of Necmettin Erbakan and the General Directorate of the Konya Museum.
According to a prominent archeology site in Turkey, Arkeolo Jihaber, the team of excavator has managed to find numerous items from the Hittite era, including some ceramic pots and pans, several different metal objects and an assortment of different small hand goods. In 2022, the archeologists have unearthed a temple from this era and various rock-hewn cisterns.
The Hittite castle secret tunnel that the archeologists have found now dates back about four thousand years and was in all likelihood used extensively in the Seljuk era between 11th and 12th century AD.
According to Çaycı, the team of archeologists will take a break from investigating the secret tunnel and the Geval Castle itself and will continue excavations in May next year.
This Hittite castle secret tunnel could be of great help to the archeologists and historians in understanding the Hittites and their history a bit better.
The Hittites were an ancient people residing mostly in Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, who founded an empire at Hattusa (north-central Anatolia) around the 18BC.
The Hittite empire reached its peak in 14th century BC under the rule of Suppoluliuma First and Mursili Second, when it covered the majority of Asia Minor and parts of Upper Mesopotamia and Levant.
Thanks to their use of iron, the Hittites were able to launch several very successful military campaigns to nearby regions. However, iron wasn’t the only reason for their successes in the battlefield. The Hittites also used the light chariot. These were powered by two horses and were narrower and faster than what the other nations had at the time.
The Hittite empire reached its peak in 14th century BC under the rule of Suppoluliuma First and Mursili Second, when it covered the majority of Asia Minor and parts of Upper Mesopotamia and Levant. At one point, a few years after the battle at Kadesh (1275 BC), the daughter of the Hittite king Hattusilis the Third married the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses Second.
Following this, civil wars and rivaling claims to the throne weakened the Hittite Empire, until it finally collapsed around 1160 BC into several independent “Neo-Hittite” city-states, none of which lasted longer than 8th century BC. Most of these city-states were later integrated into the Assyrian empire.
Neo or Syro-Hittite city-states were generally divided into two groups: northern, with a Hittite ruler still in power; and southern, which were ruled by Arameans since around 1000 BC.
