Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

Drought in Iraq Reveals 3,400-Year-Old City

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Drought in Iraq Reveals 3,400-Year-Old City

Iraq is battling its worst drought in decades. Lack of rainfall and poor resource management has left communities that depend on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers devoid of the water they need to survive. So authorities drained part of the Mosul Dam reservoir in the country’s Kurdistan region this January to keep crops from drying out.

Archaeologists got brief access to the city during another drought in 2018, but this is the first time they managed a comprehensive site study.

As it turns out, the decision preserved more than crops. Out of that drained area, an ancient city emerged—and with just days to examine the area before the waters came back, archaeologists successfully mapped what they believe to have been a major city in the Mittani Empire (also spelled Mitanni Empire) built 3,400 years ago.

People in the area knew the city was there when the dam was created in the 1980s, but the buildings and artifacts that survived the city’s destruction in an earthquake around 1350 B.C.E. had never been fully investigated, Live Science’s Patrick Pester reports.

Parts of the city first arose from the depths during a major drought in 2018, as Smithsonian magazine’s Jason Daley reported at the time. During that brief time, researchers were able to explore a lost palace with massive, 22-foot-high walls, some six feet thick, and discovered “remains of wall paintings in vibrant shades of red and blue.” However, the archaeologists ultimately didn’t have enough time to sufficiently map the city before the waters returned.

So when drought struck again this year, a research team was assembled in a matter of days to hurry out to the site, according to a statement from the University of Tübingen. Researchers obtained short-notice funding through the University of Freiburg to examine as much as the city as possible before it was re-submerged.

The walls of the city were amazingly well-preserved.

Now, archaeologists have a clearer picture of what this ancient city might have been like, thanks to the team’s mapping of numerous large buildings and uncovering of hundreds of artifacts. Among the buildings found were an industrial complex, a fortification with a wall and towers, and a multi-story storage building.

“The huge magazine building is of particular importance because enormous quantities of goods must have been stored in it, probably brought from all over the region,” Ivana Puljiz, an assistant professor of archaeology from the University of Freiburg, says in the statement.

Hasan Ahmed Qasim, chairman of the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization and the expedition’s leader, adds that “The excavation results show that the site was an important center in the Mittani Empire.”

The team was impressed by how well many of the walls—sometimes reaching almost ten feet high—were preserved, despite being made of sun-dried mud and submerged for more than 40 years.

That’s likely due the earthquake that destroyed the city. It turned the upper parts of the walls into rubble, which buried and protected the lower parts of the city for centuries.

Also astonishingly well-preserved: five ceramic vessels containing over 100 cuneiform tablets, some still in their clay envelopes. In the statement, Peter Pfälzner, a professor of archaeology at the University of Tübingen, describes the underwater survival of unfired clay tablets as being “close to a miracle.” The team hopes the tablets, some of which could be letters, will shed more light on what the city and its daily life were like.

It’s possible the site could be the ancient city of Zakhiku, a major hub in the Mittani Empire, which lasted from roughly 1500 to 1350 B.C.E. One of a number of kingdoms and states founded by the Indo-Iranians in Mesopotamia and Syria, at its peak the empire spanned just over 600 miles, extending from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea.

In the empire’s early years, the Mittanis tussled with Egypt over control of Syria until a truce was reached with Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose IV around 1420 B.C.E. The Mittanis fell to the Hittite Empire around 1360 B.C.E., and the Assyrians soon took over the area.

Though the emergence of this underwater city is incredible, it’s not the only abandoned town to have been revealed from the depths by drought this year.

In February, the Spanish village of Aceredo—which was flooded to create the Alto Lindoso reservoir in 1992—was fully exposed during a drought, Gizmodo’s Molly Taft reports.

Though the tops of houses are sometimes visible when the reservoir’s water levels drop, full buildings had never been exposed before this winter, which was unnaturally dry due to climate change.

Before the waters came back, researchers covered the area with tarps and gravel for safekeeping.

Drought can also reveal other archaeological wonders. The 4,000- to 7,000-year-old megalithic monument known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal emerged in 2019 when drought hit a Spanish reservoir that had covered the stones for about 60 years, Smithsonian’s Meilan Solly reported at the time.

Iraq has been hit especially hard by global warming—temperatures there are rising twice as fast as the global average, according to PBS’ Simona Foltyn. Average annual rainfall is down by 10 percent, and as a result, historic wetlands have dried up, livestock are dying, and people are struggling to get fresh water.

For now, there’s still enough water that the Mosul reservoir refilled in February, ending the researchers’ investigation. To protect the city, the team covered the area in tarps overlaid with gravel fill before the waters fully re-flooded the area.

Drought is expected to continue to plague the region. That will be a disaster for locals—and could present other opportunities for archaeologists.

There’s likely plenty left to discover: As Qasim told the Art Newspaper’s Hadani Ditmars, “There are more than 100 underwater sites in the Eastern Tigris area” alone.

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

Scientists Uncover Nearly 100 Dinosaur Nests in Fossilized Hatchery

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Scientists Uncover Nearly 100 Dinosaur Nests in Fossilized Hatchery

Paleontologists in central India have uncovered 92 preserved dinosaur nests and 256 eggs in an extensive fossilized hatchery. During the Late Cretaceous period, this breeding ground belonged to long-tailed, long-necked titanosaurs.

Five images display (A) an unhatched egg, (B) a circular outline of a possibly unhatched egg, (C) a compressed egg showing hatching window (arrow) and eggshells collected around the hatching window (circled), (D) an egg showing a curved outline, and (E) a deformed egg showing egg surfaces slipping past each other.

Combined with other sites previously found nearby, this trove of fossilized nests makes up one of the world’s largest known dinosaur hatcheries.

“Such nesting colonies would have been a sight to see back in the Cretaceous,” Darla Zelenitsky, a dinosaur paleobiologist at the University of Calgary in Canada who was not involved in the study, tells CNN’s Katie Hunt. “The landscape would have been dotted by a huge number of large dinosaur nests.”

Researchers studied these nests from 2017 to 2020 and published their findings Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, revealing insights into the dinosaurs’ reproductive habits.

Some 40 species of titanosaurs, a kind of herbivorous sauropod, are known to have lived, and several of them likely used this hatchery. The researchers found evidence of six species—or kinds of dinosaur eggs—at the site.

With so many nests in close proximity, it would have been hard for the massive reptiles to access the site to incubate eggs or feed hatchlings. Likely incapable of stepping delicately through the hatchery without crushing eggs underfoot, titanosaurs presumably were hands-off parents.

Instead, they might have incubated eggs by covering them, likely with sand, the researchers suggest. Laid and buried in shallow pits, titanosaur eggs may have been warmed by sunlight and the heat of the earth. After hatching, the young dinosaurs would have left the clutch quickly.

“It looks like sauropods laid their eggs and then left their offspring to fend for themselves,” Susannah Maidment, curator of dinosaurs at London’s Natural History Museum who was not involved in the study, tells the museum’s James Ashworth.

To that end, the paleontologists did not find any preserved dinosaur remains with the eggs and nests. No evidence of adults—or even hatchlings—was found in the area.

“It could be possible that this area was only for nesting and not for habitation purposes,” Guntupalli Prasad, a study co-author and paleontologist at the University of Delhi in India, tells Gizmodo’s Isaac Schultz in an email. Alternatively, it’s possible “the bones could not get preserved, or are deeply buried or still unexposed and yet to be discovered.”

One find in particular stood out to the researchers: a rare egg-within-an-egg. This phenomenon, called “ovum-in-ovo,” is a known occurrence in birds. It happens when an egg that’s going to be laid gets pushed back into the body and becomes embedded within another egg, usually under stressful conditions like disease, a shortage of food or extreme temperatures. However, this kind of egg has never been identified in a dinosaur—or in any reptile.

This first-of-its-kind find, if confirmed, suggests that titanosaurs had a similar reproductive system to modern birds. They may have laid eggs sequentially, as birds do, rather than all at once in a clutch, like crocodiles. But the dinosaurs still shared some traits with crocodiles: They nested in marshy areas, and their eggs were randomly spaced.

The reproductive systems of titanosaurs, the researchers conclude, were likely more similar to birds and crocodiles than to any other modern-day reptiles.

Experts note that it’s difficult to tell whether these 92 nests were all active at the same time or just created in the same vicinity over the course of decades, centuries or millennia.

Regardless, the find is astonishing, Zelenitsky tells  Joshua A. Krisch in an email. “Frankly, it is surprising that discoveries of this magnitude are still being made.”

ASIA, KAZAKHSTAN, WORLD

Archaeologists Unearth the ‘Golden Man’ of the Saka Burial Mound in Kazakhstan

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Archaeologists Unearth the ‘Golden Man’ of the Saka Burial Mound in Kazakhstan

Last week, Ancient Origins reported on the fascinating discovery of a golden treasure left by the ancient Saka people in a burial mound in Kazakhstan.

It was called one of the most significant finds in helping archaeologists unravel the history of the ancient Scythian sub-group. Now, archaeologists have found the missing element of the Saka burial mound – a ‘golden man’.

According to Archaeology News Network , the mummy of a Saka man who died in the 8th-7th centuries BC was found in the Yeleke Sazy burial mound in the remote Tarbagatai Mountains of eastern Kazakhstan. He died when he was just 17 or 18 years old and it is estimated he was 165-170 centimeters (5.4-5.6 ft.) tall.

The ‘golden man’ found in the Saka burial mound.

There are plans underway to find out more about the man, as lead archaeologist Zeinolla Samashev, stated, “We will do facial reconstruction from the skull of this young man, extract DNA from the bones to find out the environment people lived in back then, to learn about their everyday life and habits”.

Kazakhstan’s ministry of information and communications explained why the human remains received its shining nickname, “When buried, the young man was dressed in gold, with all of his clothes being embroidered with gold beads.

The man was buried with a massive gold torc around his neck (suggesting his noble origin) and a dagger in a golden quiver beside him.”

The man’s remains were removed from the site for analysis.

That fits in well with the previous discovery of 3000 golden artifacts in the kurgan (burial mound). Archaeologists have unearthed plates, necklaces with precious stones, earrings, beautifully crafted figurines of animals, and golden beads which may have been used to embellish Saka clothing.

The find also corresponds with the belief that elite members of the culture were laid to rest in the Saka burial mound. As Yegor Kitov, an anthropologist at Moscow’s Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, said, “The finds and the size of the mound suggest that the young man buried inside had a high social status.”

Kitov also suggests “The body was mummified to allow time for those coming from far away to say farewell to the man,” further exemplifying the man’s social status in his time.

These gold beads would have been used to decorate his clothing.

The burial mound which held the man’s remains was created by members of the Saka culture. This was a Scythian nomadic group who spoke an Iranian language and lived on the Eurasian Steppe.

The Saka are best remembered as skilled horsemen and metalworkers. Danial Akhmentov, head of the East Kazakhstan regional administration, notes the craftsmanship of the Saka in the recently revealed treasures from the burial mound, “The finds indicate the high level of technological development in gold jewelry production in the 8th century B.C., which, in turn, suggests the high level of civilization at that time,” he said .

One of the gold figurines found in the treasure.

The Saka are known to have buried members of the elite in their kurgans, usually in pairs or as a family unit. That means that there may still be other skeletons inside the Yeleke Sazy burial mound.

There are still more plans to excavate in the area because estimates suggest that there may be 200 burial sites in varying states of conservation nearby. Unfortunately, it is believed that looting has been an issue in at least some of the kurgans.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Archaeological Treasure Trove! 21 Royal Han Tombs Unearthed in China

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Archaeological Treasure Trove! 21 Royal Han Tombs Unearthed in China

Archeologists exploring a mountainside in China have discovered 21 tombs dating back 2,000 years. The presence of luxury artifacts and a rare “couple’s grave” suggests this was an ancient royal burial site.

The discovery of the 2,000-year-old royal tombs was made at the Changsha archaeological site, which is located just over 665 miles (1,000 kilometers) southwest of Shanghai. Located in the present-day Hunan district, the ancient Changsha Kingdom was founded in 203 or 202 BC and represented the largest and longest-lasting kingdom of the Han Empire of China.

The discovery of the 21 tombs was announced earlier this week by a team of archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology , at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

Located along a remote mountainside, the researchers said the tombs have laid buried for two millennia and that they “potentially held regal past, but not anymore”.

21 Vertical Pits Loaded with Ancient Artifacts

The imperial Han dynasty of ancient China was established by Liu Bang around 200 BC and was subsequently ruled by the House of Liu. This dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty , and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period from 220 to 280 AD, which represented the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei , Shu Han, and Eastern Wu.

On Tuesday this week, via China’s state-affiliated news outlet, Xinhua, the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences announced that a team of archaeologists have excavated “21 vertical pit tombs containing over 200 artifacts.”

One particular tomb was filled with pottery grave goods that dated back 2,000 years to the Western Han Dynasty, which the team of researchers said flourished during the earlier half of the Han dynasty, from about 200 BC to 25 AD.

Photo of the ancient Han tomb after the fill was removed. The Chinese burial tomb contained numerous luxury artifacts.

Rows of Tombs Whispering Ancient Royal Secrets

The archaeologists said they grouped the 21 tombs into two types: “tombs with passageways and tombs without.” Many of the tombs were found side-by-side; at one end of the site, three tombs were found in a row, while at the other end four further tombs were lined up together.

One of the 21 tombs unearthed in Changsha held the remains of five decaying pillars and outer coffins shaped like “Ⅱ” or like double ‘I’s, according to the press release.

The researchers said this type of double layered tomb “is rarely found in the Hunan province.” In this tomb, excavators recovered “two iron relics, walls covered in glaze and a mineral known as talc and a tan-colored talc disk (or bi) with a rhombus and circle pattern.” Furthermore, it is thought that the rare “pair of tombs” may have accommodated the joint burials of a husband and wife.

The picture shows the unearthed talc bi, decorated with lozenge pattern + dotted pattern, recovered from the ancient Han dynasty tomb

After studying the assemblage of 21 tombs, which are all of a similar age, the archaeologists concluded they likely belonged to “a royal family buried together in an ancient mausoleum”.

Looking To Ancient Chinese Texts for Answers

The Lunheng is a wide-ranging classical Chinese classic text written by Wang Chong around 27-100 AD, containing detailed essays about ancient Chinese mythology , natural science, philosophy, and literature.

These texts describe Western Han imperial burial practices as having involved “sacrificial offerings” at ancestral temples, which accounts for the amount of pottery vessels and grave goods discovered among the 21 tombs.

Well-known examples of Western Han tombs have been excavated in the past, including Mawangdui and the tombs of Liu Sheng , prince of Zhongshan and his wife, Dou Wan.

The tomb at Mawangdui was a nested tomb and the “paired tombs” of Liu Sheng and his wife, Dou Wan were cave tombs . It is known that “couple burials” emerged as the standard form of royal burial during the late Han period, along with the pairing of male/female motifs in the styling of the tombs.

This is why the archaeologists point towards their discovery of a rare “paired tomb” as the smoking gun for this being the burial site of a Han “royal” family.

The ornate jade burial suit of Liu Sheng and his wife Dou Wan, the first undisturbed Western Han tomb ever discovered
ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Discovery of oldest known trousers in the world

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Discovery of oldest known trousers in the world

In 2022, a team of archaeologists excavating tombs in western China uncovered the remains of two nomadic herders and a 3,000-year-old pair of trousers with woven patterns, which are the oldest known pair ever discovered, according to a report in  . The finding gives support to the theory that the transition from tunics to trousers was a practical development for horse-riders of the time. 

It is not known when humans first began making clothing due to the fast deterioration of fabrics and materials, but estimates range between 100,000 and 500,000 years ago.  The first clothes were made from animal skins and furs, grasses, leaves, bones, and shells.

Clothing was often draped or tied however, simple needles made out of animal bone provide evidence of sewn leather and fur garments from at least 40,000 years ago. When settled Neolithic cultures discovered the advantages of woven fibres, the making of cloth emerged as one of humankind’s fundamental technologies. The earliest dyed fibres have been found in a prehistoric cave in the Republic of Georgia and date back to 36,000 BC.

The first clothing made from woven fabrics, in both Europe and Asia, included simple tunics, robes, togas, wraps, and tied cloths. But at some point, this progressed to more sophisticated garments, which included trousers. Researchers have been eager to find out when and why this development occurred and the latest finding has helped to shed light on these questions.

Painted Egyptian Tunic

The ancient trousers, which are made of wool, have straight-fitting legs, a wide crotch, and decorative designs on the legs. The trousers were sewn together from three pieces of brown-coloured wool cloth, one piece for each leg and an insert for the crotch.

The tailoring involved no cutting – the pant sections were shaped on a loom in the final size. Finished pants included side slits, and strings for fastening at the waist.

The team led by archaeologists Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin, called the ancient invention of trousers “a ground-breaking achievement in the history of cloth making.” 

The discovery was made within tombs in the Yanghai graveyard in China’s Tarim Basin, where dry climate and hot summers helped preserve human corpses, clothing and other organic material. It is most famous for the Tarim mummies , a set of very well-preserved mummies with distinctly Caucasian features.

Within the tomb, archaeologists found the remains of two middle-aged men, a decorated leather bridle, a wooden horse bit, a battle-axe, a leather bracer for arm protection, whip, decorated horse tail, bow sheath, and bow.  

The grave goods suggest that the men were both warriors and herders, and supports previous research which has suggested that nomadic herders invented trousers to provide bodily protection and freedom of movement for horseback journeys and mounted warfare.

“This new paper definitely supports the idea that trousers were invented for horse riding by mobile pastoralists, and that trousers were brought to the Tarim Basin by horse-riding peoples,” said linguist and China authority Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mair suspects that horse riding began among the nomadic herders about 3,400 years ago and trouser-making came shortly thereafter in wetter regions to the north and west of the Tarim Basin.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Archaeologists Are Surprised to Find a 2,500-Year-Old Cannabis Burial Shroud Found in China

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Archaeologists Are Surprised to Find a 2,500-Year-Old Cannabis Burial Shroud Found in China

Thirteen cannabis plants were found covering the body of a man who was buried in Turpan, China, around 2,500 years ago. This is the first time archaeologists have discovered a quantity of well-preserved cannabis plants and it provides information on how the plant was used in ancient Eurasian cultures.

National Geographic reports that the plants were placed across the 35-year-old man’s chest with their roots below his pelvis and the tops of the plants reaching up past his chin to the left side of his face – as if they were a shroud. Each plant measures about 3 feet (0.91 meters) long.

The grave of the man found with a “cannabis shroud” in the Jiayi cemetery, China.

A previous example of cannabis found in a burial comes from nearby Yanghai cemetery – where the herb was discovered nearly a decade ago . That grave contained almost two pounds of cannabis seeds and powdered leaves.

Regarding the Altai Mountains region , another grave which was found to contain cannabis belonged to the famous Siberian Ice Maiden, who is also known as the Princess of Ukok and the Altai Princess of Ochi-Bala.

This burial has been dated back about 2,500 years and was found in 1993 in a kurgan (mound) of the Pazyryk culture in the Republic of Altai, Russia. It has been suggested that the cannabis found near the mummified woman’s remains may have been used to help her cope with breast cancer.

Reconstruction of the Princess of Ukok’s face.

But what makes the recently discovered cannabis shroud unique is that it provides the first example of complete cannabis plants found in the archaeological record. This is also the first time that the plant has been found acting as a burial shroud.

According to China Topix , the man with the cannabis shroud was found placed on a wooden bed with a reed pillow beneath his head. He is said to have Caucasian features and his grave is one of 240 burials which were excavated at the Jiayi cemetery of Turpan.

Some of the plants which were found laid across the man’s chest as a shroud.

Radiometric dating of the tomb and the archeobotanical remains within it shows an age of about 2800–2400 years old. At that time, the area was occupied by the Gushi Kingdom and the desert oasis was an important location on the Silk Road .

With the importance of the site on the trade route, Hongen Jiang and the rest of the team of researchers wondered if the plant was locally-sourced or came from another location.

National Geographic reports that the fact that the plants were found flat on the man’s body led the archaeologists to decide they were fresh when they were placed in his grave – and therefore were local.

Detail showing the “cannabis shroud”.

Moreover, a few of the plants had flowering heads which were nearly ripe and had immature fruit. This allowed the researchers to conclude that the man was buried in late summer.

The flowering heads of the cannabis plants also provided inspiration for the researchers in deciding the common purpose of plant in the region at the time of the man’s burial.

It is believed that there were three general uses for the cannabis plant in that location during that time period: as a psychoactive substance, for textiles via hemp fibers, and as a food source with its seeds.

However, as Jiang noted to National Geographic, “no hemp textiles have been found in Turpan burials, and the seeds of the plants in the Jiayi burial are too small to serve as a practical food source.”

The flowering heads that were found on the plants were, however, covered with glandular trichomes that secrete resin containing psychoactive cannabinoids such as THC – supporting the psychoactive substance hypothesis.

Thus, the researchers concluded that the plant was “grown and harvested for its psychoactive resin, which may have been inhaled as a sort of incense or consumed in a beverage for ritual or medicinal purposes.”

A detail from one of the ancient cannabis plants found in the grave.

In another recent discovery regarding ancient cannabis, it was found that the nomad tribe known as the Yamnaya may have facilitated the first transcontinental trade of the plant.

As Natalia Klimczak wrote “the herb was not first used and domesticated somewhere in China or Central Asia. Rather, it was used in Europe and East Asia at the same time – between 11,500 and 10,200 years ago.”

The tribe of Yamnaya nomads came from the eastern Steppe region, which is nowadays Russia and Ukraine, and entered Europe about 5,000 years ago. And, as Klimczak notes “Carbonized achenes and signs of cannabis burning were discovered at archeological sites which suggests that the Yamnaya brought the practice of cannabis smoking with them as they spread across Eurasia.”

The trade route created by Yamnaya and their neighbors became a part of the Silk Road several millennia later. The researchers in that study suggested that “the fact that cannabis had multiple uses made it an ideal candidate for being a “cash crop before cash.””

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

A missing link from our evolution: Inside the cave that was home to several human species, including the mysterious Denisovans

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A missing link from our evolution: Inside the cave that was home to several human species, including the mysterious Denisovans

After studying DNA from teeth and a pinky bone discovered in a Siberian cave, geneticists found out that they belonged to individuals living thousands of years apart. This has provided insight into the life of this mysterious human species.

Denisovans are considered to be a sister species of the Neanderthals that emerged 200 000 years ago. It is believed that they lived on the plains of Siberia and East Asia before modern humans arrived on the continent. Studying them is difficult because very fossilised remains are discovered.

Today, researchers know more about how the Denisovans lived. They constantly inhabited the same caves.

The entrance of Denisova Cave, the place where different human species remains were found

With the help of a new DNA analysis technology used on a teeth and a fragment of pinky finger bone that were found at the Denisova cave in Altai Krai, in the Altai Mountains near Barnaul, Russia, the researchers discovered that these fossils belonged to three individuals who lived thousands of years apart.

The location of Denisova cave (Altai Krai, the Altai Mountains near Barnaul, Russia)

The analysis of the pinky finger bone fragment (which belonged to a young girl), revealed they were a species closely related, but different from Neanderthals. This opened some questions for anthropologists. Was the cave a temporary shelter for the Denisovans or was it a permanent settlement for them?

The latest study presented at the annual conference for the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution, tells that the girl has lived around 50 000 years ago.

On the other hand, the DNA from teeth that belonged to two other individuals (adult male and a young female), shows that they were in the cave 65 000 earlier. but there are many different ideas about the age of the specimens.

Other tests suggested the tooth of the young female is probably 170,000 years old and the molar tooth is from an adult male that lived 7 500 before the girl (to which the bone fragment belonged).

Left upper molar tooth from a Denisovan, found in the caveDenisova 4 Left upper molar M2 or M3
The pinky finger bone from a young Denisovan girl

These findings show us that the cave probably served as a regular living space for the Denisovans. It appears that they had a real sense of “home”.

Viviane Slon, a geneticist working for paleogeneticist Professor Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Munich, Germany, said the DNA analysis showed the Denisovans had surprisingly diverse genomes.

One suggestion is that instead of living in small isolated groups they were mixing and breeding to ensure they high genetic diversity. However, the age gap can also explain the diversity. The prolonged period in which they lived in the cave may be the cause of that.

The “living room” of Denisova cave. The cave probably served as a regular home for the Denisovans, but also for Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.
The Denisova Cave – or as locals call it Ayu-Tash, which means Bear’s Rock – is both a natural and archaeological landmark in the valley of the Anui River, 150km from Barnaul.

Another study at the Denisova cave by geologist Professor Tom Higham, an expert on radiocarbon dating, and Dr Katerina Douka, an archaeologist, both at the University of Oxford, showed that more than one human species used the cave.

They found a toe bone from a Neanderthal that is around 50 000 years old.  Remains from Homo Spaiens that occupied the cave around 45 000 years ago were also found.

Different layers of sediment inside the cave

According to Dr Douka, the remains of different human species in the cave, can lead to theories that Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans were interbreeding.

ARMENIA, ASIA, WORLD

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

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

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

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

All organic materials such animal skins worn by Paleolithic or Neolithic peoples have, for the most part, disappeared. In the right environment though, such materials can last for thousands of years. If an environment is dry, and undisturbed, normally fragile, perishable material can last for millennia. One example of this is a 5,500-year-old leather shoe found in an Armenian cave which is one of several other examples of ancient footwear.

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

Other Preserved Ancient Shoes

Two other famous examples of ancient footwear are sandals found in the Arnold Research Cave in Missouri and another in the Cave of the Warrior in the Judaean Desert. The shoes in the Arnold Research Cave are between 800 and 8,000 years old. The youngest were made of deerskin while the oldest were sandals made of fibers from a plant called rattlesnake master.

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

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

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

A pair of sandals from the Middle Neolithic.

It should be noted that the two other examples of ancient footwear were not directly dated, but were dated using comparison with other artifacts found in the caves. The Armenian shoes were directly dated with radiocarbon dating. The great antiquity of the Armenian shoe is thus more certain than the antiquity of the other shoes.

The Armenian Shoe

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

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

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

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

The oldest known leather shoe, recovered at the base of a Chalcolithic pit in the cave of Areni-1, Vayots Dzor, Armenia.

Life and Times of the Shoe

During the time that this shoe was in use, the inhabitants of Armenia had already been farming for thousands of years, having adopted domesticates from the Levant. It is also around this time that the Kurgan culture, the proposed carriers of the Proto-Indo-European language began to move out of their ancestral homeland.

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

It is unknown whether the inhabitants of the caves were in some way related to the Kurgan culture, but we do know interesting things about them. The people of Armenia of this day used domesticates prevalent during the Neolithic, including wheat, barley and sheep.

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

These shoes reveal yet another facet of Prehistoric Armenia, which is already known for its relatively rich archaeological record. Eventually with enough research, we may learn more things about their culture beyond just what type of shoes they wore, what they ate and other aspects of their material culture. We may also learn about the immaterial aspects of their culture, such as small glimpses of how they viewed the world.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

9,000-yr-old Site near Jerusalem is the “Big Bang” of Prehistory Settlement

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9,000-yr-old Site near Jerusalem is the “Big Bang” of Prehistory Settlement

A huge 9,000-year-old Neolithic settlement — the largest ever discovered in Israel, say archaeologists — is currently being excavated outside Jerusalem, researchers said in mid  2019.

This site, located near the town of Motza, is the “Big Bang” for prehistory settlement research due to its size and the preservation of its material culture, said Jacob Vardi, co-director of the excavations at Motza on behalf of the Antiquities Authority, according to The Times of Israel.

Among the many important findings is that 9,000 years ago, the people of the settlement practiced religion. “They carried out rituals and honored their deceased ancestors,” Vardi, an archaeologist, told Religion News Service.

Dwelling foundations unearthed at Tell es-Sultan in Jericho

Perhaps 3,000 people lived in this settlement near where Jerusalem is today, making it quite a large city for the period that is sometimes called the New Stone Age. The site has “yielded thousands of tools and ornaments, including arrowheads, figurines and jewelry,” said CNN.”

The findings also provide evidence of sophisticated urban planning and farming, which may force experts to rethink the region’s early history, said archeologists involved in the excavation.”

Although the area has long been of archeological interest, Vardi said the sheer scale of the site — which measures between 30 and 40 hectares — only emerged in 2015 during surveys for a proposed highway.

Ashkelon Pre-Pottery Neolithic C site.

“It’s a game changer, a site that will drastically shift what we know about the Neolithic era,” said Vardi in an interview with The Times of Israel. Already some international scholars are beginning to realize the existence of the site may necessitate revisions to their work, he said.

“So far, it was believed that the Judea area was empty, and that sites of that size existed only on the other bank of the Jordan river, or in the Northern Levant. Instead of an uninhabited area from that period, we have found a complex site, where varied economic means of subsistence existed, and all this only several dozens of centimeters below the surface,” according to Vardi and co-director Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily in an IAA press release.

Israelite Temple at Tel Motza.

This site predates the first known settlement in Jerusalem by about 3,500 years. Experts had not thought that people lived in such a concentrated fashion during this time in the region.

During the 16-month excavation, archaeologists discovered large buildings, separated by well-planned alleys, used for residential and public purposes. Some of the buildings contained plaster remnants.

Archaeological excavations near Motza, Israel.

Pieces of jewelry, including bracelets made of stone and mother of pearl, as well as figurines, locally made flint axes, sickle blades, knives, and thousands of arrowheads were also unearthed, said Religion News.

Vardi said the residents buried their dead with care in designated burial locations and placed “either useful or precious objects, believed to serve the deceased” after they died, inside the graves.

“We have decorated burial sites, with offerings, and we also found statuettes and figurines, which indicate they had some sort of belief, faith, rituals,” Vardi said. “We also found certain installations, special niches that might have played a role in ritual.”

Sheds held a large number of well-preserved legume seeds, something the archaeologists called “astonishing” given how much time has passed.

“This finding is evidence of an intensive practice of agriculture. Moreover, one can conclude from it that the Neolithic Revolution reached its summit at that point: animal bones found on the site show that the settlement’s residents became increasingly specialized in sheep-keeping, while the use of hunting for survival gradually decreased,” the antiquities authority said.

ASIA, IRELAND, WORLD

THE DISCOVERY OF A MASS BABY GRAVE UNDER A ROMAN BATHHOUSE IN ASHKELON, ISRAEL

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The discovery of a mass baby grave under a Roman bathhouse in Ashkelon, Israel

In the seaport of Ashkelon, along the coast of the Israeli Mediterranean coast, archaeologist Ross Voss made a bizarre discovery, while exploring one of the sewers of the area, he found a significant amount of bones.  At first, the bones were accepted to be chicken bones. Later, it was found that the bones were that of human.

Remains of Roman bathhouse in Israel

Newborn child bones from the Roman period. With the remaining parts adding up to in excess of 100 children, it was the biggest disclosure of babies remains to date.

Why were these roman babies killed?

As curious as you are, so was the Archaeologist while he found out the bones of the newborns. Voss took the remaining parts to forensic anthropologist Professor Patrician Smith. Smith analyzed the baby remains and established that there was no indication of the chances of survival of the babies longer than a week before being killed.

She used a technique of forensic testing that enabled her to confirm that none of the newborn children was healthy when they died.

During the era of Romans, it was normal for babies to be murdered as a type of birth control. It wasn’t a crime, as babies were seen as being ‘not completely human.

As a rule, a Roman lady who did not need an infant would take part in the act of “exposure” as she would desert the newborn child, either to be found and taken care of by another person or to die.

As per the convictions at the time, it was up to the gods to decide if the newborn child would be saved or not.

According to Roman mythology, the most popular record of close child murder, in which Romulus and Remus, two newborn children of the war god, Mars, were surrendered in the forested areas yet were raised by wolves and later established the city of Rome.

The most famous account of attempted infanticide, in which babies were left exposed to the elements, is the story of Romulus and Remus

Research showed that the newborn children at Ashkelon did not seem to have been “exposed”. Rather, it shows up they were deliberately murdered. One piece of information into the purpose behind their murder lies in the area of the bodies.

Investigations uncovered that the sewer where the remaining parts were found was straight underneath a previous bathhouse. It is conceivable that the babies were born to prostitutes or workers who worked at the bathhouse. However, this remains a mystery as there is no additional information on this theory.

While Ashkelon bathhouse was not the only place the bodies of the Roman infants were found.

Hambleden(the site of a former Roman villa) mass killing

In 1912, Alfred Heneage Cocks, the guardian of the Buckinghamshire County Museum in England, made a stunning disclosure. While driving an unearthing in Hambleden, Cocks revealed the remains of 103 people.

Of those 103 people, 97 were newborn children, 3 were children, and 3 were adults. While this frightful find delivers inquiries of how and why these babies had been slaughtered, Cocks neglected to conduct any further examination with regards to the roots of the bodies.

Hambleden – site of mass baby grave, Buckinghamshire, England.

Jill Eyers, archaeologist and director of Chiltern Archeology in England, found the remaining in a historical centre file, the bones spent near a century in 35 little boxes intended to hold free cigarettes and shotgun cartridges, each container sufficiently enormous to hold the total skeleton of one baby.

“It was quite heart-rending, really, to open all these little cigarette boxes and find babies inside,” said Eyers.

Then he chose to look into the reason for the mass killing. People believed that the Hambleden site is another area where prostitutes would give birth to an unwanted child that was consequently murdered. The site was not a region of poverty, so an absence of resource couldn’t clarify the mass executing.

There were additionally no recorded diseases in the region at the time that could represent the huge volume of death. People believe that the main sensible clarification is that the site once housed a brothel.

Because of the absence of birth control at that time, there were restricted choices for the who needed to abstain from having a baby or bringing up the child. So, child murder may have been the main decision they trusted they had.

Dr Simon Mays, a skeletal biologist at English Heritage, has examined the Hambleden Roman infant bones

However, the reasons for the death may be any, but the mass graves of newborn child remains are genuinely heartbreaking. The history behind the roman era living is a big mystery. In time, it is trusted that we may discover more responses to precisely how and why these newborns were killed.