More than 4,500 Skeletons Discovered in Islamic Necropolis in Spain
CNN reports that more than 4,500 graves have been identified at a cemetery in northeastern Spain, in an area thought to have been largely untouched by the Arab invasion of the Iberian peninsula in the early 8th century A.D.
In an 8th-century burial ground in the town of Tauste, near Zaragoza in Aragon, the tombs were uncovered, Eva Gimenez, an archaeologist currently excavating the region with the archaeology firm Paleoymás, told CNN.
Muslim occupation of Tauste had been considered “incidental and even non-existent” by traditional and written sources, researchers from the University of the Basque Country have said — but the region’s cultural association had long suspected the area had been home to a large Islamic settlement because of architectural clues and human remains found in the town, Miriam Pina Pardos, director of the Anthropological Observatory of the Islamic Necropolis of Tauste with the El Patiaz cultural association, told CNN.
An ancient Islamic necropolis containing over 4,500 bodies has been uncovered in northeastern Spain, with archaeologists excavating more than 400 tombs in the five-acre site
From 711 to 1492, the boundaries between the Christian north and the Islamic south shifted constantly with the changing sovereign authority, according to researchers from the University of the Basque Country.
DNA studies and carbon dating place remains in the necropolis between the 8th and 11th centuries, according to El Patiaz.
Archaeologists unearth ‘huge number’ of sealed Egyptian sarcophagi Some 44 skeletons were uncovered during smaller excavations in the years following the initial dig, Pina Pardos said, and this year, more than 400 bodies have been found after local authorities ordered an extensive excavation of the area.
Earlier excavations revealed several skeletons at the site.
“It’s rare to do an excavation and to find 400 tombs. It’s amazing,” she said.
All of the skeletons had been buried according to Islamic customs, positioned to the right and facing southeast toward Mecca, Pina Pardos added.
“We can see that the Muslim culture and Islamic presence in this area is more important than we thought,” Gimenez said.
“We can see there was a big Muslim population here in Tauste from the beginning of the presence of Muslims in Spain,” she added.
“It is very important — the 400 Muslim tombs show the people lived here for centuries,” she said.
The remains will be cataloged, stored for research and studied, Pina Pardos said.
Ancient Egyptian Child Mummies Show High Rates Of Anemia
Anemia was common in mummified Ancient Egyptian children, according to a new study that analyzed child mummies in European museums.
Researchers used computed tomography (CT) scans to peer non-invasively through the mummies’ dressings and discovered that one-third of them had signs of anemia; they found evidence of thalassemia in one case, too.
“Our study appears to be the first to illustrate radiological findings not only of the cranial vault but also of the facial bones and postcranial skeleton that indicate thalassemia in an ancient Egyptian child mummy,” the team writes in their published paper.
Paleopathologist Stephanie Panzer and her colleagues from Germany, the US, and Italy, suggest that anemia was likely common in ancient Egypt, and it was probably caused by factors such as malnutrition, parasitic infections, and genetic disorders, which still cause the health problem today.
Researchers have even speculated that Tutankhamun died of sickle cell disease, a cause of anemia. However, as the researchers of this new study explain, “the direct evidence of anemia in human remains from ancient Egypt is rare.”
Anemia is a condition where the body lacks enough healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. As Panzer and colleagues studied child mummies, the remains are more likely to show signs of anemia than adult mummies, due to their early death.
Whether or not anemia played a role in each of the children’s deaths could not be determined from the CT scans, but the research team believes it is likely to have contributed. They also looked for signs of diseases that could have caused the anemia.
When ancient humans were mummified, their bodies were preserved in ways that kept more information than those buried. Although modern science doesn’t let researchers remove the wrappings used in the mummification process, they often use scans to ‘look’ through the wrappings and see what’s inside.
CT scans can look at the mummies’ bones, which can provide evidence of anemia because the bone marrow makes red blood cells.
Chronic hemolytic anemia and iron deficiency anemia are often accompanied by an enlargement of the cranial vault (the area of the skull that houses the brain). The researchers hoped to look for this along with further indicators of anemia in the bones, such as porosity, thinning, and changes in shape.
Measuring the porosity and thinness of bones requires a certain level of contrast – often reduced in the CT scans by the density of the preserved tissue and surrounding embalming. After consideration, this assessment, as the authors explain in their paper, “was not feasible in this study because of insufficient CT image quality.”
Overall, the team found that 7 of the 21 child mummies they examined in German, Italian, and Swiss museums had measurable signs of anemia, specifically an enlarged frontal cranial vault.
Moreover, one child – referred to as case 2 – had facial and other bone changes present in thalassemia, a genetic disease in which the body can’t make enough hemoglobin. Case 2 also had a tongue that was larger than usual, which the authors say “probably indicated Beckwith–Wiedemann syndrome.”
This genetically unlucky child probably died from thalassemia’s many symptoms, which can include anemia, within 1.5 years of birth.
“The chronologically oldest mummy dated back to the time span between the Old Kingdom (2686–2160 BCE) and the First Intermediate Period (2160–2055 BCE). Most mummies dated to the Ptolemaic (332–30 BCE) and Roman Periods (30 BCE–395 CE),” the researchers state.
As sad as this discovery is, ancient Egyptian mummified remains certainly have revealed some interesting facts and insights about their lives and deaths. While it adds to our understanding, a small-scale study like this does have limitations.
“The collection of investigated child mummies did not represent a population,” the authors note in their paper.
“The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence of anemia in ancient Egyptian child mummies and to provide comparative data for future studies.”
Viking Raids and Long-distance Oceanic Explorations Were All Enabled by Tar
What exactly inspired the 8th century Vikings of Scandinavia to sharpen their farming tools, to build ships and conquer Europe, has long been debated.
However, a new study all but closes the case book on this enduring mystery proving the industrial scale production of tar enabled the waterproofing of longships for long-distance raiding missions around Europe, across the Atlantic in North America and eastwards “Down the Russian rivers towards Islamic lands.”
Andreas Hennius of Uppsala University recently published his new findings in a paper titled Viking Age tar production and outland exploitation which can be read on Cambridge.org. He discovered “output from tar pits in Scandinavia increased dramatically just as Vikings began raiding other parts of Europe.”
The Viking Voyagers
Vikings were ruthless seafaring traders and fierce warriors who launched seaborne attacks on Europe from Scandinavia. By the mid-11th century the Viking’s Nordic empire expanded across vast territories in Britain, Iceland, Greenland and America, and as detailed in an article on History.com they also “raided Italian and Spanish ports and even attacked the walls of Constantinople.”
The Oseberg Ship, well-preserved historic ship exhibited in The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.
Hennius told reporters at The Guardian that his new research, which was funded by the Berit Wallenberg Foundation, reveals the tar pits “could produce 300 liters in one production cycle,” which would enable production of more than enough tar to waterproof a large fleet of ships.
“Tar production … developed from a small-scale activity … into large-scale production that relocated to forested outlands during the Viking period,” added Hennius.
Traditionally, archaeologists have proposed that changes in climate boosted agriculture, causing a sharp spike in population, which inspired the Vikings to look for new lands .
Others maintain local chieftains funded treasure hunting raids to further establish their wealth, dominance and power, but now, Hennius had proved that “tar has been used for millennia to waterproof boats. It was made in pits filled with pine wood, covered with turf and set on fire.
Small domestic tar kilns were found in Sweden in the early 2000s. These dated to between AD100 and 400. But much larger pits were found during road construction and dated to between 680 and 900, when the rise of the Vikings began.”
Funnel-shaped feature used for tar production in the Roman Iron Age (photograph courtesy of Upplandsmuseet) and a schematic reconstruction drawing (amended from Kurzweil & Todtenhaupt 1998).
Tar Trade
The pits were, up to now, thought to have been used for producing charcoal, but Hennius argues that, “These kilns are not associated with any inhabited settlements and were situated closer to forests of pine, which was their key ingredient.”
Vikings then sailed their tar enhanced longships on long distance raids. The research paper also noted that, “This development coincides with Scandinavian society’s intensified marine focus and the introduction of the sail.
This most probably drove the increase in tar production, which was used for protecting wood, impregnating and sealing sails, and as a trade product.”
Viking raiding and trading was not confined to precious objects , metals, stones… and tar. A New York Times article dissing the 2014 Vikings: Life and Legend , exhibition at the British Museum, said “A slave collar from Dublin and an ankle shackle from Mecklenburg in Germany remind us that Vikings were very active slave traders, capturing adults and children in raids, both to sell them or to keep as domestic servants and laborers.”
Reconstructed Viking longboat “Hugin”.
Driven to Explore and Exploit
What is more, the same article reports eyewitness accounts from Arab travelers that speak of “Vikings transporting slaves down the Russian rivers towards Islamic lands.
And DNA evidence from Iceland suggests that while the males are almost all of Scandinavian origin, there is a significant element of Irish and Scots DNA among the females, most of whom probably arrived as slaves.”
And earlier this year, The Independant published an article about the findings of scholar Birgitta Wallace , an award-winning specialist in Norse archaeology and Viking evidence in the West, who uncovered evidence of the “long lost Viking settlement that featured in sagas passed down over hundreds of year,” on the east coast of Canada.
If Wallace is proved correct, it would be the second Viking settlement to be discovered in North America.
What is special about Andreas Hennius’ ‘tar pit’ discovery is that it is the scaffolding which underpins all of these recent discoveries of Vikings in exotic lands; for the fact is clear, without tar the Vikings wouldn’t have left the coasts of Scandinavia.
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 were 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 kilometers west of the modern-day 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 excavators 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, archeologists 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 the 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 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 18BC.
The Hittite empire reached its peak in the 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 the Levant.
Thanks to their use of iron, the Hittites were able to launch several very successful military campaigns in nearby regions. However, iron wasn’t the only reason for their success on 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 the 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 the 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 the 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.
Images of Jesus and Other Biblical Figures Found in a 1,000-Year-Old Bible Discovered in Turkey
The nearly thousand-year-old bible has been recently discovered by171 the Turkish Police when smugglers tried to sell the priceless book to undercover officers.
Police in the central Turkish city of Tokat seize the ancient Bible together with additional priceless artifacts after catching the smugglers red-handed.
The Turkish Police also confiscated a valuable collection of jewelry and 53 ancient coins as well as two parts of valuable rings and two arrowheads were also recovered from the crooks trying to gain a profit off of the immensely valuable artifacts.
“They steal everything that they can sell, and what they can’t sell, they destroy,” Qais Hussein Rasheed, Iraq’s deputy minister for antiquities and heritage, said earlier this year of the Islamic State’s looting practices.
The researcher lists a 1,000-year-old Bible, written in the old Assyrian language and illustrated with religious motifs made of gold leafs, in a video posted on October 28, 2015.
“We have noticed that the smuggling of antiquities has greatly increased since last June,”
The origins of the bible are still unknown. The Bible is reportedly damaged, but the writings in the old Assyrian language can be still noticed on the crumbled pages.
The cover is completely ruined, but the remaining fifty-one pages have images and religious motifs in gold leaf.
Discoveries of biblical artifacts have made news a number of times this past year, with a team of scholars claiming to have discovered the world’s earliest-known version of the Gospel back in January.
A team of researchers headed by Craig Evans, a professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, said that they found a sheet of papyrus used to make an ancient mummy’s mask in Egypt which contains a written portion of the Gospel of Mark and dates back to as early as 80 A.D.
“Where did we find it? We dug underneath somebody’s face and there it was,” Evans said. ” It was from one of these masks that we recovered a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that is dated to the 80s. We could have a first-century fragment of Mark for the first time ever.”
Holy book The Bible, written in the old Assyriac language, is estimated to be around 1,000 years old and is illustrated with religious motifs made of gold leafs.
The oldest surviving copies of the Scripture had been dated to the second century, between the years 101 to 200 A.D.
In July this year, Israeli archeologists announced that they had found a rare inscription of the name of an apparently influential person from the time of King David, which is also mentioned in the Bible.
The researchers found a 3,000-year-old large ceramic jar with the inscription of the name “Eshbaal Ben Beda,” which is mentioned in the Old Testament book of 1 Chronicles in 8:33 and 9:39.
Archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor expressed doubts, however, that the jar belonged to the same Eshbaal that is mentioned in the Bible.
Remains of a 2,100-year-old Gallo-Roman worship complex found in France
A large temple possibly used by Roman soldiers for hundreds of years has been unearthed by archaeologists in northwest France. Archaeologists in northwest France have unearthed what may have been a temple to the Roman war god Mars, dating to the first century B.C.
An artist’s depiction of the temple or cult sanctuary at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz as it would have looked in the first century A.D.
The temple, or sanctuary, is part of a Roman complex spread over more than 17 acres (7 hectares) that was discovered last year at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz, Brittany, and was probably visited by Roman soldiers posted to the region.
“The size of the sanctuary indicates it was an important place for religion,” Françoise Labaune-Jean, one of the directors of the excavations and an archaeologist at the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), told Live Science.
La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz has been recognized for its wealth of archaeological remains since the 1970s, and it was first excavated in the 1990s, Labaune-Jean said. The latest excavations started in 2022.
The site is slightly elevated, with a commanding view of the Rennes basin. This viewpoint makes it “likely that religious ceremonies gathered here from Condate [the Roman city in the basin] and the surrounding area,” Labaune-Jean said in an email.
The sanctuary site near the city of Rennes in Brittany was slightly elevated and overlooked the entire region.
Roman war god
Archaeologists believe the site was dedicated to Mars after discovering a bronze statuette of the Roman war god in 2022, while iron weapons deposited in a ditch around the sanctuary also suggest that it was frequented by soldiers.
The discovery in 2022 of a bronze figurine of the Roman war god Mars indicates he was one of the deities worshipped at the sanctuary
But a large number of terracotta figurines, perhaps representing Venus and mother goddesses, were also found in a nearby pit.
“As is often the case with religious buildings of antiquity, it is difficult to know which deity they may have been dedicated to,” Labaune-Jean said, noting that no inscriptions or large statues have been found at the site. “When the study of the objects discovered there is more advanced, it will perhaps be possible to propose other complementary deities.”
These bronze handles for a bronze bowl are decorated with eagles, a symbol of Rome and the legions of the Roman army.
Julius Caesar conquered Brittany — called “Armorica” by the Romans — in 56 B.C.
The sanctuary at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz seems to date from close to that time and was used until the fifth century A.D., according to a statement from INRAP.
The archaeologists aren’t sure why the complex was abandoned, but it may be linked with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire at about that time.
Temple complex
The many coins found at the sanctuary site are a mixture of Roman and local Gallic money.
The temple complex expanded over time to include a small town with public baths and a cemetery containing about 40 tombs.
Some of the tombs held items made of silver, such as bracelets, pins and belt buckles, while another had a dagger and parts of a harness for horses. Hundreds of everyday artifacts have also been unearthed there, including furniture and pieces of pottery, glass and metal.
Labaune-Jean role is to quickly preserve and study artifacts unearthed during the excavations, which might otherwise deteriorate quickly when exposed to air or light. X-rays and computerized 3D imaging are also being used to document the discoveries, she said.
Eric Norde, an archaeologist with the Dutch archaeological agency RAAP, who is excavating(opens in new tab) a sanctuary used by Roman soldiers near Zevenaar, Netherlands, said he’s.cautious about assigning the sanctuary at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz to Mars alone.
That’s because the Zevenaar sanctuary shows that Roman temples were often associated with several deities. “When you look only at the sculptures and the weapons and military equipment, one would conclude only Hercules was venerated,” he told Live Science.
But careful research shows instead that several different gods were worshiped there. “It is quite dangerous to assign a deity to a sanctuary based only on the finds,” and not inscriptions or texts, he said.
Two Viking Ship Burials Revealed by Archaeologists in Sweden
Archaeologists in Sweden have announced the discovery of two ship-burials that may add invaluable data to the country’s Viking past . There have been no Viking ship burials found in the country in almost fifty years, and now two have been found in one astounding swoop!
The extraordinary find was made by Swedish archaeologists working with the with Arkeologerna, which works on behalf of Sweden’s historical museums according to the Daily Mail . The rare discovery was made in the municipality of Gamal Uppsala .
A skeleton of a man, buried with a horse and a dog, was found in one of the Viking ship burial sites.
This was once, one of the most important religious and ceremonial sites in all of the Viking world and where once, according to Christian writers, human sacrifices were offered to the Norse gods . A great pagan temple was once here but later Christians built a church upon its site.
The finds were made near an old vicarage in Uppsala, the home of a member of the local Christian clergy, which is next to a church. The area was being investigated by archaeologists before a new building project began.
They identified something of archaeological significance there last autumn. The experts returned this summer and they discovered the two boat burials in June of this year.
Viking Ship Burials
A boat burial or boat grave involved dead individuals of high standing being interred in a full-sized ship. They were typically buried with a great many valuable grave goods .
Anton Seiler part of the team who found the graves stated that “It is a small group of people who were buried in this way,” according to Newsweek.
This means that ship burials are very rare and only ten have been found in the history of the country, although more have been found in neighboring Norway, the most recent being found near Oslo.
One of the Viking burial ships or boat graves found in Sweden.
This type of burial is associated with the Viking Age (9 th to the 11 th century AD) and also the earlier mysterious Venland culture. Based on an analysis of the grave goods in one of the ships the burials date are from the Viking era.
One of the boat burials was found complete and undisturbed. This makes it of great archaeological importance. The second burial was damaged when the vicarage was being built, many decades ago.
Last Resting Place of a Viking Warrior?
In the intact burial, the investigators found the skeleton of a man who had been placed in the stern of the vessel. Some animal bones were also unearthed, and they have been tentatively identified as belonging to a horse and a dog.
Archaeologists work on the skeleton of a horse found in the Viking ship burial site.
These animals were probably deliberately buried with the man to accompanying him on his journey to the afterlife. In this grave a shield, sword, and spear, indicating that the dead man had once been a warrior, was also found.
There may have been another person interred in the intact or complete burial. According to Geek.com “…a richly ornate comb , believed to belong to the man, was also found in the grave”. This was not uncommon in Viking era boat burials. The two men were in all likelihood related.
A shield and a comb was found in one of the Viking ship burial sites.
Will the Viking Ship Burial Discovery Bring New Insights?
Little of the actual boats now remain because their wood decayed through the centuries. The archaeologists have only been able to retrieve some iron rivets and fragments of wood.
No human remains have been found in the damaged or less intact ship, this is despite the fact that it was likely “the larger of the two, measuring about 23 feet (7 meters) long” reports Geek.com.
Experts believe that further study of the Viking ship burials will bring insights into the Viking culture.
According to The Local “Parts of the find will go on display at Gamla Uppsala Museum and Stockholm’s Swedish History Museum”. The team of archaeologists is continuing to work on the site for the rest of the summer.
Scientific tests are going to be carried out on the artifacts and other finds and it is hoped that they will generate new insights into the Vikings.
Unearthing the 1,000-Year-Old Story of a Rare Viking Toolbox
The discovery of a rare 1,000-year-old Viking toolbox containing 14 unique iron tools caused excitement during recent excavations at an old Viking fortress.
The toolbox was unearthed in a small lump of soil at Denmark’s fifth Viking ring fortress: Borgring. It is the first direct evidence that people actually lived at the site.
Journalist Charlotte Price Persson became an archaeologist for a day and joined the team of researchers to help clear away the dirt and expose the iron tools.
The soil containing the artifacts was removed from the site of one of the four gates at Borgring. The researchers suggest that the tools could have belonged to people who lived in the fortress. It contains an amazing collection of tools which were used around the 10 th century AD.
Lead archaeologist Nanna Holm decided to take a better look before excavation began on the tools. As she told Science Nordic: “We could see that there was something in the layers [of soil] around the east gate.
If it had been a big signal from the upper layers then it could have been a regular plough, but it came from the more ‘exciting’ layers. So we dug it up and asked the local hospital for permission to borrow their CT-scanner.”
The scans allowed the researchers to see the shapes of the tools and they realized that the toolbox itself was gone – the wood had rotted away over time. However, the placement of the objects suggests that the wooden box was replaced with soil.
The discovery is exceptionally rare. Tools made of iron were very expensive and precious to the Vikings. It is strange that nobody had found them before and melted the objects down to repurpose the iron.
CT Scan of the Viking toolbox.
The archaeologists believe that an analysis of the artifacts will help them to understand what type of craftsman owned them.
For now, they suppose that the spoon drills and drawplate could have been used to produce thin wire bracelets. But, this kind of drill was also used to make holes in wood – suggesting that it could have also been a carpenter’s toolbox.
Moreover, the location of the artifacts by the eastern gate of the fortress provides more information on the tools’ history.
They could have been used after a fire that torched the fortress’ north and east gates in the second half of the 10th century.
The team also found a room near the gate which could have been a workshop or used for housing a craftsman. It measures about 30-40 square meters (322-430 sq. ft.), and had its own fireplace.
The researchers speculate that the tools were buried underground when the gate collapsed – explaining why the recovery of the valued iron objects would have been difficult.
Aerial photo of Vallø Borgring. This is an edited version of a satellite photo with added hill shade. The arrow is pointing at a site which has a clear circular form.
Now the researchers want to scan the tools by X-ray. That should help Holm’s team to identify exactly what the tools are. She already has some ideas, for example, that one of the spoon drills may be a pair of pliers or tweezers.
It is planned that the tools will be put on display next year, although the artifacts need conservation work before they will be ready to be exhibited.
A 1,000-Year-Old Bible Found in Turkey Has Images of Jesus and Other Biblical Figures
Nearly thousand-year-old bible has been recently discovered by171 the Turkish Police when smugglers tried to sell the priceless book to undercover officers.
Police in the central Turkish city of Tokat seize the ancient Bible together with additional priceless artefacts after catching the smugglers red-handed.
The Turkish Police also confiscated a valuable collection of jewelry and 53 ancient coins as well as two parts of valuable rings and two arrowheads were also recovered from the crooks trying to gain a profit off of the immensely valuable artifacts.
“They steal everything that they can sell, and what they can’t sell, they destroy,” Qais Hussein Rasheed, Iraq’s deputy minister for antiquities and heritage, said earlier this year of the Islamic State’s looting practices.
“We have noticed that the smuggling of antiquities has greatly increased since last June,”
Researcher lists through 1,000-year-old Bible, written in the old Assyriac language and illustrated with religious motifs made of gold leafs, in a video posted on October 28, 2015.
The origins of the bible are still unknown. The bible is reportedly damaged, but the writings in the old Assyrian language can be still noticed on the crumbled pages. The cover is completely ruined, but the remaining fifty-one pages have images and religious motifs in gold leaf.
Theologians are hoping that the 1,000-year-old document will shed clues about how Christianity developed in past centuries.
Holy book The Bible, written in the old Assyriac language, is estimated be around 1,000 years old and is illustrated with religious motifs made of gold leafs.
Discoveries of biblical artifacts have made news a number of times this past year, with a team of scholars claiming to have discovered the world’s earliest-known version of the Gospel back in January.
A team of researchers headed by by Craig Evans, a professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, said that they found a sheet of papyrus used to make an ancient mummy’s mask in Egypt which contains a written portion of the Gospel of Mark, and dates back to as early as 80 A.D.
“Where did we find it? We dug underneath somebody’s face and there it was,” Evans said. ” It was from one of these masks that we recovered a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that is dated to the 80s. We could have a first century fragment of Mark for the first time ever.”
The oldest surviving copies of the Scripture had been dated to the second century, between the years 101 to 200 A.D.
In July this year, Israeli archeologists announced that they had found a rare inscription of the name of an apparently influential person from the time of King David, which is also mentioned in the Bible.
The researchers found a 3,000-year-old large ceramic jar with the inscription of the name “Eshbaal Ben Beda,” which is mentioned in the Old Testament book of 1 Chronicles in 8:33 and 9:39.
Archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor expressed doubts, however, that the jar belonged to the same Eshbaal that is mentioned in the Bible.
Bows Were Being Used in Europe 40,000 Years Earlier Than We Thought
A cave in southern France has revealed evidence of the first use of bows and arrows in Europe by modern humans some 54,000 years ago, far earlier than previously known.
The research, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, pushes back the age of archery in Europe by more than 40,000 years.
The use of the bow-and-arrow in Africa has been documented to date back some 70,000 years.
But the oldest previous evidence of archery in Europe was the discovery of bows and arrows in peat bogs of Northern Europe, notably Stellmoor in Germany, dating back 10,000 to 12,000 years.
The new research comes from the Mandrin rock shelter overlooking the middle valley of the Rhone River in southern France.
The Grotte Mandrin site, which was first excavated in 1990, includes layer upon layer of archaeological remains dating back over 80,000 years.
The researchers who conducted the latest study have documented previously that Neanderthals and their modern “cousins” – Homo sapiens – alternated in inhabiting the Mandrin cave.
A level known as “Layer E” has been attributed to the presence of Homo sapiens some 54,000 years ago and is interposed between layers of numerous Neanderthal occupations.
The researchers conducted a functional analysis of flint artifacts found in Layer E that were more finely executed than the points and blades in the layers above and below.
Tiny flint points were key because other elements of archery technology such as wood, fibers, leather, resins and sinew are perishable and rarely preserved in European Paleolithic sites.
Too light to be efficient
For the study, the researchers reproduced the tiny flint points found in the cave, some of which are smaller than a US penny, and fired them as arrowheads with a replica bow at dead animals.
“We couldn’t throw them at the animals any other way than with a bow because they were too tiny and too light to be efficient,” said Laure Metz of Aix Marseille University, a co-author of the study along with Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse.
“We had to use this kind of propulsion,” Metz told AFP. “The only way that it was working was with a bow.”
Fractures on the flint points were compared with scars found on the artifacts found in the cave, proving undoubtedly that they were used as arrowheads, the researchers said.
“Fractures for a lot of them, not all, were fractures of impact,” Metz said. “And they are coming at the end of the point.”
Metz said the evidence suggests that the Neanderthals and the Homo sapiens who used in the cave likely met at some point although “we don’t know the nature of the meeting, whether it was nice or not.”
The Neanderthals who inhabited the Mandrin site continued to use traditional weapons, however, such as thrusted or hand-thrown spears and did not develop mechanically propelled weapons, she said.
“The traditions and technologies mastered by these two populations were thus profoundly distinct, illustrating a remarkable objective technological advantage to modern populations during their expansion into the European continent,” the researchers said.
Metz said the occupants of the cave would have typically hunted horses, bison and deer and animal bones have been found inside.
