Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, ROMAN, WORLD

‘Miraculously’ Well-Preserved Ceremonial Chariot Found at Villa Outside of Pompeii

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‘Miraculously’ Well-Preserved Ceremonial Chariot Found at Villa Outside of Pompeii

The carriage’s intricate decorations include metal medallions depicting satyrs, nymphs and cupids

The team speculates that ancient Romans used the vehicle for festivals, parades, weddings and other ceremonial events.

Archaeologists found the vehicle near the stable of a Roman dwelling in Civita Giuliana, a suburb about a half mile northwest of Pompeii. Featuring a seat with metal armrests and backrests, it was supported by four iron wheels and boasted ornate decorations, including bronze and tin medallions depicting satyrs, nymphs and cupids.

Incredibly, notes the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in a statement, the chariot was recovered completely intact, “spared by both the collapse of the [surrounding room’s] walls and ceiling” during Mount Vesuvius’ onslaught and looters’ more recent construction of illegal tunnels. Officials even found imprints of ropes and mineralized wooden pieces nearby.

“This is an extraordinary discovery that advances our understanding of the ancient world,” Massimo Osanna, interim director of the park, tells Reuters.

View of the well-preserved Roman chariot
View of the well-preserved Roman chariot’s iron wheels
View of the well-preserved Roman chariot

The chariot is the first of its kind unearthed in its entirety, reports Colleen Barry for the Associated Press (AP). Though experts have previously discovered vehicles used for everyday activities like transportation, the recently found example was too ornate for such purposes. Instead, the team speculates that ancient Romans used it for festivals, parades, weddings and other ceremonial events.

“I was astounded,” Eric Poehler, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who specializes in the traffic of Pompeii, tells Becky Sullivan of NPR.

“Many of the vehicles I’d written about before … are your standard station wagon or vehicle for taking the kids to soccer. This is a Lamborghini. This is an outright fancy, fancy car.”

Excavations at Civita Giuliana began in 2017 in response to the discovery of illicit activity, including looters’ creation of a more than 250-foot network of tunnels.

“The fight against the looting of archaeological sites, both inside and outside the urban area of ancient Pompeii, is certainly one of the primary objectives,” says Chief Prosecutor of Torre Annunziata Nunzio Fragliasso in a press video, as quoted by Valentina Di Donato and Eoin McSweeney of CNN.

Luckily, notes the AP, the looters’ tunneling just missed the newly discovered cart, “grazing but not damaging [it].”

The chariot is adorned with depictions of nymphs, satyrs and cupids.
Detail of chariot decoration

In 2022, excavations at the stable across from the double-level portico where the chariot was stored revealed the well-preserved remains of three horses, including one that was still saddled and harnessed.

Another major find made at Civita Giuliana came to light last November, when researchers discovered the remains of a wealthy man of 30 or 40 and a younger enslaved man, both eerily frozen in their final death throes.

For now, reports CNN, the carriage is undergoing cleaning at the archaeological park’s laboratory. Restoration and reconstruction will follow.

Pyroclastic flows and poisonous fumes killed around 2,000 people in Pompeii and the neighboring city of Herculaneum. Inadvertently preserved by the volcano’s ash and pumice, the city’s ruins have fascinated researchers for hundreds of years, with the first systematic excavations of the site taking place in the mid-18th century.

Since 2022, the Great Pompeii Project, an ongoing conservation initiative funded largely by the European Union, has unearthed a stunning array of treasures, from a snack bar that served snails and fish to a sorceress’ kit. To date, experts have exhumed about two thirds of the 165-acre settlement, according to Reuters.

“[The chariot] is precisely the kind of find that one wants to find at Pompeii, the really well-articulated, very well-preserved moments in time,” Osanna tells NPR. “And it happens to be in this case an object that is relatively rare despite its ubiquity in the past.”

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

‘Miniature Pompeii’ Found Beneath Abandoned Verona Cinema

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‘Miniature Pompeii’ Found Beneath Abandoned Verona Cinema

In the second century A.D., “a calamitous event, in this case a fire, suddenly marked the end of the complex,” notes a statement

Researchers found the charred remains of wooden furniture at the site of the former Astra cinema in Verona.

Archaeologists digging under an abandoned cinema in Verona, Italy, have discovered the ruins of a second-century Roman building evocative of a “miniature Pompeii,” according to the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Verona, Rovigo and Vicenza.

As Mario Poli of the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) reports, the building appears to have suffered a fire that left its roof collapsed and wooden furniture partially burned.

In a parallel to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D, “a calamitous event, in this case a fire, suddenly marked the end of the complex, leaving traces,” notes the superintendency in a statement translated by Angela Giuffrida of the Guardian.

Per VeronaSera, researchers are unsure what the building was used for but think it was too large to function as a private residence. The statement says that despite the fire damage, some of the structure’s interior was “preserved intact, with the magnificent colors of the frescoed walls dating back to the second century.” Other finds included decorated concrete floors and heating systems, notes ANSA.

Workers first found traces of an ancient Roman structure at the site—home of the former Astra cinema—in 2022, reports VeronaSera. Camilla Bertoni of Corriere del Veneto writes that experts returned to the theater, which shuttered 20 years ago, ahead of a major renovation and redevelopment project.

The Astra cinema closed some 20 years ago.

The abandoned cinema stands near the center of the northern Italian city, just blocks from the Verona Arena, a Roman amphitheater that remains in use 2022.

During the Roman era, the area where the amphitheater is located was on the outskirts of the urban area, just outside the city walls, according to Culture Trip.

Verona, located about 300 miles north of Rome, was probably founded sometime in the second century B.C., per World History Encyclopedia. Its first residents may have been members of an ancient Gallic tribe.

It became a Roman colony in the first century A.D., around the time the Verona Arena was built. By the time the newly unearthed building was erected, Verona was part of the Roman Empire.

In, the city is a Unesco World Heritage site known for both its Roman-era history and its prosperity as an independent entity under the control of the Scaliger family during the 13th and 14th centuries.

William Shakespeare’s use of Verona as the setting of Romeo and Juliet adds to its attraction for visitors, though it’s worth noting that the playwright never actually visited the city.

Last year, archaeologists unearthed a well-preserved mosaic floor dated to around the third century A.D. at a vineyard just north of Verona, as Camilla Madinelli of L’Arena reported at the time. The tiles—and portions of the villa’s foundations—had long been buried beneath growing vines.

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

10,000-year-old footprints show journey of squirmy toddler and caregiver

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10,000-year-old footprints show journey of squirmy toddler and caregiver

The footprints found at White Sands National Park are more than 10,000 years old.

A small woman—or perhaps an adolescent boy—walks quickly across a landscape where giant beasts roam. The person holds a toddler on their hip, and their feet slip in the mud as they hurry along for nearly a mile, perhaps delivering the child to a safe destination before returning home alone.

Despite the fact that this journey took place more than 10,000 years ago, a new paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews manages to sketch out what it might have looked and felt like in remarkable detail.

Evidence of the journey comes from fossilized footprints and other evidence discovered in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park in 2022, reports Albuquerque TV station KRQE.

Toward the end of the late Pleistocene epoch—between 11,550 and 13,000 years ago—humans and animals left hundreds of thousands of tracks in the mud along the shore of what was once Lake Otero.

The new paper investigates one specific set of tracks, noting details in the footprints’ shapes that reveal how the traveler’s weight shifted as they moved the child from one hip to the other.

“We can see the evidence of the carry in the shape of the tracks,” write study co-authors Matthew Robert Bennett and Sally Christine Reynolds, both of Bournemouth University in England, for the Conversation.

“They are broader due to the load, more varied in morphology often with a characteristic ‘banana shape’–something that is caused by outward rotation of the foot.”

At some points along the journey, the toddler’s footprints appear as well, most likely because the walker set the child down to rest or adjust their position. For most of the trip, the older caretaker carried the child at a speed of around 3.8 miles per hour—an impressive pace considering the muddy conditions.

“Each track tells a story: a slip here, a stretch there to avoid a puddle,” explain Bennett and Reynolds. “The ground was wet and slick with mud and they were walking at speed, which would have been exhausting.”

In this artist’s depiction, a prehistoric woman holding a child leaves footprints in the mud.

On the return trip, the adult or adolescent followed the same course in reverse, this time without the child. The researchers theorize that this reflects a social network in which the person knew that they were carrying the child to a safe destination.

“Was the child sick?” they ask. “Or was it being returned to its mother? Did a rainstorm quickly come in catching a mother and child off guard? We have no way of knowing and it is easy to give way to speculation for which we have little evidence.”

The fossilized footprints show that at least two large animals crossed the human tracks between the outbound and return trips. Prints left by a sloth suggest the animal was aware of the humans who had passed the same way before it.

As the sloth approached the trackway, it reared up on its hind legs to sniff for danger before moving forward. A mammoth who also walked across the tracks, meanwhile, shows no sign of having noticed the humans’ presence.

White Sands National Park contains the largest collection of Ice Age human and animal tracks in the world. As Alamogordo Daily News reports, scientists first found fossilized footprints at the park more than 60 years ago. But researchers only started examining the tracks intensively in the past decade, when the threat of erosion became readily apparent.

The international team of scientists behind the new paper has found evidence of numerous kinds of human and animal activity. Tracks testify to children playing in puddles formed by giant sloth tracks and jumping between mammoth tracks, as well as offering signs of human hunting practices.

Researchers and National Park Service officials say the newest findings are remarkable partly for the way they allow modern humans to relate to their ancient forebears.

“I am so pleased to highlight this wonderful story that crosses millennia,” says Marie Sauter, superintendent of White Sands National Park, in a statement. “Seeing a child’s footprints thousands of years old reminds us why taking care of these special places is so important.”

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

Archaeologists Uncover One of the Largest Viking Longhouses in Scandinavia

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Archaeologists Uncover One of the Largest Viking Longhouses in Scandinavia

Using ground-penetrating radar, scientists were able to find the Iron Age settlement and learn more about its place in Viking culture

An aerial shot shows of the site where the Viking longhouse was discovered.

Not far from where a Viking ship was unearthed in Norway three years ago, archaeologists have located one of the largest Viking longhouses ever discovered in Scandinavia, reports the Associated Press (AP). The buried structure is nearly 200 feet long and 50 feet wide.

Using ground-penetrating radar, a team led by Lars Gustavsen of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) detected the longhouse along with a cluster of others in Gjellestad, about 50 miles southeast of Oslo.

“We have found several buildings, all typical Iron Age longhouses, north of the Gjellestad ship,” says Gustavsen in “The most striking discovery is a 60-meter-long and 15-meter-wide longhouse, a size that makes it one of the largest we know of in Scandinavia.”

An archaeological team headed by Lars Gustavsen of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) has discovered what may be the largest ever Viking longhouse built in Scandinavia.

The longhouses—large communal structures commonly featured in Viking settlements—are part of what is believed to be a larger community established in the Iron Age, which dates from around 1200 to 600 B.C.E. Archaeologists found a total of five longhouses of varying sizes while using ground-penetrating radar to map the ancient village, writes Shanti Escalante-De Mattei for .

“We do not know how old the houses are or what function they had,” says Sigrid Mannsåker Gundersen, one of the archaeologists on the team, in the same statement. “Archaeological excavations and dating will help us get an answer to this.”

An earlier survey found a 130-foot-long building that may have been used for ancient rituals or as a feasting hall, reported Ida Irene Bergstrøm of Science Norway in 2022.

Researchers believe the presence of the large longhouse could indicate how wealthy and important Gjellestad was during the Viking era. They also discovered several plowed-over burial mounds in farm fields just north of the site.

“We are not surprised to have found these burial mounds, as we already know there are several others in the surrounding area,” says Gustavsen in the statement, adding, “Still, these are important to know about to get a more complete picture of Gjellestad and its surroundings.”

Located next to a large fjord, Gjellestad may have been an important base of operations for early Vikings. In the 2022 Science Norway article, archaeologist Camilla Cecilie Wenn said the region appears to have been a significant site of power.

“It’s really exciting to do a dig, one house, one ship,” said Wenn, leader of the Gjellestad excavation team. “But it’s when you see it all in a bigger context that society starts to appear.

“When you see the Gjellestad Viking ship in a wider frame, you can start appreciating the site as an important place of power for the Viking region, and not least on a national scale,” she said. “Only a handful of places in Norway are comparable.”

Gustavsen and his team plan to continue their research of the site in hopes of learning more about its importance, including how significant the village was to Viking development.

“Finding these longhouses confirms that Gjellestad was a central place in the late Iron Age,” he says in the statement. “Our hope is that within the next years, we will understand the relationship between the ship, the buildings and the rise of central places much better.”

EUROPE, SWEDEN, WORLD

Archaeologists Unearth Trove of Viking Age Jewelry in Sweden

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Archaeologists Unearth Trove of Viking Age Jewelry in Sweden

The 1,000-year-old neck rings, finger rings, pearls and coins were in near-pristine condition.

All of the jewelry archaeologists unearthed from a Viking Age site north of Stockholm

Archaeologists in Sweden have unearthed a once-in-a-lifetime trove of jewelry dating back an estimated 1,000 years to the Viking Age. Despite their age, the pieces are in near-pristine condition and look like they’re “almost completely new,” says Maria Lingström, one of the archaeologists who made the find, in a statement.

Researchers with the National Historical Museums in Sweden were digging at a Viking Age settlement in Viggbyholm, a neighborhood north of Stockholm, when they stumbled upon a small ceramic pot tucked beneath the remnants of a building’s wooden floors.

Inside, they found eight torque-style neck rings, one finger ring, two pearls and two arm rings. They also found a linen pouch that contained 12 coin pendants (which are coins used as jewelry).

Carefully excavating the jewelry

Archaeologists sent the jewelry pieces to Acta Konserveringscentrum, a conservation company in Stockholm, for cleaning.

“This is something you probably only experience once in a lifetime,” says Lingström in the statement.

“When I started to carefully remove the neck rings one by one, I had this extraordinary feeling of, ‘They just keep coming and coming.’”

Archaeologists digging at a Viking Age settlement in Viggbyholm, a neighborhood in the Täby municipality north of Stockholm

The researchers believe people lived at the settlement for several hundred years, starting around 400 C.E. through the Viking Age (800-1050) and into the early Middle Ages.

So far, they’ve discovered more than 20 houses and buildings at the site, as well as an array of other artifacts, including amulet rings and arrows.

Though the researchers were surprised and delighted to find all of the jewelry, they were particularly interested in the 12 coins. Some originated in Europe—probably from regions like Bohemia, Bavaria and England—while others were Arabic coins called dirhams.

Coin-makers minted one of the European coins in Rouen, a city in Normandy, France, sometime during the tenth century. Until now, researchers only knew of this rare coin’s existence from drawings in an 18th-century book.

The rare coin minted in Normandy

Taken together, the coins suggest that people living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age participated in wide-reaching trade and made far-flung connections.

Researchers don’t know why the historic owners chose to hide the jewelry, though they say people have a tendency to bury valuable items underground during periods of unrest or tumult.

The team will need to conduct further research to determine if that’s the case, or if something else triggered the burial of such a precious cache of belongings.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Archaeologists Just Unearthed 10,500-Year-Old Human Remains In A German Bog

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Archaeologists Just Unearthed 10,500-Year-Old Human Remains In A German Bog

Archaeologists in northern Germany have unearthed 10,000-year-old cremated bones at a Stone Age lakeside campsite that was used for spearing fish and roasting hazelnuts.

Archaeologists think this was a temporary campsite on the shore of an ancient lake that has now silted up; it was used for roasting hazelnuts and for spearing fish, and the bones were probably from someone who died nearby.

Archaeologists in northern Germany have unearthed 10,000-year-old cremated bones at a Stone Age lakeside campsite that was once used for spearing fish and roasting hazelnuts, major food sources for groups of hunter-gatherers at that time.

The site is the earliest known burial in northern Germany, and the discovery marks the first time human remains have been found at Duvensee bog in the Schleswig-Holstein region, where dozens of campsites from the Mesolithic era or Middle Stone Age (roughly between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago) have been found.

Hazelnuts were a big attraction in the area because Mesolithic people could gather and roast them, Harald Lübke, an archaeologist at the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, an agency of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation.

The campsites changed over time, the research shows. “In the beginning, we have only small hazelnut roasting hearths, and in the later sites, they become much bigger” — possibly a consequence of hazel trees becoming more widespread as the environment changed.

Archaeologists think Duvensee was a lake at that time, and that Mesolithic campsites on islands and the shore were used by hunter-gatherers who visited there in the fall to harvest hazelnuts.

The burial was found during excavations earlier this month at a site first identified in the late 1980s by archaeologist Klaus Bokelmann and his students, who found worked flints there not during a formal excavation, but during a barbecue at a house on the edge of a nearby village, Lübke said.

“Because the sausages were not ready, Bokelmann told his students that if they found anything [in the bog nearby], then he would give them a bottle of Champagne,” he said. “And when they came back, they had a lot of flint artifacts.” 

The cremated bones date from about 10,500 years ago, during the Mesolithic era. They are the first human remains found at any of the Mesolithic sites at the Duvensee bog.

Ancient lake

The burial site is near at least six Mesolithic campsites, which would have been on the shores of the ancient lake at Duvensee, Lübke said.

The first sites investigated by Bokelmann in the 1980s were on islands that would have been near the western shore of the lake, which has completely silted up over the last 8,000 years or so, and formed a peat bog, called a “moor” in Germany.

Archaeologists have discovered mats made of bark for sitting on the damp soil, pieces of worked flint, and the remains of many Mesolithic fireplaces for roasting hazelnuts, but they haven’t unearthed any burials at the island sites.

“Maybe they didn’t bury people on the islands but only at the sites on the lake border, which seem to have had a different kind of function,” Lübke said.

Unlike during the later Mesolithic era, when specific areas were set aside for the burial of the dead, at this time it seemed the dead were buried near where they died, he said. Significantly, the body was cremated before its burial at the Duvensee site, like other burials of approximately the same age near Hammelev in southern Denmark, which is about 120 miles (195 kilometers) to the north. 

Only pieces of the largest bones were left after the cremation, and it’s not clear if they were wrapped in hide or bark before they were buried. In any case, “burning the body seems to be a central part of burial rituals at this time,” Lübke said.

The site where the cremated bones were found was identified in the 1980s when fragments of worked flints were found there, but it wasn’t excavated until this summer.

Changing landscape

As well as roasting hazelnuts and burning bodies — both of which are activities utilizing fire — Mesolithic people used the lakeside campgrounds for spearing fish, according to the discovery of several bone points crafted for that purpose that were found at the site.

Related: Look into the eyes of a Stone Age woman in this incredibly lifelike facial reconstruction

Flint fragments also have been found throughout the area, although flint doesn’t occur naturally there, suggesting that Mesolithic people repaired their tools and hunting weapons in this place during the annual hazelnut harvest in the fall, Lübke said.

The Duvensee bog is among the most important archaeological regions in northern Europe; dozens of Mesolithic sites have been found there since 1923, and most of them since the 1980s.

The Mesolithic sites at Duvensee are about the same age as the Mesolithic site at Star Carr in North Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, and some of the artifacts found there are very similar, Lübke said.

From that time until about 8,000 years ago, the Schleswig-Holstein region and Britain were connected by a now-submerged region called Doggerland, and it’s likely that Mesolithic groups would have shared technologies, he said.

The researchers now plan to carry out further excavations at the site of the Mesolithic burial, to determine what other activities took place there.

Head of Schleswig-Holstein’s State Archaeology Department, said the latest find at Duvensee is of global significance.

“It speaks to the long tradition of archaeological research in Schleswig-Holstein in the expiration of moors and wetlands,” he told Live Science in an email. “The present find advances itself and the landscape around it to something spectacular.”

But he noted that the preservation of organic finds in the Duvensee region is threatened by climatic changes that could result in heavy rain and flooding, or dry periods.

Both types of changes could threaten archaeological features in the area, so archaeologists are working to recover any finds and to develop strategies for better managing the area in the face of a changing climate, Ickerodt said.

ASIA, EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Astonished Archaeologists Find Roman Colosseum Replica in Anatolia, Turkey

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Astonished Archaeologists Find Roman Colosseum Replica in Anatolia, Turkey

While exploring the site of the ancient city of Mastaura in western Turkey last summer, archaeologists discovered something remarkable. Partially buried in the earth and further obscured beneath trees and bushes, they were able to identify the unmistakable outline of a large, circular amphitheater , built in the same distinctive shape as the famed Colosseum in Rome.

Initial excavations quickly confirmed the truth. Hidden in an area currently occupied by olive and fig groves, the archaeological team from Adnan Menderes University in Aydin, Turkey had indeed found the remains of a Colosseum replica, which had been constructed to host entertainment spectacles during a time when Anatolia (modern Turkey) was a part of the Roman Empire.

Like its renowned counterpart in the empire’s capital city, the newly found Colosseum replica would also have hosted bloody battles that pitted man-against-man, man-against-beast, and animal-against-animal.

Amazingly, the Colosseum replica was found to be largely intact, protected from decay and destruction by its earthen and vegetative cover.

The ruins of Roman amphitheaters have been found in Turkish territory before. But only traces of these ancient structures remain, due to natural erosive forces and the ravages of looters.

Turkey’s Colosseum Replica

“There is no previous example of such an amphitheater in Anatolia and its immediate surroundings,” declared archaeologist Sedat Akkurnaz , the Mastaura excavation team leader. “It is the only example that has survived in this very solid way.”

“Most of the amphitheatre is under the ground,” he continued. “The sections under the ground are very well preserved. It is solid as if it was just built.”

Searching through the stadium’s subterranean sections, the archaeologists found many structurally sound and well-preserved rooms, which would have been occupied by gladiators, important guests, venue administrators, and event planners.

Arched entryways and vaulted ceilings revealed an indisputable link to the signature construction style of Roman architects , who set standards that loyal provincial authorities did their best to emulate.

The circular design of the Mastaura amphitheater is relatively unique. Most Roman amphitheaters were built in a half-moon or semi-circular shape, but it seems the architects of this particular structure were anxious to demonstrate their fealty to the classic design principles established by the builders of the Colosseum in Rome in the first century AD.

The dimensions of this long-lost building are quite impressive. It measures approximately 330 feet (100 meters) in diameter and features walls that are 50 feet (15 meters) tall at their highest points. While precise calculations of seating capacity are difficult to obtain, Akkurnaz estimates that the amphitheater could have held between 15,000 and 20,000 people when it was fully packed.

This is dwarfed by the 50,000 to 70,000 seat capacity of the Colosseum in Rome, but would have been perfectly suitable for the less densely populated regions of Anatolia.

The Decline Of The Roman Empire And The Colosseum Replica

The cascade of troubles that hit the Romans and the Anatolians in the third century AD included barbarian invasions, civil warfare and unrest, peasant rebellions, and the Antonine Plague of measles or smallpox that swept across Roman lands and left millions of dead bodies in its wake.

This confluence of factors, plus political mismanagement in general, plunged the Empire into a prolonged economic depression that caused a major decline in the fortunes of the cities Anatolia and the province of Asia in particular. This region of the Empire never again came close to matching its peak prosperity, and in the fourth century it was divided up into multiple smaller provinces.

The amphitheater at Mastaura was obviously constructed with the expectation that the good times would continue. Given the economic troubles that beset the region sometime shortly after its completion, this grand edifice may have sat empty and unused for much of the time, since the spectacles it was designed to host would have been too costly for financially-strapped promoters to sponsor. In the economically challenged post-Severan era, this newly built structure may have been dismissed as wasteful expenditure and a sign of Roman decadence.

Preservation Work to Continue in the Coming Months

During the remainder of 2022, the archaeologists who unearthed the Mastaura amphitheater will begin conservation and preservation work on its most vulnerable sections.

After that process is complete, Akkurnaz and his team will launch a series of geophysical surveys at the site, to gain more information about what the structure looks like underground.

In addition to the support they’re receiving from the local government of the nearby town of Nazilli, the archaeologists are also cooperating closely with Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism on this important excavation project.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Child’s bones buried 40,000 years ago solve long-standing Neanderthal mystery

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Child’s bones buried 40,000 years ago solve long-standing Neanderthal mystery

This reconstruction shows the Neanderthal child’s burial at La Ferrassie.

We don’t know whether it was a boy or a girl. But this ancient child, a Neanderthal, only made it to about two years of age.

This short life, lived about 41,000 years ago, was uncovered at a famous archaeological site in southwestern France, called La Ferrassie. The remains of several Neanderthals have been found there, including the most recent discovery, the child, known only as La Ferrassie 8.

When the ancient remains were first found – most at various stages of the early 20th century – archaeologists had assumed the skeletons represented intentional burials, with Neanderthals laying their departed kin to rest under the earth.

Nonetheless, in contemporary archaeology, doubts now swirl around the question of whether Neanderthals did indeed bury their dead like that, or whether this particular aspect of funerary rites is a uniquely Homo sapiens custom.

In part, the asking of these questions links back to the archaeological techniques and record-keeping used in the past, as the antiquated methods used by archaeologists and anthropologists from the early 20th century (and even earlier) mean we can’t always be entirely confident in their findings.

With such a mystery on their mind, a team led by researchers from Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in France has now conducted a thorough re-evaluation of La Ferrassie 8’s ancient remains, which have now been kept in the museum for almost 50 years after being discovered between 1970 and 1973.

“The discovery and context of this skeleton has generally been regarded as poorly documented, but in fact this deficiency stems from a lack of the necessary processing of the information and materials from La Ferrassie related to the penultimate excavation phase (1968–1973),” the researchers write in their new paper(opens in new tab).

“Indeed, a huge amount of data remained unassessed prior to our current study.”

In the new work, the researchers reviewed the notebooks and field diaries used by the original excavation team, as well as analysing La Ferrassie 8’s bones. They also performed new excavations and analyses at the La Ferrassie cave shelter site where the child’s remains were found.

The results of their multi-disciplinary approach suggests that – despite the substandard nature of previous research into La Ferrassie 8’s purported burial – the old conclusions were correct: the child was buried.

“The combined anthropological, spatial, geochronological, taphonomic, and biomolecular data analysed here suggest that a burial is the most parsimonious explanation for LF8,” the authors explain.

“Our results show that LF8 is intrusive within an older (and archaeologically sterile) sedimentary layer. We propose that Neandertals intentionally dug a pit in sterile sediments in which the LF8 child was laid.”

In reaching this conclusion, the team confirmed that the well-preserved bones were laid to rest in an unscattered manner, remaining in their anatomical position, with the head raised higher than the rest of the body, even though the lay of the land was inclined at a different angle (suggesting a contrived elevation by Neanderthal hands).

Further, there were no animal marks on them, which the team consider another probable sign of a prompt, intended burial. Especially when compared to the weathered state of various animal remains found in the vicinity.

“The absence of carnivore marks, the low degree of spatial disturbance, fragmentation, and weathering suggest that they were rapidly covered by sediment,” the researchers explain.

“We cannot find any natural (i.e. non-anthropic) process that could explain the presence of the child and associated elements within a sterile layer with an inclination that does not follow the geological inclination of the stratum. In this case, we propose that the body of the LF8 child was laid in a pit dug into the sterile sediment.”

It’s not the first study in recent times to claim new evidence of Neanderthals burying their dead, and it likely won’t be the last.

The French team say it’s time in a new-and-improved analytical standards were brought to bear on the varying skeletal remains of La Ferrassie 1 through to 7, giving us an updated assessment of how they too were interred.

Then, maybe, with all said and done, these very old souls might finally get some rest.

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER GIANT DEFENSIVE MINEFIELD FROM THE ROMAN IRON AGE

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Archaeologists discover giant defensive minefield from the roman iron age

Archaeologists have unearthed a massive structure in Lolland that is believed to have been used to ward off an attacking army back in the Roman Iron Age.  So far, 770 meters of the structure have been detected.

In 2022 a team of archaeologists from the Museum Lolland-Falster in Denmark discovered a vast ancient “hole belt”: a defense land work featuring over 1000 long lines and rows of small holes dug into the ground.

According to archaeologist and Museum Inspector, Bjørnar Mage, talking to TV2 EAST , this hole belt was designed to slow down hostile advancing armies from the south coast of Lolland and it was built during the reign of the Roman Empire in Europe, and while 770 meters of the belt have been measured, museum staff estimate it may be up to twice as big.

The hole belt is thought to have been located about a kilometer from the coast between two impassable wetlands meaning attacking enemies advancing into Lolland, would have been seriously hampered, says Bjørnar Måge.

Since 2022, two smaller excavations have studied the hole belt but this recent excavation was the first to illustrate how large this ancient military feature actually was, and revealed that it had built at one time in a major constriction project.

The massive structure may have stretched 1.5 km across Lolland.

Tomb of the Pagan Prince

The hole belt might have been built in the days leading up to a major battle , but maybe it was a reaction to a concrete threat where you “wanted to make sure you had time to defend yourself against an advancing enemy,” says Bjørnar Mage in a Nyheder article. And this apparent immediacy in the building of the structure is supported in the fact no evidence has been discovered that the belt was ever maintained after its construction and it appears that it had been left to lapse.

So far, three-hole belts have been found to the east of the main belt, but a number have been found in Jutland. However, this belt is much wider than any of the Jutland examples.

Bjørnar Måge believes the building of the hole belt required “considerable strength and hinterland” and that it was beyond the abilities of the average local farmer, leading him to suspect that “a local warlord or prince” was behind the construction.” He said it takes “time and a lot of manpower” to build such a large defense force and this is only something that would make sense if there was a “major man behind it.”

Perhaps lending weight to this line of thinking, not far from the hole belt in the town of Hoby near Dannemare, archaeologists discovered a stone built tomb dating from the Roman Iron Age but the researchers have not yet been able to associate the two sites yet.

Hundreds of markers map out the elements of the hole belt.

Imagine For A Second, The Horror Of Being Trapped In A Hole Belt

The coasts of Denmark during the late Iron Age were invaded by armies from Norway and Eastern Europe but no historical records exist pertaining to military activities in the north of the country, but the belt indicates a major battle was prepared for.

Putting ancient hole belts in context, Bjørnar Måge compares them with “modern minefields” designed specifically to delay advancing enemy forces. According to writers J.E. and H.W. Kaufmann’s 2018 Classical to Medieval Fortifications in the Lands of the Western Roman Empire, “Caesar’s Lilies”, were Roman-built ditches about 1 meter (3.3ft) deep containing sharpened wooden spikes and Bjørnar Måge, said Viet Cong soldiers used “ Caesar’s lilies” against American soldiers as recently as the Vietnam War.

Example of Roman Lilia at Rough Castle, Antonine Wall.

The archaeologists in Denmark believe the hole belt was designed to delay advancing armies so that the native army could get into the most tactically suitable positions, from where they could “shoot the attackers with arrows from towers” arranged behind the hollow belt.

But at this time no archaeological remains of such towers have been found, says Bjørnar Mage, however, towers were not needed to seriously hamper an advancing Roman army, for example:

Imagine you are on the front line of a Roman army. You’ve just spent eight months advancing into Denmark, sleepless and weary having defended your camp from native guerrilla attacks every night. Your sword is blunted chopping the skeletons of Denmark’s indigenous peoples and you are standing amidst your 6000 brothers in arms when you are deafened with the war cry “We Are Legion” as your field commander signals you to advance into the hole belt.

Tip-toeing around thousands of wooden spikes and deep pits your advance is slow, but you are almost at the other side and stop to take a breath, and to prepare your psychology for another mass-slaughter.

But then, your accumulated worst fears arrive in one nightmarish moment as the Danish infantry begin to thin, making way for their special forces who ride forward through the morning mist: 200 mounted cavalries armed with bows who fringe the hole belt.

Realizing their destiny, panic spreads among your men and most are reduced to whimpering as the sky quickly darkens with thousands of heavy oak, iron-tipped arrows, and for the last time your thoughts turn to your family and the swaying wheat fields from whence you came, and to where you will now return, courtesy of the hole belt.

Unfortunately, due to its environmental circumstances, the Lolland hole belt is rapidly disappearing and Bjørnar Mage said that if the site had been left for as little as five more years “there would probably be nothing left” and he says only the bottom five centimeters of the belt have been preserved in many areas of the structure.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

2,000-yr-old Item Found Buried with Woman Looks Like a Smartphone

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2,000-yr-old Item Found Buried with Woman Looks Like a Smartphone

A tomb recently excavated in Siberia revealed what at first appeared to be an ancient iPhone on the 2,100-yr-old remains of a woman dubbed ‘Natasha’ by researchers. Found alongside her skeleton, to the amazement and excitement of all, was an item that looked suspiciously like an iPhone.

It’s not, of course — it’s a belt buckle — but the object bears a striking and astonishing similarity to a iPhone. It’s black, and shaped rather like a check book (remember those?) and has beautiful, precious stones laid into its surface. And it was no doubt just as important to the woman who wore it as our smartphones are to us .

It was a fashionable ancient belt buckle made of gemstone jet with inlaid decorations of turquoise, carnelian and mother-of-pearl.

The find was part of a larger excavation, dubbed the “Russian Atlantis.” Skeletons and objects like ‘Natasha’s’ belt buckle date back more than 2,000 years, archaeologists say.

The Siberian Times reported recently that the site was made accessible to archaeologists and other researchers when a massive reservoir was drained during the summer, so researchers could get a look at the relics resting there. The belt buckle is just one of many interesting — and ancient — items found at this “Russian Atlantis.”

The buckle’s precious stones include mother of pearl and turquoise, and even part of an ancient Chinese coin has been carved into it. According to Dr. Pavel Leus, one of the archaeologists on the dig, “Natasha’s burial with a Hunnu-era ‘iPhone’ remains one of the most interesting (items) at this site.”  He added, “Hers was the only belt decorated with Chinese Wizhu coins, which helped us to date it.”

Other ancient graves rest close to ‘Natasha,’ including one whom the archaeologists have dubbed ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ The items with which she was buried indicate that she was a designer who worked in leather.

A third set of remains belonged to a woman who was a weaver, researchers confirmed; she had a wooden spindle, inside a sewing kit placed with her.

It’s these kinds of objects, rather like ‘Natasha’s’ so called ‘iPhone,’ that give researchers the clues they need to date the remains accurately.

The site is usually under more than 55 feet of water, according to the Siberian Times. Scientists, historians and archaeologists know they must beat the clock because the reservoir will indeed fill with water again, sooner or later.

They are working feverishly to recover and excavate these rare and historic artifacts before that happens.Elsewhere at the ‘Atlantis’ site another excavation is taking place, called Terezin, containing 32 graves.

Dr. Marina Kilunovskaya, of the St. Petersburg Institute of Material Culture, acknowledged how rich the site is in an interview with the Siberian Times.

“We are incredibly lucky to have found these burials of rich Hun nomads that were not disturbed by (ancient) grave robbers.” The burial sites date as far back as the Bronze Age, during the reign of Genghis Khan.