Archaeological El Dorado: Stunning Golden Sun Bowl Found in Austria
“A discovery of a lifetime” is what archaeologist Dr. Michal Sip termed the find: a golden sun bowl dated to 3,000 years ago, unearthed during ongoing excavations in a prehistoric settlement in Ebreichsdorf, Austria.
Work at this ancient settlement dated to 1300-1000 BC, has been in full flow since September 2019. Researchers at the site are focused on the “urn field culture” found here, a reference to their funeral rites and ceremonial cremation, reports Heritage Daily .
The Golden Bowl with the Sun Motif
This latest find is that of a golden bowl, decorated with a beautiful motif that depicts the rays of the sun. The bowl is 20cm (7.8”) in diameter and 5cm (2”) high, and made of a very thin sheet metal consisting of 90% gold, 5% silver, and 5% copper.
Inside there is coiled golden wire wrapped around organic material clumps, originally fabric sewn with gold thread. This is possibly the remnants of decorative scarves attached to the bowl, used during the sun worship ceremonies and rituals.
The sun rays on the bowl interior, and the wire found in the bowl
Archaeologist Dr. Michal Sip, from Novetus, termed it a kind of “archaeological Eldorado” and considered it one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made in Austria.
A first of its kind discovery in this region, only 30 such bowls have been scattered across the entirety of the vast European continent. “This is the first find of this type in Austria, and the second to the east of the Alpine line,” said the archaeologist.
He added that single vessels of this kind have been found in France, Switzerland and Spain, but the production probably occurred in northern Germany, Scandinavia, and Denmark, reports PAP.
The “golden” finds, particularly the golden bowl, indicate extensive trade relations between western and northern Europe.
A Routine Excavation
The excavation was routine, and the discoveries purely accidental. At this site, 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) south of Vienna, the Austrian Federal Railways (the OBB) plans to build a railway station.
These plans required an archaeological survey before they could be approved, prompting archaeologists to check what was underground.
Franz Bauer, CEO of ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG, stated that archaeological excavation work as part of “such a major project” is also required as part of the environmental impact assessment. “Building new things and preserving the old is one of our premises when implementing construction projects.”
Apart from the golden bowl, in the 70 hectares (173 acres) excavated, 5,000 finds have been listed in total, including hundreds of items made of bronze items, and many dozens made of gold. This includes the remains of residential, work, and storage buildings.
These finds have sparked debate amongst historians, who are now asking probing questions into the living conditions and life of the late Bronze Age .
“We now have a very clear picture of this prehistoric settlement from 3,000 years ago. We were able to reconstruct where the economic area was and where the residential area was,” Dr. Sip told noe.ORF.at.
The southern boundary had a dry riverbed, 25 meters (82 feet) wide, which was either a swamp or a seasonal, flowing waterbody. This entire stretch has revealed pins, daggers, knives, all of which were in great condition. This indicates that it was definitely not a refuse pit.
Weapon blades found at the site
Hundreds of kilos of animal bones, clay vessels, and ceramic shells have also been found in this area of the site. This has led Dr. Sip and his colleagues to speculate that this swamp was likely part of the larger religious ceremony involving the sun.
The Bronze Age “Urn Field Culture”
The “urn field culture” community led a sedentary lifestyle, and were proficient in animal domestication and breeding, particularly that of sheep. Echoes of this culture survive in contemporary Poland with the Lusatian culture, centered around their famous settlement at Biskupin, in northern Poland.
Well-Preserved Remains of Two Vesuvius Victims Found in Pompeii
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., a wealthy man of 30 or 40 and a younger enslaved man survived the immediate impact, only to die in a second volcanic blast the following day.
Archaeologists made plaster casts of the pair, who are thought to be a high-status older man and a younger enslaved individual.
Two millennia later, reports Angela Giuffrida for the Guardian, archaeologists excavating a villa on the outskirts of the ancient Roman city have found the pair’s remains, eerily frozen in their final death throes.
Based on traces of the older man’s clothing, which included a woolen cloak, researchers from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii say he was probably a person of high status. The body of the younger man, aged 18 to 25, had several compressed vertebrae, suggesting he was a manual laborer.
Likely enslaved by his companion, the second individual wore a short, pleated tunic possibly made out of wool. The team found the remains in an underground corridor of the ruined structure beneath more than six feet of ash.
“The victims were probably looking for shelter in the cryptoporticus, in this underground space, where they thought they were better protected,” Massimo Osanna, director general of the archaeological park, tells the Associated Press’ Frances D’Emilio.
Instead, the duo died in a rush of heat and volcanic debris that flowed into the building
“It is a death by thermal shock, as also demonstrated by their clenched feet and hands,” Osanna tells Angelo Amante of Reuters.
Archaeologists preserved the newly discovered remains using a variation of a technique developed by Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863.
The process involves pouring liquid chalk into cavities left by decomposing bodies; this plaster fills gaps in preserved bones and teeth, creating a cast of the bodies as they looked at the moment of death.
The bodies were found under more than six feet of ash in a ruined villa.
A close-up view of one of the victim’s clenched hands
A close-up view of one of the victim’s clenched hands
“It is impossible to see those deformed figures, and not feel moved,” wrote Italian author Luigi Settembrini in his 1863 “Letter to the Pompeians,” as quoted in a statement from the archaeological park.
“They have been dead for eighteen centuries, but they are human beings seen in their agony. This is not art, it is not imitation; these are their bones, the remains of their flesh and their clothes mixed with plaster, it is the pain of death that takes on body and form.”
Pompeii now contains the bodies of more than 100 people preserved as plaster casts. Osanna tells the Times that the technique captured fascinating details of the newly discovered bodies, including the “extraordinary drapery” of their wool garments.
“They really look like statues,” he says.
The new find is located in Civita Giuliana, about 750 yards northwest of Pompeii’s city walls. The villa is on private property, and government-commissioned excavations only began there in 2017, when archaeologists stepped in to help prevent looters from tunneling into the site and stealing artifacts.
This isn’t the first impressive find made at the villa: In 2018, archaeologists unearthed the preserved remains of three horses, still saddled and harnessed as if ready to depart at a moment’s notice. Research teams also found a whole street of large houses lined with balconies.
The ruins of Pompeii, a city of about 13,000 people at the time of its destruction, have fascinated people around the world for centuries. Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger, who witnessed the destruction from a neighboring city, described it as “an extraordinary and alarming” scene.
Spanish king Charles III of Bourbon began the first official excavations of the site in 1748. Work has continued ever since. (Launched in 2012, the $140 million Great Pompeii Project seeks to conduct the most extensive scientific investigation of the site to date.)
The preserved city, with its inhabitants forever caught in the middle of daily activities, has yielded much information about life in ancient Rome, from Pompeiians’ culinary habits to their fertility and love rituals.
Remarkably Massive Viking Longhouse Discovered in Norway
While excavating near the ruins of a 17th century royal estate near the village of Sem in the Eiker district of southeastern Norway, archaeologists unearthed dozens of ancient postholes spread around the faint but unmistakable outline of a Viking longhouse.
The architectural structure would have been of tremendous size. Early indications suggest it was probably constructed during the Viking Age , which in Norway lasted from approximately 800 AD to the year 1066.
Postholes Provide Clues to the Viking Longhouse’s Distinctive Architecture
Postholes were a standard feature of longhouses, regardless of when they might have been built. Heavy wooden posts were needed to support the walls and roofs of these massive construction projects and the posts had to be firmly anchored in the ground. But the placement of the postholes at the newly discovered Viking longhouse is curious and unique, since they were only set up to support the walls.
Outside the outline formed by the first set of postholes, about 11 feet (3.5 meters) away, there were more postholes dug in straight lines. According to the Norwegian archaeologists, these would have supported separate roofing material that covered passageways running along the outside of the main structure. Given the distance between the outer and inner postholes, the archaeologists think the outer posts may have been slanted inward, bracing the outer walls to keep them from bowing under the weight of the structure’s roof.
An overview picture of the extraordinary house. Poles have been placed in the post holes. This is, however, only a small part of the house according to the archaeologists.
With the wood used to make the walls and roof of the house long gone, there is no way to know for sure what the house looked like when it was in use and how exactly it was designed. But the one thing the archaeologists can determine with certainty is the size of the house and they know it was huge by ancient standards.
From one outer posthole line to another, the longhouse measured 52 feet (16 meters) across. As for its length, that is yet to be determined—but there is no doubt the house was much longer than it was wide.
“It’s an extraordinary building, and we haven’t excavated the whole thing,” Løchsen Rødsrud explained. He noted that the outline of the house is currently bisected by a road, and that no digging will take place in the field on the other side of the road until next year.
“I expect the house is much longer,” Løchsen Rødsrud said. “Twice or three times as long as it is wide.” If this estimate is correct, it means the house could be as much as 150 feet (45 meters) long from end to end. This would make it a true long house, by the standards of any place or time.
Excavation work documenting the postholes which are providing clues about the architecture of the supposedly Viking longhouse.
The Hoen Hoard and Viking History in Southeastern Norway
The area around the newly discovered longhouse and the former royal estate in Sem has been famous since the 19th century. Or since 1834, to be more exact. That was the year that a stunned farmworker from the village of Hokkslund found a solid gold ring while digging in a bog on the plantation of his employer.
After the excited worker informed the landowner what he’d found the two of them dug down further. In the end, they recovered what would turn out to be the largest and most valuable Viking Age gold treasure ever found in Scandinavia.
The so-called Hoen Hoard , named for the owner of the farm who generously decided to split the treasure with the laborer who found it, included 5.5 lbs (2.5 kg) of golden coins and golden jewelry of different types and sizes. The hoard is believed to have been buried between 875 to 890, which coincides with the time when Viking ships were most active raiding and trading up and down the European coast.
There are approximately 50 jewelry pieces, 200 coins and more than 200 pearls and semi-precious stones in this priceless collection. While this gold could have been acquired through legitimate trading activity, it may also have been plundered from elite European homes during ninth century Viking raids. The gold and stones have been identified as coming from continental Europe and the Middle East, so there is no doubt it was not locally sourced.
The village of Hokkslund, where the Hoen Hoard was found, was a prominent port city in the Viking Age . The spot where the farmers dug up the gold is just 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) from the excavated 17th century royal estate at Sem, which highlights how much wealth circulated through the Eiker district of southeastern Norway between the peak of the Viking Age and the time when the country was ruled by hereditary monarchs.
Experts believe there were approximately 120 farms and about 3,000 people living in this region during the ninth century. The presence of a huge Viking longhouse and the most valuable Viking treasure ever found shows that wealthy and influential people were well-represented among that number.
There were definitely fortunes to be made in Eiker, thanks to the abundance of fertile farmland and to the ease with which large merchant ships could travel up and down the Drammen River, which had a water level that was 18 to 20 feet (five to six meters) higher 1,000 years ago than it is today. So perhaps the Hoen Hoard was imported to the region and then sold to an ultra-wealthy aristocrat or landowner by the Viking traders or raiders who’d acquired it. Or maybe such a person financed some Viking trading or raiding missions and was entitled to take possession of the most valuable items they recovered.
The Hoen treasure, which was found in 1834, is the largest treasure find from the Viking Age in Norway.
But Was This Really a Viking Longhouse?
At the moment, the archaeologists who found the supposed “Viking longhouse” near the royal estate in Sem are most concerned with figuring out its exact age. “We are very excited about which part of prehistoric or historical times it belongs to,” Løchsen Rødsrud said.
As of now, the house has been tentatively identified as a Viking Age construction project. This is because of its architectural style, which is consistent with other Viking fortresses that were built in Denmark in the late first millennium.
The design of those buildings was customized to produce tall, long and wide structures, like the longhouse discovered at the Sem site. Such an approach to construction was most convenient for Viking Age farmers, since Viking longhouses were multi-purpose buildings that contained living spaces, workshops, cattle barns and crop storage areas all under one roof.
But the linking of the expansive longhouse to the Viking Age remains in question. This is because pottery shards have been found inside some of the postholes, and these ceramics were apparently manufactured several centuries earlier, during the Scandinavian Iron Age (500 BC to 800 AD).
The postholes could have been dug during the Viking Age on top of a much older settlement, which left pottery pieces littered across the landscape. But that is only one possibility. “If these shards are not random, the house is much older than the aforementioned houses from the Viking Age. In that case, it’s quite a sensation,” Christian Løchsen Rødsrud stated.
To definitively discover the age of the structure, the archaeologists will have to wait for the results of radiocarbon dating tests that are currently being performed on seeds and charcoal recovered during the longhouse excavation. Once they know for sure when the house was built and by whom, they will gain some new and valuable insights into the construction practices of at least some ancient Norwegians, be they Vikings or earlier occupants of the Eiker region.
Human Genome Recovered From 5,700-Year-Old Chewing Gum
The piece of Birch tar, found in Denmark, also contained the mouth microbes of its ancient chewer, as well as remnants of food to reveal what she ate.
A 5,700-year-old piece of birch tar, chewed as gum, contains the genome, mouth microbes, and even dietary information about its former chewer.
Modern chewing gums, which often contain polyethylene plastic, could stick around for tens or even hundreds of years, and perhaps much longer in the right conditions. Some of the first chewing gums, made of birch tar and other natural substances, have been preserved for thousands of years, including a 5,700-year-old piece of Stone Age gum unearthed in Denmark.
For archaeologists, the sticky stuff’s longevity can help piece together the lives of ancient peoples who masticated on the chewy tar. The ancient birch gum in Scandinavia preserved enough DNA to reconstruct the full human genome of its ancient chewer, identify the microbes that lived in her mouth, and even reveal the menu of a prehistoric meal.
“These birch pitch chewing gums are kind of special in terms of how well the DNA is preserved. It surprised us,” says co-author Hannes Schroeder, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. “It’s as well-preserved as some of the best petrous [skull] bones that we’ve analyzed, and they are kind of the holy grail when it comes to ancient DNA preservation.”
Birch pitch, made by heating the tree’s bark, was commonly used across Scandinavia as a prehistoric glue for attaching stone tools to handles. When found, it commonly contains toothmarks. Scientists suspect several reasons why people would have chewed it: to make it malleable once again after it cooled, to ease toothaches because it’s mildly antiseptic, to clean teeth, to ease hunger pains, or simply because they enjoyed it.
The gum’s water-resistant properties helped to preserve the DNA within, as did its mild antiseptic properties which helped to prevent microbial decay. But the find was also made possible by the conditions at the site, named Syltholm, on an island in southern Denmark, where thick mud has perfectly preserved a wide range of unique Stone Age artifacts. Excavations began at the site in 2012 in preparation for the construction of a tunnel, affording the Museum Lolland-Falster a unique chance for archaeological field work.
No human remains have yet been found at Syltholm—unless you count the tiny strands of DNA preserved in the ancient gum Schroeder and colleagues described today in Nature Communications.
The discarded gum yielded a surprising amount of information about its 5,700-year-old chewer. She was a female, and while her age is unknown, she may have been a child considering similar birch pitch gums of the era often feature the imprints of children’s teeth.
From the DNA, researchers can start to piece together some of the ancient woman’s physical traits and make some inferences about the world she lived in. “We determined that she had this striking combination of dark skin, dark hair, and blue eyes,” Schroeder says. “It’s interesting because it’s the same combination of physical traits that apparently was very common in Mesolithic Europe. So all these other ancient [European] genomes that we know about, like La Braña in Spain, they all have this combination of physical traits that of course today in Europe is not so common. Indigenous Europeans have lighter skin color now but that was apparently not the case 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.”
An artist’s illustration of what the Scandinavian person who chewed the ancient piece of gum may have looked like.
The gum-chewers’ family ties may also help to map the movement of peoples as they settled Scandinavia.
“The fact that she was more closely related genetically to people from Belgium and Spain than to people from Sweden, which is just a few hundred kilometers farther north, tells us something about how southern Scandinavia was first populated,” Schroeder says. “And it looks like it was from the continent.”
This interpretation would support studies suggesting that two different waves of people colonized Scandinavia after the ice sheets retreated 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, via a southern route and a northeastern route along today’s Norwegian coast.
The individual was part of a world that was constantly changing as groups migrated across the northern regions of Europe. “We may expect this process, especially at this late stage of the Mesolithic, to have been complex with different groups, from south, west or even east, moving at different times and sometimes intermingling while perhaps other times staying isolated,” Jan Storå, an osteoarchaeologist at Stockholm University, says via email.
Additional archaeological work has shown that the era was one of transition. Flaked stone tools and T-shaped antler axes gave way to polished flint artifacts, pottery and domesticated plants and animals. Whether the region’s turn to farming was a lifestyle change among local hunter-gatherers, or spurred by the arrival of farming migrants, remains a matter of debate.
“This is supposed to be a time when farming has already arrived, with changing lifestyles, but we find no trace of farmer ancestry in her genome, which is fairly easy to establish because it originated in the Near East. So even as late as 5,700 years ago, when other parts of Europe like Germany already had farming populations with this other type of ancestry present, she still looked like essentially western hunter-gatherers, like people looked in the thousands of years before then,” Schroeder says.
“The ‘lack’ of Neolithic farmer gene flow, at this date, is very interesting,” adds Storå, who wasn’t involved in the research. “The farming groups would probably have been present in the area, and they would have interacted with the hunter-gatherer groups.”
The era’s poor oral hygiene has helped add even more evidence to this line of investigation, as genetic bits of foodstuffs were also identifiable in the gum.
Presumably not long before discarding the gum, the woman feasted on hazel nuts and duck, which left their own DNA sequences behind. “The dietary evidence, the duck and the hazel nuts, would also support this idea that she was a hunter-gatherer and subsisted on wild resources,” Schroeder says, noting that the site is littered with physical remains which show reliance on wild resources like fish, rather than domesticated plants or animals.
“It looks like in these parts maybe you have pockets of hunter-gatherers still surviving, or living side-by-side with farmers for hundreds of years,” he says.
Scientists also found traces of the countless microbes that lived in the woman’s mouth. Ancient DNA samples always include microbial genes, but they are typically from the environment. The team compared the taxonomic composition of the well-preserved microbes to those found in modern human mouths and found them very similar.
Satisfied that genetic signatures of ancient oral microbes were preserved in the woman’s gum, the researchers investigated the specific species of bacteria and other microbes. Most were run-of-the-mill microflora like those still found in most human mouths. Others stood out, including bacterial evidence for gum disease and Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia today and is responsible for a million or more infant deaths each year.
Epstein-Barr virus, which more than 90 percent of living humans carry, was also present in the woman’s mouth. Usually benign, the virus can be associated with serious diseases like infectious mononucleosis, Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple sclerosis. Ancient examples of such pathogens could help scientists reconstruct the origins of certain diseases and track their evolution over time, including what factors might conspire to make them more dangerous.
“What I really find interesting with this study is the microbial DNA,” Anders Götherström, a molecular archaeologist at Stockholm University, says in an email. “DNA from ancient pathogens holds great promise, and this type of mastics may be a much better source for such data than ancient bones or teeth.”
Natalija Kashuba, an archaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues have also extracted human DNA from ancient birch gum, from several individuals at a 10,000-year-old site on Sweden’s west coast.
“It’s really interesting that we can start working on this material, because there’s a lot of it scattered around Scandinavia from the Stone Age to the Iron Age,” she says, adding that gums may survive wherever birches were prevalent—including eastward toward Russia, where one wave of Scandinavian migration is thought to have originated.
The fact that the discarded artifact survived to reveal so much information about the past isn’t entirely due to luck, Kashuba says. “I think we have to thank the archaeologists who not only preserved these gums but suggested maybe we should try to process them,” she says. “If it hadn’t been for them, I’m not sure most geneticists would have bothered with this kind of material.”
3,000-Year – old wooden wheel discovered in Doomed Bronze Age town
In the ruins of a prehistoric town in eastern England, a 3000-year-old wooden wheel was discovered. Archaeologists said the Bronze Age wheel is the largest and best-preserved of its kind, dating back to 1100-800 B.C.
The wheel was extracted during a dig at the Must Farm in Peterborough, measuring approximately 3 feet(1 meter) and with a hub still intact. According to an announcement from Historic England, a heritage organization that is partly funding the excavation.
“This remarkable but fragile wooden wheel is the earliest complete example ever found in Britain,” Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said in a statement.
He added that the discovery expands the understanding of the technological sophistication of people living in the region 3,000 years ago.
Must Farm, which was first discovered in 1999, has been described as “Peterborough’s Pompeii.” Pompeii was a Roman city that was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.
Ash from that volcanic eruption left the town extraordinarily well-preserved, with elaborate murals and graffiti still intact on the walls of its buildings. Like Pompeii, the Must Farm site was frozen in time through catastrophe.
The circular wooden houses of the Must Farm site were built on stilts above a river channel, the old course of the River Nene. But a devastating fire caused the dwellings to plunge into —and become preserved in —the sandy water below, archaeologists said.
In addition to finding the wooden houses, excavators uncovered some rare items that might not normally survive in the archaeological record: a wooden platter, wooden utensils, clothing made from the fiber of lime trees and even jars containing the remains of food, perhaps abandoned when the fire broke out, the researchers said.
The Must Farm was partially excavated in 2006, but the site is currently undergoing a larger, £1.1-million ($1.58 million U.S.), eight-month excavation.
The archaeologists said they plan to dig trenches across nearly 12,000 square feet (1,100 square meters) of the site. They’re about halfway done with the project, according to Historic England.
In another clue that people of this era were quite savvy about transportation, eight Bronze Age boats were recovered from the same river in 2011. The discovered wheel suggests the people at the Must Farm site traveled to and had ties with the dry land beyond the river.
Technically, the new find isn’t the oldest Bronze Age wheel found in Britain. That distinction still belongs to the Flag Fen wheel, which was found at a nearby site and dates back to about 1300 B.C. However, that artifact is less complete than the newly discovered wheel and is smaller, at about 2.6 feet (0.8 m) in diameter.
New Research Suggests Human-Like Footprints in Crete Date to 6.05 Million Years Ago
The oldest known human-like footprints may be even older than previously believed, reports Jacinta Bowler for Science Alert. New research suggests the controversial fossilized imprints, found on the Greek island of Crete in 2002, are around 6.05 million years old.
New research suggests these human-like footprints found in Crete may by 6.05 million years old.
Originally dated to 5.7 million years ago, the 50 footprints might predate this estimate—proposed by scholars in 2017—by more than 300,000 years, according to a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Believed to be left by hominins, the footprints could upend scientists’ understanding of how early humans evolved, moving the group’s starting point from Africa to the Mediterranean Sea, reports Ruth Schuster for Haaretz. Researchers say it’s possible the bipedal creature who made the marks was a member of Graecopithecus freyberg, an early human ancestor discovered in 1944 and nicknamed “El Graeco.”
“The tracks are almost 2.5 million years older than the tracks attributed to Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) from Laetoli in Tanzania,” says study co-author Uwe Kirscher, an expert on paleogeography at the University of Tübingen, in a statement.
Laser scan of one of the best preserved footprints (left) and transverse sections showing concave and convex structures in the impression (right)
Writing for the Conversation in 2017, Matthew Robert Bennett, an environmental scientist and geographer at Bournemouth University, and Per Ahlberg, an evolutionary biologist at Uppsala University, said, “The footprints are small tracks made by someone walking upright on two legs.”
The pair, who co-authored both the 2017 study and the new paper, added that the impressions “have a shape and form very similar to human tracks,” including five toes without claws, a parallel big toe and a ball of the foot.
“Non-human ape footprints look very different,” the authors wrote. “[T]he foot is shaped more like a human hand, with the big toe attached low on the side of the sole and sticking out sideways.”
Some scientists are skeptical of the study’s claims, doubting that the Graecopithecus freyberg species even existed. Israel Hershkovitz, a biological anthropologist at Tel Aviv University who was not involved in the research, speculates that the footprints were actually left by a late European ape.
“All we have from Europe is a group of pre-human apes,” he tells Haaretz. “They are interesting and attest to much more favorable climatic conditions [during the late Miocene], but I don’t think they are directly or indirectly associated with human evolution.”
Speaking with Amalyah Hart of Cosmos magazine, Julien Louys, a paleontologist at Griffith University who wasn’t involved in the study, adds, “Some of the footprints look like a bipedal animal, but a lot of the other footprints are very ambiguous and variable in size. Some of them don’t look like footprints at all. So, the issue here is making a very large claim on the basis of information that’s quite open to interpretation.”
The new study acknowledges this dissent. As the authors write, “[Our] interpretation has been controversial, and several counter-interpretations have been made.”
View of footprints discovered on Crete in 2002
Paleontologist Gerard Gierliński discovered the tracks on a beach near the village of Trachilos while on vacation in western Crete in 2002. The prints’ owners left the impressions in sediment deposits linked to the end of the Miocene epoch, when the Mediterranean Sea temporarily dried out, wrote Emily Chung for CBC News in 2018.
Researchers used improved dating techniques to push back the timeline of the footprints’ creation, notes Cosmos. They settled on 6.05 million years ago by testing foraminifera—fossilized marine microorganisms found in sedimentary rocks.
If correct, the team’s discovery could complicate the commonly held belief that humans originated in Africa. Discovered in Tanzania in 1974, the famous “Lucy” fossils—identified as Australopithecus afarensis and dated to about 3.2 million years ago—are the oldest widely accepted pre-human footprints. But older body fossils attributed to early hominins have been found in Africa, suggesting the human lineage stretches back far beyond Lucy’s species.
Comparatively, scientists suggest that modern humans—also known as Homo sapiens—evolved around 300,000 years ago. The species includes genes from a now-extinct line of hominins known as Homo neanderthalensis, which first appeared about 430,000 years ago.
Even if the footprints do belong to hominins, their presence doesn’t necessarily discount the idea that Africa is the cradle of humankind.
“The interesting thing claimed in the new paper is that it demonstrates migration from Europe to Africa of these bipedal hominins,” Louys tells Cosmos. (This finding aligns with “Desert Swing,” a hypothesis that posits dry conditions in Mesopotamia and the Sahara led to a mass migration of mammals from Eurasia to Africa around 6.25 million years ago.) “All our studies of intercontinental migrations indicate that it’s not just a one-way street.”
Louys adds, “So even if we take at face value that these are hominin footprints, there’s no indication that they have to have originated in Europe and then moved to Africa, there’s equal possibility that they could have originated in Africa and moved to Europe.”
Archaeologists Unearth Egyptian Queen’s Tomb, 13-Foot ‘Book of the Dead’ Scroll
Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a cache of treasures—including more than 50 wooden sarcophagi, a funerary temple dedicated to an Old Kingdom queen and a 13-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll—at the Saqqara necropolis, a vast burial ground south of Cairo, according to a statement from the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiques.
Researchers have identified a pyramid in the vast Saqqara necropolis as the tomb of King Teti’s wife, Queen Naert.
As first reported by Al-Ahram, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and his colleagues discovered the coffins, which appear to date back to the New Kingdom era (1570–1069 B.C.), in 52 burial shafts measuring 33 to 40 feet deep.
Paintings of ancient gods and excerpts from the Book of the Dead, which was thought to help the deceased navigate the afterlife, adorn the sarcophagi.
Hawass tells CBS News’ Ahmed Shawkat that researchers first started excavating the site, which stands next to the pyramid of King Teti, first of the Sixth Dynasty rulers of the Old Kingdom (2680–2180 B.C.), in 2010.
“[B]ut we didn’t find a name inside the pyramid to tell us who the pyramid belonged to,” he adds.
Now, reports Agence France-Presse, experts have finally identified the complex—which boasts a stone temple and three mud-brick warehouses that housed offerings and tools—as the tomb of Teti’s wife, Queen Naert.
Around a month ago, the team found Naert’s name etched onto a wall in the temple and written on a felled obelisk near the entrance of the burial, per CBS News.
“I’d never heard of this queen before,” Hawass says to CBS News. “Therefore, we add an important piece to Egyptian history, about this queen.”
One of the artifacts discovered at Saqqara
Another artifact discovered at the excavation site
A papyrus scroll containing the text of Chapter 17 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
Researchers say the coffins likely hold the remains of members of a Teti-worshipping cult.
According to the statement, this is the first time archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old coffins at Saqqara—one of Egypt’s “richest archaeological sites,” as Jo Marchant wrote for Smithsonian magazine last year. In recent months, excavations at the necropolis have yielded an array of exciting, albeit newer, finds, from sealed sarcophagi to ancient statues.
“Actually, this morning we found another shaft,” Hawass told CBS News on Monday. “Inside the shaft we found a large limestone sarcophagus. This is the first time we’ve discovered a limestone sarcophagus inside the shafts. We found another one that we’re going to open a week from now.”
The coffins found in the burial shafts probably hold the remains of followers of a Teti-worshipping cult formed after the pharaoh’s death, writes Owen Jarus .
Experts think that the cult operated for more than 1,000 years; members would have considered it an honor to be entombed near the king.
Other highlights of the discovery include a set of wooden masks; a shrine to the god Anubis; bird-shaped artifacts; games including Senet, which was believed to offer players a glimpse into the afterlife; a bronze ax; paintings; hieroglyphic writings; and fragments of a 13-foot-long, 3-foot-wide papyrus containing Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead.
The name of the scroll’s owner, Pwkhaef, is inscribed on the papyrus, as well as on one sarcophagus and four sculptures, according .
These finds, notes the statement, as translated by CNN’s Amy Woodyatt, “will rewrite the history of this region, especially during the 18th and 19th dynasties of the New Kingdom, during which King Teti was worshiped, and the citizens at that time were buried around his pyramid.”
12,000-Year-Old Massive Underground Tunnels Are Real And Stretch From Scotland To Turkey
Mysterious tunnels have been discovered in Scotland that stretch all the way to Turkey, however, researchers are still unsure of why or how they were created. What makes them all the more mysterious, is how absolutely amazing they are, and ho meticulously hey were created.
These thousands of Stone Aged underground tunnels have left scientists completely perplexed. Dr. Henrich Kusch explained in his book entitled ‘Secrets of the Underground Door to an Ancient World’ that the tunnels had been dug under literally hundreds of Neolithic settlements throughout Europe.
The mere fact that they have survived for over 12,000 years proves that the original tunnels must have been all the more massive.
He further believes that the tunnels were to be used as highways, which allowed people to travel to distant places across Europe.
He explains that ‘Across Europe, there were thousands of these tunnels – from the north in Scotland down to the Mediterranean.
They are interspersed with nooks, at some places, it’s larger, and there is seating, or storage chambers and rooms. They do not all link up but taken together it is a massive underground network.’
‘In Bavaria in Germany alone we have found 700metres of these underground tunnel networks. In Styria in Austria we have found 350metres,’ he said.
‘Across Europe, there were thousands of them – from the north in Scotland down to the Mediterranean.
‘Most are not much larger than big wormholes – just 70cm wide – just wide enough for a person to wriggle along but nothing else.
‘They are interspersed with nooks, at some places it’s larger and there is seating, or storage chambers and rooms.
‘They do not all link up but taken together it is a massive underground network.’
While many have described the tunnels as ancient highways, others have explained that they were a method for protecting men from predators. In his book, Dr. Henrich explains that churches were often built by the entrances to the tunnels because the Church was afraid of the heathen legacy that the tunnels may have represented and wanted to stop their influence.
Other, similar tunnels have been discovered on other continents. And even throughout the Americas, a number of ancient tunnels have been found.
However, the big question is why were these passages constructed? Furthermore, how were they constructed? While there are a number of legends regarding them, researchers have yet to discover any solid answers.
Farmer Stumbles Onto Egyptian Pharaoh’s 2,600-Year-Old Stone Slab
A farmer in northeastern Egypt was preparing his land for crop planting when he discovered an intricately carved sandstone slab that appears to have been installed by the pharaoh Apries 2,600 years ago.
Archaeologists are working to decipher the slab’s 15 lines of hieroglyphs.
The standing stone—also known as a stele, or stela—measures 91 inches long and 41 inches wide. It features a carving of a winged sun disk and a cartouche, or oval enclosing Egyptian hieroglyphs, representing Apries, reports Owen Jarus .
Per Encyclopedia Britannica, stelae were used across the ancient world as tombstones or symbols of “dedication, commemoration and demarcation.”
After the farmer who found the slab reported it to government authorities, the director of the Ismailia Antiquities District and other archaeological experts confirmed its authenticity.
Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, says in a statement that the artifact appears to be connected to a military campaign the pharaoh was waging east of Egypt. The slab includes 15 lines of hieroglyphs that experts are now working to translate.
As the Jerusalem Post’s Aaron Reich writes, Apries was also known as Wahibre Haaibre, or, in Hebrew, Hophra. He was the fourth ruler of the 26th dynasty, reigning from about 589 to 570 B.C.
Apries unsuccessfully tried to help King Zedekiah of Judah ward off an invasion by Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the pharaoh welcomed Jewish refugees into Egypt after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians.
The campaign mentioned may refer to the fighting in Jerusalem or separate a civil war in Egypt. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus described a coup against Apries in which a general named Amasis was declared pharaoh and Apries made a failed attempt to regain power.
Only a few artifacts, such as this fragment of a statue, offer clues about King Apries.
Apries’ rule took place during what’s known as Egypt’s Late Period (roughly 664 to 332 B.C.), around 2,000 years after the construction of the Pyramids of Giza and more than 200 years before Alexander the Great’s arrival in the region.
As Mustafa Marie reports for Egypt Today, much of what historians know about Apries comes from Herodotus and the Torah, as only a few artifacts from his rule have been found in Lower Egypt.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that images of 26th dynasty kings are rare, but one known fragment of a statue probably depicts the enigmatic pharoah.
Archaeologists also attribute a structure in the ancient capital city of Memphis, where a gateway was decorated with scenes depicting the Festival of the White Hippopotamus, to Apries.
Thanks to the recent discovery of hundreds of coffins at the ancient site of Saqqara, researchers are now learning more about Late Period Egypt.
As Jo Marchant reports in Smithsonian magazine’s July/August cover story, many of the sarcophagi bear signs of animal cults that thrived during the Late Period, perhaps because they were seen as a symbol of national identity in the face of foreign threats.
Saqqara—the subject of “Tomb Hunters,” a new documentary series from the Smithsonian Channel—was not just a local cemetery, but a pilgrimage site that drew visitors from across the eastern Mediterranean.
“Saqqara would have been the place to be seen dead in,” Campbell Price, a curator at the Manchester Museum in England, tells Smithsonian. “It had this numinous, divine energy that would help you get into the afterlife.”
“Nationally Significant” Bronze Age Treasure Sword Discovered in Scotland
The Bronze Age has been unearthed in Scotland. The land of Scots is famous for plenty of things – bagpipes, haggis, and some pretty fine whisky. But coming upon a cache of 3,000 year old antiquities? Not so much.
Big Bronze Age discoveries in Scotland
But that’s precisely what happened not long ago when 44 year old Mariusz Stepien went out into a field with a metal detector, on the hunt for perhaps some old coins or a bit of 20th century jewelry.
Much to his surprise, his device began vibrating and signalling him that something big was not far underground. Sure enough, when Stepien began digging, he came upon a treasure trove of antiquities that are about 3,000 years old, from the Bronze Age.
He knew better than to gather up the finds himself, and instead called in experts from Scotland’s Crown Office Treasure Trove Unit. Emily Freeman, the head archaeologist with the unit who went to investigate the find, recently told the BBC, “it’s a nationally significant find.”
Pieces of an ancient horse harness found
After spending 22 days digging deep with the archaeologists, Stepien and the group found a sword still in its scabbard, chariot wheel axle caps, and an entire horse harness, along with a decorative rattle pendant that would have been placed on the harness, the only one like it ever found in Scotland.
Freeman enthused, “so few hoards have been excavated in Scotland,” she explained to the BBC, “(that) it was an amazing opportunity for us not only to recover Bronze Age artifacts, but organic material as well.”
It was that very organic material, she went on, that enabled artifacts made of leather and wood to even stay preserved all these centuries.
As for Stepien – he is extremely pleased that his hobby has turned up such a significant find. “I was over the moon,” he said in an interview, “actually shaking with happiness…I’ve just discovered a big part of Scottish history.”
What happens to the artifacts now? According to Freeman, they must all be thoroughly cleaned, catalogued and examined to learn why they ended up in this spot near Peeples.
The question for experts now is, why was this collection placed in this particular spot near Peeples? That is going to take a lot of detective work, but Freeman is thrilled to have the chance to investigate.
Bronze Age Nordic sword (not the one found).
Right now, the experts suggest the sword dates back between 1,000 B.C. And 900 B.C. Other items need to be more thoroughly examined before dates can be affixed.
The Bronze Age is a period when man was quickly learning how to produce bronze and, more importantly, how to use it to make tools, weapons and other valuable items. Before it was the Stone Age; after it came the Iron Age.
In Britain, experts say the Bronze Age commenced about 2000 B.C., and lasted until around 750 B.C. Of course Scotland, England and other places that comprise the United Kingdom go back thousands of years, and plenty of history remains yet to be discovered under the soil in all those countries.
