Archaeologists Uncover 18,000 Ancient Egyptian ‘Notepads’
Researchers excavating the ancient Egyptian city of Athribis have discovered more than 18,000 ostraca—inscribed pottery shards that essentially served as “notepads,” writes Carly Cassella for Science Alert.
Archaeologist discovered a large number of ostraca, or inscribed fragments of pottery, at the ancient Egyptian temple of Athribis.
Ranging from shopping lists to trade records to schoolwork, the fragments offer a sense of daily life in the city some 2,000 years ago. Per Newsweek’s Robert Lea, the trove is the second-largest collection of ostraca ever found in Egypt.
Ancient Egyptians viewed ostraca as a cheaper alternative to papyrus. To inscribe the shards, users dipped a reed or hollow stick in ink. Though most of the ostraca unearthed in Athribis contain writing, the team also found pictorial ostraca depicting animals like scorpions and swallows, humans, geometric figures, and deities, according to a statement from the University of Tübingen, which conducted the excavation in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
A large number of the fragments appear to be linked to an ancient school. Over a hundred feature repetitive inscriptions on both the front and back, leading the team to speculate that students who misbehaved were forced to write out lines—a schoolroom punishment still used (and satirized in popular culture) .
Researchers found inscriptions of repetitive phrases, likely written by students as a form of punishment.
“There are lists of months, numbers, arithmetic problems, grammar exercises and a ‘bird alphabet’—each letter was assigned a bird whose name began with that letter,” says Egyptologist Christian Leitz in the statement.
Around 80 percent of the ostraca are written in demotic, an administrative script used during the reign of Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII (81 to 59 B.C.E. and 55 to 51 B.C.E.). Greek is the second-most represented script; hieratic, hieroglyphics, Greek, Arabic, and Coptic (an Egyptian dialect written in the Greek alphabet) also appear, testifying to Athribis’ multicultural history, per Science Alert.
“We will be able to make a case study of daily life in late Ptolemaic/early Roman time[s] once we have analyzed all the texts or at least a larger part of it, which will take years,” Leitz tells Newsweek.
Tübingen archaeologists began digging at Athribis—located about 120 miles north of Luxor—in 2003. Initially, excavations were focused on a large temple built by Ptolemy to honor the lion goddess Repit and her consort Min.
The temple was transformed into a nunnery after pagan worship was banned in Egypt in 380 C.E. More recently, the team has shifted focus to a separate sanctuary west of the temple.
A purchase receipt for bread written in Demotic script
According to the statement, Leitz and his team found the ostraca near a series of “multi-story buildings with staircases and vaults” to the west of the main dig site.
Prior to the excavation, reports Science Alert, the only comparable collection of ostraca discovered in Egypt was a cache of medical writings found in the workers’ settlement of Deir el-Medineh, near the Valley of the Kings, in the early 1900s.
“This is a very important discovery because it sheds light on the economy and trade in Atribis throughout history,” Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Egyptian antiquities ministry’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, tells Nevine El-Aref of Ahram Online.
“The text reveals the financial transactions of the area’s inhabitants, who bought and sold provisions such as wheat and bread.”
Archaeologists Find 1,900-Year-Old Snacks in Sewers Beneath the Colosseum
Spectators at Rome’s ancient amphitheater enjoyed olives, figs, nuts and more.
Archaeologists found fruit, nuts and other snacks in the sewers beneath the Colosseum.
In the sewers and passageways beneath the Colosseum, archaeologists have found new evidence of what attending events at the ancient amphitheater may have been like—and even what snacks spectators may have preferred.
During a yearlong study, scientists unearthed traces of olives, nuts, meats, cherries, grapes, figs, blackberries and peaches from 1,900 years ago. Attendees at the famous amphitheater likely munched on these snacks while watching events like plays and gladiator fights.
The discoveries “deepen our understanding of the experience and habits of those who came to this place during the long days dedicated to the performances,” says Alfonsina Russo, director of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, according to Reuters.
Also among the findings: bones from lions, bears, dogs and other animals. The researchers hypothesize that these animals may have been forced to fight each other in front of audiences, or perhaps used as prey as part of hunting demonstrations, reports Reuters.
They also found 50 bronze coins that date back to between the third and seventh centuries, in addition to a rare silver coin from around 171 marking ten years of Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ rule.
“The only places where such discoveries can be made are the sewers,” Federica Rinaldi, the Colosseum’s lead archaeologist, tells Popular Mechanics’ Tim Newcomb. “The importance of this discovery is in the type of animals. Besides lions and bears used in the shows, remains of small dogs, chickens and pigs were found.
There are also many plant remains that illustrate the biodiversity of Roman times and the presence of evergreen plants used for ornamental purposes in the arena during the shows [and possibly] in the area surrounding the Colosseum.”
Researchers began the immense project of clearing out the 2,000-year-old landmark’s sewers and lower passages in 2022. Per Artnet’s Vittoria Benzine, experts are using “wire-guided robots” to navigate the arena’s complex drainage system, hoping to “learn more about hydraulics systems that the Colosseum’s showrunners devised to flood its tunnels and produce water spectacles.”
“In particular we wanted to excavate the southern sewer because it was full of earth and many archaeological remains,” Rinaldi tells Artnet.
The famous Roman Colosseum is one of Europe’s most-visited landmarks. Though many associate the amphitheater, which was the largest in the ancient world, with gladiator fights, it was also used for extravagant theatrical productions, sometimes featuring fire displays, or even mock naval battles playing out on the flooded grounds in front of tens of thousands of spectators. The structure fell into disuse after around 523, when the last recorded games took place.
“The Colosseum continues to tell us its stories, clearly emerging in the wider flow of great history,” writes the Colosseum Archaeological Park in a statement, per Google Translate.
“Exploring the underground sewers, recovering the precious data of older investigations, we are studying to better understand the functioning of the ancient sewers and the hydraulics of the Flavian Amphitheater.”
Human footprints dated to roughly 85,000 years ago revealed in Saudi Arabia
In some of the earliest important migrations that took place, it is likely that humans used the Sinai route to exit Africa and arrive in Asia, making the region now known as Saudi Arabia quite crucial to understanding these routes, according to new research.
Humans footprints dated to roughly 85,000 years ago have been found in the northwest part of Saudi Arabia, providing fresh evidence on how humans migrated outside the African plateau.
The newly collected archaeological clues strengthen the belief that the Arabian Peninsula may have played a key role in facilitating the first migrations from Africa.
According to archaeologists who are working in the field in the country, plus already available evidence obtained from the region, these early major migrations may have unfolded much earlier than previously believed.
Earlier research suggests that mass migrations to other continents from Africa happened some 60,000 years ago. With the evidence mounting, including the recent footprint finds, paleo-anthropologists might consider pushing back the timeline.
Likewise, there may need to be changes in the estimate of when the first humans appeared in Africa, which is traditionally said to be around 200,000 years ago. J
ust in 2022, a human fossil unearthed in Morocco was, to widespread surprise, found to be 100,000 years older than fossils found in Ethiopia, a find that by itself challenges the human evolution narrative regarding when and where the first humans appeared.
Tabuk, Saudi ArabiaMountain
Regarding the newly found footprints, they were identified close to the city of Tabuk, the capital of the Tabuk Region in the northwest of the Middle East country. Though it is a desert region today, back in the time of the early migrants who left their traces, the place would have thrived with vegetation and wildlife.
The news on the findings was shared in a press release on May 14, 2018, by the Saudi’s Ministry of Culture and Information. The foot traces were found in various directions, all associated with the site of an ancient freshwater lake. The prehistoric humans could have used the lake as a potential food resource, catching fish.
As the National Geographic writes, it was Prince Sultan bin Salman, who presides over the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, who announced the news while visiting the National Museum of Tokyo; the institution was hosting an exhibition of ancient artifacts belonging to Saudi Arabia.
Prince Salman commented, “This is a wonderful and very rare discovery that shows man’s arrival in the Arabian Peninsula from Africa alongside other human migrations,” according to Gulf News.
He suggested that the footprints might be as old as 85,000 years. According to archaeologists, further analysis is still needed, and plans are due for producing a scientific paper in the upcoming period, reports National Geographic.
Saudi Arabia might be indeed the next hotbed of archaeological excavations. The country has only recently opened its doors to scientists and researchers from abroad, inviting top-notch institutions to investigate ancient sites which can provide knowledge on key subjects such as the earliest human migrations.
The latest footprint find was due to an effort carried out by a group of researchers, both from institutions based in Saudi Arabia and from internationals such as Germany’s Max Planck Foundation for Human History, the U.K.’s Cambridge University and Oxford University, and Australia’s University of New South Wales as well as Australia National.
Saudi Arabia
While hundreds of sites have been inspected thus far, many of which former lakebeds, many more sites of interest are on the list yet. Some of the relics include ancient remnants of stone tools, and others are the recently found fossilized remain of a human finger estimated to be 90,000 years of age.
The finger and the footprint discoveries seem to be of the same period. The first was found not too far away from the latter, just roughly 90 miles away in Tabuk’s province of Tayma. The entire region is noted for already having revealed evidence of two ancient Arabian kingdoms, the Lihyan and Nabataean.
Aramaic inscription from Tayma
Another interesting discovery in the region is a recently identified fossil jawbone collected from Israel and dated to about 180,000 years ago. This is a remnant of the oldest known human outside the boundaries of Africa, according to National Geographic.
5,000-year-old Iraqi city discovered under a 10 meter-deep mound
In the Kurdistan province of northern Iraq, an ancient town called ‘Idu’ was discovered. Hidden under a mound of 32 feet (10 meters), it is believed that the city was an entertainment center between 3,300 and 2,900 years ago.
King inscriptions made for walls, tablets, and plinths of the stone show that once it was full of lavish palaces. It is thought the inscription was made by the local kings celebrating the construction of the royal palace.
Archaeologists at the University of Leipzig in Germany spent the next few years excavating the area. They believe the city of Idu spent much of its time under the control of the Assyrian Empire about 3,300 years ago.
The ancient city of Idu is now part of a Tell that rises about 32 feet (10 metres) above the surrounding plain. The modern day name of the site is Satu Qala and a village lies on top of the Tell
This cylinder seal dates back around 2,600 years, to a time after the Assyrians had re-conquered Idu. The seal would show a mythical scene if it was rolled on a piece of clay. It depicts a crouched bowman, who may be the god Ninurta, facing a griffon
The city is thought to have been a hub of activity between 3,300 and 2,900 years ago. The above image shows a living structure, with at least two rooms, that may date to around 2,000 years ago when the Parthian Empire controlled the area in Iraq
But archaeologists also found evidence that it was a fiercely independent city. Its people fought for and won, 140 years of independence before they were reconquered by the Assyrians.
Among the treasures found were artwork showing a bearded sphinx with a human head and the body of a winged lion. Above it was the words: ‘Palace of Ba’auri, king of the land of Idu, son of Edima, also king of the land of Idu.’
They also found a cylinder seal dating back roughly 2,600 years depicting a man crouching before a griffon.
‘We were lucky to be one of the first teams to begin excavations in Iraq after the 2003 war,’ archaeologists Cinzia Pappi told MailOnline.
‘The discovery of ancient Idu at Satu Qala revealed a multicultural capital and a crossroad between northern and southern Iraq and between Iraq and Western Iran in the second and first millennia BC.
‘Particularly the discovery of a local dynasty of kings fills a gap in what scholars had previously thought of as a dark age in the history of ancient Iraq.
‘Together these results have helped to redraw the political and historical map of the development of the Assyrian Empire.’ The city was hidden beneath a mound, called a tell, which is currently home to a village called Satu Qala.
The left image shows a clay model of a bed something which has been found at other sites in the Middle East. On the right is a work of art showing a bearded sphinx with a human male head and the body of a winged lion
On the left is a plaque that reads ‘Palace of Assurnasirpal’. Researchers claim that it was created for Assurnasirpal II and that he must have had a palace built or rebuilt after the Assyrians had re-conquered Idu. On the right is a work of art showing a horse wearing a headstall being led by a man in a short robe
‘For wide-scale excavations to continue, at least some of these houses will have to be removed,’ said archaeologists Cinzia Pappi.
‘Unfortunately, until a settlement is reached between the villagers and the Kurdistan regional government, further work is currently not possible.’
Archaeologists plan to continue excavating the site once they reach an agreement. In the meantime, a study on the materials from the site, now stored in the Erbil Museum of Antiquities, has just been completed in co-operation with the University of Pennsylvania.
Together, the researchers will explore the surrounding area to determine the extent of the kingdom of Idu in its regional context. The findings have been reported in the journal Anatolica.
Malta’s Hypogeum, One of the World’s Best Preserved Prehistoric Sites, Reopens to the Public
The complex of excavated cave chambers includes a temple, cemetery and funeral hall.
Main chamber
Chambers inside Malta’s Hypogeum.
Main chamber.
Passageways inside Malta’s Hypogeum.
Chambers inside Malta’s Hypogeum.
Red ochre spiral paintings inside the Hypogeum.
This month, one of the world’s best preserved prehistoric sites — a 6,000-year-old underground burial chamber on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta — reopened to the public.
Last June, Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, one of Europe’s only known neolithic necropolises, closed for a series of improvements to its environmental management system. Its reopening brings updates that will enhance conservation and ongoing data collection while improving visitor access and experience.
Archaeological evidence suggests that around 4,000 BCE, the people of Malta and Gozo began building with the purpose of ritualizing life and death. The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, one of the first and most famous of such complexes, is an underground network of alcoves and corridors carved into soft Globigerina limestone just three miles from what is now the capital city of Valletta.
The builders expanded existing caves and over the centuries excavated deeper, creating a temple, cemetery and funeral hall that would be used throughout the Żebbuġ, Ġgantija and Tarxien periods.
Over the next 1,500 years, known as the Temple Period, above-ground megalith structures cropped up throughout the archipelago, many with features that mirror their subterranean counterparts.
Whatever remained of the above-ground megalithic enclosure that once marked the Hypogeum’s entrance was destroyed by industrialization during the late 1800s. Now, visitors enter through a modernized lobby, then descend a railed walkway and move chronologically through two of the site’s three tiers, glimpsing along the way evidence of the structure’s dual role as worship and burial place.
The Hypogeum’s oldest and uppermost level consists of a passageway, access to a cistern below, a courtyard-like space dug into the promontory and five low-roofed burial chambers carved out of pre-existing caves.
Archaeologists believe this is where funerary processions likely began, and Heritage Malta has kept an original grave intact. The middle level is the most ornate. It is also where archaeologists believe the bulk of ritual activity took place. In the “Oracle Room,” an oblong chamber measuring more than five meters long, niches in the walls create amplified and echoing acoustic effects, much like those at the Oracle of Delphi.
The “Holy of Holies” is carved to look like many of the Hypogeum’s contemporary above-ground temples. In front of its entrance, two linked holes in the ground may have been used to collect libations or solid offerings. Visitors exit via a spiral staircase before entering the Hypogeum’s youngest and deepest level.
The third tier reaches 10 meters into the earth and consists of five spaces, each less than five meters in diameter, that give access to smaller rooms that served as mass graves.
The “Holy of Holies” room in Malta’s Hypogeum.
Like other megalith structures in Malta, the Hypogeum fell out of use by 2,500 BCE. The ancient necropolis wasn’t rediscovered until 1902, when construction workers accidentally found one of the chambers while excavating a well for a housing subdivision. It would be two more years before formal excavation took place and another four until the site opened to the public.
The Hypogeum provides insights into Malta’s Temple Culture and its contemporary above-ground structures. Archaeologists estimate over 6,000 people were buried at the site and have found beads, amulets, intricate pottery and carved figurines alongside the bones.
Several chambers are still decorated with black and white checkerboards and red ochre spirals and honey-combs, the only prehistoric paintings found on the island. Corbeled ceilings hint at how the ancient people of Malta supported roofs on the abundant above-ground buildings, now in ruins, found throughout the islands. “[It] gives us a chance to see what [the Hypogeum’s] contemporary temple structures might have looked like on the inside,” says Heritage Malta curator MariaElena Zammit.
According to Zammit, the Hypogeum and its artifacts held up over the millennia largely thanks to its encapsulation. “The Hypogeum is completely underground, completely closed, so it’s humid,” she says.
That moisture “keeps the salt in the stone soluble, preventing flaking. In other [temples throughout Malta], the surface is dissolving in places… [The Hypogeum] is held together by humidity.”
Without Heritage Malta’s careful control, the very presence of visitors to the ancient site would endanger its preservation. Curious fingertips leave behind visible oils that degrade any coloring and even the limestone itself.
Pathway-illuminating artificial lights encourage the growth of microorganisms, and the daily succession of warm, breathing bodies alters CO2 levels, airflow, temperature and humidity. So, while guides encourage tourists to play with the acoustics in the “Oracle Chamber,” visitors are prohibited from speaking directly into the echoing niche.
Preservation efforts first began in earnest in 1991, when the site closed for nearly a decade. The project resulted in walkways, visitor limitations, regulation of artificial light levels and an early but now outdated environmental control system.
More intensive monitoring began in 2022, as part of a grant from the European Economic Area to preserve the Unesco site for future generations, and those data, collected over a period of six years, provided the basis for the new environmental management system.
The Hypogeum’s newest preservation efforts include both passive and active measures, from improved insulation to better control humidity and temperature to modernized technology for studying microorganism growth and tracking real-time changes to the site’s microclimate. “Data will continue to be gathered and analyzed to continually assess the performance of the system installed, as well as [to] monitor the behavior of the site,” says Zammit.
Many of the changes won’t be visible to visitors: Ducts hide behind walls and the air handling units and chillers sit atop the visitor’s center roof. However, tourists will find a cleaner, more modern visitor center with high-pressure laminate panels, replacing mold-prone carpeting, and a new buffer system that gradually increases humidity between the welcome area and the main site.
The most exciting change for visitors will be the enhanced interpretation and virtual tour option. In 2000 after its first major preservation efforts, Heritage Malta limited site tours to 80 individuals per day. That number still stands, so visitors must book weeks or even months in advance to tour the Hypogeum in person.
Furthermore, low lighting and slick walkways render the site inaccessible to people in wheelchairs or with limited mobility. To help meet demand, the visitor’s center is now equipped with audiovisual technology that allows an additional 70 people to virtually tour the site daily from its lobby.
“Thus,” says Zammit, “Heritage Malta will be implementing its mission by making the site more accessible to more members of the community.”
2,000-Year-Old Grave of Child and Puppy Found in France
The dog, outfitted in a collar with a bell, was placed next to the 1-year-old’s feet.
A bent metal rod discovered in the grave was likely a dog toy.
Some 2,000 years ago, a small child in Roman Gaul—now France—died and was buried alongside what archaeologists say was probably a pet puppy.
As Kim Willsher reports for the Guardian, researchers from the National Institute for Preventative Archaeological Research (INRAP) found an iron ring attached to a bent metal rod—likely a toy—between the legs of the dog, which was placed at the child’s feet outside of the coffin. The canine sported a collar with a bell and bronze decorations.
The child, who died when they were about 1 year old, was buried with an array of objects, including terracotta vases, half a pig and two headless chickens, as well as glass pots believed to have contained oils and medicines. The researchers are testing the receptacles to discover exactly what they held.
Given the wealth of grave goods found at the site, the team suggests that the child belonged to an elite family.
“The items that accompany this deceased are absolutely exceptional, both in terms of quantity and quality,” says an INRAP statement, per a translation by the Guardian.
“Such a profusion of crockery and butchered items, as well as the personal effects that followed the child to [their] grave, underline the privileged rank to which [their] family belonged.
A dog’s association with a young child is well documented in a funeral context, but here it is the collar and bell that are unusual.”
Dated to sometime during the first three decades A.D., more than 50 years after Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, the burial is the “oldest and most important” child’s grave unearthed in France to date, according to the Guardian. At the time of the infant’s death, Gaul was becoming increasingly assimilated into the Greco-Roman world.
The wealth of goods buried with the child suggests they hailed from an elite family.
Laurence Lautier, head of the research team, tells Agence France-Presse that the burial is “unusual because of the profusion of vases and offerings. In this type of tomb we often find one or two pots placed at the foot. Here there are around 20 as well as many food offerings.”
Lautier adds that the vessels probably contained “the child’s part of the food and drink from the funeral banquet.”
Also found in the grave was an older child’s baby tooth, which was placed on a fragment of shell. The researchers say that the tooth may have been left by a sibling of the deceased.
Though the bodies of adults were normally cremated during this period, small children were often buried, reports Clyde Hughes for UPI.
The research team conducted the dig ahead of a development project at the Clermont-Ferrand Auvergne Airport in central France. Since November, the group has excavated a 7.4-acre area of the site.
In addition to the Roman-era grave, the archaeologists have found artifacts spanning the Iron Age through the Middle Ages. Highlight include pits and structures dated to as early as 800 B.C., as well as medieval-era buildings containing equine and bovine remains that indicate they may have housed a butchery operation.
The entire site is covered by a network of ditches, suggesting that locals made multiple efforts to drain the area’s marshland over the millennia.
‘Stunning’ Victorian Bathhouse Unearthed Beneath Manchester Parking Lot
The facility offered laundry and bathing services for 19th-century textile workers and their families.
The baths featured both male and female pools, as well as laundry facilities.
Ahead of construction of a new public park, archaeologists in Manchester, England, have uncovered a bathhouse used by textile factory workers more than 150 years ago.
“We knew what we would be excavating but we didn’t expect the tiles to be in such good condition,” Graham Mottershead, project manager at Salford Archaeology, tells BBC News. “[T]hey are stunning.”
As Louise Rhind-Tutt reports for I Love Manchester, the baths opened in 1857, offering much-needed bathing and laundry services for workers during the city’s heyday as a center of industrial textile production. The facility included male and female pools, the largest of which measured 62 feet.
So far, researchers have uncovered two large tiled pools, boilers, flues and pumps. The mechanical systems heated water and circulated it through both the bathing and laundry facilities.
To uncover the baths’ details, archaeologists are using 3-D laser scanning and drone photography, in addition to physical excavation. The team will preserve these digital records alongside historical documents, allowing for the creation of accurate representations of the facilities.
“The sheer pace of change and innovation during the Industrial Revolution means many advancements were not recorded,” says Mottershead in a statement.
“Excavations like this help us to learn a great deal about what is arguably the most important period of human history and, in the case of Mayfield, a location that is so very relevant to the heritage of the people of Manchester.”
The researchers said the condition of the uncovered bathhouse tiles was “stunning.”
A history provided by the development company explains that the Mayfield area of Manchester became an important industrial center after businessman Thomas Hoyle established the Mayfield Print Works there in 1782.
By the mid-19th century, the neighborhood had won fame for its impressively quick printing of patterned textiles. At the time, Manchester as a whole was known as “Cottonopolis”—a reflection of its centrality to cloth production.
The Mayfield Baths were the third public baths built in the city. Ian Miller, an archaeologist at the University of Salford, tells BBC News that baths began as an amenity for the middle class in the 18th century but were followed by public facilities oriented toward the hygienic needs of industrial workers and their families. The city’s first public baths opened in 1846. Later, more were built, reaching a peak of 30 across the city by the late 19th century.
“Before public baths the textile workers lived in crammed insanitary conditions and would wash their clothes in the used bath water,” Miller says. “Public baths were a game changer for the health of the working classes, keeping clean and having clean clothes were essential for public health.”
The Guardian’s Josh Halliday reports that the facility remained standing until World War II, when it was damaged by bombing. It was later demolished.
More recently, the area, located behind Manchester Piccadilly station, went largely unused. The planned 6.5-acre Mayfield Park will be the first new public park built in the city in 100 years.
Per I Love Manchester, the excavation is part of an enormous effort by the Mayfield Partnership to redevelop a large section of the English city. In addition to the park, the plan includes the construction of 1,500 homes and nearly two million square feet of commercial, retail and leisure space.
One of the commercial buildings will be named after George Poulton, a 19th-century competitive swimmer and public health advocate who gave swimming lessons at the Mayfield Baths and educated the public about hygiene. The design of the building’s foyer will echo the baths’ appearance.
3,000-Year-Old Submerged Settlement Discovered in Switzerland
Traces of a prehistoric pile dwelling suggest humans inhabited the Lake Lucerne area 2,000 years earlier than previously thought
Underwater archaeologists recovered 30 wooden poles used as supports for prehistoric pile dwellings.
Archaeologists surveying Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne have discovered the remains of a submerged Bronze Age village.
As Swissinfo.ch reports, the new finds suggest that the area around the lake was settled 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Though researchers have long searched for proof of early habitation in the Lucerne region, a thick layer of mud had obscured traces of the village until recently.
Per a statement from the local government, construction of a pipeline at Lake Lucerne offered underwater archaeologists the chance to examine the lakebed up close. The first dive took place in December ; between March 2022 and February 2022, reports Swissinfo.ch, the team recovered about 30 wooden poles and 5 ceramic fragments at depths of roughly 10 to 13 feet.
“These new finds from the Lucerne lake basin confirm that people settled here as early as 3,000 years ago,” says the statement, per Google Translate. “[W]ith this evidence, the city of Lucerne suddenly becomes around 2,000 years older than has been previously proven.”
Experts used radiocarbon analysis to date the artifacts to about 1000 B.C., when the lake level was more than 16 feet lower than it is today, writes Garry Shaw for the Art Newspaper. According to the statement, these conditions “formed an ideal, easily accessible settlement area” around the lake basin.
The team identified the wooden sticks found at the site as supports used in pile dwellings, or prehistoric coastal houses that stood on stilts. Dwellings of this kind were common in and around the Alps between 5000 and 500 B.C., notes Unesco, and can provide researchers with useful insights into Europe’s Neolithic period and Bronze Age.
Researchers surveyed the lakebed between December 2022 and February 2022.
“The wood is very soft on the outside and hard on the inside,” archaeologist Andreas Mäder tells Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), per Google Translate. “Something like that is typical of prehistoric piles.”
For now, the scholars’ research is limited to the trench surrounding the underwater pipeline. Traces of other submerged settlements are likely hidden nearby, but the team will need additional funding to investigate the area further.
As Heritage Daily reports, Lake Lucerne is a 44-square-mile body of water that reaches depths of up to 1,424 feet. Per a second government statement, the city of Lucerne itself was established 800 years ago.
Written records indicate that humans had settled in the area by the eighth century A.D., but until now, archaeological evidence of earlier habitation was scant.
Lake Lucerne’s water level rose significantly in the millennia following the submerged village’s peak, with a weather-driven increase in rubble and debris buildup exacerbated by medieval residents’ construction of water mills and other buildings. The lake likely reached its current level during the 15th century, according to the statement.
The archaeologists’ announcement coincides with the tenth anniversary of Unesco adding “Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps” to its World Heritage List. In total, wrote Caroline Bishop for the Local Switzerland in 2017, the listing includes 111 sites across Europe, including 56 in Switzerland.
As Unesco noted in a 2011 statement, “The settlements are a unique group of exceptionally well-preserved and culturally rich archaeological sites, which constitute one of the most important sources for the study of early agrarian societies in the region.”
5,000-year-old ‘bog body’ found in Denmark may be a human sacrifice victim
The bones of a possible ancient human sacrifice victim have been found in a bog in Denmark.
The archaeologists first found the bones from a human leg, and then a pelvis and a lower jaw with some teeth still attached.
Archaeologists have discovered the ancient skeletal remains of a so-called bog body in Denmark near the remnants of a flint ax and animal bones, clues that suggest this person was ritually sacrificed more than 5,000 years ago.
Little is known so far about the supposed victim, including the person’s sex and age at the time of death. But the researchers think the body was deliberately placed in the bog during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age.
“That’s the early phase of the Danish Neolithic,” said excavation leader Emil Struve(opens in new tab), an archaeologist and curator at the ROMU museums in Roskilde. “We know that traditions of human sacrifices date back that far — we have other examples of it.”
Dozens of so-called bog bodies have been found throughout northwestern Europe — particularly in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain, where human sacrifices in bogs seem to have persisted for several thousand years.
“In our area here, we have several different bog bodies,” Struve told Live Science. “It’s an ongoing tradition that goes back all the way to the Neolithic.”
The archaeologists hope that wear on the teeth could indicate the person’s age when they died, and that the teeth themselves may contain ancient DNA.
Ancient bones
The ROMU archaeological team found the latest set of bones in October ahead of the construction of a housing development. The site, which has now been drained, had been a bog near the town of Stenløse, on the large island of Zealand and just northwest of the Danish capital Copenhagen.
Danish law requires archaeologists to examine all land that’s to be built on, and the first bones of the Stenløse bog body were found during a test excavation at the site, Struve said.
The site near Stenløse was originally a bog, but it’s been drained for use as farmland. A housing development is due to be built there next year
The archaeologists will now fully excavate the site in the spring, when the ground has thawed after winter. But the initial excavations have revealed leg bones, a pelvis and part of a lower jaw with some teeth still attached. The other parts of the body lay outside a protective layer of peat in the bog and were not preserved, he noted.
Several animal bones found near the human remains indicate this was an area of the bog used for rituals.
Struve hopes that the sex of the body can be determined based on the pelvis and that wear on the teeth may indicate the individual’s age. In addition, the teeth could be sources of ancient DNA, which might reveal even more about the person’s identity, he said.
Archaeologists from the ROMU museums supervised the digger making the initial test trench at the site near Stenløse
Bog bodies
Struve said the flint ax-head found near the body was not polished after it was made and may have never been used, and so it seems likely that this, too, was a deliberate offering.
A flint axe head found next to the human remains seems never to have been used; its in a style that dates to about 3600 B.C.
The oldest bog body in the world, known as Koelbjerg Man, was found in Denmark in the 1940s and may date to 10,000 years ago, while others date to the Iron Age in the region from about 2,500 years ago.
One of the most famous and best preserved bog bodies is Tollund Man, who was found on Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula in 1950 and is thought to have been sacrificed in about 400 B.C.
A few of the bog bodies seem to have been accident victims who drowned after they fell in the water, but archaeologists think most were killed deliberately, perhaps as human sacrifices at times of famines or other disasters.
Miranda Aldhouse-Green(opens in new tab), a professor emeritus of history, archaeology and religion at Cardiff University in the U.K. and the author of the book “Bog Bodies Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery”(opens in new tab) (Thames & Hudson, 2015), said ancient people were likely well aware that bogs could preserve bodies.
“If you put a body in the bog, it would not decay — it would stay between the worlds of the living and the dead.”
2,000-Year-Old Terracotta Figurines of Deities, Mortals, Animals Found in Turkey
Some of the petite sculptures still bear traces of the pigments used to decorate them.
A number of terracotta heads were found separated from the rest of their bodies.
Turkish archaeologists studying the ruins of the ancient town of Myra have found more than 50 terracotta figurines depicting humans, gods and animals.
The team, working on behalf of Akdeniz University and Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, excavated the town’s 12,000 seat Roman-era theater and an older, smaller theater located below it this past summer.
They found the figurines in the older structure, which dates to the Hellenistic period (spanning Alexander the Great’s death in 323 B.C to the rise of the Roman Empire around 31 B.C.).
Dig leader Nevzat Çevik, an archaeologist at Akdeniz, tells Yasemin Saplakoglu that the art’s discovery was “an unexpected big surprise.”
He adds, “It is as if the people of ancient Myra were resurrected and ran through the time tunnel all together and came to our day.”
The statuettes, each standing just a few inches tall, include rams, horsemen, women with children and a boy carrying fruit, as well as mythic figures like Leto, Artemis, Apollo and Heracles.
Çevik tells the Demirören News Agency that some of the figures still bear traces of the red, blue and pink pigments used to paint them.
“The fact that the dyes on them are partially preserved shows us the color of clothes they wore in their time,” he says.
In addition to the terracotta figures, the team found ceramic, bronze, lead and silver artifacts scattered around the Hellenistic theater.
The figurines depict gods, humans and animals.
Rock-cut tombs in Myra
Myra, located near the mouth of the Andriacus River on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey, was an important Mediterranean port city for thousands of years, falling under the control of different regional forces over the centuries.
Per Encyclopedia Britannica, it was one of the most important towns in ancient Lycia, a confederation of maritime cities dating back in some form to the 14th century B.C. In the sixth century B.C., Persian forces conquered Lycia, which later came under Roman control before becoming its own Roman province around the fourth century A.D.
Among Myra’s best-known features are rock-cut tombs, many of which look like wooden houses and shrines, carved into its hills between the fifth and third centuries B.C. The city’s huge Roman theater, built in the third century A.D., is known as one of the most impressive in Anatolia.
The Hurriyet Daily News notes that excavations at the site have been ongoing for more than a decade. Over the summer, project coordinators brought dozens of researchers and workers to the site in Antalya’s Demre district.
“I can say that the excavations we carried out in the Myra Ancient City Theater this summer gave one of the most important gifts of the year to Anatolian archaeology,” Çevik tells Hurriyet.
In addition to many complete figurines, Live Science reports that the team found more than 50 heads without bodies—discoveries that suggest more artifacts are still waiting to be discovered.
For now, the team is continuing to piece together remnants of additional figurines. It plans to share them with the Museum of Lycian Civilizations in Demre.
