All posts tagged: archeology

DNA evidence points to a massive stone age population collapse

DNA evidence points to a massive stone age population collapse

Published by Jenni Sidey

A stone tomb near Paris held generations of dead, but the people buried there did not all belong to the same world. That is the striking picture emerging from new genetic work on 132 individuals buried at Bury, a large Neolithic megalithic site about 50 kilometers north of Paris. The tomb was used in two separate phases, first around 3200 to 3100 BC. Then it was used again across much of the third millennium BC until about 2450 BC. Between those periods, something appears to have gone badly wrong. The break is not subtle. The people buried in the earlier phase were not closely related to the later group. Instead, the DNA points to a major population turnover. This fits into a broader pattern of demographic upheaval that seems to have affected much of northwestern Europe at the end of the fourth millennium BC. “We see a clear genetic break between the two periods,” said Frederik Valeur Seersholm, an assistant professor at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen and one of the study’s …

Ruins of a ‘Unique’ Temple Complex Discovered in Northern Sinai

Ruins of a ‘Unique’ Temple Complex Discovered in Northern Sinai

Published by Jenni Sidey

An Egyptian archeological mission has announced their discovery of a temple complex at Tell el-Farama, the site of the ancient city of Pelusium in northern Sinai. The ruin feaures a large circular basin, around 100 feet in diameter, once attached to an easternmost branch of the Nile (now long dry). Surrounding the basin, which would have been filled with water, is a complex system of drainage channels; at its center is a square plinth that may have supported a statue of the local deity Pelusius. The archeologists—working under the Supreme Council of Antiquities—first discovered the complex in 2019, unearthing a Greco-Roman structure with benches inside it that they originally thought was a civic building. But according to Dr. Hisham Hussein, head of the Central Department for Maritime Antiquities and Sinai and supervisor of the excavation, ongoing excavation and comparative studies have changed their understanding of the site. Related Articles “We now know this was a sacred water installation used in religious rituals,” said Hussein in a statement, “not a political structure.” Stratigraphic evidence suggests that …

Native Americans Used Dice Earlier Than Previously Known, Study Shows

Native Americans Used Dice Earlier Than Previously Known, Study Shows

Published by José Betancourt

Native Americans were using dice for gaming long before Bronze Age societies in the Old World, according to a new Colorado State University study. Research published in the journal American Antiquity by Robert J. Madden, a PhD student at CSU, presents evidence that dice were made by hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains more than 12,000 years ago. Dice games are considered humanity’s earliest structured engagement with the idea of randomness, the intellectual precursor to probabilistic thinking. Until now, dice games were thought to have originated in the complex societies of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley beginning around 5,500 years ago. Related Articles Aware that Native Americans have a long history of dice games, Madden created a checklist of specific attributes of historic Native American dice to reclassify older artifacts. “We had a body of literature that carried [the use of dice] all the way back to about 2,000 years before the present,” Madden told CSU’s The Audit podcast, “but it broke down at that point. That got me interested in seeing what I could do to trace this back. How …

Rome’s Colosseum Gets a New Pedestrian Plaza

Rome’s Colosseum Gets a New Pedestrian Plaza

Published by José Betancourt

A restoration of the Roman Colosseum’s southern piazza has been completed after four years of construction, according to Artnet News. The project, led by Stefano Boeri Interiors, has recreated the travertine-paved pedestrian plaza outside the amphitheater’s southern façade, where spectators once waited to enter the arena. Built between 70 and 80 CE, the Roman Colosseum remains one of the engineering marvels of the world. At four stories high and with 80 arched entrances, the amphitheater could seat 50,000 or more people, equal to a modern stadium. Even more impressive, it was completely freestanding, supported by a complex vault system. Related Articles It had a retractable awning system to shade spectators, and a complement of latrines and water fountains. Its most famous use was for gladiator games, in which enslaved people or prisoners of war fought each other or wild animals to the death. It also presented public executions and mock naval battles, for which the amphitheater could reportedly be filled with water. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Colosseum was used as a …

3.67 million year old fossil provides new insight into the evolution of the human face

3.67 million year old fossil provides new insight into the evolution of the human face

Published by Jenni Sidey

Little Foot’s face looks like it has been through a slow-motion car crash, because it has. For millions of years, rock pressure and shifting sediments pushed and twisted the fossil’s facial bones until the front of the skull no longer fit together in a way scientists could safely fix by hand. Now, a new digital rebuild of that face is offering a sharper view of how early hominin faces varied across Africa around 4 to 3 million years ago. Little Foot, formally cataloged as StW 573, comes from the Sterkfontein Caves about 40 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg, inside South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. It is described as the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found. The skeleton has fueled research for years, but the face remained a stubborn problem. A face rebuilt without touching the bone An international team led by Dr. Amelie Beaudet and Professor Dominic Stratford digitally reassembled the face using high-resolution synchrotron scanning at the Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom and virtual reconstruction methods. The work was …

40,000-year-old Paleolithic carvings may be the precursor to human writing

40,000-year-old Paleolithic carvings may be the precursor to human writing

Published by Jenni Sidey

Rows of tiny crosses and dots run along the flank of a mammoth no bigger than your palm. Someone carved it from a tusk around 40,000 years ago, then went back and added the marks with care. They show up again on other Aurignacian objects from southwestern Germany, on ivory plates and figurines and bones. For a long time, it was easy to treat them as decoration, or as something too fragmentary to take seriously. A new computational analysis argues otherwise. Linguist Christian Bentz of Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz of Berlin’s Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte say the repeated sign sequences on Ice Age objects carry a measurable “statistical fingerprint,” and that fingerprint looks unexpectedly close to the earliest proto-cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia. Their work appears in PNAS. They do not claim these marks are writing in the modern sense. Still, the numbers suggest the marks were more than idle doodles. Examples of Uruk protocuneiform tablets from Uruk V. (CREDIT: PNAS / CC-BY-SA 4.0, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum/Olaf M. Teßmer) …

1.9 million-year-old finding points to the earliest evidence of humans outside of Africa

1.9 million-year-old finding points to the earliest evidence of humans outside of Africa

Published by Jenni Sidey

When a stone sits on the Earth’s surface, cosmic rays quietly pepper it, leaving behind rare isotopes like tiny time stamps. Bury the stone deep enough, and that cosmic “printing press” shuts off. From there, those isotopes decay in a predictable way. In geology, that is as close as you get to a stopwatch. That stopwatch, along with two other independent clocks, has helped researchers build a sharper timeline for ‘Ubeidiya, an early prehistoric site in Israel’s Jordan Valley. The site has long mattered to anyone trying to map how early humans moved beyond Africa. A new study argues the site is at least 1.9 million years old, older than many past estimates and among the earliest known records of early humans outside Africa. The work was led by Prof. Ari Matmon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Omry Barzilai of Haifa University, and Prof. Miriam Belmaker of the University of Tulsa. Their approach leaned on three dating methods that ask the same question in different ways: how old are the sediments and artifacts …

In a First, Portugal Returns Looted Antiquities to Mexico

In a First, Portugal Returns Looted Antiquities to Mexico

Published by José Betancourt

In a sign of growing international cooperation in the restitution of looted artifacts, Portugal has returned three pre-Columbian objects to Mexico. This will be the first time Portugal has repatriated unlawfully acquired antiquities to that country. The three pieces represent distinct pre-Hispanic periods and cultures. They include a Shaft Tomb Culture female figure, a Maya painted vessel, and a Zapotec urn. According to a press release from Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the handover took place at the Mexican embassy in Lisbon on February 12. The objects will be returned to Mexico in the coming weeks. Related Articles “This return confirms that international cooperation protects who we are,” said Claudia Curiel de Icaza, Mexico’s Secretary of Culture. “Each restitution restores memory and identity to Mexico and reaffirms the shared commitment to combating the trafficking of cultural property.” The objects were originally flagged by the embassy in Portugal, which notified Portuguese authorities of their existence. Specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), an agency of the Ministry of Culture, subsequently reviewed photographs provided …

Rich medieval Danes bought graves ‘closer to God’, study finds

Rich medieval Danes bought graves ‘closer to God’, study finds

Published by Jenni Sidey

In medieval Denmark, death could double as a display of status. The closer your grave lay to a church wall or inside a monastery, the more it likely cost. Wealth followed you into the ground. That raised a harder question. If someone carried a disease tied to stigma, would that person still rest near the altar? A team led by Dr. Saige Kelmelis of the University of South Dakota set out to test that idea. Working with Vicki Kristensen and Dr. Dorthe Pedersen of the University of Southern Denmark, Kelmelis examined nearly a thousand skeletons from medieval cemeteries. Their findings appear in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. “When we started this work, I was immediately reminded of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, specifically the scene with the plague cart,” Kelmelis said. “I think this image depicts our ideas of how people in the past — and in some cases today — respond to debilitating diseases. However, our study reveals that medieval communities were variable in their responses and in their makeup. For several …

Digitally Rebuilding the Lighthouse of Alexandria

Digitally Rebuilding the Lighthouse of Alexandria

Published by Jenni Sidey

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, according to traditional lists, the Lighthouse of Alexandria once loomed over the Mediterranean city’s harbor during Egypt’s Hellenistic age. At 460 feet tall, it was second only to the Great Pyramid of Gaza in height. The lighthouse, also known as the Pharos of Alexandria, was commissioned by Ptolemy I Soter (c. 367–283 B.C.), a Macedonian Greek general under Alexander the Great who became pharaoh of Egypt; it was seen to completion by his son and successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus. During the Ptolomaic dynasty, which lasted 300 years, Alexandria was a center of Greek culture in Egypt. Related Articles Located on the island of Pharos off the coast of Alexandria, the lighthouse was constructed of limestone and was rectangular at the bottom, octagonal in the middle, and cylindrical at the top. It used mirrors and a furnace to guide ships to the city’s harbor. The building, already weakened by previous tremblors, was destroyed by the 1303 earthquake, most of its remains disappearing under rising seas. Now, however, …