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Scientists mapping the ruins of the abandoned Maya city of Caracol in Belize knew they had tackled a big job, uncovering the city from the encroaching jungle. They didn’t know how big it really is until modern mapping techniques took a look underneath the forest canopy.
An April 2009 flyover of the Maya city of Caracol used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) equipment—which bounces laser beams off the ground—to help scientists construct a 3-D map of the settlement in western Belize. The survey revealed previously unknown buildings, roads, and other features in just four days, scientists announced earlier this month at the International Symposium on Archaeometry in Tampa, Florida.
How much bigger is it?
…the project also revealed thousands of new structures, 11 new roads, tens of thousands of agricultural terraces, and even a number of hidden caves throughout a city, which is now known to stretch over 68 square miles (177 square kilometers).
Caracol was burned around A.D. 895, and was completely abandoned by the year 1050. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!
(Image credit: University of Central Florida Caracol Archaeological Project)
As Arctic ice fields retreat, more and more artifacts that were frozen and buried are coming to light. In 1997, hunters found a dart that turned out to be over 4,000 years old. Since then, scientists are searching for history that was preserved under ice for thousands of years. Biologists are finding specimens of well-preserved plants and animals. Archaeologists are collecting evidence of human habitation. Pictured is a bone arrow with a copper tip, believed to be about 1600 years old. TYWKIWDBI has a roundup of stories of newly-found glacial artifacts. Link
This odd story marries archeology with physics. Roman lead ingots mined 2,000 years ago are an archaeological treasure. They are also perfect for shielding a nuclear particle detector for cutting-edge physics experiments.
The 120 lead ingots, each weighing about 33 kilograms, come from a larger load recovered 20 years ago from a Roman shipwreck, the remains of a vessel that sank between 80 B.C. and 50 B.C. off the coast of Sardinia. As a testimony to the extent of ancient Rome’s manufacturing and trading capacities, the ingots are of great value to archaeologists, who have been preserving and studying them at the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, southern Sardinia. What makes the ingots equally valuable to physicists is the fact that over the past 2,000 years their lead has almost completely lost its natural radioactivity. It is therefore the perfect material with which to shield the CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) detector, which Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) is building at the Gran Sasso laboratory.
Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
(image credit: INFN/Cagliari Archeological Superintendence)
Ostrich eggshells with patterns engraved on them were found in Africa dating back 60,000 years. The eggshells were used to carry water.
The four different patterns and markings are repeated and believed to convey ownership or purpose and to differentiate the eggs from each other.
The researchers led by Pierre-Jean Texier, of the University of Bordeaux, said that before this discovery, the first signs of art, writing or ‘culture’ was thought to have been first shown in the late Stone Age between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago.
It included cave paintings dating back to 30,000 years BC, thought to be some of the earliest examples of decorative art or written communication.
But this latest discovery, which is much older, showed “collective identities and individual expressions” that were the beginning of modern civilised behaviour, they said.
In other words, writing. Or at least a form or communication that led to writing. The researchers examined 270 fragments of ostrich eggs found in South Africa. Link -via Scribal Terror
Experimental archaeology is a field of study in which scholars attempt to recreate functional implements of ancient technologies. Alasdair Wilkins of io9 has a roundup of ten such efforts, including the Butser Ancient Farm. This is a working farm in Britain using pre-Roman conquest Iron Age technology.
Link | Butser Ancient Farm | Photo: Butser Ancient Farm
The Cro Magnon were said to be the precursor to the Homo sapiens, however we know very little about their religion, traditions, and way of life. What we do know is that their cave drawings were strategically placed in inaccessible areas. What were they trying to accomplish and what did the drawings mean?
What’s interesting about the Cro Magnon cave drawings is that the animals are quite lifelike in their orientation, yet the people drawn were not. Furthermore, the animals painted-bison, horses, wild boar, and bears-depict arrows and spears plunging into their bodies at the most critical points during a hunt. This same action is shared with the Native Americans, who similarly shot arrows into certain points within the animals to provide the animal with a swift death.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.
Giants once roamed the earth, meaning many species of animals that are familiar to us have enormous extinct ancestors. Cracked looks at seven of them, some of which have been previously featured individually at Neatorama. Take a look at Argentavis magnificens.
As if answering the dare to make us feel more inadequate, the world gave us Argentavis magnificens, the largest flying bird in recorded history. These beasts possessed a wingspan between 19- and 26-feet, and a wing area of 75-feet, which you may notice is only slightly smaller than a Lear Jet. In addition to its staggering size and 240-pound weight, the bird is believed to have swallowed prey as large as cattle in one fell swoop.
Link -via Gorilla Mask
A team of archaeologists on the Greek island of Crete found a tool way older than what they expected to find. Thomas Strasser of the University of Providence and his crew hoped to find artifacts dating back as far as 11,000 years. The five-inch axe they uncovered was something completely different.
Knapped from a cobble of local quartz stone, the rough-looking tool resembled hand axes discovered in Africa and mainland Europe and used by human ancestors until about 175,000 years ago. This stone tool technology, which could have been useful for smashing bones and cutting flesh, had been relatively static for over a million years.
Crete has been surrounded by vast stretches of sea for some five million years. The discovery of the hand ax suggests that people besides technologically modern humans—possibly Homo heidelbergensis—island-hopped across the Mediterranean tens of thousands of millennia earlier than expected.
More digging unearthed a total of 30 hand axes plus other tools at nine locations on Crete. The rock terraces the tools were taken from are thought to range from 45,000 years old to 130,000 years old.
“I was flabbergasted,” said Boston University archaeologist and stone-tool expert Curtis Runnels. “The idea of finding tools from this very early time period on Crete was about as believable as finding an iPod in King Tut’s tomb.”
It was thought that humans earlier than Homo sapiens were incapable of long deliberate sea voyages. Link
(image credit: Thomas Strasser)
That’s the provocative title of an article in this month’s Archaeology magazine exploring the scientific, legal, and ethical considerations involved. Extensive information about the Neanderthal genetic code is available, and the technologic problems can apparently be overcome. Questions remain about how the process might best be accomplished, and whether it should be done at all.
The Neanderthals broke away from the lineage of modern humans around 450,000 years ago… As different as Neanderthals were, they may not have been different enough to be considered a separate species. “There are humans today who are more different from each other in phenotype [physical characteristics],” says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin… Many of the differences between a Neanderthal clone and a modern human would be due to genetic changes our species has undergone since Neanderthals became extinct… Clones created from a genome that is more than 30,000 years old will not have immunity to a wide variety of diseases, some of which would likely be fatal. They will be lactose intolerant, have difficulty metabolizing alcohol, be prone to developing Alzheimer’s disease, and maybe most importantly, will have brains different from modern people’s…
“I think there would be no question that if you cloned a Neanderthal, that individual would be recognized as having human rights under the Constitution and international treaties,” says Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. The law does not define what a human being is, but legal scholars are debating questions of human rights in cases involving genetic engineering…
Hawks believes the barriers to Neanderthal cloning will come down. “We are going to bring back the mammoth… the impetus against doing Neanderthal because it is too weird is going to go away.” He doesn’t think creating a Neanderthal clone is ethical science, but points out that there are always people who are willing to overlook the ethics. “In the end,” Hawks says, “we are going to have a cloned Neanderthal, I’m just sure of it.”
Much more at the link. The image is a computer-assisted reconstruction of a Neanderthal child by a research team at the University of Zurich.
Previously on Neatorama: Misconceptions About Neanderthals, and Cavemen Did Have Compassion: They Cared for Disabled Children.
I remember reading in Roman History class back in college that during the reign of Emperor Trajan (r. 98-117 AD), the Roman Empire sent an emissary to China. This information was found not in Roman records, but Chinese. Now there’s some archaeological evidence to support the historical claim of direct Roman-Chinese contact. The remains of a man with East Asian genes from 2,000 years ago has turned up in southern Italy:
Researchers found his body on an imperial Roman estate and took dental samples. Why examine teeth? Well, the water you drink at birth leaves a distinct signature in your teeth. That water signature is in the form of oxygen isotopes, atoms of oxygen with different numbers of neutrons. Isotopes say something about the latitude and elevation of your birthplace—which in the case of our mystery man definitely wasn’t southern Italy.
Then the researchers tested his mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through your maternal lineage. And this fellow had east Asian genes.
Link | Photo: Indiana University
Archaeologists have recently found a temple underneath the city of Alexandria, Egypt dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet. It contains around 600 statues of cats!
Egyptian archaeologists who found the temple say it was built by Queen Berenike II, wife of Greek King Ptolemy III, who ruled Egypt from 246 to 221 B.C.
Cats were important house pets in ancient Egypt and were often depicted in private tombs. In some cases, cats were mummified in the same way as humans and buried at temples.
The statue pictured is made of limestone. Link
(image credit: Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities)
The oldest remains yet of a member of English royalty are thought to have been found in Germany. Queen Eadgyth (pronounced Edith) was the sister of King Athelstan and married the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I in 929 AD. She died in 946. The bone fragments from a lead coffin in Magdeburg will be analyzed by a team of forensic specialists.
Professor Mark Horton of the Bristol University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who is coordinating this side of the research, explained the strategy: “We know that Saxon royalty moved around quite a lot, and we hope to match the isotope results with known locations around Wessex and Mercia, where she could have spent her childhood. If we can prove this truly is Eadgyth, this will be one of the most exciting historical discoveries in recent years.”
Eadgyth is likely to be the oldest member of the English royal family whose remains have survived. Her brother, King Athelstan is generally considered to have been the first King of England after he unified the various Saxon and Celtic kingdoms following the battle of Brunanburgh in 937. His tomb survives in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, but is most likely empty. Eadgyth’s sister Adiva – also offered to Otto as wife, but he choose Eadgyth instead – was also married to an unknown European ruler, but her tomb is not located.
(image credit: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Juraj Liptak)
A new set of tombs have been found near the great pyramids of Egypt, belonging to the workers who built the pyramids 4,000 years ago. The discovery points away from the idea that the monuments were built by slaves. Instead, Egyptologists now believe they were paid professionals, according to Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“These tombs were built beside the king’s pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves,” said Hawass in the statement. “If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king’s.”
Evidence from the site, Hawass said, indicates that the approximately 10,000 laborers working on the pyramids ate 21 cattle and 23 sheep sent to them daily from farms in northern and southern Egypt.
Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
The Egyptians had the Book of the Dead to express one’s descent into the afterlife. At the Valley of the Statues in Colombia, however, there are guardians watching over the land. History comes alive in these hand carved figurines, telling the story of various cultures that called San Agustin their home.
(image credit: Jan Arkesteijn)
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Archaeology magazine has eight stories of archaeological hoaxes that made the news throughout history, with bonus links to their earlier articles about hoaxes.
The reasons for perpetrating hoaxes and forgeries range as widely as the kinds of fakes. Common motives for making bogus artifacts include publicity and self-promotion, monetary gain, practical jokes, and revenge, but some fakers have had the goal of supporting their own theories about the human past. Fakes have often been inspired by nationalism, with patriotic perpetrators boosting their country through spurious links to past civilizations.
People are taken in by hoaxes and fakes for many reasons. Successful bogus artifacts often match expectations or preconceived ideas of antiquities. Spectacular fakes have worked because those who buy them are blinded by their own pride of ownership–and the higher the price tag, the harder it is to make an embarrassing admission that it’s a fake.
Shown is the Fawcett idol, which led Percy Fawcett to search for Atlantis in the jungles of South America. He never returned. Link -via Metafilter
In this documentary video, historians and archaeologists from the year 3000 try to piece together information about The Beatles from 20th Century fragmentary remains. The impact that John, Paul, Greg, and Scottie had on music, culture, and technology cannot be underestimated.
The video was created by Scott Gairdner, a producer of viral humor videos.
via The Presurfer
Thousands of mummified animals have been recovered in Egypt over the past hundred years. They include gazelles, shrews, rams, crocodiles, hawks, fish, dung beetles, and of course, cats. In the early days of excavation, they were considered unimportant, as things to be pushed aside in order to get to the treasure. Scientists are now studying them in detail for clues about the way ancient Egyptian humans lived. National Geographic looks at how the animals were preserved, and why. Link
(image credit: Richard Barnes)
Experts in Great Britain are overwhelmed by both the magnitude and the quality of the objects, which include not only coins but beautifully-crafted works of art. There are 1,500 items, most of which are warfare-related (sword pommel caps, hilt plates) and jewelry, crosses, and decorative items designed to be worn by males rather than females. It appears to be a collection of trophies, perhaps from a battle or the accumulation of a military career.
The Staffordshire Hoard contains about 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, making it far bigger than the Sutton Hoo discovery in 1939 when 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold was found near Woodbridge in Suffolk.
Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe, said: “This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries.
“(It is) absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells.”
Some of the gold pieces are inlaid with precious stones such as garnets. The hoard appears to date from the 7th century; at present there is no indication of who owned it or why it was buried in the Staffordshire field.
Link to BBC article and slideshow of 12 photos.
Link to a gallery of photos at The Guardian.
Photo credit to The Stafforshire Hoard, which appears to be a sort of “home page” for the find.
Photo: Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project
Archaeologists have found new clues from the Maya ruins of Kiuic in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:
… The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
"The people just walked away and left everything in place," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. "Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it’s a frozen moment in time." [..]
When the team started exploring the hilltop palaces, five vaulted homes to the south of the hilltop plaza and four to the north, the archaeologists found tools, stone knives and axes, corn-grinder stones called metates (muh-TAH-taze) and pots still sitting in place. "It was completely unexpected," Bey says. "It looks like they just turned the metates on their sides and left things waiting for them to come back."
Let’s tell the archaeologists to hurry up. 2012 is just around the corner …Here’s an interesting article by Dan Vergano for USA Today: Link
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have found a 2,000-year-old stone cup. The leader of the excavation team Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina says this kind of cup was common in Jewish households of the time, but this particular cup is different.
What sets the newfound cup apart is its inscription, which is still sharply etched but so far impossible to understand.Similar to intentionally enigmatic writing in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the cup’s script appears to be a secret code, written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, the two written languages used in Jerusalem at the time (see video of a village where the language of Jesus is still spoken).
“They wrote it intending it to be cryptic,” Gibson said.
The inscription will eventually be posted online. Link
(image credit: S. Pfann/UHL)
Six years after the invasion (and subsequent liberation) of Iraq, the country is still too dangerous for normal tourism. This is too bad since Iraq is literally a treasure trove of archaeological artifacts.
To accommodate armchair tourists too timid to risk life and limbs, the Italian government funded the creation of The Virtual Museum of Iraq, showcasing pieces dating from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian eras and more.
Check it out: Link – via Neal Ungerleider’s True/Slant blog
An oak barrel of butter has been found in a bog near Gilltown, Ireland. Two workers, John Fitzharris and Martin Lane, noticed a white streak in the peat and uncovered the barrel, estimated to be 3,000 years old. Pádraig Clancy and Carol Smith of the National Museum of Ireland took charge of the barrel.
“It’s rare to find a barrel as intact as that,” Mr. Clancy explained, “especially with the lid intact, and attached. It’s a really fine example.”
He estimates that the barrel is approximately 3,000 years old, from the Iron Age.
At the moment it is being dried out by staff at the Conservation Department. Once dry it will be soaked in a wax-like solution which preserves it.
“At 35ks, it’s a pretty big one,” Ms. Smith explained. Other examples of bog butter they showed tended to be less intact and much smaller.
Link -via Unique Daily
Archaeologists have unearthed a well in Cyprus that is believed to be between 9,000 and 10,500 years old, making one of the earth’s oldest water wells. Debris at the bottom of the well includes the skeleton of a woman.
Pavlos Flourentzos, the nation’s top antiquities official, said the 16-foot deep cylindrical shaft was found last month at a construction site in Kissonerga, a village near the Mediterranean island nation’s southwestern coast.
After the well dried up it apparently was used to dispose trash, and the items found in it included the poorly preserved skeleton of the young woman, animal bone fragments, worked flints, stone beads and pendants from the island’s early Neolithic period, Flourentzos said.
(image credit: Cyprus Antiquites Department/AP)
(image credit: Reconstruction by Kennis & Kennis/Photograph by Joe McNally, National Geographic)
A bottle has been unearthed in Greenwich, England that contains urine and objects believed to have been put there to combat witchcraft. It was completely corked, so the contents were available for analysis, unlike other bottles found from the period.
An Old Bailey court record from 1682 documents that a husband, believing his wife to be afflicted by witchcraft, was advised by a Spitalfields apothecary to “take a quart of your Wive’s urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin.”
The excavated bottle appears to have been made according to those, or similar, instructions.
CT scans and chemical analysis, along with gas chromatography conducted by Richard Cole of the Leicester Royal Infirmary, reveal the contents of the bottle to include human urine, brimstone, 12 iron nails, eight brass pins, hair, possible navel fluff, a piece of heart-shaped leather pierced by a bent nail, and 10 fingernail clippings.
So far, they’ve found the urine was from someone who smoked, and the fingernails were in good shape, indicating a person of high status. Link -via Unique Daily
(image credit: Mike Pitts/British Archaeology)
Photos: otisarchives2 (left), modcult (right)
Are cave paintings signs of intelligence of ancient cave dwellers or are they just scribbles of crazy cavemen?
Take a look at the two photos above. The one to the left is a painting made by a patient at St. Elizabeth’s hospital. The patient had a case of dementia praecox (eventually classified as schizophrenia) and used a pin or fingernail to scratch paint from the wall, creating pictures symbolizing past events in the patient’s life and represent a mild state of mental regression.
Jeb of Modcult made this intriguing observation:
You know, everyone assumes cave paintings were made for some sort of vaunted religious or technical purpose, but maybe in olden times they just sent their crazy people into a cave. I mean, that’s basically what we do now.
Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
This sculpture may look a little bit like a roast chicken, but don’t let that distract you – it’s an incredibly important artistic find. This small figurine is arguably the oldest representation of the human body yet discovered.
(image credit: Nicholas Conard)
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mattphunkadellic.
Archaeology is a religion for illuminated individuals, however if you cross the Gods you will suffer the consequences. Many men have risked their lives in pursuit of historical relics, many have never returned.
The Valley of the Kings in Egypt is located on the West bank of the Nile River within “the heart of the Theban Necropolis”. This illuminated place is said to hold the wealth of Egypt where Kings and Queens were laid to rest and their treasure was buried with them. Many men have died risking their lives to discover the mysteries of this sacred place, some have never returned.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.
A ship discovered off the coast of North Carolina in 1997 has been identified by experts as the Queen Anne’s Revenge, a ship used by the pirate Blackbeard. The ship was originally named Le Concorde before the pirate seized it from its French crew in 1717. Artifacts, such as this apothecary weight featuring two fleurs-de-lis, helped to identify the ship as Blackbeard’s.
Le Concorde’s surgeon, who was forced to serve briefly in Blackbeard’s crew, may have owned the weights, designed for pharmaceuticals. Pirates could have also used the weights to measure gold dust, experts say.
See more pictures at National Geographic. Link
(image credit: Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources)
The favorite perfume of powerful Egyptian "she king" Hatshepsut may be resurrected from residue found in a 3,500-year-old perfume bottle.
X-ray photographs of the 4.7-inch-tall (12-centimeter-tall) bottle, from the permanent collection of Bonn University’s Egyptian Museum, reveals remnants of the ancient oil. Scientists plan to identify the substance and, possibly within a year, re-create the perfume.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.
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