Secret HistoryS


Blue Planet

Oxford was murder capital of late medieval England, and students were to blame

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Thu, 28 Sep 2023 15:27 UTC
medieval murder
© British LibraryDetail of a 14th century medieval miniature of Cain killing Abel.
Oxford today is known as a place of learning and elite scholarship. Several hundred years ago, the university town had something of a darker reputation.

A deep dive into historical documents reveals that during the late medieval period in the 14th century CE, Oxford had a per capita murder rate four to five times higher than other high-population hubs like York and London.

And the reason? Bloody students.

Like, quite literally. Newly translated documents list 75 percent of the perpetrators of murders with known background as "clericus", a term most commonly used to describe students or members of the then-recently founded University of Oxford. And 72 percent of the victims were also classed as clericus.

Comment: It's notable that these students would probably have also been considered to be members of the upper class:

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Blue Planet

Neanderthals might not be the separate species we always thought, study claims

Mike McRae
Science Alert
Sun, 22 Oct 2023 12:00 UTC
Neanderthal
© Eunostos/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0A Neanderthal skull.
Stoop-backed, heavy-browed, communicating in ape-like grunts, impressions of the Neanderthal as a simple-minded brute a few steps below modern humans on the evolutionary ladder have endured since their discovery in the mid-19th century.

In spite of the myriad of findings detailing their genetic and cultural similarities, our long-extinct 'cousins' are still all too often exiled into their own species, Homo neanderthalensis.

That categorization is due for a change, according to a team of researchers who have spent the past twenty years digging through layers of dust and grit in the central Portuguese cave site of Gruta da Oliveira.

"More than different species, I would speak of different human forms," says University of Trento archaeologist Diego Angelucci, the lead author of a recent study summarizing decades of research on what was home to families of Neanderthal more than 71,000 years ago.

Comment: One aspect has yet to be disputed is how Neanderthal's lifestyle and tool usage remained relatively static over vast stretches of time, and some of these creative practises may have originated with humans, whom they emulated, which, taken together, reflects on their relative lack of ingenuity when compared to humans. By comparison, the evolution of human's tool technology evolved much more quickly: The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction

It seems that this attempt to equate' Neanderthals with humans seems to have its origins more in the woke ideology that has infected academia, than in the evidence itself. Woke ideology wants to promote ideas where everyone and everything is equal, nothing is superior, and everything is subjective.

Other studies haven't escaped this same bent, such as the recent claim that that, throughout history women hunt in majority of foraging societies, and use a greater variety of weapons and tactics as men, except the archaeological data doesn't support this claim, nor do the practises of current foraging cultures.

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Blue Planet

'A Neolithic feat of engineering': Orkney dig reveals ruins of huge tomb with 14 skeletons

Dalya Alberge
The Guardian
Sat, 21 Oct 2023 16:11 UTC
orkney
© National Museums ScotlandFourteen skeletons were found in one of six rooms surrounding the main chamber at the site. Clues unearthed more than 100 years ago inspired archeologists to locate the 5,000-year-old site.
The ruins of a 5,000-year-old tomb in a construction that reflects the pinnacle of neolithic engineering in northern Britain has been unearthed in Orkney.

Fourteen articulated skeletons of men, women and children - two positioned as if they were embracing - have been found inside one of six cells or side rooms.

The tomb measures more than 15m in diameter and contains a stone structure accessed through a long passage of around seven metres. The excavation was headed by Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, senior curator of prehistory (neolithic) at the National Museums Scotland, and Vicki Cummings, professor of neolithic archaeology at Cardiff University.

Comment: See also:

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Blue Planet

'Sensational' hoard of Bronze Age jewelry discovered in Switzerland


Newsweek
Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:00 UTC
Bronze Age jewelry
© Thurgau Canton Office of ArchaeologyA Bronze Age jewelry hoard discovered in a field in Güttingen, Switzerland, includes a necklace of spiked discs, amber beads, finger rings and gold spirals.
A hoard of "very rare" Bronze Age jewelry unearthed in Switzerland is described by one expert as a "sensational" discovery.

The hoard includes a necklace made of bronze spiked discs, two finger rings, gold wire spirals and more than 100 tiny amber beads. It also contains several more unusual finds, such as a rock crystal, a beaver tooth, a perforated bear tooth, a bronze arrowhead, a few lumps of polished iron ore, a small ammonite shell and a fossilized shark tooth, among other items.

The hoard, which is thought to date to around 1500 B.C., or roughly 3,500 years ago, was discovered in August by an amateur archaeologist named Franz Zahn in a freshly plowed carrot field in the municipality of Güttingen in northeastern Switzerland.

Zahn immediately reported the find to the canton of Thurgau's Office of Archeology (OA), which arranged for experts to document and recover the artifacts the next day.

Comment: There's research that leads one to believe that this seeming fascination with spirals, and other shapes the predominate in Bronze Age art (and even earlier), may have had something to do with the activity in the skies at the time: The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy, Part One

See also:

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Info

Amazonian rainforest hides thousands of records of ancient indigenous communities under its forest canopy


Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Thu, 05 Oct 2023 17:46 UTC
Forested landscape of Amazonia
© Hans ter SteegeForested landscape of Amazonia.
The world's most diverse forest, the Amazon, may also host more than 10,000 records of pre-Columbian earthworks (constructed prior to the arrival of Europeans), according to a new study. The new study combines cutting-edge remote sensing technology with archaeological data and advanced statistical modeling to estimate how many earthworks may still be hidden beneath the canopy of the Amazon rainforest and in which locations these structures are most likely to be found.

Conducted by a team of 230 researchers from 156 institutions located in 24 countries across 4 continents, led by Brazilian researchers Vinicius Peripato, a doctoral student in Remote Sensing at Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and Luiz Aragão. "Our study suggests that the Amazon rainforest may not be as pristine as many believe, as when we seek a better understanding of the extent of pre-Columbian human occupation throughout it, we are surprised by a significant number of sites still unknown to the science community", says Vinicius Peripato.
LIDAR Image
© Vinicius PeripatoLiDAR point cloud and the digital terrain beneath the forest with a vertical exaggeration of 2.5 meters. The scale on the right represents the tree's height.
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Blue Planet

Neanderthals carried genes acquired from ancient interactions with 'cousins' of modern humans

Liana F. Wait
Penn Today
Fri, 13 Oct 2023 12:00 UTC
Ethiopia
© Sarah TishkoffA new collaborative study led by Sarah Tishkoff shows that Neanderthals inherited at least 6% of their genome from a now-extinct lineage of early modern humans. Members of Tishkoff's research team collecting ethnograpgic information from participants in Ethiopia.
Modern humans migrated to Eurasia 75,000 years ago, where they encountered and interbred with Neanderthals. A new study published in the journal Current Biology shows that at this time Neanderthals were already carrying human DNA from a much older encounter with modern humans. The Penn-led research team, including collaborators from Addis Ababa University, the University of Botswana, Fudan University, Hubert Kairuki Memorial University, and the University of Yaoundé, showed that an ancient lineage of modern humans migrated to Eurasia over 250,000 years ago where they interbred with Neanderthals. Over time, these humans died out, leaving a population with predominantly Neanderthal ancestry.

"We found this reflection of ancient interbreeding where genes flowed from ancient modern humans into Neanderthals," says Alexander Platt, a senior research scientist in the Perelman School of Medicine and one of the study's first authors. "This group of individuals left Africa between 250,000 and 270,000 years ago. They were sort of the cousins to all humans alive today, and they were much more like us than Neanderthals."

The team arrived at this conclusion by comparing a Neanderthal genome with a diverse set of genomes from modern indigenous populations in sub-Saharan Africa.


Comment: It may be that this ancient lineage left Africa, but the data doesn't support human origins as coming 'out of Africa': Most human origins theories are not compatible with known fossils


Comment: See also:

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Info

Stonehenge Altar Stone did not come from Wales - research


Aberystwyth University
Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:34 UTC
Altar Stone
© Professor Nick Pearce, Aberystwyth UniversityThe Altar Stone, seen here underneath two bigger Sarsen stones.
The origin of the largest "bluestone" at the heart of Stonehenge has been thrown into doubt by Aberystwyth University research.

For the past 100 years, the 6-tonne Altar Stone was believed to have come from Old Red Sandstone in south Wales.

This was assumed to be close to the Preseli hills in west Wales where the majority of Stonehenge's world-renowned 'bluestones' came from.

Formed when molten rock crystallised, the Pembrokeshire bluestones are believed to have been among the first erected at the Wiltshire site around 5000 years ago.

The Altar Stone, a sandstone, has traditionally been grouped with the other, smaller, igneous bluestones, although when it arrived at Stonehenge is unclear.

Now, in an attempt to locate its source, scientists at Aberystwyth have compared analyses of the Altar Stone with 58 samples taken from the Old Red Sandstone across Wales and the Welsh borders.

The composition of the Altar Stone cannot be matched with any of these locations. The Altar Stone has a high barium content, which is unusual and may help in identifying its source.
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Info

A 4,000-year-old treasure map of France

oguz kayra
Arkeonews Net
Tue, 17 Oct 2023 22:57 UTC
Saint-Belec Slab
© Arkeonews Net
Overlooked for millennia, a rock fragment adorned with enigmatic inscriptions has emerged as a valuable "treasure map" for archaeologists. After 4,000 years of dormancy, researchers are now using it to uncover ancient sites in northwestern France.

The so-called Saint-Belec slab was claimed as Europe's oldest map by researchers in 2021 and they have been working ever since to understand its etchings - both to help them date the slab and to rediscover lost monuments.

"Using the map to try to find archaeological sites is a great approach. We never work like that," said Yvan Pailler, a professor at the University of Western Brittany.

Ancient sites are more commonly uncovered by sophisticated radar equipment, aerial photography, or by accident in cities when the foundations for new buildings are being dug.

"It's a treasure map," said Pailler. But the team is only just beginning their treasure hunt.

The ancient map marks an area roughly 30 by 21 kilometers and Pailler's colleague, Clement Nicolas from the CNRS research institute, said they would need to survey the entire territory and cross-reference the markings on the slab. That job could take 15 years, he said.
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Archaeology

More evidence that humans were in North America over 20,000 years ago

Kiona N. Smith
Ars Technica
Thu, 05 Oct 2023 21:36 UTC
Lake Otero ancient humans new mexico
This illustration shows what the shore of ancient Lake Otero may have looked like 21,000 years ago.
That means people must have been in the Americas even longer than we thought.

People really were walking around in the southwestern US during the middle of the last Ice Age, according to a recent study that double-checked the dates on a set of surprisingly ancient human footprints at White Sands National Park.

Many thousands of years ago, someone walked along the muddy shore of an ancient lake at what's now White Sands. They crushed ditchgrass seeds and grains of conifer pollen beneath their feet with every squishing, slippery step. Bournemouth University archaeologist Matthew Bennett and his colleagues (including the authors of the current study) unearthed eight layers of tracks at the site in early 2020; they radiocarbon-dated the ditchgrass seeds from the oldest layer of footprints to 23,000 years old and the youngest layer to around 21,000 years old.

Their 2021 paper sparked immediate debate.
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Info

Stash of ancient bombs discovered at Badaling Great Wall in Beijing


Global Times
Tue, 17 Oct 2023 04:18 UTC
Great Wall
© Global Times
Lined up neatly, over 50 ancient explosive weapons were recently excavated at the Badaling Great Wall in Beijing.

A total of 59 stone bombs were discovered by archaeologists along the western section of the Badaling Great Wall in Beijing's Yanqing district. Ma Lüwei, an archaeologist specializing in ancient Chinese military history, told the Global Times that the stone bombs were major weapons used to "defend against enemy invasion" along the Great Wall during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

"The bomb was often installed in medium-sized hollow bits of stone. Those weapons were easy to make and were also very handy for soldiers to throw them down at invaders while standing on the Great Wall," Ma told the Global Times.

Shang Heng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Institute of Archaeology, said the stone bombs possessed "big explosive power" and were once the preference of Qi Jiguang, a Ming Dynasty military general who made major contributions to China's military system and strategy as well as the innovation of military weapons.

Those 59 stone bombs were found inscribed with orders at one of the Great Wall's station houses that were once used for standing guards watching out for the enemy. The space was later identified by archaeologists as a warehouse for storing weapons.

Prior to the new discovery, no similar "warehouses" had been found along the Beijing sections of the Great Wall.
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