Welcome to Sott.net
Wed, 29 Sep 2021
The World for People who Think

Secret History
Map

Telescope

Victorian-era solar eclipse film restored to 4k as 19th century 'magic' meets 21st technology


RT
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 20:21 UTC
early film solar eclipse restored
© The Royal Astronomical Society’s archive/BFI
Still from restored footage of 1900 solar eclipse
The British Film Institute (BFI) has released remarkable footage of a solar eclipse shot during the Victorian era but painstakingly restored to stunning 4k, in what may be the world's oldest surviving astronomical film.

The incredible footage was shot in North Carolina in 1900 by Nevil Maskelyne, a British magician-turned-filmmaker, who was taking part in a Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) expedition.
      Read More...
Info

Stone artefacts from 2.6 million years ago are the earliest Homo tools ever found in Ethiopia

Dyani Lewis
Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 01:02 UTC
Ancient Tools
© Wikipedia Org
Oldowan tools mark the first technology developed by humanity's distant ancestors.
Humans are expert tool-makers, and as far back as 2.6 million years ago our stone age relatives were getting there too.

That's according to an analysis of 300 stone artefacts - including sharp-edged rock flakes and the rocks they have been chipped from, known as "cores" - published in the journal PNAS.

The new trove of artefacts was unearthed in Ethiopia's Afar Basin, a region that rocketed to fame in 1974 when the 3.2-million-year-old remains of our ancient relative "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis) were discovered.

The new site - known as Bokol Dora 1 (BD 1) - lies just five kilometres away from the location of one of oldest fossil remains of our own genus, Homo, a lower jaw that is 2.8 million years old.

Stone artefacts are the best evidence available of the early cognitive abilities of prehistoric humans.

But discoveries in recent years show that other early hominins, lines that pre-dated the Homo lineage, got in on the act too. Primitive stone tools from the Lomekwi 3 site in Kenya, for instance, date to 3.3 million years ago.

Modern primates - chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys - are also known to fashion rudimentary tools.
      Read More...
Info

The 'death jars' of Laos continue to mystify

Nick Carne
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:21 UTC
Laos Death Jars
© ANU
The mystery deepens: some of the newly discovered “death jars” strewn across a mountain forest in Laos.
The so-called "death jars" of Laos could be more widespread than previously thought.

Australian archaeologists and Lao Government officials have reported discovering 15 new sites containing 137 of the massive stone jars, which are believed to be around 1000 years old.

Experts believe the jars are related to disposal of the dead, but nothing is known for sure about their original purpose or the people who brought them there.

"These new sites have really only been visited by the occasional tiger hunter," says ANU's Nicholas Skopal. "Now we've rediscovered them, we're hoping to build a clear picture about this culture and how it disposed of its dead."

What's intriguing, says Skopal's colleague Dougald O'Reilly, is that there are no signs of occupation in the surrounding area, suggesting the jars were transported over a distance.

"It's apparent the jars, some weighing several tonnes, were carved in quarries, and somehow transported, often several kilometres to their present locations," he says. "But why these sites were chosen as the final resting place for the jars is still a mystery."
      Read More...
Cross

Why conservatives should hate the Reformation (which ruined everything)

Candida Moss
Daily Beast
Sun, 05 Nov 2017 21:15 UTC
Sure, Martin Luther's actions and arguments gave us Evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, and more. But it also led to a free for all that eventually undermined organized religion.
reformation
The Halloween candy is mostly eaten, but the celebrations of Reformation Day (which also falls on October 31st) are still in full swing. The Reformation is a watershed event in religious and political history, but was it a good thing?

To be sure, Martin Luther's actions and arguments gave us Evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, individuality, the idea of religious freedom, church shopping, free markets, and brought about the (counter-) reform of the Roman Catholic Church, but it also laid the groundwork for the rise of secular society. It's Martin Luther's world and we're just living in it.

In a series of publications that include his lengthy and erudite Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society and the recently published trade version Rebel in the Ranks, award-winning European historian Brad Gregory argues that the Reformation was an unintended disaster that has fundamentally and inescapably shaped the subsequent course of Western history.

Comment: Pretty much.

      Read More...
Info

Ancient faeces reveals early settler parasite infection

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Fri, 31 May 2019 20:34 UTC
Excavation
© Scott Haddow
Archaeologists carefully excavating the neolithic village.
Researchers picking though 8000-year-old human faeces have identified the earliest evidence of intestinal parasite infection in the mainland Near East.

A team led by archaeologist Piers Mitchell of Cambridge University in the UK travelled to the well preserve remains of a prehistoric village called Çatalhöyük, in southern Anatolia.

The site was occupied from about 7500 to 5700 BCE, and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Apart from the extraordinarily good state of its survival, the village is of key interest because it was occupied around the period that populations in the region shifted from foraging to farming.

The change in both diet and lifestyle - particularly the emergence of permanent settlements - introduces the question of whether such a shift in living conditions also brought about a consequent change in disease profiles.

One key challenge all early settlers faced was the need to manage human waste. In the matter of Çatalhöyük, faeces was disposed of in the village midden, or dumped. It is thought that villagers either went to the toilet directly in the midden, or did their business in their homes in clay bowls and then carried the results.

Either way, Mitchell and his colleagues were able to excavate four fossilised human turds, known as coprolites, from the site. They also took samples of soil beneath the pelvic areas of skeletons resting in graves.
      Read More...
Palette

'Domachowo Paupers Bible': Centuries old polychrome paintings discovered under floorboards of Polish church

Anne Chatham
ThefirstNews
Sat, 12 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
polychrome paintings Domachowie Poland
© Parafia Rzymskokatolicka pw Św. Michała Archanioła w Domachowie
The paintings were found during conservation work in the Church of Michael the Archangel in Domachowo, a village in the Wielkopolska region.
Polychromes have been discovered in a church in western Poland.

Forgotten for centuries, they were found by accident under the floorboards, where they had been protected from wear and tear.

While their colours have faded, their images of Biblical scenes, the Holy Trinity and even a dragon are clearly visible.

During the Middle Ages, the interiors of churches were often decorated with colourful paintings, known as polychromes, yet few have survived in good condition.

The paintings were found during conservation work in the Church of Michael the Archangel in Domachowo, a village in the Wielkopolska region.

Built in the mid-16th century, the church is celebrating its 450th birthday this year. With its dark exterior and roof covered in wooden shingles, it is one of the oldest churches made of wood in Wielkopolska.

Comment: More on polychromatic art:
The word is simply used for multi-coloured art, or things decorated in- or having several colours. The term was first used to describe the decoration of wood and stone carving in full colour and gold. Much Egyptian, Greek was originally polychrome with sculptures painted in strong colours. So was ancient architecture such as the Parthenon in Rome according to pigment traces found on the building.

Polychrome representations have always been used in all most cultures in the world. With the advent of Christian medieval- and Renaissance art, the Europeans were subjected to a true bombardment of colours to evoke emotion and religious awe. Sophisticated Islamic art served much the same purpose though it was mostly abstract and geometric in comparison.


      Read More...
Archaeology

Oldest-known Christian church unearthed outside Egypt's Alexandria


Sputnik
Fri, 31 May 2019 15:29 UTC
ancient church alexandria
© T. Skrzypiec/pcma.uw.edu.pl
The experts were working on a ruined basilica when they found the remains of an even older church.
The newly-unearthed ancient temple's structure resembles those found on the Greek islands and mainland, which are also alleged to date back to the mid-fourth century AD.

Polish archaeologists made a remarkable discovery as they unearthed the over 2,000-year-old port city of Marea, to the southwest of the ancient Egyptian stronghold of Alexandria, claiming that it might have been a hotspot of early Christianity in Egypt.

Marea was home to a large Christian basilica, which served its religious purpose from the fifth to the eighth century, and right underneath there was found an even older Christian temple.

Comment: More from The Express:
Specific construction techniques used in raising the church suggest its walls were built sometime around the mid-fourth century.

Dr Babraj said: "It is, therefore, one of the oldest Christian temples found in Egyptian territories, today."

In the expert's opinion, the structure was built by locals but it shared architectural features with churches found on the Greek islands and mainland around the same time period.

The archaeologist said: "Our discovery is also important because we practically do not know of any church remains from the neighbouring metropolis of Alexandria, from this time period.

"Now we know, how they could have looked like, which is is why it is crucial we continue our research, which we have only just begun in the vicinity of the old church."

The ancient Egyptian city of Marea was a port city built during the conquests of Alexander the Great. The port developed from around the time of the third century BC up until the Byzantine era of the eighth century AD.

Marea served as a transport hub on the Nile, connecting goods from deep within Egypt to the Mediterranean.

The ancient city may have also been known in the past as Philoxenite.


      Read More...
Butterfly

5000 year old "birdman" burial in Siberia puzzles scientists


Siberian Times
Wed, 29 May 2019 12:00 UTC
bird man siberia
© Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, The Siberian Times
5,000 years old graves reveal shamans in bird beak ‘collar’ and bronze ‘spectacles’.
5,000 years old graves reveal shamans in bird beak 'collar' and bronze 'spectacles'.

Two unique burials of the Odinov culture (early Bronze) were unearthed last year at the Ust-Tartas site in Novosibirsk region.

Inside one of them researchers found several dozen long beaks and skulls of large birds assembled into something looking like a collar, a head dress, or armour.

'Nothing of this kind was ever found as part of Odinov culture in all of Western Siberia' said researcher Lilia Kobeleva from Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Info

Possible traces of 'lost' Stone Age settlement discovered beneath the North Sea

Tom Metcalfe
Live Science
Wed, 29 May 2019 13:58 UTC
Doggerland
© Anton Balazh/Shutterstock
Doggerland once covered a vast swath of land between what is now the east coast of England and the European mainland.
Deep beneath the North Sea, scientists have discovered a fossilized forest that could hold traces of prehistoric early humans who lived there around 10,000 years ago, before the land slipped beneath the waves a few thousand years later.

The discovery gives the researchers new hope in their search for "lost" Middle Stone Age - or Mesolithic - settlements of hunter-gatherers, because the find shows that they have found a particular type of exposed ancient landscape.

The scientists took sediment samples from the submerged fossilized forest during their 11-day voyage in the North Sea aboard the research ship RV Belgica, in the Doggerland region known as Brown Bank or Brown Ridge. The scientists say they are certain they are close to finding traces of a prehistoric human settlement in the submerged lands. [See Images of a Treasure Trove Found Beneath North Sea]

"We are absolutely dead sure that we are very close to a settlement," said archaeologist Vincent Gaffney of Bradford University in the U.K., one of the project leaders. "The numbers of artifacts historically from that region tell us there is something there."

"We have now identified the areas where the Mesolithic land surface is close to the surface [of the seafloor]," he said. "So we can use the dredges or grabs to get larger samples of whatever that surface is."

The scientists now plan to revisit the Brown Bank area on a Dutch research ship in the fall, with heavier dredging equipment that will let them take more samples from the submerged fossilized forest, Gaffney said.
      Read More...
Info

The mystery of human bipedality

Tom Garlinghouse
Sapiens Org
Wed, 29 May 2019 23:40 UTC
Bipedality
© Julie Delton/Getty Images
Bipedality, the ability to walk upright on two legs, is a hallmark of human evolution. Many primates can stand up and walk around for short periods of time, but only humans use this posture for their primary mode of locomotion.

Fossils suggests that bipedality may have begun as early as 6 million years ago. But it was with Australopithecus, an early hominin who evolved in southern and eastern Africa between 4 and 2 million years ago, that our ancestors took their first steps as committed bipeds. Yet scientists still know little about the circumstances that led to this trait's emergence.

Carol Ward, a paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Missouri, studies this question. A specialist in human origins, Ward has spent a number of field seasons at various paleontological sites, including at Kanapoi and Lomekwi in West Turkana, Kenya, where she and her colleagues recovered australopithecine fossils. Her latest work repurposes 3D medical-imaging technologies to compare modern primate anatomy, including soft tissues and organs, with the skeletal fossil record of ancient hominids. That technique allows her to make inferences about our ancient ancestors and how their bodies supported different forms of locomotion. As she discussed in a short lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in February, figuring out how and why humans became bipedal could be essential to understanding human evolution more broadly.

The following conversation with Ward has been edited for clarity and brevity.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts