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Largest known prehistoric rock engravings discovered in South America


Bournemouth University
Tue, 04 Jun 2024 18:14 UTC
Rock engravings recorded by researchers from Bournemouth University (UK), University College London (UK) and Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) are thought to be the largest prehistoric rock art in the world.

Found carved into rock faces along the Upper and Middle Orinoco River in Venezuela and Colombia, the engravings feature a range of imagery - including depictions of giant snakes, human figures, and giant Amazonian centipedes.

Some of the engravings are tens of metres long - with the largest measuring more than 40m in length. The team believe this is the largest single rock engraving recorded anywhere in the world.
Rock Art
© Phil Riris/Jose OliverOne of the monumental rock engravings, depicting a giant snake.
While some of the sites were already known, the team have discovered several more and mapped 14 sites of monumental rock engravings - defined as those which are more than four metres wide or high - through working with local guides and using drone photography.

While it is difficult to date rock engravings, similar motifs used on pottery found in the area indicate that they were created anywhere up to 2,000 years ago, although possibly much older.

Many of the largest engravings are of snakes, believed to be boa constrictors or anacondas, which played an important role in the myths and beliefs of the local Indigenous population.
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Blue Planet

Largest group of 'unique' neolithic earthworks discovered in Ireland yet


Artnet
Fri, 31 May 2024 18:24 UTC
Baltinglass
© James O’Driscoll/Antiquity Publications LtdA view of the Baltinglass landscape in County Wicklow, Ireland. An archaeological survey of the region has revealed various previously unknown monuments.
Archaeological studies of a landscape in eastern Ireland have turned up the greatest number yet of ancient structures that remain rare in that country, and may cast light on the beliefs and burial practices of early farming communities in the region as far back as the Neolithic period. These so-called cursus monuments exist throughout England, but this is the largest number yet discovered in the Baltinglass region of Ireland, in County Wicklow.

These enigmatic monuments, consisting of either elongated earthworks or lines of wooden posts that sometimes stretch as far as six miles in length, have been found as part of some of the best-known prehistoric sites, including Stonehenge.

The new cluster of monuments, numbering as many as five, was discovered using LIDAR technology. It's the largest cluster yet found in Ireland, where not even 20 examples are known throughout the country.

Comment: Despite these regions having low populations in our own time, there's lots of evidence showing that in the past they were quite the hive of activity, and sophistication:

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Info

The 4,500-year-old Wisconsin canoe was built around the same time that Stonehenge was being constructed

oguz kayra
Arkeonews Net
Fri, 31 May 2024 17:58 UTC
Submerged Canoe
© Wisconsin Historical SocietyThe boats are known as dugout canoes because each was constructed out of a single tree. After cutting the tree and sculpting the canoe, natives would burn the seating area and scrape out the charcoal with stone tools to create a softer feel on the inside.
Historians from Wisconsin have reported the amazing finding of at least eleven prehistoric canoes in Lake Mendota, which is close to Madison. Among the important discoveries is a canoe from 2500 BC. The findings were announced in a press release by the Wisconsin Historical Society on May 23.

Two historic canoes were discovered in a lakeside cache in 2021 and 2022, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Since then, at least eleven more ancient canoes have since discovered by historians along what they believe to be an ancient shoreline that gradually submerged.

All the canoes varied in age, with the youngest one dating back to 1250 AD. The archaeologists explained that the canoes "may have been intentionally cached in the water during the winter months, a standard practice to keep canoes safe from freezing and warping."

The oldest canoe was discovered through radiocarbon dating to be from 2500 B.C., which suggests it was constructed around the same time as Stonehenge. The canoe was built more than 1,700 years before the first inhabitants of Ancient Rome arrived and 2,500 years before Jesus was born.

The canoes were also discovered along a shoreline that has since been submerged, suggesting a previously unknown civilization once thrived in the area.

Dr Amy Rosebrough, State Archaeologist for the Wisconsin Historical Society mentioned that divers also found stone tools in the water, suggesting the presence of an ancient village site, which has yet to be located. "Even without finding the village, the discovery of these canoes and the tools found within the first canoe reminds us that people have lived and worked alongside the lake for thousands of years,".
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Archaeology

'Archaeological sensation': Winemaker discovers hundreds of mammoth bones while renovating his cellar

Patrick Pester
Live Science
Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00 UTC
archaeologist
© OeAW-OeAI/Th. EinwögererArchaeologist Hannah Parow-Souchon (right) explains the mammoth bone discovery to Councillor Sonja Fragner (center) and wine cellar owner Andreas Pernerstorfer (left).
A winemaker in Austria has discovered hundreds of mammoth bones underneath his wine cellar.

Andreas Pernerstorfer came across the bones in March while renovating his cellar in the village of Gobelsburg, northwest of Vienna, CNN reported. At first, he mistook a bone for wood.

"I thought it was just a piece of wood left by my grandfather," Pernerstorfer told the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), according to BBC News. "But then I dug it out a bit, and then I remembered that in the past, my grandfather said he had found teeth. And then I immediately thought it was a mammoth."
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Pharoah

Ramesses II's sarcophagus finally identified thanks to overlooked hieroglyphics

Jennifer Nalewicki
Live Science
Tue, 28 May 2024 20:25 UTC
Archaeologists determined that a fragment of a sarcophagus hidden beneath a Coptic building's floor once belonged to Ramesses II.
sarcophagus fragment
© Kevin CahailThe sarcophagus fragment was found under the floor of a Coptic building in Egypt.
A sarcophagus fragment discovered beneath the floor of a religious center belongs to Ramesses II, one of the best-known ancient Egyptian pharaohs, according to a new study.

Archaeologists unearthed the granite artifact in 2009 inside a Coptic building in Abydos, an ancient city in east-central Egypt. The team, led by archaeologists Ayman Damrani and Kevin Cahail, had determined that the sarcophagus had carried two individuals at different times. However, they could identify only the latter — Menkheperre, a "high priest of the 21st dynasty," who lived in roughly 1000 B.C., according to a translated statement from France's National Center for Scientific Research.

The initial owner of the sarcophagus — a container that is covered in carved decorations and texts — had remained a mystery. But archaeologists knew it had belonged to a "very high-ranking figure of the Egyptian New Kingdom," according to the statement.

Further sleuthing enabled Egyptologist Frédéric Payraudeau, a teacher and researcher at Sorbonne University in France, to connect Ramesses II (also spelled Ramses II) to the sarcophagus. To do so, they deciphered an overlooked cartouche, an oval-shaped engraving that represents the name of a pharaoh, "of Ramses II himself," according to the statement.
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Better Earth

Orkney promontory may be a neolithic artificial island, known as a crannog

Sigurd Towrie
Archeology Orkney
Sat, 25 May 2024 16:35 UTC
crannog orkney
© Tom O’BrienThe Wasdale promontory from above.
Postgraduate students were back in Firth, Orkney, recently to carry out test-pitting on a promontory at the northern end of the Wasdale loch.

Previous visits were for walkover survey practical sessions, but this time the focus was on seeing what, if any, archaeology survives and whether it could clarify the nature of the feature.

Although it's possible to cross dry-shod these days, it appears as an islet on the 1882 Ordnance Survey map. Little is known about the site, but the fact the shoreside edges appear to show the remains of walling led to the suggestion it may be a crannog.

Comment: Recent finds point to the region as being quite the hub of activity in the neolithic.

The crannogs themselves are intriguing and the following snippets may provide clues as to why they were constructed: Crannogs: Neolithic artificial islands in Scotland stump archeologists
[...] many of Scotland's lochs hide the remains of a dozen crannogs or more, most of them dating to the same eras - around either the 5th or 2nd Centuries BC.

Building that kind of dwelling requires a high level of skill.

It also needs abundant resources.In that sense, the crannogs may be a little like the mysterious hill forts of Wales, which appeared around the same period.

But if this idea is true, it raises the question of why people began paying more attention to defence or status at this specific time.

In part, this may have stemmed from the same reason that caused a boom in Welsh hill forts in the same period: climactic deterioration.


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Arrow Down

Federal government used bribery to end relationships with Native American tribes

Jodi Heckel
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Thu, 23 May 2024 19:11 UTC
Book by David Beck
© Courtesy David BeckThe federal government used bribery to try to end its legal and political relationships with Native American tribes in the first half of the 20th century, says University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor David Beck. In his new book, “Bribed With Our Own Money,” Beck describes how the government coerced tribal nations to accept termination by threatening to withhold money owed them.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Federal policy toward Native American tribal nations in the first half of the 20th century sought to end the government's legal and political relationship with tribes. A new book by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor David Beck looks at one aspect of termination policy — bribery.

Bribed With Our Own Money: Federal Abuse of American Indian Funds in the Termination Era examines how officials coerced tribal nations to accept termination by threatening to withhold money owed them by the federal government. Beck found that such coercion was a government policy, with both Congress and the interior department advocating using the money owed to tribes to force the end of the government's relationship with them.

For example, in 1954, Congress appropriated money owed to the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, which it won in a lawsuit over timber mismanagement after the federal government clear-cut tribal forests. Congress forced the tribe to accept termination of its federal trust relationship with the government as a condition of being paid the money it won in the lawsuit.

"Termination was foisted onto the tribes as a quid pro quo for the payments that were due to them," Beck wrote of such tactics.

Federal Indian policy established a trust or fiduciary relationship with tribes under which the government is to provide protection and ensure the survival of the tribal nations. Among the government's responsibilities are overseeing the governance of reservation lands and managing resources such as forests, minerals and game.

"It's a legal as well as a moral responsibility. Almost from the very beginning, the federal government has been trying to get out from under that responsibility," Beck said.
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Info

Flashback Stalin 'planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact'

Nick Holdsworth in Moscow
The Telegraph
Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:16 UTC
Map of Europe post WWI
© UnknownThere is no image in the achieved article, but this map may help to locate the different countries mentioned.
Stalin was 'prepared to move more than a million Soviet troops to the German border to deter Hitler's aggression just before the Second World War'

Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.

Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler's pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany's other neighbours.

Comment: History is often hotly contested, and the events that surrounded the beginning of WWII is no exception. A difference between then and now, is that the lines of communication are much faster, but if anyone imagined more technology would make the World more more peaceful then the results are disappointing. Consider also: "the British and French side - briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals - did not respond to the Soviet offer, ". The technology of telegrams and telephone was there, but it was not used.
Putin reminded his listeners that true blame for the war should be found in those European powers that had already created non-aggression pacts with Hitler long before Russia, beginning with the 1938 Munich Agreement between France, England and Germany permitting the later to carve up Czechoslovakia. To this point, Putin said: "Let them read historical documents so that they can see that the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938: the leaders of key European countries - France and the United Kingdom - signed an agreement with Hitler to divide Czechoslovakia."

The Russian leader went onto say "It is people like those who negotiated with Hitler - it is people like that who today are tearing down monuments to the liberating warriors, the Red Army soldiers who freed Europe and the European people from the Nazis."


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Blue Planet

Pagan-Christian trade networks supplied horses from overseas for the last horse sacrifices of 14th century Europe


Cardiff University
Fri, 17 May 2024 17:32 UTC
china bronze age
© Kai Bai; Antiquity Publications LtdFILE: One of the six sacrificial horse pits unearthed at Yaoheyuan in northwestern China. The walled city likely served as a political and cultural hub in Bronze Age China.
Horses crossed the Baltic Sea in ships during the Late Viking Age and were sacrificed for funeral rituals, according to research from Cardiff University.

Published in the journal Science Advances, studies on the remains of horses found at ancient burial sites in Russia and Lithuania show that they were brought overseas from Scandinavia utilising expansive trade networks connecting the Viking world with the Byzantine and Arab Empires.

Up to now, researchers had believed sacrificial horses were always locally-sourced stallions. But these results reveal horses from modern Sweden or Finland travelled up to 1,500 km across the Baltic Sea. The findings also show that the sex of the horse was not necessarily a factor in them being chosen for sacrifice, with genetic analysis showing one in three were mares.

Comment: See also:

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Info

The new study presents evidence suggesting the use of threshing sledges in Neolithic Greece as early as 6500 BCE

Leman Altuntaş
Arkeonews Net
Fri, 17 May 2024 19:03 UTC
Threshing Sledge
© University of Pisa
The threshing sledges, which until a few decades ago was used in many Mediterranean countries from Turkey to Spain to separate the chaff from the wheat, is estimated to have appeared in Greece as early as 6500 BC.

By applying advanced analytical methods, including co-orientated microscopy, to the flint industries, researchers led by the University of Pisa were able to trace the early adoption of such technology and the adaptation of what can be considered among the first agricultural machines in Europe.

The research, conducted as part of several research projects funded by the European Union, Italy, and Spain and directed by the University of Pisa in collaboration with the CSIC in Spain and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, predates previous records of this technology in Europe by at least 3,000 years, providing new insights into Neolithic society's technological innovations.

We have been working for years to reconstruct the routes and mechanisms of the spread of agriculture from the Near East to the rest of the Mediterranean, explains Professor Niccolò Mazzucco, of the University of Pisa, principal investigator of the work, discovering the processes of technological innovation and how new machines were introduced is fundamental to reconstructing past technological systems.

The use of the threshing sledge, also known by the Roman term tribulum, allowed for a considerable increase in the amount of grain processed and accelerated its processing. In the past, it was believed that this innovation was linked to the birth of the first states, but our study shows that its first use is much older.
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