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'Sensational' hoard of Bronze Age jewelry discovered in Switzerland


Newsweek
Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:00 UTC
Bronze Age jewelry
© Thurgau Canton Office of Archaeology
A 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 Steege
Forested 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 Peripato
LiDAR 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 Tishkoff
A 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 University
The 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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Safe

Declassified Soviet files reveal horror crimes of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators


RT
Sun, 15 Oct 2023 19:50 UTC
ukraine nazi collaborators ww2
© Wikipedia
Ukrainian women dressed in national costumes salute Nazi German high command during the parade in Stanislaviv (currently Ivano-Frankovsk), October 1941.
Nationalists began ethnic cleansing of Jews during WWII, even before German occupation began, documents show

RT has obtained a trove of declassified KGB documents, highlighting crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists in Soviet territories occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII. The files include witness accounts of people who survived ethnic cleansing, as well as testimonies of Ukrainian collaborators captured by the Soviet domestic intelligence, then known as the NKVD.

Large swaths of present-day Ukraine fell under Nazi occupation in summer 1941 as German troops advanced deep into the Soviet Union. In fact, attacks on ethnic Jews and Poles, as well as local communists, began immediately as Soviet troops withdrew.

"In the first hours following the retreat of the Bolsheviks, the Ukrainian population has demonstrated commendable activity against Jews," a status report from the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police, dated July 16, 1941, reads.

Comment: Substitute 'Russian' for 'Jews' and you have the state of Ukraine today. The mindset remains, only the target has changed.

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Info

An extraordinary archaeological discovery in Spain


Durham University
Wed, 04 Oct 2023 21:29 UTC
Decorated Stela
© Durham University

A new decorated stela has been found in context, in the 3000-year-old funerary complex of Las Capellanías, in Cañaveral de León (Huelva, south-west of Spain). It is thought that late prehistoric stelae in Iberia were created to commemorate important personages. This new stela depicts a human figure with a headdress, a necklace, and two swords. The figure also has a detailed face, hands and feet, as well as male genitals. Las Capellanías is being excavated within a fieldwork project co-directed by the Department's Dr Marta Diaz-Guardamino.

An amazing and very special find

There are three main reasons why this stela is such a valuable find.

Firstly, this is the third decorated stela found at this site, and the second one found in context. A report on the first stela is available now. The publication of the second stela is in preparation, but a preliminary short summary can be found on the Department website.

This find is remarkable, as the contexts of use of late prehistoric stelae in Iberia are largely unknown, despite over 120 years of research. This is due to a variety of reasons, including the conditions of discovery (normally agricultural work) and the lack of archaeological fieldwork conducted at the find spots.
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Hammer

Homicides peaked 4,000 years ago

Matthew Ward Agius
Cosmos
Tue, 10 Oct 2023 06:48 UTC
skull with head trauma

Skeletons and marks of lethal trauma to the face. (Standen et al., JAA, 2021)
European archaeologists and historians have turned homicide investigators by peeling back the veil on human conflict thousands of years ago.

While data on homicide and assaults are readily available today, record keeping over the millennia is, unsurprisingly, less extensive. But records may exist in human remains unearthed by scientists over the years.

Writing in Nature Human Behaviour, Professor Joerg Baten from the University of Tübingen, Giacomo Benati from the University of Barcelona and Professor Arkadiusz Sołtysiak from the University of Warsaw have ascertained a high point in historic human conflict by developing a dataset of ancient skeletons from the Middle East.

They studied the remains of more than 3,500 people uncovered in the region from modern-day Turkey around the Mediterranean Sea to Iran from 12,000-400 BCE.

Using skeletons with signs of head trauma or weapon-inflicted wounds, their database quantified injuries by period, geographic location, and cause of injury.
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