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3,000-year-old mural of knife-wielding spider god discovered in Peru

Isaac Schultz
Gizmodo
Wed, 31 Mar 2021 18:33 UTC
Ancient Spider
© Screenshot: Agencia de Noticias Andina/YouTubeA view of the uncovered mural. The spider’s leg and hilt of the knife are visible.
It likely had eight legs, and at least one of them is still brandishing a knife. That's the report from archaeologists in northern Peru, who have announced the discovery of a 50-foot mural that once was the centerpiece of a pre-Columbian shrine.

The find was made in November 2020, when farmers seeking to expand their land partially destroyed a huaca — a Peruvian ceremonial structure — sitting among their avocado and sugar cane crops. The huaca, now cut in half, revealed a striking mural.

"What we have here is a shrine that would have been a ceremonial centre thousands of years ago," Régulo Franco Jordán, one of the archaeologists who went about excavating and preserving the elements of the ancient artwork that hadn't been demolished, told the Peruvian newspaper La República.
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Blue Planet

Ancient international trading routes between Exeter and Europe revealed in new study

University of Exeter
Phys.org
Tue, 16 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
Bamburgh
A previous study revealed that while most of Britain was in the 'Dark Ages' one area was playing host to visitors from across Europe, researchers studying bones uncovered near Bamburgh Castle claim
Cutting-edge scientific techniques used to study ancient artifacts found in Exeter have revealed more about the ancient international trading routes between the city and Europe.

A five-year research project by a team of archaeologists led by Professor Stephen Rippon at the University of Exeter shows the links between merchants in Exeter and France, the Low Countries, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and the Mediterranean.

The artifacts are held by the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery in Exeter. The analysis has helped experts establish where various pottery vessels found in Exeter were made,

Comment: There is strong evidence that at different points in time throughout humanities history our world was better connected, more civilized and more sophisticated than was previously believed: Also check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology

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The Mountain capital of the Dacians


Heritage Daily
Sat, 27 Mar 2021 18:36 UTC
Sarmizegetusa Regia was the capital and political centre of the Dacians, located in the Orăştie Mountains of the Grădiștea Muncelului Natural Park, in present-day Romania.
Sarmizegetusa Regia
© Balate Dorin - Shutterstock
The Dacians were a Thracian people who inhabited the cultural region of Dacia, an area that incorporated parts of modern Romania, Moldova, as well as smaller parts of Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Ukraine.

During the reign of the Thracian King Burebista (82/61 BC to 45/44 BC), the Getae and Dacian tribes were unified into the Dacian Kingdom, with the capital being moved to Sarmizegetusa Regia (possibly from the Geto-Dacian stronghold at Argedava).

Sarmizegetusa Regia was situated at an elevation of 1200 metres near a mountain summit, serving as a nucleus of a strategic defensive system that included the fortresses of Costești-Blidaru, Piatra Roșie, Costeşti-Cetățuie, Căpâlna and Băniţa.
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Genomes trace the origin and decline of the Scythians


Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Fri, 26 Mar 2021 18:25 UTC
Generally thought of as fierce horse-warriors, the Scythians were a multitude of Iron Age cultures who ruled the Eurasian steppe, playing a major role in Eurasian history. A new study published in Science Advances analyzes genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals spanning the Central Asian Steppe from the first millennia BCE and CE. The results reveal new insights into the genetic events associated with the origins, development and decline of the steppe's legendary Scythians.
Aerial view of Hun-Xianbi culture burials
© Zainolla SamashevAn aerial view of Hun-Xianbi culture burials. Both horses and warriors can be identified.
Because of their interactions and conflicts with the major contemporaneous civilizations of Eurasia, the Scythians enjoy a legendary status in historiography and popular culture. The Scythians had major influences on the cultures of their powerful neighbors, spreading new technologies such as saddles and other improvements for horse riding. The ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Chinese empires all left a multitude of sources describing, from their perspectives, the customs and practices of the feared horse warriors that came from the interior lands of Eurasia.

Still, despite evidence from external sources, little is known about Scythian history. Without a written language or direct sources, the language or languages they spoke, where they came from and the extent to which the various cultures spread across such a huge area were in fact related to one another, remain unclear.
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Colosseum

World's earliest stone technologies likely to be tens of thousands of years older than previously thought

Olivia Mille - University of Kent
Archaeology News Network
Wed, 24 Mar 2021 20:00 UTC
handaxe
© W. RoebroeksAcheulean handaxes from the site of Boxgrove, England, which dates to about 500 Ka. The handaxes
are made of flint and are between 12 and 14.5 cm in length
A new study from the University of Kent's School of Anthropology and Conservation has found that Oldowan and Acheulean stone tool technologies are likely to be tens of thousands of years older than current evidence suggests. They are currently the two oldest, well-documented stone tool technologies known to archaeologists.

These findings, published by the Journal of Human Evolution, provide a new chronological foundation from which to understand the production of stone tool technologies by our early ancestors. They also widen the time frame within which to discuss the evolution of human technological capabilities and associated dietary and behavioural shifts.

For the study, a team led by Kent's Dr Alastair Key and Dr David Roberts, alongside Dr Ivan Jaric from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, used statistical modelling techniques only recently introduced to archaeological science. The models estimated that Oldowan stone tools originated 2.617-2.644 million years ago, 36,000 to 63,000 years earlier than current evidence. The Acheulean's origin was pushed back further by at least 55,000 years to 1.815-1.823 million years ago.

Comment: See also:

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Better Earth

World's oldest wooden statute the Shigir Idol discovered to be even older at 12,100 years old

Ryan Morrison
Daily Mail
Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:28 UTC
shigir idol
Shigir Idol
A wooden statue discovered in Russia in 1890 is more ancient than previously thought, making it twice as old as Stonehenge, researchers claim.

The Shigir Idol was first discovered by Russian gold miners who stumbled upon the large object in the Shigir peat bog 62 miles north of Yekaterinburg.

Radiocarbon dating from the 1990s placed the idol at 9,750 years old, but researchers have since re-dated it, finding it is about 12,100 years old.

This makes it almost twice as old as Stonehenge in the UK, which had been dated back about 5,000 years.

The tree that provided the wood to carve the large statue was about 12,250 years old based on the 159 growth rings seen within the statue itself, the team from the University of Gottingen and Institute of Archaeology RAS discovered.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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3,000-year-old gold mask linked to enigmatic civilization found in China

Isis Davis-Marks
Smithsonian Magazine
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:20 UTC
Gold mask China
© Photo by Shen Bohan / Xinhua via Getty ImagesFragment of a gold mask unearthed at Sanxingdui, an archaeological site in southwest China .
Archaeologists have uncovered a trove of 3,000-year-old artifacts — including fragments of a gold mask — at Sanxingdui, an excavation site in China's Sichuan province.

As Stephen Chen reports for the South China Morning Post, the researchers, who began digging at the site in 2019, found more than 500 objects, most of which were crafted out of gold, bronze, jade and ivory.

Experts are unsure who made the artifacts, but they speculate that the cache's creators belonged to the Shu state, a highly skilled civilization conquered by the neighboring state of Qin in 316 B.C. Because the people of Shu left behind few written records, notes Oscar Holland for CNN, historians' knowledge of their culture is limited.

A major highlight of the find is a 0.6-pound fragment of a gold mask that may have been worn by a priest during religious ceremonies, reports the Global Times' Chen Shasha. About 84 percent pure gold, the piece likely weighed close to one pound in its entirety, making it one of the heaviest gold masks from that time period discovered in China to date. The Sanxingdui team found the mask, along with an array of other ornate items, in six rectangular sacrificial pits.
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Key

Best of the Web: Did CIA pressure Yemen to release al-Qaeda leader from prison?

Alexander Rubinstein
MintPress News
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC
Tenet Awlaki
© bucketeer/amazonaws.comFormer CIA director George Tenet • Anwar Al-Awlaki
Explosive new recordings released by the Houthi government of Yemen pile more earth atop mountains of existing evidence of the U.S. government's support for the very same terrorists it has claimed to be waging war against for nearly two decades.

The Moral Guidance Department, a branch of the Yemeni Armed Forces of the revolutionary Houthi government of Yemen published last week a number of secret documents and phone calls from the former regime of longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Two phone calls between former president Saleh and the former director of the CIA George Tenet were released. A Yemeni government official has confirmed to me that the calls took place in 2001.

In the calls, the former CIA director can be heard pressuring Saleh to release a detained individual involved in the bombing attacks on USS Cole in October of 2000, which left 17 dead and 37 injured. In the call, Tenet is asked by Saleh's translator about the name of the individual in question.

"I don't want to give his name over the phone," Tenet tells him.

Saleh notes that the FBI team tasked with the USS Cole investigation had already arrived in Sana'a, and asks Tenet if the FBI personnel could meet with him to discuss the matter. Tenet refuses, saying
"this is my person, this is my problem, this is my issue... The man must be released. I've talked to everybody in my government; I told them that I was going to make this call."
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Blue Planet

Ancient Americans were among the world's first coppersmiths

David Malakoff
Science Magazine
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:22 UTC
Copper spear
© Michelle Bebber/Kent State University Experimental Archaeology LabArchaeologist Michelle Bebber of Kent State University, Kent, made these replicas of copper arrowheads and knives crafted by people of North America’s Old Copper Culture.
About 8500 years ago, hunter-gatherers living beside Eagle Lake in Wisconsin hammered out a conical, 10-centimeter-long projectile point made of pure copper. The finely crafted point, used to hunt big game, highlights a New World technological triumph — and a puzzle. A new study of that artifact and other traces of prehistoric mining concludes that what is known as the Old Copper Culture emerged, then mysteriously faded, far earlier than once thought.

The dates show that early Native Americans were among the first people in the world to mine metal and fashion it into tools. They also suggest a regional climate shift might help explain why, after thousands of years, the pioneering metallurgists abruptly stopped making most copper tools and largely returned to stone and bone implements.


Comment: The question is: what caused this 'climate shift': Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle


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NPC

Medieval meme? Silver gilt 'snail man' relic may depict ancient joke

Mark Brown
The Guardian
Mon, 22 Mar 2021 16:55 UTC
snail man
© Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service/PAThe snail-man has been described as a kind of 'medieval meme'.
Delicately crafted using silver-gilt, it shows a praying knight emerging from a snail on the back of a goat and may be an example of 13th-century Yorkshire satire. Precisely what the joke was may never be known.

"It is very unusual," said Beverley Nenk, the curator of later medieval collections at the British Museum, which announced its discovery on Monday. "It is such a funny little thing ... I haven't seen anything like it."

The "snail-man" object, just over 2cm long, was discovered by a metal detectorist in a field near Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in September last year.

Comment: See also:

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