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Earliest evidence of forest management discovered at the La Draga Neolithic site


Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Mon, 17 Jul 2023 18:28 UTC
la drage neolithic site ancient forest management
© Universitat Autònoma de BarcelonaGeneral and detailed image of the anthropic marks identified on bay tree posts at La Draga. Right: Oriol López-Bultó at La Draga, with an oak post recovered from the site.
UAB researchers identify marks carved intentionally on bay trees some five or ten years before the Neolithic settlement of La Draga was built in Banyoles 7,200 years ago. The discovery allows confirming the presence of human groups in the area before they settled there by selecting, marking and controlling the forests.

A research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has found the earliest known evidence of forest management based on the analysis of several anthropic markings located on posts made out of bay tree wood (Laurus nobilis) used in building La Draga (Banyoles, Girona), the only lakeside Neolithic site of the Iberian Peninsula dating back 7,200 to 6,700 years.

The research was conducted by Oriol López-Bultó, Ingrid Bertin and Raquel Piqué, from the UAB Department of Prehistory, and archaeologist Patrick Gassmann, and was published in the International Journal of Wood Culture after being presented at the From Forests to Heritage conference held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The study indicates that the trees were marked several times with adzes. The wood continued to grow on top of the scars left by the marks, and some five to ten years later, those same trees were cut down and converted into posts to be used in the early phases of building the settlement.

Marks such as the ones found at La Draga had been previously identified at a site located in Switzerland, the Hauterive-Champréveyres site, but were at least 1,000 years younger than the ones found at La Draga.
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Blue Planet

Mysterious labyrinth found hidden under a church in Mexico

David Nield
Science Alert
Wed, 19 Jul 2023 10:49 UTC
labyrinth mexico
© Project LyobaaA variety of imaging techniques were used to spot underground spaces.
Archaeologists working at the Mitla site in southern Mexico have come across a discovery worthy of an Indiana Jones movie: a labyrinth of chambers and passageways hidden below a church, representing an 'entrance' to the underworld.

When the buildings were put up by the ancient Zapotecs more than 1,000 years ago, they would've been used as a religious temple and known as the Lyobaa - the 'place of rest'. Several tombs appear to be part of the underground network, which sits some 5-8 meters (16-26 feet) below the surface.

To find the underground structures, researchers used three scanning methods to reveal what was hidden from view: ground-penetrating radar (measuring electromagnetic wave reflections), electrical resistivity tomography (measuring the progress of electric currents), and seismic noise tomography (measuring the progress of seismic waves).

Comment: See also:

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Blue Planet

3,000-year-old untouched burial of 'charioteer' discovered in Siberia, first evidence of chariot use in region

Tom Metcalfe
Live Science
Tue, 18 Jul 2023 20:11 UTC
chariot siberia
© IAET SB RASThe burial includes a distinctive hooked piece of bronze, probably once fixed to a belt around the waist, which is for drivers of horse-drawn chariots to tie the reins and free their hands.
Archaeologists in Siberia have discovered the untouched 3,000-year-old grave of a person thought to be a charioteer — indicating for the first time that horse-drawn chariots were used in the region.

The skeletal remains were interred with a distinctive hooked metal attachment for a belt, which allowed drivers of horse-drawn chariots to tie their reins to their waists and free their hands. This type of artifact has also been found in Chinese and Mongolian graves.

Aleksey Timoshchenko, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email that the object was found in its original placement at the waist of the person in the undisturbed grave.

Comment: See also:

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Fire

The big lie behind modern Ukraine: Why does Kiev refuse to properly investigate the mysterious 2014 'Maidan massacre'?

Christina Sizova
RT
Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:56 UTC
montage
© RTUkraine montage
For almost ten years officials have refused to find the culprits, despite plenty of eyewitness accounts and evidence...

The active phase of hostilities in Ukraine has been going on for more than 500 days. During this time, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have died.

Meanwhile Western governments have spent billions to support the war, and an active discussion has begun in Russia about the possibility of using nuclear weapons.

Ivan Katchanovski, a Canadian researcher of Ukrainian origin, believes that the first domino in the sequence toppled almost ten years ago, when the mass protests that would become known as "EuroMaidan" broke out in the Ukrainian capital.

On one day in Kiev more than 100 people, including both protesters and police, were killed. The Ukrainian leadership, western politicians and media blamed the Berkut special police force, but many facts suggest that the protesters may have been shot by fellow oppositionists.

In his article 'The Maidan Massacre Trial and Investigation Revelations: Implications for the Ukraine-Russia War and Relations', Katchanovski shows how the failure to properly investigate decade-old crimes has helped bring international relations to their current state.
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Better Earth

Best of the Web: Ancient Chinese relics point to unbroken cultural links that began a million years ago, further discrediting Out of Africa theory say researchers

Stephen Chen
South China Morning Post
Sat, 15 Jul 2023 16:00 UTC
china yeyuan
© Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics BureauArtefacts uncovered at the Yeyuan site are rewriting China's pre-history.
The earliest signs of civilisation in China have been dated to thousands of years ago, with many ancient cultural and political traditions still in place today. But emerging evidence has helped researchers establish a much longer continuity between early hominin activity and the roots of Chinese civilisation.

A series of excavations carried out between 2019 and 2023 at various locations in the Yellow River Basin - considered the birthplace of Chinese civilisation - have yielded stone tools and other artefacts that date from between 1.1 million to 10,000 years ago, according to scientists.

"The uninterrupted history of hominin development in our country can be dated back over a million years," said Luo Wenli, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, in a report posted online by People's Daily. Hominins consist of all modern and extinct humans and our immediate ancestors.

Comment: The above report is notable because it further emphasises how the much promoted Out of Africa theory for all of humanity is simply not supported by the evidence: And check out SOTT radio's:




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Books

'Heart-stopping': censored pages of history of Elizabeth I reappear after 400 years

Dalya Alberge
The Guardian
Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:00 UTC
elizabeth I
© British LibrarySeeing hidden text in pages from William Camden's Annals was ‘incredible’, said an expert.
It was the first official account of Elizabeth I's reign, one of the most valuable sources on early modern Britain, commissioned by her successor, King James I. But, for 400 years, no one has been able to read passages on hundreds of pages of this manuscript because they had been so heavily revised and self-censored by their 17th-century author, apparently to avoid punishment for offending his patron.

Now state-of-the-art imaging technology has enabled the British Library to read hidden pages of William Camden's Annals for the first time, "a significant finding in early modern historical scholarship".

Those pages had been either over-written or concealed beneath pieces of paper stuck down so tightly that attempting to lift them would have ripped the pages and destroyed evidence.

Comment: This kind of censorship and biased revision happens in our own time - and often to discredit great people - and its likely our understanding of our past is equally obscured by such actions: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Info

2000-year-old Celtiberian city discovered in northern Spain

Leman Altuntaş
Arkeonews Net
Sat, 15 Jul 2023 01:01 UTC
Celtiberian city
© University Madrid Polytechnic
The Polytechnic University of Madrid announced the discovery of a Roman camp and the Celtiberian city of Titiakos in the province of Soria, in the north of Spain.

In addition, a limestone quarry was found, which is thought to have been used for the construction of this large military camp, according to a statement from the university.

Celtiberia is a region in modern-day north-central Spain that was inhabited starting in the third century BC by tribes thought to be of mixed Celtic and Iberian ancestry. The majority of the current province of Soria as well as a sizable portion of the neighboring provinces of Guadalajara and Teruel were inhabited by these Celtiberians, who lived in the hill country between the sources of the Tagus (Tajo) and Iberus (Ebro) rivers.

The remains of a Celtoiberian city that existed more than 2,000 years ago have been discovered by excavations carried out by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). The site could be the lost city of Titiakos, a Celtoiberian stronghold from the Sertorian War, according to the researchers.

The Sertorian War (80-72 BC) was the last stand of the Marian faction after their defeat in Italy during Sulla's Second Civil War and saw Quintus Sertorius hold out in Spain for over a decade before finally being defeated by Pompey and Metellus Pius.

The research, recently published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, was conducted in the locality of Deza after archaeological sites were detected through aerial photographs. These photographs revealed sections of a rock-cut road with wheel ruts caused by the passage of carts.
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Magnify

The life and dentistry of a 17th-century French aristocrat

Juliette Collen
Science Alert
Sat, 15 Jul 2023 13:04 UTC
teeth aristocrat
© (INRAP/AFP)
Scientists have discovered the long-buried secret of a 17th-century French aristocrat 400 years after her death: She was using gold wire to keep her teeth from falling out.

The body of Anne d'Alegre, who died in 1619, was discovered during an archaeological excavation at the Chateau de Laval in northwestern France in 1988.

Embalmed in a lead coffin, her skeleton - and teeth - were remarkably well preserved.

At the time, the archaeologists noticed that she had a dental prosthetic, but they did not have advanced scanning tools to find out more.

Comment: See also: Why we have so many problems with our teeth

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Better Earth

Humans were in South America at least 25,000 years ago, giant sloth bone pendants reveal

Kristina Killgrove
Live Science
Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:51 UTC
sloth
© Júlia D'OliveiraAn artist's interpretation of a human crafting a pendant from a giant ground sloth bone around 25,000 years ago in what is now Brazil.
The date that humans arrived in South America has been pushed back to at least 25,000 years ago, based on an unlikely source: bones from an extinct giant ground sloth that were crafted into pendants by ancient people.

Discovered in the Santa Elina rock shelter in central Brazil, three sloth osteoderms — bony deposits that form a kind of protective armor over the skin of animals such as armadillos — found near stone tools sported tiny holes that only humans could have made.

The finding is among the earliest evidence for humans in the Americas, according to a paper published Wednesday (July 12) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Comment: Other evidence suggests human occupation for the Americas going back at least ten thousand years earlier; if not tens of thousands of years earlier: And check out SOTT radio's:


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Info

Research group deciphers enigmatic ancient Kushan script


The University of Cologne
Thu, 13 Jul 2023 02:39 UTC
The Kushan Empire in Central Asia was one of the most influential states of the ancient world. A research team at the University of Cologne's Department of Linguistics has now deciphered a writing system that sheds new light on its history / publication in the 'Transactions of the Philological Society'.

Characters on a rock in the Almosi Gorge in Tajikistan
© Bobomullo BobomulloevCharacters on a rock in the Almosi Gorge in Tajikistan.
A team of early-career researchers at the University of Cologne has succeeded in decoding a script that has been puzzling scholars for over seventy years: the so-called 'unknown Kushan script'. Over a period of several years, Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann and Natalie Korobzow examined photographs of inscriptions found in caves as well as characters on bowls and clay pots from various Central Asian countries in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

On 1 March 2023, they first announced their partial decipherment of the unknown Kushan script at an online conference of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan. Currently, about 60 percent of the characters can be read, and the group is working to decipher the remaining characters. A detailed description of the decipherment has now been published in the journal Transactions of the Philological Society under the title 'A Partial Decipherment of the Unknown Kushan Script'.
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