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Best of the Web: Stonehenge altar stone hails from Scotland

Mark Milligan
Heritage Daily
Wed, 14 Aug 2024 18:41 UTC

Comment: This discovery doesn't bring us any closer to solving the mystery of how Stonehenge's megaliths were transported into place, but it does move us further away from asinine notions that they were moved using ropes, carts and boats!


Altar Stone Stonehenge
© Shutterstock
According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the Altar Stone at Stonehenge (thought to be Welsh in origin) actually hails from Scotland.

The Altar Stone, otherwise known as Stone 80, is a six-tonne recumbent megalith made from a micaceous sandstone.

Previous studies have attributed the Altar Stone to the Senni Beds formation of the Old Red Sandstone in Wales (ORS), however, a geochemical analysis of two 30-µm samples now suggests that the stone was transported from Scotland some 4,500-years-ago.

The research was led by a Welsh PhD student, Anthony Clarke, now working at Curtin University in Western Australia.

The study authors analysed the chemistry of detrital zircon, apatite and rutile grains from within fragments from the stone, revealing Mesoproterozoic and Archaean sources in the Zircon, and a mid-Ordovician source in the rutile and apatite.
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2,600-year-old terracotta pipeline found in India

oguz kayra
Arkeonews Net
Sun, 11 Aug 2024 16:14 UTC
Terracotta pipeline
© Government of Tamil Nadu
During the 10th phase of archaeological excavations at the Keeladi archaeological site in Tamil Nadu, India, archaeologists uncovered a terracotta pipeline that shows the existence of an ancient water management practice practiced by humans 2,600 years ago.

Ancient city Keeladi in southern India serves as a reminder that our ancestors had some pretty clever tricks up their sleeves, just when you thought modern plumbing was the pinnacle of human achievement.

In the latest news from this archaeological goldmine, excavations have revealed a 6th-century B.C.E. terracotta pipeline. Previously, the archaeologists found an open drain, a closed channel, and small tanks in Keeladi.

Located approximately seven miles southeast of Madurai, the Keeladi archaeological site has been a hidden gem since Archaeological Survey of India researcher K. Amarnath Ramakrishna discovered it in 2014. More than 20,000 antiquities and artifacts have been discovered in the last ten years; each one whispers a story of a sophisticated society that once flourished along the banks of the Vaigai River.
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Palette

The Olympics: Weightlifting, hurdles and . . . poetry?

Ellen Wexler
Smithsonian
Tue, 06 Aug 2024 20:56 UTC
ancient olympics poetry competition engraving
© DEA / ICAS94 via Getty ImagesAn 1838 illustration of Pindar, the lyric poet from ancient Greece, reciting one of the Olympian odes
Poetry was an official Olympic event for nearly 40 years. Pierre de Coubertin hoped the modern Games would encourage the ancient Greek notion of harmony between "muscle and mind"

At the ancient Olympics in Greece, athletes weren't the only stars of the show. The spectacle also attracted poets, who recited their works for eager audiences. Competitors commissioned bigger names to write odes of their victories, which choruses performed at elaborate celebrations. Physical strength and literary prowess were inextricably linked.

Thousands of years later, this image appealed to Pierre de Coubertin, a French baron best known as the founder of the modern Olympics in 1896. But today's Games bear little resemblance to Coubertin's grand vision: He pictured a competition that would "reunite in the bonds of legitimate wedlock a long-divorced couple — muscle and mind."

The baron believed that humanity had "lost all sense of eurythmy," a word he used to describe the harmony of arts and athletics. The idea can be traced back to sources such as Plato's Republic, in which Socrates extolls the virtues of education that combines "gymnastic for the body and music for the soul." Poets should become athletes, and athletes should try their hand at verse.
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Butterfly

Çemka Höyük: Mysterious 12,000-year-old burial of woman with wild animals was a shaman, new study claims

Carly Cassella
Science Alert
Sat, 10 Aug 2024 15:29 UTC
shaman
© Kodaş et al., L'Anthropologie , 2024The grave of the female 'shaman', buried curled up on her right side.
Archaeologists think they have hit upon the ancient burial site of a female 'shaman' in southeast Türkiye.

In life, as in death, scientists suspect the early Neolithic woman was 'one with' the animals that used to roam the banks of the Tigris River.

In 2019, her remains were unearthed at a roughly 12,000-year-old settlement, called Çemka Höyük.

Her grave is a veritable menagerie of local fauna.

Comment: See also:

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Handcuffs

Historic US-Russia prisoner swap exposes CIA support for Chechen jihad

Kit Klarenberg
The Grayzone
Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00 UTC
Vadim/Zemi
© oc-media.org/DailyMailVadim Krasikov (L) convicted of killing Zelimkhan Khangoshvili (R)
Western media focused intently on a Russian "murderer" released in the exchange with Washington, but whitewashed the record of his target - a Chechen militant now confirmed as a CIA asset.

August 1 saw the largest prisoner exchange between Moscow and Washington since the end of the Cold War. Among those freed were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan, who were each serving 16 year sentences for espionage.

In the other direction, Russian opposition activists jailed for criticism of the so-called "special military operation" have now resettled in Western countries. This includes politician Ilya Yashin, sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in December 2022. At a press conference in Bonn, Germany on August 2, he described the feeling of being beside "the wonderful Rhine river", when just a week earlier he was imprisoned in Siberia, as "really surreal." But Yashin claimed that his release was difficult to personally accept, "because a murderer was free."

He referred here to Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of killing the Georgian-born Chechen militant Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in August 2019, who was also released as part of the deal. He was reportedly of extremely high value to the Kremlin. In a February 2024 interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed trading Gershkovich for an unnamed Russian "patriot" imprisoned in a "US-allied country" for "liquidating a bandit."
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Calendar

Carvings at Göbeklitepe could be World's Oldest Calendar

Leman Altuntaş
Arkeonews Net
Tue, 06 Aug 2024 21:37 UTC
Göbeklitepe Calender
© Dr Martin SweatmanDetail of pillar 43 of Göbekli Tepe.
Experts suggest that markings on a stone pillar at the 12,000-year-old Göbeklitepe archaeological site in Türkiye probably represent the oldest solar calendar in history, having been established as a memorial to a catastrophic comet strike.

According to a recent study from the University of Edinburgh, the markings at the location might be a record of an astronomical event that marked a significant turning point in human civilization.

Southeast Türkiye's Göbeklitepe is well-known for its array of enormous, T-shaped stone pillars adorned with animal and abstract symbol carvings. According to recent analysis, some of these carvings might have functioned as a kind of calendar that tracked important celestial events and marked the positions of the sun, moon, and stars.

This finding suggests that prehistoric humans utilized these engravings to document their observations of the universe, possibly signifying a primitive lunisolar calendar that combined solar and lunar cycles to predict the passage of time.

A fresh analysis of V-shaped symbols carved onto pillars at the site has found that each V could represent a single day. This interpretation allowed researchers to count a solar calendar of 365 days on one of the pillars, consisting of 12 lunar months plus 11 extra days.
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4,000-year-old lunar eclipse omen tablets finally deciphered

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Tue, 06 Aug 2024 17:54 UTC
Tablets added to the British Museum's collection many decades ago have finally been deciphered.
cuneiform tablet
Scholars have finally deciphered 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets found more than 100 years ago in what is now Iraq. The tablets describe how some lunar eclipses are omens of death, destruction and pestilence.

The four clay tablets "represent the oldest examples of compendia of lunar-eclipse omens yet discovered" Andrew George, an emeritus professor of Babylonian at the University of London, and Junko Taniguchi, an independent researcher, wrote in a paper published recently in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies. (Lunar eclipses occur when the moon falls into Earth's shadow.)

The authors of the tablets used the time of night, movement of shadows and the date and duration of eclipses to predict omens.

For example, one omen says that if "an eclipse becomes obscured from its center all at once [and] clear all at once: a king will die, destruction of Elam." Elam was an area in Mesopotamia centered in what is now Iran. Another omen says that if "an eclipse begins in the south and then clears: downfall of Subartu and Akkad,"which were both regions of Mesopotamia at the time. Yet another omen reads: "An eclipse in the evening watch: it signifies pestilence."
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Gold Coins

Archaeologists find ancient Persian gold coins in western Turkey

Morgan Sherburne
University of Michigan
Fri, 02 Aug 2024 18:48 UTC
Gold Persian coins
© Photo courtesy of Notion Archaeological Project, University of MichiganArchaeologists discovered a pot of gold Persian coins, called darics, at the ancient city of Notion in Turkey. The coins show a figure of a kneeling archer, the characteristic design of the Persian daric, a type of gold coin issued by the Persian Empire.
Darics were minted from the late sixth century B.C. until the conquest of the Persian empire by Alexander the Great in 330 B.C., and the design of the coins remained the same with only minor stylistic differences. Researchers have tried to arrange the coins in a chronological sequence by analyzing those stylistic differences. One of the important aspects of the newly discovered hoard is that it is independently dated by other artifacts associated with the hoard.

"This hoard will provide a firm date that can serve as an anchor to help fix the chronology of the (entire sequence of coins)," Ratté said.

According to Andrew Meadows of Oxford University, formerly curator of coins at the British Museum and the American Numismatic Society, the archaeological context for the hoard is likely "if it can be established accurately by other means, to allow us to fine-tune the chronology of the Achaemenid gold coinage. This is a spectacular find ... of the highest importance."

Researchers launched the excavations in Notion in 2022. Archaeologists with the project discovered the coins in 2023, and the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has now given permission for the discovery of the coins, which remain in Turkey, to become public.
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Tank

How the United States drove Russia to invade Ukraine and the potential consequences

Chip Burns
Covertactionmagazine.com
Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:00 UTC
Ukraine Conflict
© Thomas Lohnes /Getty


The Cold War did not end for the United States with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, the United States set out on a systematic 30-plus year effort to undermine, humiliate and threaten the Russian state. This has ultimately led to the tragedy of the war in Ukraine.

Of course this is nothing new.

Invasions of the Russian land mass by the West have been regular and destructive. Napoleon invaded in 1812, killing 500,000 Russians. The Crimean War of 1853-1856 killed another 250,000.

World War I saw 3,300,000 Russian deaths, and World War II 27,000,000. In total the Western Powers have been responsible for 30-35 million dead Russians, not to mention turning western Russian into a moonscape, over two centuries. Everyone attacked Russia through Ukraine. This is known in historical circles as a pattern.

But I digress.
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Info

Julius Caesar's perfume recreated

Leman Altuntaş
Arkeonews Net
Fri, 02 Aug 2024 19:24 UTC
Old perfume bottles.
© Berrak SağlamOld perfume bottles.
The Romans are long regarded as heroes in the history of ancient civilizations because of the legacy they have left behind. However, the lives of many emperors continue to be a subject of curiosity. And what about you? Have you ever wondered what a Roman emperor smelled like?

Julius Caesar's "Telinum" perfume has been re-created by the Scent Culture and Tourism Association, which promotes ancient perfumes.

According to research, the Romans liked perfumes with simple formulas. Made with rose oil and the sweat of gladiators, rhodium was the most widely used formula in ancient Rome. because gladiators' dirt and sweat, rather than their blood, were valued enough to be used in sculpture and painting.

In Antique Rome, besides rhodium with rose, narcissus, and crocus with saffron, metopium with bitter almonds was among the most loved perfume mixtures.

However, the scent of an emperor would undoubtedly have been more special and different. Especially, high-level executives, generals, priests and the rich would import different perfumes from all over the world to smell different from everyone else or order leading perfumers of the age to make special perfumes for them.
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