© ScreenCapture/YouTube
Secret History
© Harappa Archaeological Research Project, in Yadav et al 2010 PLOS One
A typical seal of the Indus Valley Civilization, containing undeciphered signs.
A typical seal of the Indus Valley Civilization, containing undeciphered signs.
But if it's fame you're after (as well as intense scrutiny and even death threats) there's no better challenge than the symbols of the Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished some 4,000 years ago in present-day Pakistan and northwest India.
From this culture, archaeologists have recovered several thousand short inscriptions, most with just 4 or 5 signs. There is no consensus on how to read them, although dozens of speculative decipherments have been proposed over the past century.
Complicating efforts, the underlying language the script is tied to is disputed, and there are complex modern-day political ramifications to the question. Rival ethnic groups claim to descend from this once-great civilization and knowing its language would help cement cultural ties. Hence the reported threats to scholars immersed in the matter.
Furthermore, some researchers go so far as to deny the existence of an underlying language. That is, they argue the Indus inscriptions were not true writing - visible signs that unambiguously represent speech - but an alternate symbolic system similar to emblems, conveying more general meanings.
Despite naysayers and challenges, decipherment efforts have progressed in the past decade, thanks to better databases of texts and new computational methods for finding patterns among the signs. Here's what we know, for now.
© Meliton Tapia Davila/AP
A skull-like stone carving and stone trunk depicting the Flayed lord.
A skull-like stone carving and stone trunk depicting the Flayed lord.
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday the find was made during recent excavations of Popoloca ruins in Puebla state.
The institute said experts found two skull-like stone carvings and a stone trunk depicting the god, Xipe Totec. It had an extra hand dangling off one arm, suggesting the god was wearing the skin of a sacrificial victim.
Priests worshipped Xipe Totec by skinning human victims and then donning their skins. The ritual was seen as a way to ensure fertility and regeneration.
An ancient spinning disk (reconstruction shown) found in what's now southwestern France may have been a children's toy.
A cartoon that Biblical scholar Kristine Garroway taped up in her college dorm helps to explain kids' invisibility at ancient sites: Two men in business suits stare intently at an unidentifiable round object sitting on a table. "Hey, what's this?" asks the first guy. "I dunno, probably a toy ... or a religious object," says the second.
Archaeologists have long tended to choose the second option, says Garroway, now a visiting scientist at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. Ambiguous finds, such as miniature pottery vessels and small figurines, get classified as ritual or decorative objects. Some of these artifacts undoubtedly were used in ceremonies. But not all of them, Garroway argues.
Comment: Evidently we share great behaviorally similarities with our ancestors, and yet, as other findings show, some possessed a knowledge we've yet to attain in our supposedly advanced age:
- Prehistoric cave art study reveals ancient people had complex knowledge of astronomy and were tracking catastrophic meteor showers
- Newly found megalithic ruins in Russia contain the largest blocks of stone ever discovered
- Child of Neanderthal and Denisovan identified for first time
- What ancient footprints may tell of the life of children in prehistoric times
- Polish archaeologists baffled by ancient bones of child with a bird skull in its mouth
© Graeme Robertson/Guardian
The inside of a rediscovered ice house near Regent’s Park in central London.
The inside of a rediscovered ice house near Regent’s Park in central London.
For the most discerning hosts, that meant using blocks of purest frozen Norwegian fjord, which was shipped to London's docks and then carefully stored until required to be chipped into glasses and clinked.
Archaeologists have now uncovered a link to the capital's lost ice trade with the rediscovery, under one of London's most prestigious addresses, of an enormous 18th-century ice store, the existence of which had been almost entirely forgotten.
Comment: As detailed below, the technology for storing ice and keeping things cool goes a long way back. From wiki:
Yakhchāl (Persian: یخچال "ice pit"; yakh meaning "ice" and chāl meaning "pit") is an ancient type of evaporative cooler. Above ground, the structure had a domed shape, but had a subterranean storage space. It was often used to store ice, but sometimes was used to store food as well. The subterranean space coupled with the thick heat-resistant construction material insulated the storage space year round. These structures were mainly built and used in Persia. Many that were built hundreds of years ago remain standing.[1]Design and process
Yakhchāl
By 400 BC, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of using yakhchāls to create ice in the winter and store it in the summer in the desert. In most yakhchāls, the ice is created by itself during the cold seasons of the year; the water is channeled from the qanat (Iranian aqueduct) to the yakhchāl and it freezes upon resting inside the structure. Usually a wall is also made along an east-west direction close to the yakhchāl and the water is channeled from the north side of the wall so that the shadow of the wall keeps the water cool to make it freeze more quickly. In some yakhchāls, ice is also brought in from nearby mountains for storage or to seed the icing process.
Rosyth's naval dockyard is home to seven defunct submarines
A survey for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1989 identified six sites for "seabed storage" of defunct naval submarines near the islands of Skye, Mull and Barra for up to 60 years - and probably longer.
Detailed and highly confidential MoD studies concluded the plan was "feasible" and would "obviate the international problems which we would face were we to dispose of these vessels in international waters."
One MoD official said the aim was "to remove submarines from public view". Another hoped that "everyone will forget about these submarines and that they will be allowed to quietly rot away indefinitely."
Comment: Wishful thinking, a disdain for the northern parts of the country, and a paranoia about 'Russians' is quite an apt assessment of the mentality of some in the British establishment:
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© dpa
Forensic physician Frank Ramsthaler demonstrates the stab which inflicted mortal injuries to remains now proven to be the Prince of Helmsdorf.
Forensic physician Frank Ramsthaler demonstrates the stab which inflicted mortal injuries to remains now proven to be the Prince of Helmsdorf.
Nearly 4 millennia ago, an experienced warrior thrust a dagger through the stomach of the so-called "prince of Helmsdorf." The weapon, measuring some 6 inches long, traveled through to the victim's spine with such ferocity that it severed multiple arteries. A second blow dealt to the prince's collarbone split his left shoulder blade and likely punctured his lung, ensuring he suffered a bloody, brutal demise.
As Deutsche Welle reports, a group of archaeologists and forensic researchers based in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt presented their detailed portrait of the prince's last moments earlier this month. The team's findings suggest the attack may be the world's oldest-known political murder.
© Fredy Thuerig/Shutterstock
Stalagmites are upward-growing mounds of mineral deposits that have built up due to water dripping onto the floor of a cave, and they reveal quite the history of a land.
Stalagmites are upward-growing mounds of mineral deposits that have built up due to water dripping onto the floor of a cave, and they reveal quite the history of a land.
Civilizations rise and fall for many reasons, and the causes of the Akkadian Empire's demise remain controversial. The coincidence of timing with far away events has led some historians to propose a climatic cause. The nature, and even existence, of this event has been unclear, however, coming as it did in the middle of the Holocene era of largely stable temperatures, with no known upsurge in volcanic activity or change in solar output.
However, when a team led by The University of Oxford's Dr Stacy Carolin studied a stalagmite from Gol-e-Zard Cave in Iran's Alborz Mountains formed between 5,200 and 3,700 years ago they saw something certainly happened around the relevant time. The team report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences there were sharp spikes in the amount of magnesium relative to calcium 4,510 and 4,260 years ago, coinciding with slower growth and changes in the stone's oxygen isotopes. These changes lasted 110 and 290 years, respectively before the stalagmite composition returned to previous levels.
© Northern Emporium Project
Three leaden pendants featuring Christian crosses dating from the early 800s have been unearthed from an excavation site in Ribe, a former Viking capital,
Three leaden pendants featuring Christian crosses dating from the early 800s have been unearthed from an excavation site in Ribe, a former Viking capital,
Three leaden pendants featuring Christian crosses dating from the early 800s have been unearthed from an excavation site in Ribe, a former Viking capital, suggesting that the first Christians had established themselves in Danish society several generations earlier than previously assumed, Danish Radio reported.
"This is new knowledge of early Christianity in Denmark. We are used to crediting Harald Bluetooth with christening the Danes in around the year 960. But this shows that people in Ribe wore Christian amulets more than 150 years before this actually happened, Søren Sindbæk, a professor at Aarhus University, said, calling it "sensational."
© PA
Routine analysis of Bishop Cardeny's tomb revealed images of saint-like figures
Routine analysis of Bishop Cardeny's tomb revealed images of saint-like figures
Depictions of saint-like figures were revealed on the side facing a wall while conservationists carried out a routine inspection.
The tomb, located in Dunkeld Cathedral in Perthshire belongs to the 15th century Scottish cleric Bishop Cardeny.
The unearthing of the stone carvings has shed new light on the history of the site, revealing the tomb has at some point been moved and built into the wall from its original free-standing location.
Comment: One wonders what brought about such a brutal and morbid practice, one that apparently continued for centuries: