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First time that Scythian settlement has been found in East Kazakhstan


Arkeolojik Haber
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 18:55 UTC
Saka Settlement
© Arkeolojik Haber
3,000-year-old Saka settlement discovered in Kazakhstan.

At the start of the 2019 archaeological season, Kazakhstani researcher Zeynolla Samashev discovered an ancient Saka settlement of the final Bronze Age and early Iron Age near the historical complex Akbaur, located some two kilometres west of Kazakhstan's capital Nur-Sultan, local news sources reported.

The Saka were among the Scythian tribes that historically inhabited the territories of Central Asia, South Caucasus, Afghanistan and modern-day India and widely believed to have had an exclusively nomadic economy and social structure.

"In the first layer we discovered numerous artifacts, including millstones for grinding wheat, thousands of ceramic fragments, spindle whorls and bones of horses, sheep and goats, all of which clearly indicate the complex nature of the economy of the people who lived here," said the Kazakhstani archaeologist Zeynolla Samashev, who led the excavation team.
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Fire

"Catastrophic" fire destroyed incredible British Bronze Age settlement a year after it was built

George Dvorsky
Gizmodo
Wed, 12 Jun 2019 10:50 UTC
Must Farm.
© Vicki Herring, Cambridge Archaeological Unit
Artist’s reconstruction of Must Farm.
A remarkably well-preserved Bronze Age settlement dubbed the 'British Pompeii' was destroyed by fire around a year after it was constructed, according to new research. It's one of many new findings that's shedding light on the 3,000-year-old community and the people who called it home-albeit it for a short time.

New research published today in the journal Antiquity offers a detailed look into Must Farm, a late Bronze Age settlement located near Whittlesey in eastern England. First described in 2016, the settlement is known as the "Pompeii of Britain" owing to its remarkable state of preservation. Like Pompeii, the settlement captures a moment in time-albeit a moment of tragedy. Some 3,000 years ago, the wooden structures caught fire and plunged into the waters below, an event that contributed to their preservation.

Comment: The similarities with Scotland's crannogs is intriguing. As noted in Crannogs: Neolithic artificial islands in Scotland stump archeologists:
In Loch Tay, of the 13 crannogs that have been radio-carbon-dated, nine date back to the same period as Oakbank. Four others seem to have been built 2,400 and 1,800 years ago. Those two spikes in activity - one in the mid-first millennium BC, the second toward the end of the millennium - echo a trend seen throughout Scotland. In part, this may have stemmed from the same reason that caused a boom in Welsh hill forts in the same period: climactic deterioration.

Around 536 AD, there was a well-documented catastrophe - likely caused by one if not two volcanic eruptions, or perhaps a series of comet impacts - that covered the Northern Hemisphere in a haze of dust. This caused crops to fail and made it colder and wetter.

As researchers Mike Baillie and David Brown, among others, have pointed out, these events line up with a spike in building crannogs in both Ireland and Scotland.
See also:

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Info

New study says gender inequality arose 8000 years ago

Dyani Lewis
Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 18 Jun 2019 18:39 UTC
Neolithic cave painting
© Universal History Archive/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images
A Neolithic cave painting in Cantabria, Spain. As the period progressed, men were depicted more often than women, and in ways often associated with violence.
At a time when human societies were abandoning their wanderlust in favour of agricultural settlements, the first inklings of gender inequality were taking root.

That's according to a study published in the European Journal of Archaeology, which analysed 5000-to-8000-year-old graves on the Iberian Peninsula.

Accounts of historical gender inequalities have largely focused on written records. Work by the historian Gerda Lerner in the early 1990s, for instance, found that by the second century BCE gender inequalities were already entrenched in middle eastern societies.

Lerner figured that the cultural practice of valuing men over women arose some time in pre-history, before written records emerged.

Archaeologists Marta Cintas-Peña and Leonardo García Sanjuán from the University of Seville in Spain decided to plumb the archaeological record to find out if she was right.

Twenty-one sites, which together contained the remains of more than 500 individuals buried in everything from individual tombs to pit graves and collective cave burials, were analysed.

The majority of the bodies were of an undetermined sex, many of them children. Nevertheless, of the 198 whose sex was known, men were over-represented. For every female grave, there were 1.5 male graves. Children were also less common than would be expected.
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Info

Impressive circular Neolithic building discovered in Cyprus


Arkeolojik Haber
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 23:57 UTC
Aceramic Neolithic site discovered in Cyprus. The announcement followed the completion of the 2019 archaeological mission of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Troodos mountains.

Aceramic Neolithic site discovered in Cyprus
Cyprus Discovery
© Arkeolojik Haber
Republic of Cyprus Department of Antiquities of the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works has announced the completion of the 2019 archaeological mission of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) in Troodos mountains.

The team, under the direction of Professor Nikos Efstratiou, consisted of undergraduate and postgraduate students of the Archaeology Section of the AUTH History and Archaeology Department and Cypriot researcher Demetris Kyriakou.
Circular Structures in Cyprus
© Arkeolojik Haber
This year, the site of Agios Ioannis/Vretsia-Upper Rhoudias a site in the upper part of Xeros River terrace in an upland area of Pafos District (elevation: 460 m.), which was first discovered during the 2018 excavation season, was further investigated

The 2019 excavations revealed an impressive circular building which belongs chronologically to the so-called 'Choirokoitian Phase' (ca. 6400 - 5600 BC). The stone building has a diameter of at least 5 meters and is extremely well-built (consisting of two lines of stones).
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Sherlock

Çatalhöyük: The 9,000 year old community troubled by climate change, over crowding and infectious diseases

Jeff Grabmeier - Ohio State University
Phys.org
Mon, 17 Jun 2019 12:00 UTC
catalhoyuk
© Stipich Béla. Wikimedia Commons
Çatal Hüyük excavations.
Some 9,000 years ago, residents of one of the world's first large farming communities were also among the first humans to experience some of the perils of modern urban living.

Scientists studying the ancient ruins of Çatalhöyük, in modern Turkey, found that its inhabitants - 3,500 to 8,000 people at its peak - experienced overcrowding, infectious diseases, violence and environmental problems.

In a paper published June 17, 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of bioarchaeologists report new findings built on 25 years of study of human remains unearthed at Çatalhöyük.

Comment: See also:

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Russian Flag

Soviet dissidents' enemy No.1: KGB general Bobkov dies in Moscow


RT
Mon, 17 Jun 2019 20:19 UTC
Bobkov
© Sputnik / Sergey Pyatakov
Filipp Bobkov in 2005.
Gen. Filipp Bobkov, a veteran of Soviet counterintelligence whose job at the KGB involved quashing dissidents and preventing flare ups of ethnic tensions, has died in Moscow aged 93.

Bobkov passed away at a Moscow hospital after a lengthy ailment, his family and friends told Russian media on Monday. A retired four-star general, he was a controversial figure in Russian history, serving as head of what was essentially the secret police responsible for tackling genuine threats to the USSR, but also blatant persecution of its dissidents. In his later years, he worked for a media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky.


Comment: That's the same oligarch Gusinsky who was a onetime rival, then partner with Berezovsky; who also fled to Israel when the Russian government started reining in the out-of-control oligarchs of the 90s. See, for example:

War veteran

His intelligence career started in 1945 with an appointment to a school of Smersh, the Soviet military organization, the name of which literally means "death to spies." At the time he was a 20-year-old man who had to lie about his age to enroll as a volunteer shortly after the Nazi invasion and rose to a decorated platoon commander on the battlefield. He graduated as an officer and investigator for the Ministry of State Security, which was what the contemporary incarnation of the soviet state security apparatus was called.
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Key

Did red-haired, cannibalistic giants exist? Unlocking Lovelock Cave

D. Olson
Megalithic Marvels
Sun, 05 Feb 2017 19:37 UTC
Inside Locklock Cave
© Dave Feliz

Part One: The Oral Tradition and Written Account

The Oral Tradition

The northern Paiutes of Nevada have an ancient oral tradition that they have passed down from generation to generation that usually causes the hearer to pause in bewilderment. The Paiutes state that long ago in ages past they went to war against a ferocious enemy known as the "Si-Te-Cah" or "Saiduka."

Now, here is where this prehistoric tale becomes fascinating. According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were a race of red-haired cannibalistic giants that would literally devour the flesh of their foes! The chronicle states that after three years of blood-weary-battles, a coalition of regional tribes finally unified together to conquer this savage enemy. The allied tribes bravely pushed the Si-Te-Cah back into the depths of a very large cave and quickly covered the entrance with brush piles. A fire was then set ablaze that began to suffocate the giants and any would-be escapees were quickly shot with a fury of fire-piercing arrows. The giant cannibalistic carnivores finally met their grim fate in a blazing cavernous inferno.

"Si-Te-Cah" is said to be translated as "Tule-Eaters" in the northern Paiute language. Tule is a species of water plant that grows in marshes across North America and would have grown in "Lake Lahontan," a Pleistocene lake that once covered much of northwestern Nevada around 12,700 years ago. According to the oral tradition, the giants used the tule to weave rafts in which to navigate the lake, flee surprise attacks from the Paiutes and worst of all - capture the Paiute women who would gather tule near the shore of Humboldt lake. [1]
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Info

Archaeologists uncover unique megalithic monument in Ireland

Hayley Halpin
The Journal IE
Sat, 15 Jun 2019 16:16 UTC
Archaeology Students
© IT Sligo
IT Sligo Archaeology students Jazmin Scally Koulak and Eugene Anderson sieving the soil at Carrowmore excavation.
An archaeological excavation in Co Sligo has uncovered a megalithic monument thought to be unlike any found in Ireland to date.

Several prehistoric tools made from a hard stone called chert were discovered and are thought to have been used for activities such as working animal hides, cutting and preparing food, basket food, basket working and bone working.

The discovery was made by a team of archaeologists from IT Sligo during a two-week excavation of a prehistoric monument in the heart of the Carrowmore megalithic complex in Co Sligo.

Carrowmore in the largest cemetery of megalithic tombs in Ireland, with 5,500-year-old passage tombs dating from 3,600 BC.
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Info

8,000-year-old carvings by ancient humans discovered in South Africa


IFL Science
Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:54 UTC
Ancient Petroglyphs
© University of the Free State
One of the carvings found on the impact crater dyke.
Two billion years ago an enormous asteroid slammed into what is now South Africa. It left behind the largest and second oldest confirmed impact crater, the 300 kilometer-wide (190-mile) Vredefort Crater. The distinctive crater shape has eroded away over the course of almost half the Earth's lifetime, but its legacy remains important. Geologists studying the crater have found stone carvings showing it was a place of considerable spiritual significance to ancient peoples, as well as making possible the world's richest gold mines.

The Vredefort Crater is almost twice the size of the one at Chicxulub that ended the Cretaceous Era. The asteroid that made it is thought to have been much larger as well - some 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) across. Despite the geological forces that have acted on it we can still make out features such as its central dome, parts of the crater rim and deformed rock that once lay below the crater floor. The site provides us with a rare opportunity to study a very large impact site without having to go to the Moon.

Geologists from South Africa's University of the Free State are in the process of investigating it, and while much of their work is still to be done, they have already come up with some exciting findings outside their fields.

The floor of the crater is marked by granophyre dykes, feldspar and quartz rocks that can stretch for miles while being only a few meters wide. A paper in Geology concludes molten material produced in the impact sank into the ground and captured rock fragments on its descent that would otherwise have eroded away over the subsequent billions of years. To geologists, these are a rich source of information about ancient rock formations that would otherwise have been lost.
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Marijuana

Oldest evidence of marijuana use discovered in 2500-year-old cemetery in peaks of western China

Andrew Lawler
Science Mag
Wed, 12 Jun 2019 14:00 UTC
cannabis
© XINHUA WU
Ancient people put cannabis leaves and hot stones in this brazier, and likely inhaled the resulting smoke.
Today, more than 150 million people regularly smoke cannabis, making it one of the world's most popular recreational drugs. But when and where humans began to appreciate the psychoactive properties of weed has been more a matter of speculation than science. Now, a team led by archaeologists Yang Yimin and Ren Meng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing reports clear physical evidence that mourners burned cannabis for its intoxicating fumes on a remote mountain plateau in Central Asia some 2500 years ago.

The study, published today in Science Advances, relies on new techniques that enable researchers to identify the chemical signature of the plant and even evaluate its potency. "We are in the midst of a really exciting period," says team member Nicole Boivin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Jena, Germany. The paper is part of a wider effort to track how the drug spread along the nascent Silk Road, on its way to becoming the global intoxicant it is today.

Cannabis, also known as hemp or marijuana, evolved about 28 million years ago on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, according to a pollen study published in May. A close relative of the common hop found in beer, the plant still grows wild across Central Asia. More than 4000 years ago, Chinese farmers began to grow it for oil and for fiber to make rope, clothing, and paper.

Comment: See also:

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