Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

A 42,000-year-old pendant found in northern Mongolia may be the earliest known phallic art

A 42,000-year-old pendant found in northern Mongolia may be the earliest known phallic art

A 42,000-year-old pendant found in northern Mongolia may be the earliest known phallic art

An international team of researchers has found a pendant in northern Mongolia that may be the earliest known example of a carved phallus. This pendant suggests that for at least 42,000 years, our species has been artistically depicting the penis.

The stone was found at a dig site in northern Mongolia’s Khangai Mountains. The piece of ornament interpreted as a phallus-like representation is about 4.3 centimeters long and made by humans.

According to researchers behind a study of the pendant, published this week in Nature Scientific Reports, the carved graphite is the “earliest-known sexed anthropomorphic representation.”

The dating of the material shows it was from approximately 42,400 to 41,900 years ago, putting its creation in the Upper Paleolithic.

Three-dimensional phallic pendants are unknown in the Paleolithic record. It attests that hunter-gatherer communities used sex anatomical attributes as symbols at a very early stage of their dispersal in the region.

The pendant was produced during a period that overlaps with age estimates for early introgression events between Homo sapiens and Denisovans, and in a region where such encounters are plausible,” the science team wrote in the study published in Nature.

Microscopic images of the modifications observed on the graphite pendant: (a–b) mid-section groove, (c) short groove located at one extremity of the artefact, (d–e) parallel striations observed on the flat side of the artefact, (f) highly smoothed and shiny facet present on the flat side of the artefact, (g) 3D reconstruction of the mid-section groove, (h–i) profile of the mid-section groove, (j) 3D reconstruction of the groove located at one extremity of the artefact, (k–l) profile of the groove located at one extremity of the artefact. Credit: Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-36140-1

The black pendant has several grooves, but two of them caught the attention of scientists.

Researchers think these grooves were carved into the stone to make it resemble a human penis. But not everyone is convinced that the Mongolian pendant represents a phallus.

Solange Rigaud, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux and the study’s lead author, thinks the strongest argument for the pendant as a phallic representation comes from the features its maker focused on.

“Our argument is that when you want to represent something abstractly, you will choose very specific features that really characterize what you want to represent,” she says. For example, the carver appears to have taken care to define the urethral opening, she notes, and to distinguish the glans from the shaft.

A combination of microscopy and other surface analyses show that stone tools were likely used to carve out the grooves for both the urethra and the glans.

The pendant was also discovered to be smoother on the back than the front; a string was likely fastened around the glans, suggesting the ornament may have been worn around the neck.

The amount of wear on the surface suggests it was likely handed down across multiple generations.

Graphite wasn’t widely available near Tolbor, suggesting the pendant may have come from elsewhere, perhaps through trade.

The study was published in the journal Nature.

ASIA, LAOS, WORLD

86,000-year-old human bone found in Laos cave hints at ‘failed population’ from prehistory

86,000-year-old human bone found in Laos cave hints at ‘failed population’ from prehistory

86,000-year-old human bone found in Laos cave hints at 'failed population' from prehistory
Researchers at Tam Pà Ling cave in Laos have found a fragment of a human shinbone that is up to 86,000 years old.

Homo sapiens arrived in Southeast Asia as early as 86,000 years ago, a human shin bone fragment found deep within a cave in Laos reveals.

The finding comes from the cave of Tam Pà Ling, or Cave of the Monkeys, which sits at around 3,840 feet (1,170 meters) above sea level on a mountain in northern Laos. Human bone fragments previously found in the cave were 70,000 years old, making them some of the earliest evidence of humans in this area of the world. This discovery prompted archaeologists to dig deeper. 

The team did just that, finding two new bones, they reported in a study published Tuesday (June 13) in the journal Nature Communications. The bones — fragments of the front of a skull and a shin bone — were likely washed into the Tam Pà Ling cave during a monsoon.

Even though the bones were fractured and incomplete, the researchers were able to compare their dimensions and shape with other bones from early humans, finding that they most closely matched Homo sapiens rather than other archaic humans, such as Homo erectus, Neandertals or Denisovans.

Here we see different views of the skull fragment from Tam Pà Ling in Laos.

The researchers used luminescence dating of nearby sediments and uranium-series dating of mammalian teeth from the same layers to produce an age range for the human remains. Luminescence dating is a technique that measures the last time crystalline materials, such as stones, were exposed to sunlight or heat, while U-series dating is a radiometric technique that, similar to carbon-14 dating, measures the decay of uranium over time into thorium, radium and lead.

The skull, they estimated, was up to 73,000 years old, and the shin bone dates back as far as 86,000 years ago.

This early date is a remarkable finding, particularly because researchers have long debated the timing of Homo sapiens’ arrival in Asia. 

“Little to no anthropological research was done in Laos since the second world war,” study lead author Fabrice Demeter, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science in an email.

Debates about human colonization of Southeast Asia have taken place for decades as researchers have attempted to understand how and when humans crossed straits and seas to eventually end up in Australia.

Tam Pà Ling is therefore “a prime place to ask some of these questions about migration, since mainland southeast Asia really sits at the crossroads of East Asia and island SE Asia/Australia.” 

Tam Pà Ling, or Cave of the Monkeys, sits at around 3,840 feet (1,170 meters) above sea level in northern Laos.
The team used luminescence dating of nearby sediments and uranium-series dating of mammalian teeth from the same cave floor layers to date the human fossils.

While the genetic and stone tool evidence amassed to date strongly supports a single, rapid dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa sometime after 60,000 years ago, studies such as this one are producing evidence for earlier migrations, many of which may have been dead ends.

Michael B.C. Rivera, a biological anthropologist at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that “perhaps this was a group that dispersed to Southeast Asia and died out before they were able to contribute genes to today’s human gene pool. I find the narratives of these ‘failed’ populations interesting to add so that we aren’t just looking at the ‘successful’ ones that ‘made it’.”

No stone tools or other clues about these humans’ lifestyles have been found in Tam Pà Ling. But archaeologists working on the prehistory of Asia have long suspected that, even before 65,000 years ago, ancient humans were capable of reaching islands and making sea crossings to populate seemingly remote parts of the world, Rivera pointed out. 

“The claim that H. sapiens made it to this region pre-60,000 years ago is not new,” Rivera said, “but it is good to have further confirmation in our attempts to fill in gaps in the archaeological record.”

ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

A 2,300-Year-Old Elephant Sculpture Discovered in India

A 2,300-Year-Old Elephant Sculpture Discovered in India

A 2,300-Year-Old Elephant Sculpture Discovered in India
Elephants commonly appear in Buddhist art from the period and archaeologists think it is a relic of early Buddhist worship in the region.

Archaeologists in eastern India have unearthed a statue of an elephant they think was carved about 2,300 years ago when Buddhism was the main religion in the region. 

The statue is about 3 feet (1 meter) high and carved from rock in the same style as other Buddhist statues of elephants found across the state of Odisha.

Historian Anil Dhir and other members of an archaeological team from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) unearthed the statue in April at a village on the banks of the Daya River in Odisha’s Puri District. “We were surveying the Daya River Valley to document its heritage,” Dhir told Live Science in an email. “This area is rich in artifacts from the ancient Buddhism which flourished here.”

The elephant statue is carved from rock in the style of statues found at other sites nearby from about 2,300 years ago when the region was strongly Buddhist.

The team found several other buried archaeological relics around the village, including architectural pieces from a Buddhist temple, he added. 

The elephant statue is very similar to one found at Dhauli, also known as Dhaulagiri, an ancient center of Buddhism about 12 miles (19 kilometers) upstream, Dhir said. That statue has been dated to between 272 B.C. and 231 B.C. 

Buddha and Hinduism

A team of archaeologists and historians from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) discovered the statue in April.

Buddhism originated in northern India in the sixth or fifth century B.C. and was one of the main religions under Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire in the second century B.C., the historian Upinder Singh of Ashoka University in India wrote in “History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century” (Pearson India, 2009). The empire covered most of India, including what’s now Pakistan, but not the very south of the subcontinent.

And from the third century B.C. until about the second century A.D., Buddhism “held sway” throughout much of India and the Odisha region in particular, Dhir said.

But Buddhism’s influence declined as its practices became assimilated into the myriad traditions of Hinduism and when Islam became more influential in the region after the 10th century; and while Buddhism is now widespread in other parts of Asia, it is only followed by about 0.7% of the modern population of India, according to a 2011 census. (The Buddha is worshipped, however, in some Hindu ceremonies, sometimes as an avatar of the god Vishnu.)

According to a statement by INTACH, the floodplains of the Daya and Mandakini rivers are rich in Buddhist antiquities.

Records also suggest that a fort was built at the site in the 16th century, and the INTACH team has found remnants of its defensive walls and moat.

Elephant symbolism

The archaeologists also found a carved laterite pillar nearby, which is an arrangement seen at other early Buddhist archaeological sites in the region.

Dhir said the elephant was a common motif in Buddhism and could be seen in many Buddhist monuments.

The INTACH statement said the recently unearthed elephant statue was found near a pillar of laterite — a reddish clay material — and other stone blocks: Similar finds were also discovered alongside another elephant statue found in the village of Kaima in Odisha’s Jajpur District. 

Art historian Christian Luczanits of SOAS at the University of London told Live Science that elephants were important royal animals in ancient India and symbolized the monsoon rains and fertility. 

Peter Harvey, a historian of Buddhism and a “faith advisor” at York St John University in the U.K., added that the elephant was also the mythical animal ridden by the pre-Buddhist god Indra, who was identified in early Indian Buddhism as a disciple of the Buddha and named Sakka (also spelled Śakra).

The elephant’s direct connection to Buddhism came about from a story that the mother of Siddhartha Gautama — the Indian prince who would become the Buddha — dreamt after he was conceived that “an auspicious white elephant [had] entered her womb,” Harvey said. 

ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

Indonesia discovers 700,000-year-old ‘hobbit’ fossils

Indonesia discovers 700,000-year-old ‘hobbit’ fossils

A visual approximation of the hobbit by Dr Susan Hayes, and right, a section of jawbone found at Mata Menge in Indonesia.

Dwarf “hobbits” lived on the Indonesian island of Flores for hundreds of thousands of years, according to evidence from newly excavated hominin fossils. An international research team, following up on the original hobbit discovery that drew international attention in 2004, has discovered a fossilized diminutive jaw bone and six small teeth from an adult and two children that they believe are 700,000 years old.

The scientists believe that the new finds, described in the journal Nature, represent ancestors of the hominin species Homo floresiensis, whose remains were discovered in 2004 and date back to around 55,000 years ago.

“The fossils . . . appear to be remarkably similar to those of Homo floresiensis,” said Yousuke Kaifu of Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, who led their dating and identification. “What is truly unexpected is that . . . Homo floresiensis had already obtained its small size by at least 700,000 years ago.”

The original discovery led to a debate between paleontologists who proposed that the fossils represented nothing more than a modern human with pathological dwarfism and those who favored a previously unknown hominin species.

“This find has important implications for our understanding of early human dispersal and evolution in the region — and quashes once and for all any doubters that believe Homo floresiensis was merely a sick modern human (Homo sapiens),” said Gert van den Bergh from Wollongong university in Australia, who led the archaeological team that excavated the jaw fragment and teeth from layers of sedimentary rock at Mata Menge on Flores.

Aida Gómez-Robles, a paleontologist at George Washington University in the US who was not part of the Flores team, agreed: “The current findings . . . confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that Homo floresiensis is a distinct hominin species with deep evolutionary roots.”

The discovery site is 70km from the Liang Bua cave where the original hobbit remains were found. The team chose to dig into the fossil-rich sandstone at Mata Menge because hundreds of thousands of years ago it was the site of a stream running through open grassland with some trees — the sort of place ancient hominins liked to live. Simple stone tools had already been found nearby.

The big evolutionary questions are when the hobbit ancestors originally reached Flores and why they became so much smaller than any other known hominins.

The oldest signs of human habitation on the island are stone tools from about 1m years ago, believed to have been left by Homo erectus, a hominin species then moving through southeast Asia by land.

Mr van den Bergh believes some individuals reached Flores accidentally — perhaps swept out to sea by a tsunami and drifting on debris — because there is no archaeological evidence for boatbuilding so long ago.

Isolated island populations of other animals are often subject to evolutionary dwarfing. Flores itself was home to two now-extinct species of pygmy elephants. If the founding population was indeed Homo erectus, then its stature would have decreased by about one-third (to around one meter tall) and its brain size shrunk by half within 300,000 years.

Workers at the archaeological dig at Mata Menge, Flores Island, sift for bone fragments.

An alternative explanation is that a smaller and older species of hominin such as Homo habilis reached Flores more than 1m years ago and underwent a slower dwarfing process.

The researchers say this is less likely because there is no evidence for the presence of hominins in what is now Indonesia so long ago.

The mystery can only be solved by the discovery of more complete skeletal remains of ancestral hobbits — including limbs and skulls — on Flores through more intensive excavation work.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Explore 1,400-year-old ruins, submerged in Eastern China – Atlantis of China

Explore 1,400-year-old ruins, submerged in Eastern China – Atlantis of China

Deep in Qiandao Lake, between China’s Five Lion Mountains, lie the mysterious ruins of two ancient cities, dating back to the Han and Tang dynasties. Known as the ‘Atlantis of China,’ the place is largely preserved intact even after centuries.

Qiandao Lake, also known as Thousand Island Lake, is a sprawling body of fresh water, covering 573 sq. km. The name comes from the fact that there are over a thousand islands in the lake.

The underwater city of Shicheng is a magnificent, mysterious time capsule of Imperial China. Shi Cheng – which means Lion City in Mandarin – was purposely flooded in 1959 to make way for the Xin’an Dam and its adjoining hydroelectric station.

This was a massive government project that forced 300,000 people to relocate their homes as more than 1,300 villages and tens of thousands of acres of farmland were flooded and submerged.

In addition to the direct impact on the local residents, two ancient cities located in the valley at the foot of the mountain were also submerged into the lake.

Explore 1,400-year-old ruins, submerged in Eastern China – Atlantis of China

The city was “rediscovered” in 2001 when the Chinese government organized an expedition to see what might remain of the lost metropolis.

The early divers found Shi Cheng to be largely intact, with many of the structures, carvings, guardian lions, and arches still preserved. There have been efforts to map & document Shi Cheng by divers and researchers, as well as looking into protective measures to prevent damage to it.

In January 2011, the cities were declared historical relics under the protection of the Zhejiang Province.

Shi Cheng was once the center of politics and economics in the eastern providence of Zhejiang. It is believed the city of Shi Cheng was built during the Tang Dynasty in 621 AD. Based on records of the region’s history, it is thought to be quite large, possibly over 60 football fields, and featuring 265 arches throughout the city. 

Shi Cheng was also unusual in that it was constructed with 5 city gates and towers, as opposed to the norm of 4.  The city of He Cheng is believed to date back even further to the Han Dong dynasty (25 -200 AD).

The city achieved the zenith of its glory from 1368-1644 when the Ming dynasty ruled China. The existing walls of the city date to the sixteenth century.

In 2014, after the authorities realized that the city was intact below water, they allowed tourists to visit the area by diving. Visitors can relish the 1,400-year-old architectural wonders at the diving site. However, only expert divers are allowed.

Today, advanced divers can get up close to the ruins with dive operators such as Big Blue and Zi Ao Diving Club, which run regular dives between April and November. Since the ruins have yet to be fully mapped, the dive is still considered “Exploratory”.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

A 42,000-Year-Old Foal Entombed in Ice Still Had Liquid Blood in Its Veins

A 42,000-Year-Old Foal Entombed in Ice Still Had Liquid Blood in Its Veins

A 42,000-Year-Old Foal Entombed in Ice Still Had Liquid Blood in Its Veins
Over the past month, scientists have made more than 20 unsuccessful attempts to extract viable cells from the foal’s tissue Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University

Last August, a group of mammoth tusk hunters unearthed the nearly intact remains of a 42,000-year-old foal during an expedition to Siberia’s Batagaika crater.

Preserved by the region’s permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, the young horse showed no signs of external damage, instead retaining its skin, tail, and hooves, as well as the hair on its legs, head, and other body parts.

Now, the Siberian Times reports, researchers from Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University and the South Korean Sooam Biotech Research Foundation have extracted liquid blood and urine from the specimen, paving the way for further analysis aimed at cloning the long-dead horse and resurrecting the extinct Lenskaya lineage to which it belongs.

To clone the animal, scientists would need to extract viable cells from the blood samples and grow them in the lab. This task is easier said than done: Over the past month, the team has made more than 20 attempts to grow cells out of the foal’s tissue, but all have failed, according to a separate Siberian Times article. Still, lead Russian researcher Lena Grigoryeva says, those involved remain “positive about the outcome.”

The fact that the horse still has hair makes it one of the most well-preserved Ice Age animals ever found, Grigoryev tells CNN’s Gianluca Mezzofiore, adding, “Now we can say what color was the wool of the extinct horses of the Pleistocene era.”

In life, the foal boasted a bay-colored body and a black tail and mane. Aged just one to two weeks old at the time of his death, the young Lenskaya, or Lena horse, met the same untimely demise as many similarly intact animals trapped in permafrost for millennia.

The scientists extracted liquid blood samples from the 42,000-year-old animal’s heart vessels Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University

The scientists extracted liquid blood samples from the 42,000-year-old animal’s heart vessels Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University

The foal likely drowned in a “natural trap” of sorts—namely, mud that later froze into permafrost, Semyon Grigoryev of Yakutia’s Mammoth Museum told Russian news agency TASS, as reported by the Siberian Times.

“A lot of mud and silt which the foal gulped during the last seconds of [the foal’s] life were found inside its gastrointestinal tract,” Grigoryev says.

This is only the second time researchers have extracted liquid blood from the remains of prehistoric creatures.

In 2013, a group of Russian scientists accomplished the same feat using the body of a 15,000-year-old female woolly mammoth discovered by Grigoryev and his colleagues 2013, as George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo. (It’s worth noting that the team studying the foal has also expressed hopes of cloning a woolly mammoth.) Significantly, the foal’s blood is a staggering 27,000 years older than this previous sample.

The NEFU and South Korean scientists behind the new research are so confident of their success that they have already begun searching for a surrogate mare to carry the cloned Lena horse and, in the words of the Siberian Times, fulfill “the historic role of giving birth to the comeback species.” It’s worth noting, however, that any acclaim is premature and, as Dvorsky writes, indicative of the “typical unbridled enthusiasm” seen in the Russian news outlet’s reports.

Speaking with CNN’s Mezzofiore, Grigoryev himself expressed doubts about the researcher’s chances, explaining, “I think that even the unique preservation [of] blood is absolutely hopeless for cloning purposes since the main blood cells … do not have nuclei with DNA.”

He continued, “We [are] trying to find intact cells in muscle tissue and internal organs that are also very well-preserved.”

What the Siberian Times fails to address are the manifold “ethical and technological” questions raised by reviving long-gone species. Among other concerns, according to Dvorsky, scientists have cited the clone’s diminished quality of life, issues of genetic diversity and inbreeding, and the absence of an adequate Ice Age habitat.

It remains to be seen whether the Russian-South Korean team can actually deliver on its ambitious goal. Still, if the purported July 2018 resurrection of two similarly aged 40,000-year-old roundworms “defrosted” after millennia in the Arctic permafrost is any indication, the revival of ancient animals is becoming an increasingly realistic possibility.

ARMENIA, ASIA, WORLD

Ruins of a 3000-year-old Armenian castle found in Lake Van – Turkey

Ruins of a 3000-year-old Armenian castle found in Lake Van – Turkey

Ruins of a 3000-year-old Armenian castle found in Lake Van – Turkey
Underwater ruins of Armenian castle in lake Van ( Anadolu Ajansı )

A team of Turkish archaeologists has discovered the remains of what is believed to be a 3,000-year-old castle from the Armenian kingdom of Urartu (Ararat) submerged underwater in Lake Van.

The underwater excavations were led by Van Yüzüncü Yıl University and the governorship of Turkey’s eastern Bitlis Province. The castle is said to belong to the Iron Age Armenian civilization also known as the Kingdom of Van, Urartu, Ararat, and Armenia.

The lake itself is believed to have been formed by a crater caused by a volcanic eruption of Mount Nemrut near the province of Van. The current water level of the reservoir is about 150 meters higher than it was during the Iron Age.

“Civilizations living around the lake set up large villages and settlements while the water level of the lake was low, but they had to leave the area after it increased again,”

said Tahsin Ceylan, one of the researchers of the newspaper.

The researchers are expecting to conduct further excavations to reveal the full scale of this discovery. The discovery is expected to attract tourism.

Although now within the borders of the Republic of Turkey, the Lake, and town of Van is the very heartland of Armenian civilization since times immemorial. In fact, so much so, that it is considered the very place where Armenian ethnic identity was first born. According to the records of the 5th-century Armenian historian Movses of Khorene, Hayk (the legendary founder of the Armenian nation) settled near Lake Van in 2492 BC where he first founded the village of Haykashen and build there the mighty fortress of Haykaberd.

At the very shores of Lake, Van Hayk assembled his army and told them that they must defeat the Babylonian tyrant king Bel who had marched against him and his people, or die trying to do so, rather than become his slaves. At Dyutsaznamart (meaning: “Battle of Giants”) near Lake Van, Hayk finally defeated Bel. Hereafter Hayk named the region where the battle took place after his own name and the site of the battle Hayots Dzor (meaning: “Valley of the Armenians”). Thus the Armenian nation and its first free kingdom were born on the very shores of Lake Van after which the Armenians call themselves ‘Hay’ and their country – ‘Hayk’ or ‘Hayastan’, in honor of the legendary founder Hayk.

The ancient Hittite inscriptions deciphered in the 1920s by the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer testify to the existence of a mountain country called ‘Hayasa’ and its vessel lying around Lake Van. The Annals of Mursili (14th century BC) describes the campaigns of Mursili against Hayasa:

And when I arrived in Tiggaramma, the chief cup-bearer Nuvanza and all the noblemen came to meet me at Tiggaramma. I should have marched to Hayasa still, but the chiefs said to me, ‘The season is now far advanced, Sire, Lord! Do not go to Hayasa.’ And I did not go to Hayasa.

Map of historic Armenian with Lake Van at its center. (from Encyclopædia Britannica Online)

It was exactly the works of Movses of Khorene that led to the initial discovery of the Armenian kingdom of Van (Urartu). The existence of this kingdom was unknown to science until the year 1823 when a French scholar, J. Saint-Martin, chanced upon a passage in the ‘History of Armenia’ by Movses of Khorene who had recorded the kingdom in great detail. Inspired by these writings Jean Saint-Martin sent a team to the described location and discovered a kingdom completely unknown to Western academia at the time.

Khorenatsi had described the ancient settlements in Van and attributed them to one of the descendants of Hayk; Ara the Beautiful son of Aram. His description exactly matched, the later discovered, Assyrian clay tablet attributing the foundation of the kingdom to the first king of Urartu; King Aram (c. 860 – 843 BC).

“Urartian history is part of Armenian history, in the same sense that the history of the ancient Britons is part of English history, and that of the Gauls is part of French history. Armenians can legitimately claim, through Urartu, an historical continuity of some 4000 years; their history is among those of the most ancient peoples in the world.”

– Mack Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia, A History, 1987, revised in 2001

The lake was the center of the Armenian kingdom of Ararat from about 1000 BC, afterward of the Satrapy of Armenia, Kingdom of Greater Armenia, and the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan. Along with Lake Sevan in today’s Armenia and Lake Urmia in today’s Iran, Lake Van was one of the three great lakes of the Armenian Kingdom, referred to as the Seas of Armenia. Its name “Van” is one of the ancient Armenian words for “town” which is still reflected in many Armenian toponyms such as Nakhichevan (meaning: “place/town of descend”), Stepananvan (meaning: “town of Stepan”), Vanadzor (meaning: “valley of Van” ), Sevan, and even the capitol city of Armenia; Yerevan.

Lake Van and its adjacent town also named Van is today part of Turkey, however, its historic Armenian traces are still visible. At the very center of this lake, there is an island called Akhtamar that still holds a thousand-year-old Armenian church; the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Armenians lived in Van up until the early 20th century when Armenians were prosecuted by the Ottoman Turks during the Armenian Genocide. One of the last stands of the Armenian people known as the Resistance of Van, where over 55,000 Armenian civilians were massacred by Ottoman militias and bandits, was extensively discussed in newspapers of that time around the world.

The resistance occupies a significant place in Armenian national identity because it symbolizes the Armenians’ will to resist annihilation at the very heartland of the Armenian people.

General view of Akdamar (Akhtamar) Island and the Armenian cathedral of the Holy cross (915 AD).
Medieval Armenian gravestones, Lake Van.
An early 20th century picture of the 10th century Armenian monastery of Narekavank, which once stood near the southeastern shore of the lake.
ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

The largest stone coffin grave found so far at the Yoshinogari Ruins -3.2 meters in Japan

The largest stone coffin grave found so far at the Yoshinogari Ruins -3.2 meters in Japan

A grave with a stone coffin around 2.3 meters long and dating to the latter part of the Yayoi Period was unearthed in Saga Prefecture, northwest of Kyushu, in southwesternmost of Japan’s main islands.

It is the largest stone coffin grave found so far at the Yoshinogari Ruins.

It is believed the grave was created between the latter half of the second century and the mid-third century when the Yamatai state existed.

According to the Saga Province prefectural government announcement, the discovered sarcophagus has four stone lids and a maximum length of 2.3 meters, and a width of 0.65 meters.

The grave measures about 3.2 meters. It is around 1.5 times the diameter of a typical grave pit for stone coffin graves that have previously been unearthed at the site.

The largest stone coffin grave found so far at the Yoshinogari Ruins -3.2 meters in Japan

The surface markings, which are thought to have been etched with sharp metal tools, closely resemble an “x” or the Japanese katakana symbol for “ki.” These shapes are thought to have the ability to protect a buried person from evil.

The governor’s office believes an influential person was buried there because it is located on top of a hill with a magnificent view.

The prefectural government plans to open the coffin on June 5.

The largest ruin among all the Yayoi ruins excavated in Japan, Yoshinogari spreads throughout the Kanzaki area of Saga Prefecture (Kanzaki town, Mitagawa town, and Higashisefuri village).

The Yayoi period was a long era spanning approximately 700 years. In the late Yayoi period, Yoshinogari developed into the largest moated village in the country, encircled by a large outer moat dug down in a “V” shape.

The village also came to feature two special inner areas (the “Northern Inner Enclosure” and the “Southern Inner Enclosure”). Particularly in the Northern Inner Enclosure, large buildings appeared as Yoshinogari entered its golden age.