Category Archives: ASIA

Scientists discover hundreds of thousands of animal, and human bones in Saudi Arabia cave

Scientists discover hundreds of thousands of animal, and human bones in Saudi Arabia cave

Although hyenas look and hunt like canines, they’re members of the mongoose family and therefore more closely related to a cat. However, just like dogs, hyenas have an affinity for hiding bones — it’s just that they can tend to go a bit overboard.

The Umm Jirsan lava tube in Saudi Arabia.

Case in point, archaeologists were left speechless after they stumbled across a lava tube cavern in northwestern Saudi Arabia that is packed with hundreds of thousands of bones gathered by striped hyenas over the course of 7,000 years.

The ultimate hoarders

The gruesome floor filled with ancient animal bones was found deep in a lava tube system — a network of caverns carved by lava flow. The site, known as Umm Jirsan, was discovered in 2007, but it was only recently that researchers ventured deep into the dark caverns.

Mathew Stewart, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, led a team of researchers who catalogued nearly 2,000 bones and teeth belonging to at least 14 different species, including cattle, horses, camels, rodents, and even humans.

Hundreds of thousands of other bones that are yet to be analyzed still lie on the cavernous floor.

Radiocarbon dating of the samples suggests the animal remains range from 439 to 6,839 years ago, which can only mean these lava tubes had been used as dens for at least 6,000 years.

Images of Saudi Arabia’s Umm Jirsan “hyena cave”: A: Entrance to the western passage and surrounding area. B: Entrance to the western passage. Note the team members on the right-hand wall for scale. C: The back chamber in which the excavation was carried out. D: Plotted sampling square before surface collection and excavation. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

The striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) is a bit smaller than spotted and brown hyenas. They have a broad head with dark eyes, a thick muzzle, and large, pointed ears, with a mane of long hair growing along the back.

Their most striking feature is the legs: the front legs are much longer than the hind legs. This gives hyenas their distinctive walk, making them seem like they’re always limping uphill.

Hyenas are nocturnal or crepuscular predators that stay out of sight during the day, preferably in a natural cave or a burrow dug into the hillside. Sometimes they may take over the dens of other creatures where they transport bones to be eaten, fed to the young, or cached for later use.

It’s a well-established fact that hyena dens aren’t tidy at all, being normal to find leftover bones scattered across the floor. However, the lava tube horde stunned even the researchers who were most familiar with the hyenas.

Hyenas will eat an entire human body — except for the skull cap

Although they didn’t find hyenas at the site, the researchers are certain this was one of their dens judging from the cuts, bites, and digestion marks left on the bones.

The presence of human skull fragments was also telling of hyena presence since the animals are known to scavenge through burial grounds in search of food. They normally will consume everything except for the top of the skull.

“The size and composition of the bone accumulation, as well as the presence of hyena skeletal remains and coprolites, suggest that the assemblage was primarily accumulated by striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena),” the authors wrote in a study published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

Molars and mandibles belonging to wild cows, rabbits, wild goats, camels, and wolves.

It’s highly unlikely that the six skullcaps with gnaw marks on them found at the site belong to humans who were killed by a hyena hunting party.

The mammals are mostly scavengers but when they do hunt they prefer to target hares, birds, and antelopes. However, the possibility that some hunter-gatherers were killed by hyena packs cannot be entirely ruled out.

Today, striped hyenas are a threatened species in Saudia Arabia but thousands of years ago they were common across the Arabian Peninsula.

The current investigation at Umm Jirsan was undertaken as part of the Paleo deserts Project, a large-scale research initiative aimed at tracking environmental and climate change in the Arabian Desert region over the past one million years.

Of particular interest is how human and animal migration in the region waxed and waned with the changing climate. This is a challenging goal since the unforgiving desert climate in the region tends to destroy any exposed organic matter.  Luckily, the Umm Jirsan lava tubes create a perfect time capsule that will give scientists material to work with for years to come.

Well-Preserved Cave Lion Cub Found to be a 28,000-Year-Old Female

Well-Preserved Cave Lion Cub Found to be a 28,000-Year-Old Female

A nearly 28,000-year-old cave lion cub discovered frozen in the Siberian permafrost is so well preserved, you can still make out each and every one of her whiskers.

Researchers in Sweden claim the cub, nicknamed Sparta, is probably the best-preserved Ice Age animal ever uncovered and describe Sparta in Quaternary. Her teeth, skin, and soft tissue have all been mummified by the ice. Even her organs remain intact.

To date, Sparta is the fourth cave lion cub (Panthera spelaea) found buried in the permafrost of Yakutia, which lies in the northeast corner of Russia. She was discovered in 2018 by local resident Boris Berezhnev who was looking for ancient mammoth tusks among the tundra.

As wildlife hunting and trade have become more restricted, ‘tusk hunters’ like Berezhnev have begun to search for ancient ivory in the icy north. With climate change weakening the permafrost and extending the tusk hunting season, we’re finding more ancient remains – and not just from woolly mammoths. In the past few years, residents in Siberia have pulled woolly rhinos, wolves, brown bears, horses, reindeer, and bison out of the permafrost, and some of these carcasses date as far back as 40,000 years.

Clearly, these icy steppes were once home to numerous large mammals. In fact, a year before finding Sparta near the Semyuelyakh River, Berezhnev found another cave lion carcass just 15 meters (49 feet) away. This one, named Boris, showed slightly more damage, possibly from its permafrost cave collapsing, but it was still remarkably intact. 

Researchers in Sweden, who have since helped analyze the carcasses, claim both Boris and Sparta are about one to two months old. Yet despite their physical proximity and similar appearances, Boris is thought to be roughly 15,000 years older, give or take a few centuries.

Today, the little we know about cave lions mostly comes from fossils, tracks, and ancient cave art.

Mummified bodies found in permafrost are some of the best evidence we have of their existence. Their frozen carcasses look remarkably similar to modern lions in many ways, just on a much larger scale and with a much warmer coat. But one of the most iconic features of African lions, their mane, seems to be missing on cave lions.

Figure 6 from the Quaternary study: The appearance of the frozen cave lion cub mummies: (a) female Sparta; (b) male Boris. Photos of lion cubs’ heads from the side: (c) Sparta; (d) Boris; (e) Sparta mummy as seen from above; (f) dark brown ‘brush’ of Sparta’s tail.


In fact, early human artwork from the time suggests cave lions rarely sported manes, or if they did, they were extremely discrete. Some Ice Age paintings, for instance, show dark patterns of colouring on the cave lion’s face, but it’s unclear what that represents.

Boris and Sparta are both juvenile cave lions, which means it’s hard to say how their coats would have developed as they aged. Apart from some dark colouring on the backs of their ears, researchers say they are mostly covered in yellowish-brown fur.

If the cubs had a chance to grow up, experts think their fur would probably have turned more of a light grey to help them camouflage in the cold Siberian Arctic.

The presence of a mane is important because it could tell us about the social structures of cave lions. For example, whether they live by themselves or in groups with clear hierarchies.

At the moment, scientists are still debating whether cave lions during the Ice Age roamed the steppes of Siberia on their own or in pride like modern African lions.

There’s one particular painting in France’s Chauvet cave from the Ice Age that depicts nearly a dozen cave lions, both male and female, in the act of hunting bison.

“Hunting in groups can be more effective than solitary hunting when the prey is large, and cave lions would have had many such prey species available in their ecosystem, for example, mammoths and rhinoceros, when there were no other options available to them,” the authors of the recent analysis write.

“In addition, large pride would have helped to protect their kill from the competition and also to protect the cubs and young from predators.”

For now, this is all just guesswork. Even though we have found some astonishingly intact cave lions in recent years, we still don’t have enough information about these extinct predators to reach any conclusions about their social structures.

Perhaps one day, that could change. Maybe we will unearth another cave lion with some hint about their long-lost lives. Or maybe one day, we will successfully bring cave lions back to life.

“There is a very realistic chance to recreate cave lions, and it would be a lot easier than to clone a woolly mammoth,” palaeontologist and one of the study’s authors Albert Protopopov told the Siberian Times.

Some scientists have suggested we do this with woolly mammoths as well, but cave lions are a much younger species. Protopopov suggests that we could supplement their clones with some of the genes from modern African lions, making the work a bit easier. That’s obviously a controversial idea, and the reality of it is probably still a ways off.

For now, the next step is to sequence the entire genome of both Sparta and Boris. Then, we can figure out what to do with the information we collect.

Tajik Buddha in Nirvana – the Largest in the World: 42 feet long and 9 feet high

Tajik Buddha in Nirvana – the Largest in the World: 42 feet long and 9 feet high

Tajik Buddha in Nirvana – the Largest in the World: 42 feet long and 9 feet high

In the past, while Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan destroyed two immense statues of Buddha, art historians in neighboring Tajikistan meticulously restored a huge reclining Buddha from the same period. The world’s largest “Buddha in Nirvana.”

Tajikistan carefully preserves the artifacts of Buddhism. The country is also home to the world’s largest clay statue of Buddha in Nirvana.

It is not for nothing that the Buddha in Dushanbe attracts thousands of tourists and pilgrims every year. This is the largest statue of Buddha in Nirvana in the world. Its length is about 14 meters, and it was created as much as 1600 years ago.

The Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe became famous precisely thanks to her. Buddha today is one of the main attractions of the country.

The terra-cotta figure, found in the 1960s among the ruins of a temple in southern Tajikistan, depicts a reclining Buddha, one hand resting on his hip, the other on a pile of pillows.

Soviet archaeologists discovered the Buddha in the temple at the ruins of Adjina-Tepa, on a wind-swept field 50 miles north of the Afghan border.

Buddha in Nirvana.

Known as Buddha in Nirvana, it was created in the sixth or seventh century and is believed to be a relic from the time when Buddhism ruled over the high mountains and deep valleys of Central Asia and Afghanistan before the advent of Islam.

Like its Afghan cousins, Tajikistan’s Buddha is huge: 42 feet long and 9 feet high. The statue is housed in a hall that is a replica of the room in a Buddhist monastery where the Buddha was once kept, visited by worshipers who entered the room, walked past the statue, and walked out.

For more than 30 years after its discovery, the statue was kept in three separate pieces in the storage rooms of the Tajik Museum of Architecture and History because there was no money to restore it.

Following independence, Tajikistan invited restorers from Russia’s Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and solicited foreign grants.

A French non-governmental organization, the Agency for Technological Cooperation and Development, helped pay specialists involved in the restoration.

In early 2001, the United States allocated 30 thousand dollars for the restoration of the clay figure. A little later the Japanese government issued a grant of 260 thousand dollars to the museum.

For the final restoration of the Buddha, restorers from the Hermitage, under the direction of Vera Fomin, came to the aid of their Tajik colleagues of the Museum of Antiquities.

The restoration of the giant statue lasted two years (2000-2001). The largest clay statue of Buddha in the world appeared before the visitors of the Museum of Antiquities on September 9, 2000, the day of the 10th anniversary of the independence of Tajikistan.

More than 97% of the population of Tajikistan today are Muslims, and according to the museum’s management, caring for artifacts and ancient objects of worship from the pre-Islamic era speaks of tolerance and respect for other faiths and demonstrates the true face of a Muslim.

Wounds on Colonial-Era Skull Examined in Indonesia

Wounds on Colonial-Era Skull Examined in Indonesia

Wounds on Colonial-Era Skull Examined in Indonesia
The injuries on the skull of the woman were examined using both digital and ultraviolet light photography.

A possibly enslaved woman may have been executed with a sharp weapon in what is now the Papua province of Indonesia, a new study finds.

Only the skull of the victim is available for analysis, but it revealed that the woman was between 26 and 42 years old when she was killed.

“Multiple sharp force trauma injuries were identified on the frontal, temporal, and occipital bones of the cranium,” the researchers wrote in a paper published Sept. 16 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. The team used digital and ultraviolet photography to examine the injuries on the skull.

The woman lived in what scholars call Indonesia’s “colonial period,” a time between the 16th and mid-20th century when the country was controlled by European powers.

The skull was found on Biak Island in 1935 by scientists from Airlangga University in Indonesia. The year and the word “Biak” (which may refer to the Biak people) is written on the skull, researchers noted in the study.

During the colonial period, Europeans went on slave raids and captured local people. The Dutch, who controlled Indonesia during much of this time period, practiced  widespread enslavement.

It’s possible that the woman was killed as part of these raids, but “it is impossible to differentiate if the cranium analyzed in this study belonged to a victim of inter or intra-tribal warfare, or if they were killed as a slave” study lead author Rizky Sugianto Putri, a forensic anthropologist at Airlangga University, told Live Science in an email.

“However, the execution-style wounds on the cranium support that the individual was kneeling or sitting and was not able to defend themselves actively.” 

The team noted that female sorcerers known as “mon” were highly sought during raids. That raises the question as to whether this woman could have been a sorcerer.

The identity of her killers is also unclear. “We do not know who killed her. However, the sharp-force trauma wounds were consistent with a parang, a weapon commonly used by Papuan tribes in the colonial period,” Sugianto Putri said.

Little research has been done on human remains in Indonesia that date to the colonial period. Putri hopes that this paper, and future research, will shed more light on how people lived and died during this period.

Earliest Multiplication Formulas Discovered in a 2,300-Year-Old Chinese Tomb

Earliest Multiplication Formulas Discovered in a 2,300-Year-Old Chinese Tomb

Archaeologists excavating a tomb in the Qinjiazui archaeological site of Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, China, have found the earliest multiplication formulas on record.

The earliest multiplication formulas on record have been discovered on bamboo slips from the Warring States period (475BC-221BC), pushing the history of these formulas back by nearly a century, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) announced at a press conference.

The formula, which dates back to the 4th century BC during the Warring State Period (475-221 BC), precedes another piece discovered in central Hunan Province by approximately a century, said Yang Kaiyong, a research fellow at the Jingzhou Museum.

The burial – known simply as M1093 – probably dates back to the reign of either King Chu Xuan or King Chu Wei, from 369 to 329 BCE.

Bamboo slips were the most popular writing material in the period before paper became widespread.

These slips, which are typically a centimeter or two wide and a few inches long, have been discovered in large numbers at the Qinjiazui site. Of all the tombs identified so far, M1093 contains the highest number of these slips.

Thousands of bamboo slips holding over 30,000 characters ranging from mathematics, literature, and animal husbandry to medicines have been discovered in the tomb.

Earliest Multiplication Formulas Discovered in a 2,300-Year-Old Chinese Tomb
An archaeologist sorts out bamboo slips at a tomb in the city of Jingzhou, in central China’s Hubei Province.

Scientists have used infrared scanning to reveal the words on the slip: “Five times seven is thirty plus five, four times seven is twenty plus eight, three times seven is twenty plus one.”

On one of the strips, researchers found multiplication formulas as well as the oldest known example of an algebraic table known as Jiujiushu.

According to the researchers: “This significant discovery offers invaluable new resources for studying the history, culture, and ideologies prevalent during the pre-Qin period.”

The Warring States period lasted from 475 to 221 BCE and ended when the Qin state overcame its six adversaries. This resulted in the unification of the Chinese empire for the first time and the establishment of the Qin dynasty.

Organic Material Blend Said to Strengthen China’s Great Wall

Organic Material Blend Said to Strengthen China’s Great Wall

A close-up image of “biocrusts” growing on the Great Wall of China. (Image credit: Bo Xiao)

Large swaths of the Great Wall of China are held together thanks to “biocrusts,” thin layers of organic materials that have helped protect the architectural marvel from erosion.

Scientists made the discovery while analyzing segments of the Great Wall of China, which spans more than 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers) and was built over the course of many centuries, beginning in 221 B.C., as a way to protect the country’s empires from the outside world.

During construction, ancient workers often used rammed earth, which included a mix of organic materials like soil and gravel that are compacted together, to build the massive wall.

While these materials may be more susceptible to erosion than other materials, such as solid stones, they often help promote the growth of “biocrusts.” 

Organic Material Blend Said to Strengthen China’s Great Wall
Sections of the Great Wall of China are strengthened due to being built with organic materials. (Image credit: Bo Xiao)

This living stucco is made up of cyanobacteria (microorganisms that are capable of photosynthesis), mosses and lichens that help reinforce the construction, especially in arid and semi-arid parts of the country, according to a study published Friday (Dec. 8) in the journal Science Advances

“Ancient builders knew which materials could make the structure more stable,” study co-author Bo Xiao, a professor of soil science in the College of Land Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, told Live Science in an email. 

“To enhance the mechanical strength, the rammed earth of the wall was always constructed with clay, sand and other adhesive[s] like lime by the original builders,” he said. These ingredients provide fertile ground for the organisms that build “biocrusts.” 

To test the strength and integrity of the Great Wall, researchers collected samples at eight different sections built between 1368 B.C. and 1644 B.C. during the Ming Dynasty.

They found that 67% of the samples contained “biocrusts,” which Xiao called “ecosystem engineers.” Using portable mechanical instruments, both on site and back at the laboratory, they measured the samples’ mechanical strength and soil stability and compared that data to wall segments containing only bare rammed earth, according to a statement.

They found that the “biocrust” samples were sometimes three times stronger than the plain rammed earth samples. Samples containing moss were particularly hearty, according to the study.

This is because the cyanobacteria and other life forms within the biocrust secreted substances, such as polymers, that would “tightly bind” together with the rammed earth particles, helping to “strengthen their structural stability” by creating what was essentially cement, Xiao said.

“These cementitious substances, biological filaments and soil aggregates within the biocrust layer finally form a cohesive network with strong mechanical strength and stability against external erosion,” Xiao said.

World’s Oldest Known ‘True’ Saddle Discovered In East Asia

World’s Oldest Known ‘True’ Saddle Discovered In East Asia

Archaeologists have used radiocarbon dating to analyze the oldest true wooden frame saddle in East Asia, revealing how advances likely aided the rise of Mongolian steppe cultures in equestrian technology.

A saddle built from a wooden frame is sturdy on horseback, facilitating the addition of stirrups. As such, it is able to carry more weight and provides the rider with greater control, allowing for different kinds of mounted combat.

World’s Oldest Known ‘True’ Saddle Discovered In East Asia

“Despite their ubiquitous presence within modern equestrian activities, saddles and stirrups were not used during the early centuries of horse-back riding,” state the authors.

“Their development revolutionized mounted warfare and contributed to far-ranging social change across Eurasia but the origins of this technology remains poorly understood.”

To trace the beginnings of this revolution, a team of archaeologists from institutions in Asia, Europe and North America studied the saddle, which was found in a human and horse burial at the cave of Urd Ulaan Uneet in western Mongolia. Their results are published in the journal Antiquity.

Calibrated radiocarbon dates place the saddle between AD 267–535, making it the oldest example of a true frame saddle from East Asia.

Additionally, further analysis of the materials that make up the saddle found that they were sourced nearby. The leather is from a domestic horse, which were bred in the area, and the wood from local birch trees.

This suggests that the horse cultures of the eastern Eurasian steppe not only used this new riding technology, but were also instrumental in its development and manufacture. Other finds from Mongolia dating to around the same time period include early metal stirrups.

Importantly, the period to which the saddle dates corresponds to the rise of the Rouran Khaganate, a powerful Proto-Mongolic “imperial confederation” that conquered much of Inner Asia.

New saddle technology that facilitated mounted combat likely aided this success.

The Khaganate took control of Inner Asia through military victories, so its rise may not have been possible without this advanced saddle technology. As such, this particular find could have dramatic implications for our understanding of East and Central Asian history.

“These new improvements to equestrian combat may have contributed to the formation of early steppe polities,” state the authors. “Our findings raise the compelling possibility that the rise of the Rouran was aided by technological supremacy linked to the early use of frame saddles and metal stirrups.”

The study was published in the journal Antiquity

490-Million-Year-Old Trilobites Could Solve Ancient Geography Puzzle

490-Million-Year-Old Trilobites Could Solve Ancient Geography Puzzle

490-Million-Year-Old Trilobites Could Solve Ancient Geography Puzzle

The humble trilobites may be extinct, but even as fossils, they can teach us much about our planet’s history. Indeed, ancient arthropods from nearly half a billion years ago, including ten newly discovered species,  may be key to understanding Thailand’s place on the former supercontinent Gondwana.

Trilobites are extinct sea creatures with half-moon-shaped heads that breathed through their legs.

A 100-page monograph in the British journal offers great detail about the new species, including one named in honor of Thai Royal Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.

The trilobite fossils were trapped between layers of petrified ash in sandstone, the product of old volcanic eruptions that settled on the sea floor and formed a green layer called a tuff.

Unlike some other kinds of rocks or sediment, tuffs contain crystals of zircon — a mineral that formed during an eruption and are, as the name of the rock layer containing them suggests, tough.

Zircon is chemically stable as well as heat and weather resistant. It is hard as steel and persists when minerals in other kinds of rocks erode. Inside these resilient zircon crystals, individual atoms of uranium gradually decay and transform into atoms of lead.

“We can use radio isotope techniques to date when the zircon formed and thus find the age of the eruption, as well as the fossil,” said Nigel Hughes, monograph co-author and UC Riverside geology professor.

It is rare to find tuffs from this particular period of time, the late Cambrian period, between 497 and 485 million years ago. “Not many places around the world have this. It is one of the worst dated intervals of time in Earth’s history,” Hughes said.

Artist’s rendering of a trilobite based on preserved soft body parts.

“The tuffs will allow us to not only determine the age of the fossils we found in Thailand, but to better understand parts of the world like China, Australia, and even North America where similar fossils have been found in rocks that cannot be dated,” said Shelly Wernette, former Hughes lab geologist now at Texas State University, and first author of the monograph.

The fossils were uncovered on the coast of an island called Ko Tarutao. It is about 40 minutes southwest from the mainland via high-speed boat and is part of a UNESCO geopark site that has encouraged international teams of scientists to work in this area.

For Wernette, the most interesting discovery was 12 types of trilobites that have been seen in other parts of the world, but never in Thailand before. “We can now connect Thailand to parts of Australia, a really exciting discovery.”

During the trilobites’ lifetime, this region was on the outer margins of Gondwanaland, an ancient supercontinent that included Africa, India, Australia, South America, and Antarctica.

“Because continents shift over time, part of our job has been to work out where this region of Thailand was in relation to the rest of Gondwanaland,” Hughes said. “It’s a moving, shape shifting, 3D jigsaw puzzle we’re trying to put together. This discovery will help us do that.”

Location of the fossil discoveries.

For example, take the species named for Royal Princess Sirindhorn. The species was named in tribute to the princess for her steadfast dedication to developing the sciences in Thailand. “I also thought this species had a regal quality. It has a broad headdress and clean sweeping lines,” Wernette said.

If researchers can get a date from the tuffs containing her namesake species, Tsinania sirindhornae, and determine when they lived, they will be able to say that closely related species of Tsinania found in northern and southern China are roughly the same age.

Ultimately, the researchers feel that the pictures of the ancient world hidden in the fossils they found contain invaluable information for the present day.

“What we have here is a chronicle of evolutionary change accompanied by extinctions. The Earth has written this record for us, and we’re fortunate to have it,” Hughes said. “The more we learn from it the better prepared we are for the challenges we’re engineering on the planet for ourselves today.”