MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Surrounded by bones, ancient Maya canoe may have been used in rituals

Surrounded by bones, ancient Maya canoe may have been used in rituals

In 2021, underwater archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico located a mysterious canoe inside an underwater cave near the Maya city of Chichén Itzá. It was found while workers were building a tourist rail project as part of the archaeological rescue work.

Surrounded by bones, ancient Maya canoe may have been used in rituals
Carbon analysis of the canoe determined that it was built during the 16th century. (Image credit: National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH))

It was revealed that the wooden canoe was surrounded by 38 bone remains, including a human metatarsal, armadillo, dog, turkey, and eagle bones. 

Based on the initial studies in laboratories in Mexico and abroad, experts concluded that due to the presence of the large variety of bones, the boat was possibly used by the Maya in an ancient ritual before it was placed in the cavern and was flooded.

Signs of ritual

The armadillo, as per the Maya, was considered an avatar of the underworld deity commonly known as God L, who wears a cape that mirrors the design of the armadillo’s shell.

The archaeologists commented that the remains of the armadillo, which could swim easily underwater whilst holding its breath and holding its claws to the ground, would be “an allusion to the entry of said animal into the underworld.”

“There are known images in Mayan ceramics in which [the armadillo] appears as a ‘stool of the gods,’ with characters that place their feet on it,” stated Alexandra Biar, an archaeologist from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). “This would be directly linked to the archaeological evidence observed in the cenote,” with the armadillo serving as a manifestation of the deity. 

Archaeologists Jesús Gallegos, along with Biar stated that the morphology of the boat itself also supports the ritual use of the canoe; since having a very heavy bow and stern, its navigation capacity should have been limited in more dynamic waters; hence they do not rule out that it had been created for symbolic purposes, they said in a statement.

Earlier claims refuted

It was also earlier reported that the Mayan canoe is tentatively dated between 830-950 AD, near the end of the Maya civilization’s classical zenith, when dozens of cities across present-day southern Mexico and Central America thrived amid major human achievements in math, writing, and art.

But after studying the wood of the canoe, Biar pointed out that the analyses for carbon 14 have shown that the organic material dates from the 16th century and not from the classical zenith period.

Measuring 1.6 meters in length and 80 cm in width, it was earlier believed that the canoe was used to transport water from the cenote or deposit ritual offerings, as per INAH.

Earlier last month, Interesting Engineering reported that INAH had discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the deep jungles of Mexico. Archaeologists named the city Ocomtun, which means “stone column” in the Yucatec Maya language.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Shang-Dynasty Town Discovered in Northern China

Shang-Dynasty Town Discovered in Northern China

Shang-Dynasty Town Discovered in Northern China
This bronze part from a horse chariot was unearthed from one of the tombs, suggesting the entire chariot and perhaps the horses that drew it were also entombed there.

The mysterious origins of ancient bronzeware found in a part of northern China may have been uncovered, with the discovery of the ruins of a complete Bronze Age town in the area.

Archaeologists have now recovered hundreds of astonishing artifacts — including bronze drinking vessels, painted pottery, ornaments inlaid with turquoise and carved pieces of jade — at the vast Zhaigou archaeological site, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of the modern city of Yulin in Shaanxi province. 

The relics, dating from more than 3,000 years ago, were made during the Shang Dynasty, which ruled northern China from about 1600 B.C. to 1046 B.C.

This bronze bird figurine inlaid with pieces of turquoise is among the roughly 3,000-year-old artifacts unearthed from the elite tombs at the Zhaigou site.

Archaeologists described the find at a news conference in Beijing by China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration.

Experts said that local people had been unearthing ancient artifacts on their farmland since the 1940s, but their origins were unknown. Now, the discovery of the entire Bronze Age settlement at the Zhaigou site, spread over 11 hills and covering more than 1.2 square miles (3 square kilometers), explains their history, the archaeologists said.

“All of the basic elements of a central settlement have been discovered at the site,” Xu Lianggao, a researcher with China’s Institute of Archaeology, told the state-owned newspaper China Daily. “We found some tombs and large-scale structures in this area in the past, but this time the complete face of a settlement has been unveiled.”

A bone delicately carved with designs that represent a catfish and inlaid with pieces of turquoise.

Ancient settlement

Shaanxi along with neighboring Henan and Shanxi, make up the so-called  “cradle” of ancient Chinese civilization in the Yellow River basin; and the Shang Dynasty is the earliest for which there is archaeological evidence, although the Xia Dynasty is said to have preceded it between 2070 B.C. and 1600 B.C.

A total of 13 ancient Chinese dynasties had their capitals in Shaanxi over more than 1,000 years, explaining why the modern province has been a source of many major archaeological finds.

Excavations at the Zhaigou archaeological site started in June 2022, and the ancient town is now recognized as the largest in the region, with some of the wealthiest tombs yet discovered, according to reports of the news conference.

At least seven elite tombs have been found at the Zhaigou site since excavations started in June 2022. This bronze star inlaid with turquoise is among the hundreds of artifacts found there.
The Zhaigou site is one of the largest ever found from this early period; the grave goods in the 3000-year-old tombs include these earrings made of gold and jade.
Archaeologists think the site consists of an entire settlement with tombs, central buildings, and artisan workshops spread over 11 nearby hills. The finds include this carved bone.
The Zhaigou site includes several elite tombs with wealthy grave goods, like this jade carving of a bird. Archaeologists think it may have been the capital of a state assimilated by the Shang.
The archaeological site dates from the period of the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty, between about 1600 and 1000 BC. This tortoise shell may have been used for divination.

Archaeologists have already found nine aristocratic tombs at Zhaigou, of which seven are rectangular tombs with passages, indicating they belonged to local leaders, Sun Zhanwei, a researcher at the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology, told China Daily.

“Tomb passages symbolize a high social status,” he said. “In this hierarchy, those without a high status could not have a tomb passage.” 

The Bronze Age town’s center was made with rammed-earth, a building technique in which a mix of damp soil is compacted inside a mold or framework. Buildings with different functions have also been discovered there, including artisan workshops and pottery kilns.

According to the Chinese state-owned television channel CGTN, archaeologists at Zhaigou have also unearthed several bronze pieces of horse chariots and the remains of horses, which will be “crucial evidence for exploring the emergence of chariots in China and the development of chariot burial customs.”

Archaeologists have now unearthed more than 200 items from tombs there, such as lacquerware, that are similar to those found at other Shang dynasty sites.

Experts at the news conference said that the ruins at Zhaigou may have once been the capital of a separate state that had been conquered by the Shang, who was based in the city of Yinxu in Henan, and thereafter paid tribute to them. 

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

This 48-Million-Year-Old Fossil Has an Insect Inside a Lizard Inside a Snake

This 48-Million-Year-Old Fossil Has an Insect Inside a Lizard Inside a Snake

Palaeontologists have uncovered a fossil that has preserved an insect inside a lizard inside a snake – a prehistoric battle of the food chain that ended in a volcanic lake some 48 million years ago.

Pulled from an abandoned quarry in southwest Germany called the Messel Pit, the fossil is only the second of its kind ever found, with the remains of three animals sitting snug in one another.

“It’s probably the kind of fossil that I will go the rest of my professional life without ever encountering again, such is the rarity of these things,” palaeontologist Krister Smith from Germany’s Senckenberg Institute told Michael Greshko at National Geographic. “It was pure astonishment.”

Smith and his team suspect that the iguana ate a shiny insect meal, and then two days later was swallowed headfirst by a juvenile snake. 

It’s unclear how the snake ultimately died, but what we do know is it got too close to the deep volcanic lake that once bubbled in the Messel Pit, and was either poisoned or suffocated by the toxic fumes.

Its corpse likely slid into the lake after death, where the Russian doll of skeletons was preserved perfectly for millions of years.

Rare ‘Nesting Doll’ Fossil Uncovers Beetle in Lizard in Snake. Snake with lizard and beetle: The rare tripartite fossil food chain from the Messel Pit.
Beetle inside a reptile inside a snake.

“To see this kind of trophic scale recorded within the gut of a snake is a very cool thing,” UK palaeontologist Jason Head from the University of Cambridge, who wasn’t involved with the study, told National Geographic.

While the combination of snake-lizard-bug is entirely unique in the fossil record, this isn’t the first time a prehistoric turducken has been discovered. 

Back in 2008, Austrian researchers found a 250-million-year-old fossil that had preserved a shark that had eaten some kind of amphibian that had eaten a small fish. 

It’s far more fragmentary than the Messel Pit fossil, but it was the first real indication that the food web of the time was far more complex than researchers had thought.

If anywhere is likely to be harbouring more of these types of fossils, it’s the Messel Pit, which in the past has served up the now notorious Darwinius masillae fossil, a fossilised beetle with its turquoise iridescence largely intact, and two turtles caught in the middle of doing, erm, turtle things…

The best-preserved fossils in the world from the Eocene epoch, which ran from around 56 to 34 million years ago, have been found here, and Smith and his team are already planning another trip back.

“This fossil is amazing,” says one of the researchers, Agustín Scanferla. “We were lucky men to study this kind of specimen.”

The find has been published in Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments.

EUROPE, SWITZERLAND, WORLD

Iron Age Celtic Woman Wearing Fancy Clothes Buried in This ‘Tree Coffin’ in Switzerland

Iron Age Celtic Woman Wearing Fancy Clothes Buried in This ‘Tree Coffin’ in Switzerland

THE ANCIENT corpse of a woman buried in a hollowed-out tree has been found in Switzerland.

It’s believed the woman, who died 2,200 years ago, commanded great respect in her tribe, as she was buried in fine clothes and jewellery.

The ancient corpse of a woman buried in a hollowed out tree in Zurich, Switzerland. Pictured are parts of her remains including her skull (top), as well as her jewellery (blue, bottom)Credit: Zurich archaeology department

Scientists say the woman was Celtic. The Iron Age Celts are known to have buried members of their tribe in “tree coffins” buried deep underground.

The woman’s remains were found in the city of Zurich in 2017, according to Live Science.

An analysis carried out by the city’s archaeology department shows she was around 40 years old when she died in 200 BC.

Her bones suggest she did little manual labour during her lifetime, suggesting she was someone of importance.

Iron Age Celtic Woman Wearing Fancy Clothes Buried in This 'Tree Coffin' in Switzerland
Artist’s impression of the woman in her coffin. The coffin was made out of a hollowed tree trunkCredit: Zurich archaeology department
And here’s how they found itCredit: Zurich archaeology department

“A specialist determined the order of the layers of clothing on the basis of the textile, fur and leather scraps preserved in the grave,” a statement said.

“So the woman wore probably a dress made of fine sheep’s wool, about another woolen cloth and a coat of sheepskin.”

Her jewellery consisted of bronze bracelets, a delicate bronze belt and a stunning necklace strung with amber and glass beads.

And of particular interest to scientists was the clasp on the woman’s necklace.

Both ends of the bling had a clip known as a brooch that allowed the woman to string blue and yellow beads onto it.

Jewellery buried with the womanCredit: Zurich archaeology department
A necklace found in the coffinCredit: Zurich archaeology department

It’s been proposed the woman may have known a Celtic man who was buried about 260 feet from her grave.

He was found buried with a sword, shield and lance. The pair were buried in the same decade.

The Celts are most commonly associated with Britain, but actually stretched as far as modern day Turkey.

They were renowned for being fierce fighters – the conquering Romans built Hadrian’s Wall to protect themselves from the Celts who had fled north.

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

The Largest Dinosaur Footprint Ever Has Been Found in Australia’s ‘Jurassic Park’

The Largest Dinosaur Footprint Ever Has Been Found in Australia’s ‘Jurassic Park’

On a 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) stretch of coastline in Western Australia, there lies a prehistoric treasure trove.

Thousands of approximately 130-million-year-old dinosaur footprints are embedded in a stretch of land that can only be studied at low tide when the sea – and the sharks and crocodiles that inhabit the region  – can’t hide them.

What scientists found there is truly special, according to a study recently published in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“Nowhere else in the world has as many dinosaurs represented by a track that Walmadany does,” Steve Salisbury, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland and lead author of the study, says in a video describing the area.

Included among those many dinosaur tracks is the largest dinosaur footprint ever found. At approximately 1.75 meters long (about 5 feet, 9 inches), the track came from some sort of giant sauropod, a long-necked herbivore.

The Largest Dinosaur Footprint Ever Has Been Found in Australia's 'Jurassic Park'
Salisbury et al, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

“There’s nothing that comes close” in terms of size, Salisbury tells CNN.

But there’s far more there than one giant footprint.

The University of Queensland/Vimeo

“We see a unique dinosaur fauna that includes things like stegosaurs and some of the biggest dinosaurs to have ever walked the planet, gigantic sauropods,” Salisbury says in the video.

This was the first evidence of stegosaurs ever found in Australia.

There are also tracks from meat-eating theropods that walked on two feet and left three-toed prints with shapes similar to those many remember from the film Jurassic Park.

In this case, the three-toed prints have a special significance: in local lore, the tracks belong to Marala, an Emu man who journeyed through the region, giving laws that dictated how people should behave.

The University of Queensland/Vimeo

In a press release announcing the findings, Salisbury also describes the various other types of dinosaur tracks discovered.  

“There were five different types of predatory dinosaur tracks, at least six types of tracks from long-necked herbivorous sauropods, four types of tracks from two-legged herbivorous ornithopods, and six types of tracks from armored dinosaurs,” he says. 

The University of Queensland/Vimeo

The University of Queensland researchers were brought in more than five years ago by the aboriginal Goolarabooloo community, who are the traditional custodians of the area and have known about the tracks for many years.

The Western Australian Government had selected the region as a processing site for liquid natural gas, and the local groups wanted experts to help protect the region and show what was at stake.

The area was designated a National Heritage site in 2011, and two years later it was announced that the gas production project wouldn’t happen.

The University of Queensland/Vimeo

Since no equipment could be left out when the tide came in, the researchers used drones to map the area with digital photography and laser scans.

According to Salisbury, they have spent more than 400 hours out on the reefs.

“It’s such a magical place – Australia’s own Jurassic Park, in a spectacular wilderness setting,” he says in the video.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Unlocking 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scrolls were buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted

Unlocking 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scrolls were buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted

Scientists have succeeded in reading parts of an ancient scroll that was buried and blacked when Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago.

The scroll was one of the hundreds that form the world’s oldest surviving library – and researchers say they are now hopeful it could reveal all of its secrets.

It was retrieved from the remains of a lavish villa at Herculaneum, which along with Pompeii was one of several Roman towns that were destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.

A close-up of the Herculaneum Papyrus scroll. Scientists have succeeded in reading parts of an ancient scroll that was buried in a volcanic eruption almost 2,000 years ago, holding out the promise that the world¿s oldest surviving library may one day reveal all of its secrets.

Some of the texts from what is called the Villa of the Papyri have been deciphered since they were discovered in the 1750s. 

But many more remain a mystery to science because they were so badly damaged that unrolling the papyrus they were written on would have destroyed them completely.

‘The papyri were completely covered in blazing-hot volcanic material,’ said Vito Mocella, a theoretical scientist at the Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR) in Naples who led the latest project.

Previous attempts to peer inside the scrolls failed to yield any readable texts because the ink used in ancient times was made from a mixture of charcoal and gum. 

This makes it indistinguishable from the burned papyrus.

Mocella and his colleagues decided to try a method called X-ray phase-contrast tomography that had previously been used to examine fossils without damaging them.

Phase contrast tomography takes advantage of subtle differences in the way radiation — such as X-rays — passes through different substances, in this case, papyrus and ink.

Using lab time at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, the researchers found they were able to decipher several letters, proving that the method could be used to read what’s hidden inside the scrolls.

‘Our goal was to show that the technique is sensitive to the writing,’ said Mocella. In a further step, the scientists compared the handwriting to that of other texts, allowing them to conclude that it was likely the work of Philodemus, a poet and Epicurean philosopher who died about a century before the volcanic eruption.

The next challenge will be to automate the laborious process of scanning the charred lumps of papyrus and deciphering the texts inside them, so that some 700 further scrolls stored in Naples can be read, Mocella said.

Two words in a hidden layer of the fragment. In the top the sequence of Greek capital letters spells PIPTOIE (pi-iota-pi-tau- omicron-iota-epsilon); in the bottom the letter sequence of the next line, EIPOI (epsilon-iota-pi-omicron-iota)
Previous attempts to peer inside the scrolls failed to yield any readable texts because the ink used in ancient times was made from a mixture of charcoal and gum.

Scholars studying the Herculaneum texts say the new technique, which was detailed in an article published in the journal Nature Communications, may well mark a breakthrough for their efforts to unlock the ancient philosophical ideas hidden from view for almost two millennia.

‘It’s a philosophical library of Epicurean texts from a time when this philosophy influenced the most important classical Latin authors, such as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero,’ said Juergen Hammerstaedt, a professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Cologne, Germany, who was not involved in the project.

‘There needs to be much work before one can virtually unroll carbonized papyrus because one will have to develop a digital method that will allow us to follow the layers,’ he said.

 ‘But in the 260 years of Herculaneum papyrology, it is certainly a remarkable year.’ 

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

‘Extraordinary’ 800-year-old chain mail discovered in Co Longford shed

‘Extraordinary’ 800-year-old chain mail discovered in Co Longford shed

A vest of chain mail, which is more than 800 years old, has been handed into the Knights and Conquests Heritage Centre in Granard, Co Longford.

‘Extraordinary’ 800-year-old chain mail discovered in Co Longford shed
It is understood the chain mail dates back to 1172 shortly after the Normans arrived in Ireland.

At an event last weekend, a member of the public disclosed that they had a hauberk, or coat of chain mail, in their garden shed.

The centre’s general manager Bartle D’Arcy said he was astonished when a member of the public brought in the artefact, which is in excellent condition.

“We had a Norman heritage day as part of [national] heritage week. I was walking around wearing a chain mail coif when people came up to me and said that they had ‘some of that’ in their shed. I said ‘What do you mean you have some of that in your shed?’

“They brought it to me two days ago and it is a full hauberk, 800 years old. They took it out of a drain a few years ago with a digger and just had it in their shed. It is extraordinary.”

Mr D’Arcy brought the chain mail to the National Museum of Ireland on Thursday. Officers there said that they were amazed to see an intact hauberk, having only ever seen fragments of chain mail.

“It is an amazing, extraordinary find. This all happened because of a chance encounter. They didn’t know what it was because it got stuck in the digger bucket. Unless you knew your history you wouldn’t really know what it was.

“It wasn’t discovered in Granard but it was discovered locally, but we are protecting the identity of the person. We are doing everything by the book and have declared it to the museum and so on,” he said.

Plans are afoot to put the chain mail on display in Longford. Mr D’Arcy said the museum would take the chain mail away to carry out some work on it.

Mr D’Arcy said the chain mail was in such good condition because it was in the water for so many years.

“It only rusts if you have water and air and if it’s only in water it survives. When the digger brought it up it was in peat.”

It is understood the chain mail dates back to 1172 shortly after the Normans arrived in Ireland. It will be restored and preserved before it goes on display.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Meet Sparta, the 28,000 Year Old Perfectly Preserved Lion Cub

Meet Sparta, the 28,000 Year Old Perfectly Preserved Lion Cub

Scientists say the remains of a lion cub, named Sparta and found in Siberia in 2018, are 28,000 years old and in excellent condition.

Meet Sparta, the 28,000 Year Old Perfectly Preserved Lion Cub
A cave lion cub named Sparta, which was found preserved in Siberia’s permafrost. Cave lions have been extinct for thousands of years. Photograph: Reuters

They say the lion cu, may still hold some of its mother’s milk inside it.

The cub was a female cave lion that researchers named Sparta. Her remains were discovered in the permanently frozen ground at the Semyuelyakh River in Russia’s Yakutia area.

The findings were part of a study published in the journal Quaternary.

According to the study, the cubs were found fifteen meters away from each other. However, scientists claim many generations separated them. The research showed that Boris lived around 43,448 years ago.

Boris, a male cave lion cub, lived and died about 15,000 years before Sparta. Photograph: Reuters

Cave lions died out thousands of years ago. The two cubs, aged one to two months old, were found by mammoth tusk collectors. Mammoths were large, hairy prehistoric elephants with very long tusks.

“To my knowledge, this is the best-preserved frozen specimen from the last Ice Age ever found,” study author Love Dalén, an evolutionary geneticist at Stockholm University’s Centre for Palaeogenetics, tells NBC News. “Sparta is in near-perfect condition.”

Cave lions coexisted with early humans for thousands of years, according to the study. For example, the Chauvet Cave in France depicts cave lions drawn on walls. The early cave paintings are estimated to be more than 30,000 years old.

The coloration of cub fur appears different than that of mature cave lions, requiring further study to determine if aging causes changes. Researchers also noted similarities in the fur between the big cats and lions of the Ice Age that still roam the savannas of Africa.

The species is thought to have smaller manes than African lions while adapting to colder climates.

Other lion cubs found in Siberia

Two other lion cubs have also been found in Siberia’s Yakutia area in recent years.

Valery Plotnikov is one of the study’s writers. He told Reuters that Sparta was so well-preserved that her fur, organs, and skeleton were still intact.

“The find itself is unique; there was not any other such find in Yakutia,” he said.

Plotnikov added that the scientists hope to find evidence of mother’s milk inside Sparta in order to learn about the diet of cave lions.

There have been numerous other similar discoveries in Russia’s larger Siberian area in recent years.

Climate change is warming the Arctic faster than the rest of the world. That increase in temperature has melted the ground in some areas that were permanently frozen.

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