Tag Archives: archaeology

May 1, 2014 · 12:09 pm

Cold War images spill new secrets: Lost cities

Cold War images spill new secrets: Lost cities

By Kate Seamons

Published April 29, 2014

Newser
coronoa atlas.jpg

An image from the website.CORONA.CAST.UARK.EDU

The Middle East is home to 4,500 archaeological sites, or so we thought. An in-depth review of Cold War-era photos taken by spy satellites has pulled back the veil on as many as 10,000 more lost cities, roads, and other ruins in the region.

As Gizmodo reports, CORONA served as the code name for America’s first use of photographic spy satellites, and was in operation from 1960 to 1972.

Its name lives on in the new CORONA Atlas of the Middle East, which made its debut Thursday at the annual gathering of the Society for American Archaeology and revealed “completely unknown” sites via some of the 188,000 declassified photos taken during the mission’s final five years, reports National Geographic.

Archaeologist Jesse Casana of the University of Arkansas describes some of the sites as “gigantic,” with two sprawling over more than 123 acres; Casana suspects the largest, which appear to include aged walls and citadels, were Bronze Age cities.

And as he explains, the photos’ age matters. Though current satellites produce images superior to these grainy decades-old ones, “we can’t see a site that someone has covered up with a building,” and the fact that they were taken before cities like Iraq’s Mosul and Jordan’s Amman swelled makes them invaluable.

The CORONA site explains that the mission’s satellites snapped images “of most of the Earth’s surface” (images whose film strips were, in a great detail noted byNational Geographic, sent back to Earth via parachute-topped buckets) and archaeologists plan to also review areas like Africa and China.

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December 24, 2013 · 3:01 pm

Human hand fossil turns back clock 500,000 years on complex tool use

Human hand fossil turns back clock 500,000 years on complex tool use

By Charles Q. Choi

Published December 17, 2013

LiveScience
  • human-hand-fossil

The discovery of a 1.4-million-year-old hand-bone fossil reveals that the modern human ability to make and use complex tools may have originated far earlier than scientists previously thought, researchers say.

A critical trait that distinguishes modern humans from all other species alive today is the ability to make complex tools. It’s not just the extraordinarily powerful human brain, but also the human hand, that gives humans this unique ability. In contrast, apes humans’ closest living relatives lack a powerful and precise enough grip to create and use complex tools effectively.

A key anatomical feature of the modern human hand is the third metacarpal, a bone in the palm that connects the middle finger to the wrist.

“There’s a little projection of bone in the third metacarpal known as a “styloid process” that we need for tools,” said study lead author Carol Ward, an anatomist and paleoanthropologist at the University of Missouri.”This tiny bit of bone in the palm of the hand helps the metacarpal lock into the wrist, helping the thumb and fingers apply greater amounts of pressure to the wrist and palm. It’s part of a whole complex of features that allows us the dexterity and strength to make and use complex tools.” [In Images: The Oddities of Human Anatomy]

Until now, this styloid process was found only in modern humans, Neanderthals and other archaic humans. Scientists were unsure when this bone first appeared during the course of human evolution. (The human lineage, the genus Homo, first evolved about 2.5 million years ago in Africa.)

“We had thought the modern human hand was something relatively recent, maybe something that appeared as a recent addition near the origin of our species,” Ward told LiveScience.

Now, researchers have discovered a fossil almost 1.5 million years old that possesses this vital anatomical feature, meaning it existed more than 500,000 years earlier than it was previously known to have existed.

“This suggests this feature might be fundamental to the origin of the genus Homo,” Ward said.

The scientists discovered a third metacarpal bone in northern Kenya, west of Lake Turkana. The fossil was found near the sites where the earliest Acheulean tools named for St. Acheul in France where tools from this culture were first discovered in 1847 were unearthed. The Acheulean artifacts were the first known complex stone tools, rough hand axes and cleavers that first appeared some 1.8 million years ago.

“It’s an arid badlands desert area now,” Ward said. “There’s not much vegetation to cover up fossils there’s cobble and rock everywhere, and we try and find fossils by going out and looking under all that cobble and rock on the surface.”

The hand-bone fossil is about 1.42 million years old. The researchers suspect it belonged to the extinct human species Homo erectus, the earliest undisputed predecessor of modern humans.

“Back then, this area was an open woodland area much more lush than today, probably with some trees and some areas of grassland,” Ward said. “The fossil was found near a winding river, which often deposits things like fossils.”

By revealing the early human lineage had a modern handlike anatomy, the fossil “suggests this feature may have [been] a pre-adaptation that helped set the stage for all the technology that came later,” Ward said.

Intriguingly, “at this time, in addition to early members of Homo, there were some late-surviving members of Australopithecus still around close relatives of humans that don’t seem to have this adaptation,” Ward said. “This raises the question of how important our hands were in the success of our lineage and the extinction of their lineage (Australopithecus).”

The researchers now want to find older hand bones “to see when this feature evolved,” Ward said. “We want to get closer to 2 million years ago to find out when this transition to modern hand anatomy took place.”

Ward and her colleagues detailed their findings online Dec. 16 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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November 20, 2013 · 6:10 am

Deformed, pointy skull from Dark Ages unearthed in France

Deformed, pointy skull from Dark Ages unearthed in France

By Tia Ghose

Published November 18, 2013

LiveScience
  • deformed-skull

    A woman’s deformed skull was found in one of the tombs, which dates to around 1,650 years ago. (© DENIS GLIKSMAN, INRAP)

The skeleton of an ancient aristocratic woman whose head was warped into a deformed, pointy shape has been unearthed in a necropolis in France.

The necropolis, found in the Alsace region of France, contains 38 tombs that span more than 4,000 years, from the Stone Age to the Dark Ages.

Rich valley
The Obernai region where the remains were found contains a river and rich, fertile soil, which has attracted people for thousands of years, Philippe Lefranc, an archaeologist who excavated the Stone Age burials, wrote in an email.

‘These deformed skulls appear in tombs rich in objects.’

– Archaeologist Philippe Lefranc

Archaeologists first found the tombs in 2011 while doing a preliminary excavation of the area prior to the start of a big industrial building project. This year, Lefranc and his colleagues went back to do a more in-depth excavation.

They found that the tombs were well preserved by the limestone rock in which they were buried. One of the burials contained 20 tombs of men, women and children. [See Images of the Tombs & Deformed Skull]

“The corpses are lying on their backs, with outstretched legs and heads turned westwards,” Lefranc said.

The tombs, which date to between 4900 B.C. and 4750 B.C., also contained a few stone vases and tools, along with ornaments such as mother-of-pearl elbow bracelets and collars. The small group may have been a family from a Neolithic farming and animal-herding culture that lived in long houses and buried their dead in cemeteries, Lefranc said.

Eastern transplants
In the second burial, which was in a separate area, they found 18 tombs from either the late Roman period or the early Dark Ages, about 1,650 years ago. One of the tombs held a woman, likely an aristocrat, who had a deformed, flattened forehead.

“The deformation of the skull with the help of bandages (narrow strips of cloth) and small boards is a practice coming from central Asia,” Lefranc said in an email. “It was popularized by the Huns and adopted by many German people.”

In those times, the deformed, alienlike skull was a privilege reserved for the aristocracy after death.

“In France, Germany and eastern Europe, these deformed skulls appear in tombs rich in objects,” Lefranc said.

The wealthy lady’s tomb also contained gold pins, belts known as chatelaines, pearls, a comb made of a stag antler, and a bronze mirror that likely came from the Caucasus region of central Asia, he said.

The team speculates that the 1,650-year-old graves held mercenary soldiers from the East and their families, who were employed by the Roman Army during the waning days of the Roman empire.

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October 28, 2013 · 1:16 pm

20 Roman Skulls Discovered In London River

20 Roman Skulls Discovered In London River

October 2, 2013
Image Caption: Roman skull found at Liverpool Street ticket hall. Credit: Crossrail

[ Watch the Video: Roman Skulls Turn Up In London River ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Archaeologists working with London’s Crossrail project have announced the latest discovery brought about by the transit project’s excavations – 20 human skulls. The team of archaeologists said the skulls were probably washed away from burial sites by the Walbrook river, one of London’s ‘lost’ waterways.

“This is an unexpected and fascinating discovery that reveals another piece in the jigsaw of London’s history,” said Jay Carver, a lead archaeologist for Crossrail. “This isn’t the first time that skulls have been found in the bed of the River Walbrook and many early historians suggested these people were killed during the Boudicca rebellion against the Romans.”

“We now think the skulls are possibly from a known Roman burial ground about 50 meters up river from our Liverpool Street station worksite,” he added. “Their location in the Roman layer indicates they were possibly washed down river during the Roman period.”

Diggers also found nearly intact pottery, which was also probably transported by the river. Archaeologists said other, oblong bone fragments would not have been washed as easily down the river.

Before being paved over in the 15th Century, the Walbrook river split London into western and eastern sides. Scientists have said that its muddy walls made for excellent artifact preservation. The newly discovered skulls were found in clusters that indicated they had been caught in a bend in the river.

All of the archaeological samples discovered by the Crossrail project are being analyzed by the Museum of London Archaeology, and researchers there said they have dated the skulls to the 3rd or 4th centuries AD, when Romans buried their citizens outside their settlement as opposed to cremating them.

“What we’re looking at here is how the Romans viewed their dead. You wouldn’t imagine modern burial grounds being allowed to wash out into a river,” Nicholas Elsden from the Museum of London Archaeology, told BBC News.

Don Walker, an osteologist from the museum, said the skulls were most likely buried in different environments, based on their various shades of brown and grey.

“Forensic studies show that when the body disintegrates near a watercourse, the skull travels furthest, either because it floats or it can roll along the base of the river,” Walker said. “They were possibly buried in an area where there wasn’t much land available.”

“At the moment it looks as though they’ve collected together through natural processes,” he added.

Walker said his initial impression was that there was no “foul play” that caused the deaths of these individuals, but further investigations could reveal additional details. He expected that the museum’s work would reveal the sex and age of the individuals and a chemical analysis on the teeth would show where they came from and what food they ate.

The discoveries are the latest associated with the Crossrail project, with archaeologists currently surveying over 40 worksites ahead of the main transit construction. The rail project is expected to result in 37 transit stations that will connect Heathrow Airport to central London and beyond by 2018.

Source: Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

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October 22, 2013 · 10:43 am

Oops! Etruscan warrior prince really a princess

By Tia Ghose

Published October 21, 2013

LiveScience
  • incinerated-skeleton

    A 2,600-year-old tomb unearthed in Tuscany, thought to hold a warrior prince actually contains the remains of a middle-age warrior princess holding a lance. (MANDOLESI)

Last month, archaeologists announced a stunning find: a completely sealed tomb cut into the rock in Tuscany, Italy.

The untouched tomb held what looked like the body of an Etruscan prince holding a spear, along with the ashes of his wife. Several news outlets reported on the discovery of the 2,600-year-old warrior prince.

But the grave held one more surprise.

A bone analysis has revealed the warrior prince was actually a princess, as Judith Weingarten, an alumna of the British School at Athens noted on her blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East. [See Photos of the Unsealed Etruscan Tomb]

Etruscan tomb
Historians know relatively little about the Etruscan culture that flourished in what is now Italy until its absorption into the Roman civilization around 400 B.C. Unlike their better-known counterparts, the ancient Greeks and the Romans, the Etruscans left no historical documents, so their graves provide a unique insight into their culture.

The new tomb, unsealed by archaeologists in Tuscany, was found in the Etruscan necropolis of Tarquinia, a UNESCO World Heritage site where more than 6,000 graves have been cut into the rock.

“The underground chamber dates back to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. Inside, there are two funerary beds carved into the rock,” Alessandro Mandolesi, the University of Turin archaeologist who excavated the site, wrote in an email.

When the team removed the sealed slab blocking the tomb, they saw two large platforms. On one platform lay a skeleton bearing a lance. On another lay a partially incinerated skeleton. The team also found several pieces of jewelry and a bronze-plated box, which may have belonged to a woman, according to the researchers.

“On the inner wall, still hanging from a nail, was an aryballos [a type of flask] oil-painted in the Greek-Corinthian style,” Mandolesi said.

Initially, the lance suggested the skeleton on the biggest platform wasa male warrior, possibly an Etruscan prince. The jewelry likely belonged to the second body, the warrior princes wife.

But bone analysis revealed the prince holding the lance was actually a 35- to 40-year-old woman, whereas the second skeleton belonged to a man.

Given that, what do archaeologists make of the spear?

“The spear, most likely, was placed as a symbol of union between the two deceased,” Mandolesi told Viterbo News 24 on Sept. 26.

Weingarten doesn’t believe the symbol of unity explanation. Instead, she thinks the spear shows the woman’s high status.

Their explanation is “highly unlikely,” Weingarten told LiveScience. “She was buried with it next to her, not him.”

Gendered assumptions
The mix-up highlights just how easily both modern and old biases can color the interpretation of ancient graves.

In this instance, the lifestyles of the ancient Greeks and Romans may have skewed the view of the tomb. Whereas Greek women were cloistered away, Etruscan women, according to Greek historian Theopompus, were more carefree, working out, lounging nude, drinking freely, consorting with many men and raising children who did not know their fathers’ identities.

Instead of using objects found in a grave to interpret the sites, archaeologists should first rely on bone analysis or other sophisticated techniques before rushing to conclusions, Weingarten said.

“Until very recently, and sadly still in some countries, sex determination is based on grave goods. And that, in turn, is based almost entirely on our preconceptions. A clear illustration is jewelry: We associate jewelry with women, but that is nonsense in much of the ancient world,” Weingarten said. “Guys liked bling, too.”

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October 21, 2013 · 3:17 pm

Ancient kingdom discovered beneath mound in Iraq

Ancient kingdom discovered beneath mound in Iraq

By Owen Jarus

Published October 01, 2013

LiveScience
  • 1-ancienct-city

    A domestic structure, with at least two rooms, that may date to relatively late in the life of the new found ancient city, perhaps around 2,000 years ago when the Parthian Empire controlled the area in Iraq. (COURTESY CINZIA PAPPI.)

In the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq archaeologists have discovered an ancient city called Idu, hidden beneath a mound.

Cuneiform inscriptions and works of art reveal the palaces that flourished in the city throughout its history thousands of years ago.

Located in a valley on the northern bank of the lower Zab River, the city’s remains are now part of a mound created by human occupation called a tell, which rises about 32 feet above the surrounding plain. The earliest remains date back to Neolithic times, when farming first appeared in the Middle East, and a modern-day village called Satu Qala now lies on top of the tell.

The city thrived between 3,300 and 2,900 years ago, said Cinzia Pappi, an archaeologist at the Universitt Leipzig in Germany. At the start of this period, the city was under the control of the Assyrian Empire and was used to administer the surrounding territory. Later on, as the empire declined, the city gained its independence and became the center of a kingdom that lasted for about 140 years, until the Assyrians reconquered it. [See Photos of Discoveries at the Ancient City of Idu]

The researchers were able to determine the site’s ancient name when, during a survey of the area in 2008, a villager brought them an inscription with the city’s ancient name engraved on it. Excavations were conducted in 2010 and 2011, and the team reported its findings in the most recent edition of the journal Anatolica.

“Very few archaeological excavations had been conducted in Iraqi Kurdistan before 2008,” Pappi wrote in an email to LiveScience. Conflicts in Iraq over the past three decades have made it difficult to work there. Additionally archaeologists before that time tended to favor excavations in the south of Iraq at places like Uruk and Ur.

The effects of recent history are evident on the mound. In 1987, Saddam Hussein’s forces attacked and partly burnt the modern-day village as part of a larger campaign against the Kurds, and “traces of this attack are still visible,” Pappi said.

Ancient palaces
The art and cuneiform inscriptions the team uncovered provide glimpses of the ancient city’s extravagant palaces.

When Idu was an independent city, one of its rulers, Ba’ilanu, went so far as to boast that his palace was better than any of his predecessors’. “The palace which he built he made greater than that of his fathers,” he claimed in the translated inscription. (His father, Abbi-zeri, made no such boast.)

Two works of art hint at the decorations adorning the palaces at the time Idu was independent. One piece of artwork, a bearded sphinx with the head of a human male and the body of a winged lion, was drawn onto a glazed brick that the researchers found in four fragments. Above and below the sphinx, a surviving inscription reads, “Palace of Ba’auri, king of the land of Idu, son of Edima, also king of the land of Idu.”

Another work that was created for the same ruler, and bearing the same inscription as that on the sphinx, shows a “striding horse crowned with a semicircular headstall and led by a halter by a bearded man wearing a fringed short robe,” Pappi and colleague Arne Wossink wrote in the journal article.

Even during Assyrian rule, when Idu was used to administer the surrounding territory, finely decorated palaces were still built. For instance, the team discovered part of a glazed plaque whose colored decorations include a palmette, pomegranates and zigzag patterns. Only part of the inscription survives, but it reads, “Palace of Assurnasirpal, (king of the land of Assur).” Assurnasirpal refers to Assurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.), the researchers said, adding that he, or one of his governors, must have built or rebuilt a palace at Idu after the Assyrians reconquered the city. [The 10 Biggest Battles for the Control of Iraq]

A hero facing a griffon
Another intriguing artifact, which may be from a palace, is a cylinder seal dating back about 2,600 years. When it was rolled on a piece of clay, it would have revealed a vivid mythical scene.

The scene would have shown a bow-wielding man crouching down before a griffon, as well as a morning star (a symbol of the goddess Ishtar), a lunar crescent (a symbol of the moon god) and a solar disc symbolizing the sun god. A symbol called a rhomb, which represented fertility, was also shown.

“The image of the crouching hero with the bow is typical for warrior gods,” Pappi wrote in the email. “The most common of these was the god Ninurta, who also played an important role in the [Assyrian] state religion, and it is possible that the figure on the seal is meant to represent him.”

Future work
Before conducting more digs, the researchers will need approval from both the local government and the people of the village.

“For wide-scale excavations to continue, at least some of these houses will have to be removed,” Pappi said. “Unfortunately, until a settlement is reached between the villagers and the Kurdistan regional government, further work is currently not possible.”

Although digging is not currently possible, the artifacts already excavated were recently analyzed further and more publications of the team’s work will be appearing in the future. The archaeologists also plan to survey the surrounding area to get a sense of the size of the kingdom of Idu.

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October 19, 2013 · 4:00 pm

Ancient 4-eyed, mega-clawed creature had spider brain

Ancient 4-eyed, mega-clawed creature had spider brain

By Denise Chow

Published October 17, 2013

LiveScience
  • mega-claw creature.jpg

    A close-up of the head region of the Alalcomenaeus fossil specimen with the superimposed colors of a microscopy technique revealing the distribution of chemical elements in the fossil. Copper shows up as blue, iron as magenta and the CT scans as green. The coincidence of iron and CT denote nervous system. The creature boasted two pairs of eyes (ball-shaped structures at the top). (N. STRAUSFELD/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)

  • fossil-nervous-system

    This illustration shows the nervous systems of the Alalcomenaeus fossil (left), a larval horseshoe crab (middle) and a scorpion (right). Diagnostic features that reveal the evolutionary relationships among these animals include the forward posi (N. STRAUSFELD/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)

The discovery of a fossilized brain in the preserved remains of an extinct “mega-clawed” creature has revealed an ancient nervous system that is remarkably similar to that of modern-day spiders and scorpions, according to a new study.

The fossilized Alalcomenaeus is a type of arthropod known as a megacheiran (Greek for “large claws”) that lived approximately 520 million years ago, during a period known as the Lower Cambrian. The creature was unearthed in the fossil-rich Chengjiang formation in southwest China.

Researchers studied the fossilized brain, the earliest known complete nervous system, and found similarities between the extinct creature’s nervous system and the nervous systems of several modern arthropods, which suggest they may be ancestrally related. [Photos of Clawed Arthropod & Other Strange Cambrian Creatures]

The arthropod family
Living arthropods are commonly separated into two major groups: chelicerates, which include spiders, horseshoe crabs and scorpions, and a group that includes insects, crustaceans and millipedes. The new findings shed light on the evolutionary processes that may have given rise to modern arthropods, and also provide clues about where these extinct mega-clawed creatures fit in the tree of life.

“We now know that the megacheirans had central nervous systems very similar to today’s horseshoe crabs and scorpions,” senior author Nicholas Strausfeld, a professor in the department of neuroscience at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in a statement. “This means the ancestors of spiders and their kin lived side by side with the ancestors of crustaceans in the Lower Cambrian.”

The newly identified creature measures a little over an inch long (3 centimeters), and has a segmented body with about a dozen pairs of attached limbs that enabled it to swim or crawl.

“Up front, it has a long pair of appendages that have scissorlike components basically an elbow with scissors on the end,” Strausfeld told LiveScience. “These are really weird appendages, and there has been a long debate about what they are and what they correspond to in modern animals.”

Previously, researchers suggested megacheirans were related to chelicerates, since the extinct creature’s scissorlike claws and the fangs of spiders and scorpions have similar structures, said Greg Edgecombe, a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, England.

“They both have an ‘elbow joint’ in the same place, and they both have a similar arrangement of a fixed and movable finger at the tip,” Edgecombe told LiveScience. “Because of these similarities, one of the main theories for what ‘great appendage arthropods’ are is that they were related to chelicerates. Thus, our findings from the nervous system gave an injection of new data to support an existing theory.”

Fossilized brain images
The researchers used CT scans to make 3D reconstructions of features of the fossilized nervous system. The scientists also used laser-scanning technology to map the distribution of chemical elements, such as iron and copper, in the specimen in order to outline different neural structures.

Though finding a well-preserved ancient nervous system is rare, the new study highlights the potential for similar discoveries, the researchers said.

“Finding ancient preservation of neural tissue allows us to analyzeextinct animals using the same tools we use for living animals,” Edgecombe said. “It suggests there should be more examples out there.”

About a year ago, Edgecombe and his colleagues found a different fossilized brain that revealed unexpected similarity to the brains of modern crustaceans.

“Our new find is exciting because it shows that mandibulates (to which crustaceans belong) and chelicerates were already present as two distinct evolutionary trajectories 520 million years ago, which means their common ancestor must have existed much deeper in time,” Strausfeld said in a statement. “We expect to find fossils of animals that have persisted from more ancient times, and I’m hopeful we will one day find the ancestral type of both the mandibulate and chelicerate nervous system ground patterns. They had to come from somewhere. Now the search is on.”

The detailed findings of the study were published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

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October 13, 2013 · 5:15 pm

Rare Jewish prayer book predates oldest known Torah scroll

Rare Jewish prayer book predates oldest known Torah scroll

Digging History

Published October 03, 2013

FoxNews.com
  • gsi05-jewishprayerbook.jpg

    Researchers have identified what is likely the oldest Jewish prayer book ever found, dated by both scholars and Carbon-14 tests to circa 840 C.E. (GREEN SCHOLARS INITIATIVE)

Scholars are calling a rare Hebrew text dating back to the 9th century the earliest known Jewish prayer book, predating the world’s oldest Torah scroll.

The 50-page book is 4.3 inches tall and about 4 inches wide and is written in an archaic form of Hebrew, on pages of aged parchment. The text includes 100 Jewish blessings and discusses topics such as the apocalyptic tale of the End Times and the Passover Seder.

Carbon testing dates the prayer book to the year 840, which is 300 to 400 years before the oldest known Torah scroll from the 12th and 13th centuries.

“This find is historical evidence supporting the very fulcrum of Jewish religious life,” said Jerry Pattengale, executive director of the Green Scholars Initiative, the group that announced the find. “This Hebrew prayer book helps fill the gap between the Dead Sea Scrolls and other discoveries of Jewish texts from the ninth and tenth centuries.”

“This was a liturgical set of prayers, hymns and poems used for various occasions,” Pattengale told the Huffington Post. “The prayer book is really what most of the Jewish community would be in touch with on a daily basis, [creating] a connection between the Bible and their daily worship.”

The book is the Jewish equivalent of an early complete edition of the Christian Book of Common Prayer.

Started by the Green family of the retail chain Hobby Lobby, the Green Scholar’s Initiative is the research arm of The Green Collection, one of the world’s largest private collections of biblical texts and artifacts containing more than 40,000 items.

The prayer book which was purchased from a private collector will be on display in a yet-to-be named biblical museum set to open in March 2017 in Washington, D.C.

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October 12, 2013 · 6:50 am

Clues to lost prehistoric code discovered in Mesopotamia

Clues to lost prehistoric code discovered in Mesopotamia

By Owen Jarus

Published October 11, 2013

LiveScience
  • 1-prehistoric-code

    Archaeologists are using CT scanning and 3D modelling to crack a lost prehistoric code hidden inside clay balls, dating to some 5,500 years ago, found in Mesopotamia. (ANNA RESSMAN/COURTESY ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.)

Researchers studying clay balls from Mesopotamia have discovered clues to a lost code that was used for record-keeping about 200 years before writing was invented.

The clay balls may represent the world’s “very first data storage system,” at least the first that scientists know of, said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, where he presented initial findings.

The balls, often called “envelopes” by researchers, were sealed and contain tokens in a variety of geometric shapes the balls varying from golf ball-size to baseball-size. Only about 150 intact examples survive worldwide today. [See Photos of the Clay Balls & Lost Code]

The researchers used high-resolution CT scans and 3D modeling to look inside more than 20 examples that were excavated at the site of Choga Mish, in western Iran, in the late 1960s. They were created about 5,500 years ago at a time when early cities were flourishing in Mesopotamia.

Researchers have long believed these clay balls were used to record economic transactions. That interpretation is based on an analysis of a 3,300-year-old clay ball found at a site in Mesopotamia named Nuzi that had 49 pebbles and a cuneiform text containing a contract commanding a shepherd to care for 49 sheep and goats.

How these devices would have worked in prehistoric times, before the invention of writing, is a mystery. Researchers now face the question of how people recorded the number and type of a commodity being exchanged without the help of writing.

Peering inside
The CT scans revealed that some of the balls have tiny channels, 1-2 millimeters (less than one-tenth of an inch) across, crisscrossing them. Woods said he’s not certain what they were used for, but speculates the balls contained fine threads that connected together on the outside. These threads could have held labels, perhaps made out of wax, which reflected the tokens within the clay balls.

The tokens within the balls come in 14 different shapes, including spheres, pyramids, ovoids, lenses and cones, the researchers found. Rather than representing whole words, these shapes would have conveyed numbers connected to a variety of metrological systems used in counting different types of commodities, Woods suggested. One ovoid, for instance, might mean a certain unit, say 10, which was used while counting a certain type of commodity.

The researchers, however, were perplexed when their CT scans found one clay ball containing tokens made of a low-density material, likely bitumen, a petroleum substance. “When we make a three-dimensional model of the cavity you get this very strange amoeba like-looking shape,” Woods said during the lecture.

The tokens, in this instance, had air bubbles around them, suggesting they were wrapped in cloth before being put in the ball, the cloth disintegrating over time. In addition, it appears that a liquid, likely liquid bitumen, was poured over the tokens after they were inserted into the balls. What someone was trying to communicate by creating such tokens is unknown.

“That’s a mystery,” Woods told LiveScience in an interview. “I don’t really have a good answer for that,” he said, adding that the bitumen tokens may represent a divergent accounting practice, or, perhaps even, that the transaction recorded involved bitumen.

In ancient Mesopotamia bitumen was used as an adhesive and to waterproof things like baskets, boats and the foundations of buildings, Woods said. [In Photos: Treasures from Mesopotamia]

Cracking the prehistoric code
All of the clay balls contain, on the outside, one “equatorial” seal (running through the middle) and quite often two “polar” seals, running above and below.

The equatorial seals tend to be unique and more complex containing what appear to be mythological motifs; for instance a ball from the Louvre Museum shows human figures fighting what appear to be serpents. The polar seals, on the other hand, are repeated more often and tend to have simpler geometric motifs.

Based on this evidence, Woods hypothesizes the seal in the middle represents the “buyer” or recipient; the polar seals would represent the “seller” or distributor and perhaps third parties who would have participated in the transaction or acted as witnesses.

Many people would have acted as the buyers, but only a limited number of sellers or distributors would have been around to transact business with, explaining why the polar seals are repeated more often.

After a transaction of some importance was complete, one of these clay devices was created to serve as a “receipt” of sorts for the seller, as a record of what was expended. “There’s a greater necessity to keep track of things that have been expended than things that are on hand,” Woods said in the lecture.

Deciphering what transaction each clay ball represented is a trickier problem. Woods suspects the tokens represent numbers and metrical units. It’s possible that, through the different token shapes, people in prehistoric times communicated numbers and units in a way similar to how the first scribes did 200 years later when writing was invented. If that’s the case, Woods and other scientists may be able, in time, to crack the code by uncovering how token types cluster and vary.

“If they are, then there is at least some hope of deciphering the envelopes and with it uncovering the earliest evidence for complex numerical literacy,” Woods said.

Technological achievement
The amount of detail the scientists gleaned from the CT scans and 3D modeling was extraordinary, Woods said during the lecture. “We can learn more about these artifacts by non-destructive testing than we could by physically opening the envelopes,” he said.

Woods will publish the full research results in the future and plans to put the images and 3D models online.

To peer inside the balls Woods worked with Jeffrey Diehm, who arranged for them to be CT scanned on a state-of-the-art industrial scanner (which is better suited for this work than a medical version), and Jim Topich, who had the CT images converted into detailed, dissectible, 3D models. Diehm was with North Star Imaging in Minnesota at the time the scans were done in 2011 (he is now the managing director of Avonix Imaging) and Topich is director of engineering and design at Kinetic Vision in Cincinnati.

The Royal Ontario Museum has a special exhibition on Mesopotamia that runs to Jan. 5, 2014. Woods’ presentation is part of a lecture series that is appearing along with it.

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October 8, 2013 · 10:01 am

Egyptian dog mummy infested with bloodsucking parasites

Egyptian dog mummy infested with bloodsucking parasites

By Jeremy Hsu

Published September 24, 2013

LiveScience
  • mummy-dog-5

    Close-up of the post mortem vertebral dislocation located between the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae of the mummified dog discovered at the excavation site of El Deir in Egypt. (CECILE CALLOU | UMR 7209 MNHN/CNRS)

A dog mummy has revealed the first archaeological evidence of bloodsucking parasites plaguing Fido’s ancestors in Egypt during the classical era of Roman rule.

The preserved parasites discovered in the mummified young dog’s right ear and coat include the common brown tick and louse fly tiny nuisances that may have carried diseases leading to the puppy’s early demise. French archaeologists found the infested dog mummy while studying hundreds of mummified dogs at the excavation site of El Deir in Egypt, during expeditions in 2010 and 2011.

“Although the presence of parasites, as well as ectoparasite-borne diseases, in ancient times was already suspected from the writings of the major Greek and Latin scholars, these facts were not archaeologically proven until now,” said Jean-Bernard Huchet, an archaeoentomologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. [See Photos of Dog Mummy Infested with Parasites]

Mentions of dog pests appear in the writings of ancient Greeks and Romans such as Homer, Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, and a painting of a hyenalike animal in an ancient Egyptian tomb dated to the 15th century B.C. shows what is likely the oldest known depiction of ticks. But evidence of ticks, flies and other ectoparasites that infest the outside of the body has been scarce in the archaeological record until now. (The only other known archaeological evidence of ticks comes from fossilized human feces in Arizona.)

Counting the bloodsuckers
The infested dog mummy was discovered in one of many tombs surrounding a Roman fortress built in the late third century A.D. Most of the main tombs were built during a period dating from the fourth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. a treasure trove for archaeologists, despite the condition of many of the mummies. The French team detailed its findings in the August online issue of the International Journal of Paleopathology.

‘Animals were considered as living incarnations of divine principles and, therefore, associated with deities.’

– Cecile Callou, an archaeozoologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris 

Huchet and his colleagues, led by Franoise Dunand and Roger Lichtenberg of the University of Strasbourg in France, found the remains of the parasite-ridden pup among more than 400 dog mummies.

“Among the hundreds of dog mummiesstudied, [many] of them were either skeletonized or still wrapped with bandages,” Huchet told LiveScience. “Moreover, most of the dog remains were seriously damaged by looters.”

The infested young pup stood out with 61 preserved brown dog ticks still clinging to its coat and nestled in its left ear. Such ticks have spread worldwide by feeding on domesticated dogs. They can also infect their hosts with a variety of potentially fatal diseases.

Archaeologists also discovered a single bloodsucking louse fly clinging firmly to the dog’s coat. But the team hypothesizes a tick-borne disease such as canine babesiosis a condition that destroys red blood cells likely caused the young dog’s premature death.

Origins of dog mummies
Hardened skin remains of maturing fly larvae suggested the dying or dead dog had attracted two species of carrion flies before Egyptian handlers mummified the corpse. [See Images of Egyptian Mummification Process]

Ancient Egyptians commonly mummified animals such as dogs, cats and long-legged wading birds called ibis. The dog mummies from the El Deir site almost certainly represented offerings to a jackal-headed Egyptian god such as Anubis or Wepwawet.

“Several reasons have led Egyptians to mummify animals: to eat in the afterlife, to be with pets, etc.,” said Cecile Callou, an archaeozoologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. “But above all, animals were considered as living incarnations of divine principles and, therefore, associated with deities.”

But many questions remain about the mummified dogs of El Deir. Researchers still want to know where the dogs came from, whether they were domestic dogs, whether they had owners and how they died. Callou pointed out that the ancient Egyptians had cat farms where cats were bred to be sacrificed and mummified could the same have been true for dogs?

Digging deeper into history
The French archaeologists hope to find answers to a different set of questions by searching for more preserved ticks and flies among the mummified dogs of El Deir. Such archaeological evidence could show how diseases originated throughout history, provide clues about the geographical spread of parasites, and reveal more about the relationship between parasites and both human and animal evolution.

Specialized lab equipment could yield even more findings from the infested dog mummy and its companions. The French team conducted most of its work on-site at El Deir and completed the examination with highly magnified photos at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris but hopes to eventually get permission to take some mummified samples back to the lab.

“The main problem will be to get the authorization to export mummified samples from Egypt for DNA analysis, since this country does not allow any exportation of archaeological material even tiny samples such as skin fragments and hairs,” Huchet said.

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