But 1500 years ago, Mantai was a bustling port where merchants traded their era's most valuable commodities.
Now, a study of ancient plant remains reveals traders from all corners of the world-including the Roman Empire-may have visited or even lived there.
Mantai was a hub on the ancient trade networks that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean and connected the distant corners of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
The port town flourished between 200 B.C.E. and 850 C.E.
During that time, it would have been a nexus for the spice trade, which ferried Indonesian cloves and Indian peppercorns to Middle Eastern and Roman kitchens."
[Read The Full Story]
[An excellent story from Science Magazine! The true extent of marine trading in antiquity is barely understood, and this study is helping to lift the veil of ignorance around this. We will likely find it was far, far greater than ever imagined by mainstream archaeology with its dominant Euro-centric paradigm.
It's well worth a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
"Plague linked to the mysterious decline of Europe’s first farmers" Nature (UK)
"Europe's first farming populations were wiped out by plague, say researchers who have identified genomes of a 4,900-year-old strain of the plague-causing bacterium Yersinia pestis from a Neolithic burial site in Sweden.
The scientists say their discovery suggests that plague emerged and spread through Europe earlier than was previously thought - but others aren't so convinced.
The Y. pestis sequences are as old as any known plague strain - and they sit closer than any other to the base of the deadly pathogen's evolutionary tree.
'We are at the beginning of the evolution of this disease', says Simon Rasmussen, a computational biologist at the University of Copenhagen who led the study, published on 6 December in Cell1.
Other scientists say the strain's discovery is significant - but that it doesn't back up the authors' bold claims about the spread of plague through Neolithic Europe."
[Read The Full Story]
[A really interesting story from Nature! The origins of plague have been controversial for many years as various reseachers point to different possible triggers. But the plague-carriers reactions to abrupt climate changes make the most sense whatever the primal cause, beit dust-loading of the stratosphere by cometary dust or terrestrial volcanism.
It's well worth a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
"New artifacts found in thwarted illegal excavations" Egypt Independent (Egypt)
"Aswan’s Tourism and Antiquities Police secured new archaeological discoveries during a Wednesday raid on an illegal excavation, near the Temple of Edfu.
The police received reports of a group searching for antiquities around the ancient Edfu Temple, north of Aswan.
After obtaining permission from prosecutors, the police arrested the suspects as they were making three archaeological excavations near the Edfu Temple.
In the first excavation, murals of sandstone bearing inscriptions were unearthed, with part of a small, 12-centimeter-tall statue of an ancient Egyptian god.
Four suspects were arrested with digging tools, while the owner of the house where excavations took place escaped."
[Read The Full Story]
[Great to see more looters being caught red-handed and arrested. If found guilty, they can then be 'recycled' into Soylent Green to be fed exclusively to the antiquitiesa dealers who encourage the looters. That'll soon stop it. It's well worth a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
As long as 3,200 years ago, Indigenous peoples living along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay harvested oysters in vast quantities.
They extracted the meat and piled the shells into mounds known as middens.
Archaeologists have long studied these shell mounds-some of which are meters deep-for a window into the lifestyles of these peoples: what they ate, how they hunted, and the tools they used.
Now, clues unearthed in these mounds also suggest they likely knew a thing or two about how to sustainably harvest oysters."
[Read The Full Story]
[An excellent story from Hakai Magazine! That Europeans should devastate a sustainable foodstock is typical of the 'gold rush' mentality that simply consumed everyting to extinction, then moved on to greener pastures leaving local peoples to starve. It's well worth a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
Perhaps they might mention Alan Turing (who proposed a "Universal Computing Museum") or the US Navy's WWII era Torpedo Data Computer.
But computers, which were initially conceived of as calculating devices, are much older than that and older than the modern world.
The world's oldest analog computer is the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek device designed to calculate astronomical positions."
[Read The Full Story]
[Interesting article in The Daily Beast based on a story in Ha'aretz! The discovery of the Antikythera mechanism has caused mayhem in the mainstream archaeological world.
The old paradigm that ancient peoples were unsophisticated has been thoroughly turned on it's head, and the academics don't like it at all.....
So we are not surprised that a version published by News.com in Australia has links to stories about 'Star Wars and its Atlantis connection' and 'Ancient Aliens' nonsense embedded throught the story they published.
Such is the state of play in modern mainstream archaeology - pathetic attempts to discredit OOPARTS by association with other published drivel online.
It's well worth a visit to read the full Daily Beast story, but it just reports the Ha'arets story with some background. Even so it's still worth a peep, but also read the News.com story below - Ed.]
An analysis of genomes from dozens of ancient inhabitants of North and South America, who lived as long ago as 11,000 years - one of the largest troves of ancient DNA from the region studied so far - suggest that the populations moved fast and frequently.
The findings were published on 8 November in Cell and Science.
The studies suggest that North America was widely populated over a few hundred years, and South America within one or two thousand years by related groups.
Later migrations on and between the continents connected populations living as distantly as California and the Andes.
'These early populations are really blasting across the continent', says David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, who co-led the Science study."
[Read The Full Story]
[This report in Nature is one of the most important in recent times to explain how the Americas were populated. The wanderings of the various peoples show that they appeared to always be on the move, and easily adapted to the various changes in climate from SAlaska to Chile. It's well worth a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
"Palaeolithic cave art in Borneo" Nature (UK)
"Figurative cave paintings from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi date to at least 35,000 years ago (ka) and hand-stencil art from the same region has a minimum date of 40 ka.
Here we show that similar rock art was created during essentially the same time period on the adjacent island of Borneo.
Uranium-series analysis of calcium carbonate deposits that overlie a large reddish-orange figurative painting of an animal at Lubang Jeriji Saléh-a limestone cave in East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo-yielded a minimum date of 40 ka, which to our knowledge is currently the oldest date for figurative artwork from anywhere in the world.
In addition, two reddish-orange-coloured hand stencils from the same site each yielded a minimum uranium-series date of 37.2 ka, and a third hand stencil of the same hue has a maximum date of 51.8 ka."
[Read The Full Story]
[Another great discovery of cave art that pushes back the earliest dates for such expressions of ancient human imagination and the copying of what they observed in their environment. It's well worth a visit to read the abstract and access the full story - Ed.]
"'Painted People' in Scotland Developed Written Language 1,700 Years Ago" Live Science (USA)
"The Picts, a fierce group of people who lived in Scotland during ancient and medieval times, may have developed their own written language about 1,700 years ago, according to results from new excavations.
The Picts (which means "Painted People" for their distinctive tattoos and war paint) are part of the reason the Roman Empire was never able to conquer Scotland.
Every time the Romans tried to invade, the Picts and other Scotland inhabitants drove the would-be conquerors back.
At times the Picts went on the offensive, attacking Roman-controlled England, forcing the Romans to send legions to try to beat attackers back.
However, while the Picts were often in conflict with the Romans, new research published today (Oct. 26) in the journal Antiquity, suggests that these people may have gotten the idea for a written language from the Romans."
[Read The Full Story]
[An excellent story from Live Science! So little is really known about The Picts, and every discovery is a welcome addition to the body of knowledge that has built up. That they developed their own writing using many symbols is not surprising as they played a much more important role in northern Europe than they are given credit for.
The Romans depicted them as 'barbarians' and 'savages', but they did that with all the peoples whose lands they sought to conquer and control. It's well worth a visit to read the full story, and here is the link to the paper in Antiquity referred to in the story - Ed.]
"Time to hew a new antiquities law" The Hindu (India)
"Cultural vigilantism threatens to cast a long shadow on the production of knowledge of the past.
The construct around a civilisational history frequently emerges from untouched archaeological sites.
Consequently, the premium has long been on archaeologists guiding a nation on what constitutes its history, memory and culture.
This ingrained notion has foundationally resulted in the framing of India's laws based on a singular view of what constitutes an antique.
To hang onto this view in today's age is destructive as can be seen from the fate of antique collecting across India.
The prevalent assumption that is constantly alluded to is that every object held by an institution or a collector must have been surreptitiously removed from a shrine or a sacred site."
[Read The Full Story]
[This is a very important story that The Hindu has published. When it comes to our history and prehistory many mainstream paradigms, including the storage and rights of interpretation have been confined within outdated parameters set up often for religious, political or academic reasons. This call for a radical review of antiquities law is long overdue, and most other clountries would do well to follow this sensible Indian example. We highly recommend a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
"Archaeologists uncover rare Celtic remains" SwissInfo (Switzerland)
"Archaeologists from canton Lucerne have uncovered rare Celtic remains on a construction site in the city of Egolzwil about 35 kilometres from the city of Lucerne.
The discovery of a bronze piece of jewellery is considered a particularly exceptional finding.
The fact that Celts once lived in canton Lucerne has been known since sacrificial remains were found on the site of a former lake in the area some time ago.
However, this new discovery, reported on Tuesday, is the first traces of settlements that have been found to date, which archaeologists hope can shed light on the history of the Celts in the area."
[Read The Full Story]
[What a great discovery! The Celts were all over the continental European area, not just Britain and Brittany, and Atlantic coastal areas further south. Well done SwissInfo for bringing this find into the public domain. It's well worth a visit to read the full, but short, story - Ed.]
The shifts in climate we're beginning to see are nothing new, as far as Earth - or our ancestors - are concerned.
But while all the talk nowadays focuses on how to change the course of the climate's evolution, a study out today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests shifts in ancient weather patterns may have affected our own species' evolution.
Researchers had long theorized that climate change might have impacted hominin evolution, but the data was sparse.
No good repository of data combined accurate weather data over time with fossil evidence and other archaeological data.
So, the team of geoscientists behind today's paper went out and got that data.
They took core samples from Lake Magadi in southwest Kenya, sampling layers so deep they go back over a million years."
[Read The Full Story]
[An excellent story from Discover! It's always good to see reports of scientists discussing ancient climate change, and especially remarking that what we are observing today is "NOTHING NEW".
This study helps everyone to understand that basic truth, and also to beging to question some of the climate change dogma that has reigned supreme, often hysterically so, in recent decades.
It's well worth a visit to read the full story, and do follow the many embedded links - Ed.]
They are hand bones of a Neanderthal child digested by a large bird.
The remains were found in Cave Ciemna (Malopolska).
Until now, the oldest human remains from Poland, also of a Neanderthal, were the three molars from Cave Stajnia in the Kraków-Czestochowa Upland.
Their age was estimated at approx. 52-42 thousand years.
'The bones our team discovered in Cave Ciemna are the oldest human remains from the area of today`s Poland, they are about 115,000 years old' - says Prof. Pawel Valde-Nowak from the Institute of Archeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków."
[Read The Full Story]
[Amazing discoveries being made in Poland these days, and this is just the latest. It seems that Poland had a climate that was conducive to human habitation over 100,000 years ago - right through the last Ice Age. Makes you wonder if the size of the ice sheets we are told existed back then may not be accurate. It's well worth a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
"More than 200 tombs unearthed in Yunnan" China.org (China)
"Archaeologists in southwest China's Yunnan Province have unearthed a cluster of 209 tombs believed to be from between the late Neolithic and early Bronze age.
The tombs were discovered during the latest excavation of 100,000 square meters of ruins in Jiangbian Village in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, according to the provincial archaeology institute.
Wan Yang, a researcher with the institute, said that most of the tombs were earth pits with well-preserved human skeletons lying flat on their back."
[Read The Full Story]
[Another great discovery in China! From discoveries made in recent years it seems that China has a really great prehistory, and this new find adds to our current knowledge of that. There was obviously a lot more going on in that region than we have previously been led to believe. It's well worth a visit to read the full story - Ed.]
"Cuisine of early farmers revealed by analysis of proteins in pottery from Çatalhöyük" PhysOrg (USA)
"An international team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of York has uncovered details about the diet of early farmers in the central Anatolian settlement of Çatalhöyük.
By analyzing proteins from residues in ancient pots and jars excavated from the site, the researchers found evidence of foods that were eaten there.
Although previous studies have looked at pot residues from the site, this was the first to use proteins, which can be used to identify plants and animals more specifically.
Using this new approach, the team determined that vessels from this early farming site in central Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, contained cereals, legumes, dairy products and meat. In some cases, the researchers could narrow down food items to specific species.
Çatalhöyük was a large settlement inhabited from about 7100 BC to 5600 BC by early farmers, and is located in what is now central Turkey."
[Read The Full Story]
[Well done The Max Planck Institute and University of York for this innovative approach! And well done PhysOrg for bringing the story to us!
The sophistication with which ancient Anatolian peoples built structures such as those at Çatalhöyük, is complimented by these new discoveries about how they subsisted. The change from hunter-gatherers to farmers was massive in its implications for how humans developed from there on, but no-one sems to be able to answer the unasked question - Why did they make this profound change?
It really is well worth a visit to read the full story and see the images of the finds, and diagrams showing the datasets arising from their investigations - Ed.]
"Possible Evidence of World’s Oldest Fishing Nets Unearthed in Korea" Hakai Magazine (Canada)
"In northeastern South Korea, archaeologists from the Yonsei University Museum unearthed what they claim are Paleolithic net sinkers-the earliest-known examples of the fishing technology, which, if confirmed, would push back the first-known use of fishing nets by roughly 19,000 years.
The 14 stone sinkers were discovered in the Maedun Cave along the coast of the East Sea by a team led by Han Chang-gyun, the director of the Yonsei museum, who has been excavating Paleolithic sites in the region since 1985. (The Paleolithic period was approximately 2.5 million to 12,000 years ago.)
He says ancient fishers from about 29,000 years ago would have used the sinkers-rounded rocks with a central groove-to hold ropes or nets underwater to trap fish.
Using nets would have allowed ancient fishers to catch more fish than would have been possible using earlier fishing technologies, such as carved bone fishing hooks or stone-tipped spears.
Based on preliminary radiocarbon dating of the soil in which they were found, the weights-as well as additional stone tools and fish bones found alongside them-fit soundly in the Paleolithic, 19,000 years earlier than all other stone sinkers previously discovered."
[Read The Full Story]
[This is a really important discovery brought to us in a great story story from Hakai Magazine!
That ancient peoples had mastered the art of fishing in many forms 30,000 years and more ago isn't surprising, and it's good that timelines are being pushed back yet again and challenging the mainstream archaeological paradigms. Ancient peoples worldwide were far more inteligent and capable of problem-solving they have consistently been denied credit for.
It really is well worth a visit to read the full story and see the image of the finds - Ed.]
"The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project" Cardiff/Athens Universites (Cymru/Greece)
[In October 1900, Captain Dimitrious Kondos was leading a team of sponge divers near the the island of Antikythera off the coast of Greece. They noticed a shipwreck about 180 feet below the surface and began to investigate. Amongst the artifacts that they brought up was a coral-encrusted piece of metal that later archaeologists found was some sort of gear wheel.
The rest of the artifacts, along with the shape of the boat, suggested a date around 2000 years ago, which made the find one of the most anomalous that had ever been recovered from the Greek seas. It became known as The Antikythera Mechanism.
In 2006 the journal "Nature" published a letter, and another paper about the mechanism was published in 2008, detailing the findings of Prof. Mike G. Edmunds of Cardiff University. Using high-resolution X-ray tomography to study the fragments of the anomalous Antikythera Mechanism, they found that it was in fact a bronze mechanical analog computer that could be used to calculate the astronomical positions and various cycles of the Moon - as seen from the Earth: - Ed]
"Researchers have many questions regarding both the Great Flood and Atlantis: Which areas were flooded? Where did the flood waters come from? What caused the flooding? How was Atlantis destroyed? Where was Atlantis located?
The short answers: Noah's Flood was caused by tsunami waves that covered all the costal areas around the Atlantic Ocean.
They also flooded the Mediterranean Basin temporarily raising sea level above 600 feet.
The tsunamis were created by comet fragments that landed in the ocean and within the Americas.
Some estimations claim that over 500,000 comet fragments hit the Americas. The craters are called Carolina Bays.
These craters are concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard within the coastal states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and as far away as Nebraska.
Atlantis was part of Plato's boundless continent, North America. Plato: '. . .and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent."
"In this provocative collaboration from two Egyptology outsiders, Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., and Robert Bauval combine their decades of research to show how the Sphinx is thousands of years older than the conventional Egyptological timeline and was built by a long forgotten pre-Pharaonic civilization.
They examine the known history of the Sphinx, contrasting what Egyptologists claim with prominent historical accounts and new research, including updates to Schoch’s geological water weathering research and reanalysis of seismic studies.
Building on Bauval’s Orion Correlation Theory, they investigate the archaeoastronomical alignments of the monuments of the Giza Plateau and reveal how the pyramids and Sphinx were built to align with the constellations of Orion and Leo.
Analyzing the evidence for a significantly older construction phase at Giza and the restoration and recarving of the Sphinx during the Old Kingdom era, they assert that the Sphinx was first built by an advanced pre-Pharaonic civilization that existed circa 12,000 years ago on the Giza Plateau, contemporaneous with the sophisticated Göbekli Tepe complex."
"The 2300 BC Event takes a new look at an old puzzle: what happened
at this date to cause the various advanced societies on the Earth to simultaneously collapse?
Civilizations in Anatolia and Greece, through Egypt and the Middle East, and eastward to India and Central Asia were at their height. The collapse of these civilizations due to earthquakes and climatic changes has been mirrored by similar interruptions on all continents, in the Arctic, and extending to the Pacific.
The discontinuities have long puzzled archaeologists and historians. New religions and accompanying mythologies appeared at this time in all cultural regions describing bombardment and flooding from the skies.
Strangely, the dominant aspect of the mythologies, however, is the observation and worship of a ring appearing to surround the Earth, oriented to the two Ursa (Bear) constellations."
"Some time around 2300 BC the Earth encountered a dense clustering of space debris, the early Southern & Northern Taurid meteoroid stream. The result was an intense fall of meteoroids, some of them sufficiently large to cause surface destruction.
Simultaneous with the meteoroid fall was a huge downpouring of water which caused flash flooding. Extensive destruction and loss of life resulted. An astonishing aspect of the event was the formation of a ring surrounding the Earth, reflecting sunlight during the day, hiding some stars at night, and moving around the sky through a 24-hour period.
Following the 'main event', there were crustal movements which shifted the location of water sources, and caused earthquakes which destroyed settlements. Abrupt severe climate changes occurred."
"Stonehenge today is a battlefield, not only for police and festivalgoers at midsummer but also for rival camps of archaeologists, astronomers, and other researchers into the mysteries of prehistoric religion and science. Controversy flared up in 1963, when Gerald Hawkins made early use of the computer to identify Stonehenge as an observatory for the sun and moon and an instrument for predicting eclipses. Further studies of megalithic sites by Alexander Thom proved that many of them were also related to the seasonal positions of the heavenly bodies.
The study of astro-archaeology has now expanded worldwide, bringing new revelations about the mystical sciences of antiquity. This "little history" summarizes the issues involved in astro-archaeology, and illustrates its principal sites and personalities. Included are recent findings of British scientists, whose records of anomalous levels of natural energies at stone circles are in accordance with the magical reputations of such places in local folklore."
