Archaeological discoveries, breakthroughs and theories

[Artaxerxes]

Darkness dispelled: exploring 1,500 years of life and death at the Sculptor’s Cave | The Past

The Sculptor’s Cave, on Scotland’s north-east coast, is best known for the Pictish carvings that give the site its name. Recent research by Ian Armit and Li ...

the-past.com

 

[killer b]

They've nailed the age of the Cerne Abbas Giant to 700-1100 AD

Cerne Giant | Dorset

Visit Cerne Giant in Dorset, an ancient naked figure sculpted into the chalk hillside above Cerne Abbas.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk

 

[Artaxerxes]

They've nailed the age of the Cerne Abbas Giant to 700-1100 AD

Cerne Giant | Dorset

Visit Cerne Giant in Dorset, an ancient naked figure sculpted into the chalk hillside above Cerne Abbas.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk

The dick however may be considerably younger.

 

[ska invita]

There might have been something on the site that predated it?

 

[petee]

 

[zahir]

Multiple hominin dispersals into Southwest Asia over the past 400,000 years - Nature

Dated palaeolake sequences show that there were at least five Pleistocene hominin expansions into the Arabian interior, coinciding with windows of reduced aridity between 400 and 55 thousand years ago.

www.nature.com

 

[Crispy]

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea - Scientific Reports

We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide...

www.nature.com

Exhaustive paper on the overwhelming evidence for the destruction of a Bronze Age city in Jordan by an exploding meteor. It might even be the source for the story of the destruction of Sodom in Genesis.

 

[Gerry1time]

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea - Scientific Reports

We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide...

www.nature.com

Exhaustive paper on the overwhelming evidence for the destruction of a Bronze Age city in Jordan by an exploding meteor. It might even be the source for the story of the destruction of Sodom in Genesis.

Can I just say, I've read that report now and it's fascinating, thanks so much for sharing. I've long had a theory that written historical sources, often seen as unlikely, are more probably based on original facts, so this just further confirms my decreasingly non-empirical prejudice in this regard.

 

[Signal 11]

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea - Scientific Reports

We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide...

www.nature.com

Exhaustive paper on the overwhelming evidence for the destruction of a Bronze Age city in Jordan by an exploding meteor. It might even be the source for the story of the destruction of Sodom in Genesis.

Seeing a few threads on twitter disputing this:

thread from Chris Stantis
thread from Mark Boslough, part 1
part 2
part 3

e.g.

Before I left I had gotten a message from the producers of History Channel’s Universe asking me if I’d help with a new episode called “Mysteries of Sodom and Gomorrah.” They told me it would feature archeologist Steve Collins' discovery of the ancient site of Tall el-Hammam.

I immediately forwarded the invitation to an archaeologist colleague, who got back to me the following week with extensive background research on Collins and his work. It was not pretty, and my response was “OMG! Thank you for saving me from making a big mistake..”

 

[tim]

Yep, storage and preserving is surely one of the most important factors in the success of humans as a species. It's history and use across different cultures would make a great TV series.

It's a shame that since we all got fridges we no longer all do it as a matter of course. The irony being that we use a fridge to preserve food, but it's such a short term solution that we throw away and waste much of what we refrigerate. If preserved using traditional methods we would waste much less food, money and the resources required to produce it.

I imagine at some point it will become much more important again as global warming, the destruction of the rain forests and increases in global population put even more of a squeeze on the world.

Why would we return to methods so time-consuming, dangerous and inefficient, when we have easier, safer, and more technologically advanced ways of preserving food? If the old ways were so good why were so many of our ancestors malnourished, and why was food poisoning so common?

Edited to say: I've just realised that I said much the same in a reply to the same post some months ago.

 

[wayward bob]

Seeing a few threads on twitter disputing this:

thread from Chris Stantis
thread from Mark Boslough, part 1
part 2
part 3

e.g.

next thing you'll be telling us jetfuel can melt steel beams

 

[Crispy]

Seeing a few threads on twitter disputing this:

thread from Chris Stantis
thread from Mark Boslough, part 1
part 2
part 3

e.g.

Bums

 

[Gerry1time]

Bums

I'm not entirely convinced by all of the Twitter rebuttals. Some of them seemed to be aimed at the archaeological method, but others seem more aimed at the motivations of the authors, which I'm not sure is a valid objection to the research itself.

 

[petee]

Ancient human footprints preserved in the ground across the White Sands National Park in New Mexico are astonishingly old, scientists reported on Thursday, dating back about 23,000 years to the Ice Age.

The results, if they hold up to scrutiny, would rejuvenate the scientific debate about how humans first spread across the Americas, implying that they did so at a time when massive glaciers covered much of their path.

Ancient Footprints Push Back Date of Human Arrival in the Americas

Human footprints found in New Mexico are about 23,000 years old, a study reported, suggesting that people may have arrived long before the Ice Age’s glaciers melted.

www.nytimes.com

(btw, shouldn't this thread be in the Science, Nature and Environment section?)

 

[farmerbarleymow]

(btw, shouldn't this thread be in the Science, Nature and Environment section?)

Yeah, it should be.

 

[ska invita]

its history innit

 

[JimW]

No mention of what reading matter was supplied:

2,700-year-old toilet found in Jerusalem was a rare luxury

Israel says archaeologists have found a rare ancient toilet in Jerusalem dating back more than 2,700 years, when private bathrooms were a luxury in the holy city.

apnews.com

 

[Crispy]

Vikings in Newfoundland dated to a precise year (1021) thanks to tree ring and C14 analysis and a conveniently timed solar storm near the time.

Vikings were in North America by 1021 CE

An ancient cosmic ray event helped archaeologists pinpoint the date.

arstechnica.com

 

[killer b]

Vikings in Newfoundland dated to a precise year (1021) thanks to tree ring and C14 analysis and a conveniently timed solar storm near the time.

Vikings were in North America by 1021 CE

An ancient cosmic ray event helped archaeologists pinpoint the date.

arstechnica.com

I liked how old-school the precise dating was, once they'd pinpointed the solar storm year.

 

[zahir]

Interview about deciphering Linear Elamite writing

KERR François Desset On The Decipherment Of Linear Elamite Writing – The Postil Magazine

KERR François Desset On The Decipherment Of Linear Elamite Writing – The Postil Magazine

www.academia.edu

 

[zahir]

Mapping Karakorum

Mapping Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire | Antiquity | Cambridge Core

Mapping Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire - Volume 96 Issue 385

www.cambridge.org

 

[petee]

2 in one day!

Chinese railroad worker house unearthed in Utah ghost town

Archaeologists excavating in a Utah ghost town have turned up a rare find: a house belonging to 19th-century Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad.

www.livescience.com

Archaeologists excavating in a Utah ghost town have turned up a rare find: a house belonging to 19th-century Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad.

The house — now just a layer of floorboards scattered with artifacts such as Chinese coins and stoneware — is the first-ever completely excavated Chinese home on the transcontinental railroad.

How did the enslaved workers of Pompeii live? A new discovery provides a rare glimpse

Archaeologists working to uncover a wealthy villa on the outskirts of the ancient city have found a dormitory for workers, providing important insight into daily life.

www.npr.org

A nearly perfectly intact room that served as a kind of dormitory for enslaved people has been unearthed by archaeologists at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. The room has three wooden beds, a chamber pot, a wooden chest and several tall Roman jars called amphorae. All of it was covered and preserved in cinerite, a sedimentary rock made mostly of volcanic ash, when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.

 

[petee]

‘It was terrifying’: ancient book’s journey from Irish bog to museum treasure

A new book tells the story of the painstaking process to preserve the 1,200-year-old Faddan More Psalter

www.theguardian.com

One summer’s day in Tipperary as peat was being dug from a bog, a button peered out from the freshly cut earth. The find set off a five-year journey of conservation to retrieve and preserve what lay beyond: a 1,200-year-old psalm book in its original cover.

 

[gentlegreen]

No mention of what reading matter was supplied:

2,700-year-old toilet found in Jerusalem was a rare luxury

Israel says archaeologists have found a rare ancient toilet in Jerusalem dating back more than 2,700 years, when private bathrooms were a luxury in the holy city.

apnews.com

I bet there must have been wooden toilet seats that don't survive.
Making holes in natural stone seem a lot of work - and not very comfortable ..

 

[butcher]

Why would we return to methods so time-consuming, dangerous and inefficient, when we have easier, safer, and more technologically advanced ways of preserving food? If the old ways were so good why were so many of our ancestors malnourished, and why was food poisoning so common?

Edited to say: I've just realised that I said much the same in a reply to the same post some months ago.

To reduce the use of CFCs used in domestic refrigeration, anyone who is concerned about the environment should consider this...

 

[tim]

To reduce the use of CFCs used in domestic refrigeration, anyone who is concerned about the environment should consider this...

Which is why they are no longer used for refrigeration.

 

[bluescreen]

Have we had this yet? Looks pretty amazing, 12,500 year old cave paintings from Colombia
(From September)

Incredible Cave Paintings 8 Miles-Long Revealed Deep in Amazon Forest: The Sistine Chapel of Ancients

An 8-mile long wall of over 10,000 cave paintings was discoverd in Colombia, and is being dubbed the Sistine Chapel of the Ancients.

www.goodnewsnetwork.org

 

[zahir]

Have we had this yet? Looks pretty amazing, 12,500 year old cave paintings from Colombia
(From September)

Incredible Cave Paintings 8 Miles-Long Revealed Deep in Amazon Forest: The Sistine Chapel of Ancients

An 8-mile long wall of over 10,000 cave paintings was discoverd in Colombia, and is being dubbed the Sistine Chapel of the Ancients.

www.goodnewsnetwork.org

It looks very similar to the paintings in the Serra da Capivara in Brazil.

America's Oldest Art - The Rock Art of Serra da Capivara

In the rock shelters of northeastern Brazil exists some of the world's most intriguing ancient rock art. It has the potential to redraft the very story of how modern humans colonised America the model known as the Clovis First Theory.

www.bradshawfoundation.com

 

[bluescreen]

It looks very similar to the paintings in the Serra da Capivara in Brazil.

America's Oldest Art - The Rock Art of Serra da Capivara

In the rock shelters of northeastern Brazil exists some of the world's most intriguing ancient rock art. It has the potential to redraft the very story of how modern humans colonised America the model known as the Clovis First Theory.

www.bradshawfoundation.com

ha

Yes, that's the one. Thanks.

 

[yield]

Collapse of the Liangzhu and other Neolithic cultures in the lower Yangtze region in response to climate change
24 Nov 2021

Abstract
The Liangzhu culture in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) was among the world’s most advanced Neolithic cultures. Archeological evidence suggests that the Liangzhu ancient city was abandoned, and the culture collapsed at ~4300 years ago.

Here, we present speleothem records from southeastern China in conjunction with other paleoclimatic and archeological data to show that the Liangzhu culture collapsed within a short and anomalously wet period between 4345 ± 32 and 4324 ± 30 years ago, supporting the hypothesis that the city was abandoned after large-scale flooding and inundation.

We further show that the demise of Neolithic cultures in the YRD occurred within an extended period of aridity that started at ~4000 ± 45 years ago. We suggest that the major hydroclimatic changes between 4300 and 3000 years ago may have resulted from an increasing frequency of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation in the context of weakened Northern Hemisphere summer insolation.