Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Famed Roman shipwreck reveals more secrets

Posted: January 6, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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Ancient artifacts resembling the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient bronze clockwork astronomical calculator, may rest amid the larger-than-expected Roman shipwreck that yielded the device in 1901.

amphora

(Photo: Ephorate of Culture/Greece)

Marine archaeologists report they have uncovered new secrets of an ancient Roman shipwreck famed for yielding an amazingly sophisticated astronomical calculator. An international survey team says the ship is twice as long as originally thought and contains many more calcified objects amid the ship’s lost cargo that hint at new discoveries.

At the Archaeological Institute of America meeting Friday in Seattle, marine archaeologist Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution, will report on the first survey of Greece’s famed Antikythera island shipwreck since 1976. The ancient Roman shipwreck was lost off the Greek coast around 67 BC,filled with statues and the famed astronomical clock.

“The ship was huge for ancient times,” Foley says. “Divers a century ago just couldn’t conduct this kind of survey but we were surprised when we realized how big it was.”

Completed in October by a small team of divers, the survey traversed the island and the wreck site, perched on a steep undersea slope some 150 to 230 feet deep in the Mediterranean Sea.

The October survey shows the ship was more than 160 feet long, twice as long as expected. Salvaged by the Greek navy and skin divers in 1901, its stern perched too deep for its original skin-diver discoverers to find.

The wreck is best known for yielding a bronze astronomical calculator, the “Antikythera Mechanism” widely seen as the most complex device known from antiquity, along with dozens of marble and bronze statues. The mechanism apparently used 37 gear wheels, a technology reinvented a millennium later, to create a lunar calendar and predict the motion of the planets, which was important knowledge for casting horoscopes and planning festivals in the superstitious ancient world.

A lead anchor recovered in a stowed position in the new survey shows that the ship likely sank unexpectedly when “a storm blew it against an underwater cliff,” says marine archaeologist Theotokis Theodoulou of Greece’s Ephorate (Department) of Underwater Antiquities. “It seems to have settled facing backwards with its stern (rear) at the deepest point,” he says.

Scholars have long debated whether the ship held the plunder of a Roman general returning loot from Greece in the era when the Roman Republic was seizing the reins of the Mediterranean world, or merely luxury goods meant for the newly built villas of the Roman elite. The last survey of the shipwreck was led by undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, whose documentary Diving for Roman Plunder chronicled that 1976 effort, which appears to have excavated the ship’s kitchen.

The October survey team watched the 1970s documentary to help orient themselves to the wreck site. “They didn’t have the diving technology that we now have to do a very efficient survey,” Theodoulou says.

Along with vase-like amphora vessels, pottery shards and roof tiles, Foley says, the wreck also appears to have “dozens” of calcified objects resembling compacted boulders made out of hardened sand resting atop the amphorae on the sea bottom. Those boulders resemble the Antikythera mechanism before its recovery and restoration. In 2006, an X-ray tomography team reported that the mechanism contained at least 30 hand-cut bronze gears re-creating astronomical cycles useful in horoscopes and timing of the Olympic Games in the ancient world, the most elaborate mechanical device known from antiquity until the Middle Ages. “The (objects) may just be collections of bronze nails, but we won’t know until someone takes a look at them,” Foley says.

The survey effort, headed by Aggeliki Simossi of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities,will continue for the next two years. The international survey team will look in two different locales for ancient shipwrecks in that time, while Greek antiquities officials ponder further exploration. An amphora recovered from the wreck will also have its inner walls tested for DNA traces of the regular cargo, such as wine, once carried by the vessel.

Recovery of whatever cargo remains with the wreck, now covered in sand, presents a technically difficult, but not impossible, challenge for marine archaeologists.

“Obviously there are a lot of artifacts still down there, but we will need to be very careful about our next steps. This ship was not a normal one,” Theodoulou says.

Dan Vergano, USA TODAY  January 4, 2013

Crossrail dig unearths forgotten London

Posted: December 24, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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BBC News, London

Archaeologist and skeletons
Hundreds of skeletons were found in an excavation at Crossrail’s new ticket hall

As a team of archaeologists digs through layers of history beneath London, the thought of the next find is never far away.

“Just about any new discovery is thoroughly exciting,” says Jay Carver, the lead on what is currently the UK’s largest archaeology project.

His team has been working alongside engineers building stations and digging two giant tunnels under central London as part of Crossrail since 2009.

On the journey so far, finds include rare amber, hundreds of skeletons and a Bronze Age track.

But for Mr Carver, among the most exciting discoveries was the Thames ironworks and ship building company which occupied the entire Limmo Peninsula.

Wild animals

He said: “The site had literally been forgotten in the ground. It was 100 years old but we have pretty much been able to reconstruct it.”

“To have discovered this huge timber shipway was extraordinary.”

“The discovery of ancient animal bones in Paddington takes it to the other extreme to a London with wild animals, an unbelievable concept in today’s world.”

Amber Archaeologists said the largest piece of amber found in the UK was unearthed at Canary Wharf

Crossrail will connect 37 stations from Heathrow Airport and Maidenhead in the west, through central London and out to Abbey Wood and Shenfield in the east.

It is due to be completed in 2018.

Being a part of this giant feat of engineering has allowed the 100-strong team of archaeologists to venture into largely unexplored territory.

Mr Carver said: “The project has allowed us to dig so many holes across so many parts of London.”

“It’s about filling information gaps, finding out about stuff we didn’t know before and making all the details we had in the past, clearer.”

He explained that digging from west to east through the centre of London, which due to city’s built-up nature is usually restricted, gives them a unique opportunity.

Roman city

“It enables us to compare and contrast areas of London by gathering scientific data from different locations, for example excavating several sites across west London and parts of the City.”

“It is exciting as you spend years doing the research then you get to dig and prove your homework” Mike Court Archaeologist

“Looking at how they developed from green fields into the city we know today and how the river system changed and developed over thousands of years.

“It will also reveal thousands of years of history in the Square Mile which covers what was a Roman and medieval city, which are fairly unknown.”

Advances in technology may mean there is less uncertainty about what might lay beneath the surface, but Crossrail has still delivered a few surprises.

At Canary Wharf a 55-million-year-old piece of amber was unearthed from beneath the dock bed in 2009.

The archaeology team said very little amber had been found in London and this piece was larger and clearer than any previously found in the UK.

The next stop for the team is Farringdon where archaeologist Mike Court will be leading a two-week excavation in January.

Crossrail excavation The Thames ship building company was unearthed at Limmo Peninsula

Trial digs have confirmed an old river channel and evidence of leather production under Smithfield Market.

Mr Court said: “It is exciting as you spend years doing the research then you get to dig and prove your homework.”

“It’s close to a big plaque pit from the black death so it gives us a chance to dig down but there’s only a 20% chance we will find it.”

Meanwhile, in a trial excavation pit at Liverpool Street in February 2011, Mr Court said they came across what he considers to be the most exciting find on the project so far – a silver Denarius, a Roman coin from 225AD.

Roman coin The team found a silver Roman Denarius which would have been in use across Europe at the time

“It’s fairly run of the mill for sites but it gives you something in your hand which showed the time Britain was part of the Roman Empire and puts us into the wider context,” he said.

Looking to 2013, Mr Carver said they would be working on the largest single excavation at the site of Crossrail’s ticket hall in Liverpool Street.

It is expected to reveal the less salubrious parts of Roman London outside of the City walls with archaeologists anticipating to encounter Roman timber-framed buildings and a street surface 6m below ground level.

The “lost” Walbrook River – a channel that divided the western and eastern parts of the city – may also be found.

At the eastern end of the Crossrail route, archaeologists will work at four large tunnel entrance sites at Pudding Mill Lane, Victoria Dock, North Woolwich and Plumstead.

Here it is thought the team will come across areas where Bronze Age people lived, farmed and hunted some 3,500 years ago.

Only halfway through its journey, and with a total of 20 archaeology sites to explore, it is hoped there is much more to be uncovered.

Jane Mower

BBC NEWS

 

Scans Strongly Suggest That Wife And Son Killed Pharaoh Ramses III

Posted: December 23, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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 The fate of Ramesses III has long been the subject of debate among Egyptologists.

Recently, a team of researchers, led by Dr Albert Zink from the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman of the European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen in Italy, analyzed the mummies of Ramesses III the second ruler of Egypt’s 20th Dynasty, and the last of great pharaohs on the throne and unknown man E, the suspected son of the king.

Ramesses III’s reign (probably from 1186 to 1155 BC) was a time of considerable turmoil throughout the Mediterranean that saw the Trojan War, the fall of Mycenae and a great surge of displaced people from all over the region that was to wreak havoc; even toppling some empires.


Ancient papyrus trial documents mention an attempt on the pharaoh’s life in 1155 BC.

Apparently, members of his harem and several people in high positions in the pharaoh’s government were involved a palace coup.


The conspiracy was led by Tiye, one of his two known wives, and her son Prince Pentawere, over who would inherit the throne, but it is not clear whether the plot was successful or not.

Recent CT scans of Ramesses III revealed a wide and deep wound in the throat of the king’s mummy.

According to researchers, the deadly wound caused by a sharp blade and hidden by the bandages, probably caused immediate death of the king.

The neck was covered by a collar of thick linen layers.

Analysis of unknown man E revealed an age of 18-20 years, while an inflated thorax and compressed skinfolds around the neck of the mummy suggests violent actions that led to death, such as strangulation.

 

Additionally, the body was not mummified in the usual way – and was covered with a “ritually impure” goatskin – which the authors say could be interpreted as evidence for a punishment in the form of a non-royal burial procedure.

A Horus eye amulet was also found inside the wound, most probably inserted by the ancient Egyptian embalmers during the mummification process to promote healing.


Another mummy that belongs to unknown man E, has unusual marks around the neck, and could be Prince Pentawere, that may have been forced to kill himself as a punishment for the conspiracy.

The cause of death “has to remain a matter of speculation.”

Finally, DNA analysis revealed that the mummies share the same parental lineage, “strongly suggesting that they were father and son,” researchers say.

“Before now we knew more or less nothing about the destiny of Ramesses III. People had examined his body before and had done radiographs but they didn’t notice any trauma. They did not have access to the CT scans that we do,” Dr Albert Zink, palaeopathologist of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Italy, said.

“We were very surprised by what we found. We still cannot be sure that the cut killed him, but we think it did.

“It might have been made by the embalmers but this is very unlikely. I’m not aware of any other examples of this.”

The body was not mummified in the usual way – and was covered with a “ritually impure” goatskin – which might have been an ancient punishment in the form of a non-royal burial procedure.

“He was badly treated for a mummy,” said Dr Zink.

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Enigmatic 2,000 Years-Old Carved Stone Owl Pipes Of The Mound Builders A Mystery To Archaeologists

Posted: December 21, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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In the early 1900s, an archaeologist, William Mills, dug up a treasure-trove of carved stone pipes that had been buried almost 2,000 years earlier.

Mills was the first to dig the Native American site, called Tremper Mound, in southern Ohio. And when he inspected the pipes, he made a reasonable – but untested – assumption. The pipes looked as if they had been carved from local stone, and so he said they were. That assumption, first published in 1916, has been repeated in scientific publications to this day. But according to a new analysis, Mills was wrong.

In a new study, the first to actually test the stone pipes and pipestone from quarries across the upper Midwest, researchers conclude that those who buried the pipes in Tremper Mound got most of their pipestone – and perhaps even the finished, carved pipes – from Illinois.

The researchers spent nearly a decade on the new research. They first collected the mineralogical signatures of stone found in traditional pipestone quarries in Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Ohio. Then they compared the material found in those quarries to the mineralogical makeup of the artifacts left behind by the people of Tremper Mound.

Less than 20 percent of the 111 Tremper Mound pipes they tested were made from local Ohio stone. About 65 percent were carved from flint clay found only in northern Illinois and 18 percent were made of a stone called catlinite – from Minnesota.

The researchers are still puzzling over how most of these materials made it to Ohio from Illinois, and are baffled by another new discovery.Pipes from a site only about 40 miles north of Tremper Mound, an elaborate cluster of immense mounds known as Mound City, were carved almost entirely from local stone.Mound City was inhabited at about the same time or shortly after Tremper Mound, and the pipes found there are stylistically very similar to the Tremper pipes.

The researchers describe their findings in a paper in American Antiquity.

These results should remind archaeologists that things are not as simple as they sometimes appear, said Thomas Emerson, the principal investigator on the study and the director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS) at the University of Illinois.

“This is how mythology becomes encased in science,” he said.

The study also confirms that the people who produced these pipestone artifacts, known today as members of the Hopewell tradition, were more diverse and varied in their cultural practices than scientists once appreciated, Emerson said.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

The Hopewell people, who lived in the region from about 100 B.C. to roughly A.D. 400, have long been the subject of speculation, as the artifacts they left behind and the manner in which these goods were disposed of are not easily understood. Those living in southeastern Ohio, especially, seemed to be “conspicuous consumers and connoisseurs of the exotic,” Emerson said.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

The Hopewell people from that area collected “massive assemblages of obsidian from Wyoming, mica from the Appalachians, and caches of elaborately carved pipes, ” Emerson said. They also collected shells from the Gulf Coast, along with the skulls of exotic animals (an alligator, for instance).

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

“Strange animals, strange minerals, strange things were really a focus,” he said.

Most of the carved stone pipes from that era have been found in Ohio, where very large caches often containing more than 100 pipes were ritually broken, burned and buried, Emerson said. The same style of pipes are found in Illinois, but many fewer have been uncovered in Illinois to date, he said, and they are dispersed, not heaped together in giant hordes as in Ohio.

There is evidence of stone carving at the Illinois sources where the stone was gathered, but none at Tremper Mound, suggesting that the Illinois stone was carved into pipes before it was transported to Ohio.

The team used a variety of techniques to analyze the material in the quarries and the artifacts. One method, called X-ray diffraction (XRD), produces a distinct signal that reflects the proportion of minerals in different types of stone. The stone must be pulverized, however, to subject it to XRD.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Location where the owl pipes were discovered.

To analyze the intact pipes, the researchers used a non-destructive portable technology, called PIMA, which illuminates a specimen with short-wavelength infrared radiation and records the refracted (unabsorbed) wavelengths, allowing investigators to identify the minerals present. They verified the accuracy of the PIMA by comparing its results to those obtained with XRD on quarry specimens and broken pipes.

The new findings should challenge archaeologists to look more carefully at the evidence left behind by the Hopewell people, Emerson said.

“This study really says to the archaeological community, you need to go back to the drawing board,” he said. “You’ve been telling stories for decades that are based on essentially misinformation.”

© MessageToEagle.com

Rudolph WAS lit — and Santa was taking magic mushrooms!

Posted: December 21, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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Flying reindeer? Theory calls St. Nick modern counterpart of shaman — on hallucinogenics
Image: FINLAND-CHRISTMAS-SANTA CLAUS

Olivier Morin  /  AFP / Getty Images

Santa Claus — hopefully without the assistance of hallucinogens — prepares his reindeer and sled in Rovaniemi, Finland, on Dec. 16, 2008. Rovaniemi’s Christmas theme park gets into full swing during the holidays, teeming mainly with families with children eager to meet Santa and his elves.
By Douglas Main
This Christmas, like many before it and many yet to come, the story of Santa and his flying reindeer will be told, including how the “jolly old elf” flies on his sleigh throughout the entire world in one night, giving gifts to all the good children.

But according to one theory, the story of Santa and his flying reindeer can be traced to an unlikely source: hallucinogenic or “magic” mushrooms.

“Santa is a modern counterpart of a shaman, who consumed mind-altering plants and fungi to commune with the spirit world,” said John Rush, an anthropologist and instructor at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif.

According to the theory, the legend of Santa derives from shamans in the Siberian and Arctic regions who dropped into locals’ teepeelike homes with a bag full of hallucinatory mushrooms as presents in late December, Rush said.

“As the story goes, up until a few hundred years ago these practicing shamans or priests connected to the older traditions would collect Amanita muscaria (the Holy Mushroom), dry them, and then give them as gifts on the winter solstice,” Rush told LiveScience. “Because snow is usually blocking doors, there was an opening in the roof through which people entered and exited, thus the chimney story.”

But that’s just the beginning of the symbolic connections between the Amanita muscaria mushroom and the iconography of Christmas, according to several historians and ethnomycologists, or people who study the influence fungi has had on human societies. Of course, not all scientists agree that the Santa story is tied to a hallucinogen. [ Tales of Magic Mushrooms & Other Hallucinogens ]

Presents under the tree
In his book “ Mushrooms and Mankind ” (The Book Tree, 2003) the late author James Arthur points out that Amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric, lives throughout the Northern Hemisphere under conifers and birch trees, with which the fungi —which is deep red with white flecks — has a symbiotic relationship. This partially explains the practice of the Christmas tree, and the placement of bright red-and-white presents underneath, which look like Amanita mushrooms, he wrote.

“Why do people bring pine trees into their houses at the Winter Solstice, placing brightly colored (red and white) packages under their boughs, as gifts to show their love for each other … ?” he wrote. “It is because, underneath the pine bough is the exact location where one would find this ‘Most Sacred’ substance, the Amanita muscaria, in the wild.”

Reindeer are common in Siberia, and seek out these hallucinogenic fungi, as the area’s human inhabitants have been known to do. Donald Pfister, a biologist who studies fungi at Harvard University, suggests that Siberian tribesmen who ingested fly agaric may have hallucinated into thinking that reindeer were flying.

“Flying” reindeer
“At first glance, one thinks it’s ridiculous, but it’s not,” said Carl Ruck, a professor of classics at Boston University. “Whoever heard of reindeer flying? I think it’s becoming general knowledge that Santa is taking a ‘trip’ with his reindeer,” Ruck said. [ 6 Surprising Facts About Reindeer ]

“Amongst the Siberian shamans, you have an animal spirit you can journey with in your vision quest,” Ruck continued. ” And reindeer are common and familiar to people in eastern Siberia. They also have a tradition of dressing up like the (mushroom) … they dress up in red suits with white spots.”

Ornaments shaped like Amanita mushrooms and other depictions of the fungi are also prevalent in Christmas decorations throughout the world, particularly in Scandinavia and northern Europe, Pfister points out. That said, Pfister made it clear that the connection between modern-day Christmas and the ancestral practice of eating mushrooms is a coincidence, and he doesn’t know about any direct link.

Many of these traditions were merged or projected upon Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century saint who was known for his generosity, as the story goes.

The Santa connection
There is little debate about the consumption of mushrooms by Arctic and Siberian tribes’ people and shamans, but the connection to Christmas traditions is more tenuous, or “mysterious,” as Ruck put it.

Many of the modern details of the modern-day American Santa Claus come from “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which later became famous as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”), an 1823 poem credited to Clement Clarke Moore, an aristocratic academic who lived in New York City.

The origins of Moore’s vision are unclear, although Arthur, Rush and Ruck all think he probably drew from northern Europe motifs that derive from Siberian or Arctic shamanic traditions. At the very least, Arthur wrote, Santa’s sleigh and reindeer are references back to various related Northern European mythology. For example, the Norse god Thor (known in German as “Donner”) flew in a chariot drawn by two goats, which have been replaced in the modern retelling by Santa’s reindeer, Arthur wrote.

Ruck points to Rudolf as another example of the mushroom imagery resurfacing: his nose looks exactly like a red mushroom, he said.  “It’s amazing that a reindeer with a red-mushroom nose is at the head, leading the others.”

Some doubt
Other historians were unaware of a connection between Santa and shamans or magic mushrooms, including Stephen Nissenbaum, who wrote a book about the origins of Christmas traditions, and Penne Restad, at the University of Texas.

One historian, Ronald Hutton, told NPR that the theory of a mushroom-Santa connection is off-base. “If you look at the evidence of Siberian shamanism, which I’ve done,” Hutton said, “you find that shamans didn’t travel by sleigh, didn’t usually deal with reindeer spirits, very rarely took the mushrooms to get trances, didn’t have red-and-white clothes.”

But Rush and Ruck say these statements are incorrect; shamans did deal with reindeer spirits, and the depiction of their clothes’ coloring has more to do with the colors of the mushroom than the shamans’ actual garb. As for sleighs, the point isn’t the exact mode of travel, but that the “trip” involves transportation to a different, celestial realm, Rush said.

“People who know about shamanism accept this story,” Ruck said. “Is there any other reason that Santa lives in the North Pole? It is a tradition that can be traced back to Siberia.”

Scientists Confirm That Pharaoh Ramesses III Was Murdered

Posted: December 19, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Based on an in-depth analysis of two ancient Egyptian mummies, an international team of Egyptologists have uncovered a series of clues that may have solved a 3,000-year-old murder mystery.

According to the team’s report in the British Medical Journal, Pharaoh Ramesses III was likely killed by conspirators during an attempted coup around 1155 B.C., confirming reports found in an ancient text known as the Judicial Papyrus of Turin.

“This study gives clues to the authenticity of the historically described harem conspiracy surrounding Ramesses III, and finally reveals its tragic outcome,” the researchers wrote in their report.

In their investigation, the scientists performed a detailed inspection of the two mummies’ morphology to assess preservation of the specimens and to record signs of either injuries or postmortem damage. Their analysis was based on information gathered using computed tomography (CT) scans and both an anthropological and forensic analysis.

The Egyptologists also took bone samples from different sections of the mummies and transferred them into sterile tubes. A genetic analysis was then performed in a laboratory in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and also in a second laboratory at Cairo University to investigate a possible family relationship between Ramesses III and a mummy recovered alongside the pharaoh, referred to as “unknown man E.”

The CT analysis of Ramesses III showed a wide and deep cut to the throat of the mummy. The scientists speculated it was caused by a sharp blade and might have spelled immediate death for the recipient.

The scan also revealed the presence of a Horus eye amulet just inside the wound. This was most likely inserted by the ancient embalmers as a ceremonial part of the mummification process, the research team said. They also noted the neck was unusually wrapped by a collar of thick linens.

The forensic analysis of unknown man E showed him to be between 18-20 years old. An inflated thorax and compacted layers of skin around the neck of the mummy pointed to a violent action, like strangulation, which probably led to his death, the authors wrote.

The experts also noticed the unknown man’s mummy was covered with a “ritually impure” goatskin—a signifier that he could have been punished via a non-royal burial procedure.

The genetic analysis of the mummies showed that Ramesses III and unknown man E shared a paternal lineage and certain genetic markers strongly suggested they were father and son. The analysis was unable to differentiate among the several sons of Ramesses III.

Being able to identify the unknown man’s mummy as Ramesses’ son, Pentawere, would have been crucial to unlocking the ancient mystery as he was the only son who revolted against his father during the coup, according to the papyrus text. The documents said Pentawere was found guilty at trial, and then took his own life.

Unfortunately, the Egyptologists were unable to close the book on the so-called ‘harem conspiracy’ that attempted to remove Ramesses from power. The Judicial Papyrus refers to Ramesses III as “the Great God,” and suggests he died before or during the trials. However, the texts also say the court received direct orders from the god-king, who would have had to survive the original attack.

First Harbor of Ancient Rome Rediscovered

Posted: December 15, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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Archaeologists have unearthed the great ancient monuments of Ostia, but the location of the harbour which supplied Rome with wheat remained to be discovered. Thanks to sedimentary cores, this ” lost ” harbour has eventually been located northwest of the city of Ostia, on the left bank of the mouth of the Tiber. Stratigraphy has revealed that at its foundation, between the 4th and 2nd century BC, the basin was deeper than 6.5 m, the depth of a seaport.

This research was carried out by a French-Italian team of the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée (CNRS / Université Lumière Lyon 2), the Ecole Française de Rome and Speciale per i Beni Soprintendenza Archeologici di Roma — Sede di Ostia* and will be published in the Chroniques des Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome in December 2012.

According to ancient texts, Ostia was founded by Ancus Marcius, the 4th king of Rome. This new settlement is supposed to have aimed three goals: to give Rome an outlet to the sea, to ensure its supply of wheat and salt and finally, to prevent an enemy fleet to ascend the Tiber. Archeological excavations showed that the original urban core (castrum) dates back to the turn of the 4th and 3th centuries BC. Major ancient buildings and main roads were progressively revealed, but the location of the Ostia river mouth harbour remained unknown to this day. For some, it was considered as lost forever. Since the Renaissance, many attempts to locate the harbour of Ostia were undertaken without success. It was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that Italian archaeologists defined an area north-west of the city, near the Imperial Palace. At the turn of the century, archaeologists confirmed the probable location of the basin, in that zone, by using geomagnetic instruments. However there was still no consensus on the exact location of the port and the debate was still alive.

A French-Italian team led by Jean-Philippe Goiran, CNRS researcher, has tried to definitely verify the hypothetical location of the harbour, by using a new geological corer. This technology solves the problem of groundwater which makes this area rather difficult for archeologists to excavate beyond 2 m deep.

Two sediment cores have been extracted, showing a complete 12 m depth stratigraphy and the evolution of the harbour zone in 3 steps:

1 — The deepest stratum, before the foundation of Ostia, indicates that the sea was present in that area in the early 1st millennium BC.

2 — A middle layer, rich in grey silty-clay sediments, shows a typical harbour facies. According to calculations, the basin had a depth of 6.5 m at the beginning of its operation (dated between the 4th and 2d centuries BC). Previously considered as a river harbour that can only accommodate low draft boats, Ostia actually enjoyed a deep basin capable of receiving deep draft marine ships.

3 — Finally, the most recent stratum, composed of massive alluvium accumulations, shows the abandonment of the basin during the Roman imperial period. With radiocarbon dates, it is possible to deduce that a succession of major Tiber floods episodes of the Tiber finally came to seal the harbour of Ostia between the 2nd century BC and the 1st quarter of the 1st century AD (and this despite possible phases of dredging). At that time, the depth of the basin was less than 1 m and made any navigation impossible. It was then abandoned in favor of a new harbour complex built 3 km north of the Tiber mouth, called Portus. This alluvium layer fits with the geographer Strabo’s text (58 BC — 21/25 AD) who indicated the sealing of the harbour basin by sediments of the Tiber at that time (Geographica, 231-232).

The discovery of the river mouth harbour of Ostia, north of the city and west of the Imperial Palace, will help better understand the links between Ostia, its harbour and the ex-nihilo settling of Portus, initiated in 42 AD and completed in 64 AD under the reign of Nero. This gigantic 200 ha wide complex became the harbour of Rome and the largest ever built by the Romans in the Mediterranean.

Between the abandonment of the port of Ostia and the construction of Portus, researchers estimate that nearly 25 years have passed. Rome was the capital of the ancient Roman world and the first city to reach one million inhabitants. So how was it supplied with wheat during that period? The question arises now researchers.

*This work was also carried out in collaboration with the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme (CNRS / Aix-Marseille Université), the Universita Roma 3, the Institut Universitaire de France and received the support of the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche).

Science News

Ciudad Perdida: Uncovering Ancient Secrets Of The Enigmatic “Lost City”

Posted: December 15, 2012 by phaedrap1 in Monuments, News
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Hidden in the middle of the jungle, archaeologists are trying to uncover ancient secrets of Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City.

It is a place that has remained unknown to most of the outside world for centauries and even today, very few people are aware of its existence.

Ciudad Perdida, Spanish for “Lost City,” is one of Colombia’s most spectacular cultural heritage sites.

The “Lost City ” was inhabited by the Tayrona people until the end of the 16th century and tucked away within the lush jungles of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta not far from the Colombian coastline.

Ciudad Perdida, is made up of hundreds of stone terraces and rings, which archaeologists believe were used as foundations for temples, dwellings and plazas.

 

Ciudad Perdida is situated atop a mountain in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a UNESCO-inscribed Biosphere Reserve. Photo: poirpom/flickr

 

Although the Tayrona built more than 250 towns across a 2,000 square mile area, few are as large or as impressive as Ciudad Perdida, which is believed to have been a regional center of political, social and economic power, home to around 3,000 people.

 

After diseases introduced by the Spanish forced the Tayrona to abandon the city, it was forgotten until 1975, when looters accidentally rediscovered the site in their search for pre-Columbian treasures.It was taken over in 1976 by the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), which began clearing forest and researching the site.

In 2009, GHF began working in partnership with ICANH to preserve Ciudad Perdida’s ancient features and to engage the local communities as major stakeholders in the site’s sustainable development.

In August this year, the growing global interest in Ciudad Perdida provided the lead story for CCTV’s Americas Now, an international broadcast news magazine.

 

View of the center area of Ciudad Perdida (“Lost City”) in north-eastern Colombia. Image credit: Wanderingstan

The program followed a tour group led by Dr. Santiago Giraldo, Director of GHF’s Colombia Heritage Program, as they trekked to the Lost City. Along the way, they met members of the Kogi indigenous tribe – descendants of the Tayrona – who are helped by the Tayrona Foundation for Archaeological and Environmental Research (FIAAT), which Dr. Giraldo helped to establish.

“What we would like, with the indigenous community and the peasant community, is to keep things at a manageable level, so that they have better livelihoods, but it does not get out of hand,” Dr. Giraldo said.

 

A boulder with carved markings, believed to be a map of the area around Ciudad Perdida. Image credit: http://flickrhivemind.net

Among those in the tour group featured on Americas Now was Dr. Barra O’Dannabhain, an archaeologist from the University College Cork in Ireland.

It was his first visit to the site, which he called one of the most impressive he’s ever seen. He insisted on the need to conserve it.

 

Ciudad Perdida has remained unknown to the outside world for a very long time. Image credit: Rutacol

“This has a relevance beyond Colombia,” he said, “because the story of Ciudad Perdida is of a vibrant, impressive culture that was wiped out by contact with Europeans…

We owe it to the dead generations, and also to their descendants who still inhabit the area today, to tell more about the story of what happened there.”

MessageToEagle.com based on information provided by Global Heritage Fund

Atlantis Found: Giant Sphinxes, Pyramids In Bermuda Triangle

Posted: December 14, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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1

Perhaps eclipsing the discoveries of Troy and King Tut’s tomb is the discovery of Atlantis. Now, two daring scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, claim they’ve found it. They discovered the submerged ruins of the ancient city off the shores of Cuba. In the distant past the region was dry land, but now only the island of Cuba remains above water. The ancient city is 600 feet below the ocean and the team of researchers led by Weinzweig and Zalitzki are convinced it is Atlantis—the city lost for more than 10,000 years.

Atlantis found in Bermuda Triangle

Two scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, working off the coast of Cuba and using a robot submersible, have confirmed that a gigantic city exists at the bottom of the ocean. The site of the ancient city—that includes several sphinxes and at least four giant pyramids plus other structures—amazingly sits within the boundries of the fabled Bermuda Triangle.

According to a report by arclein of Terra Forming Terra, Cuban Subsea Pyramid Complex, the evidence points to the city being simultaneously inundated with rising waters and the land sinking into the sea. This correlates exactly with the Atlantis legend.

The disaster may have occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. As the Arctic icecap catastrophically melted it caused sea levels to rise quickly around the world, especially affecting the Northern Hemisphere. Coast lines changed; land was lost; islands (even island continents) disappeared.

The Greek philosopher Plato wrote of lost Atlantis

At the end of last Ice Age sea levels were nearly 400 feet lower than present day levels. Once the waters began to rise, they rose swiftly. Conceivably, no technology then, or now, could have saved Atlantis from its watery grave. The evidence that land in what’s now the Caribbean also sank into the sea concurrently seems pretty certain.

Arclein observes: “At the time uplifted portions of the Mid Atlantic Ridge subsided also including Lyonese and the home islands and land mass around the Azores. Even if that had not happened, this subsidence was amply large enough.

‘Atlantis The Lost Continent’ [Image: MGM Studios]

“This would have produced an orthogonal pressure forcing subsidence to either East or West. Since the ridge between Cuba and Yucatan is the natural point of weakness between the Gulf subsidence basin and the Caribbean subsidence basin, it naturally subsided deeply. The driver for all this was the hydrostatic changes brought about by both the original crustal shift of 12,900 years ago that I have called the Pleistocene Nonconformity and the slow uplift of the Hudson Bay Basin brought about by the ending of the Ice Age.”

Cuban missile crisis stops research

According to journalist Luis Mariano Fernandez the city was first discovered decades ago, but all access to it was stopped during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

An artist reconstruction of the city of Atlantis

“The U.S. government discovered the alleged place during the Cuban missile crisis in the sixties, Nuclear submarines cruising in the Gulf (in deep sea) met pyramid structures. They immediately shut down the site and took control of him and the objects, in order that it will not come to Russians hands.”

The science team of deep ocean experts, archaeologists and oceanographers found ruins of ancient buildings 600 feet below the ocean. They say the city is Atlantis.

Look carefully, in the muky water a giant pyramid is visible [Image: LMF]

Pyramids and sphinxes bigger than Egypt’s

Evidence that the island of Cuba is the vestige of a once mighty culture is supported by Zalitzki’s discovery on the island of extremely ancient symbols and pictograms identical to those seen on the underwater structures.

A second giant pyramid photographed by the ROV [Image: LMF]

Using exploration submersibles, they discovered amazingly huge pyramid structures similar to (but larger than) the pyramids in Giza, Egypt. They estimate the Atlantis pyramids are constructed with stones weighing many hundreds of tons.

Robotic Ocean Vehicle (ROV) being lowered to site [Image: LMF]

Incredibly the ancient city also has magnificent sphinxes and “stones that arranged like Stonehenge, and a written language engraved on the stones,” reports Fernandez.

Crystal Atlantean pyramid also found in the Triangle

Another giant pyramid capped with what looks like a crystal was discovered by divers in the Bermuda Triangle [See: Giant Crystal Pyramid Discovered In Bermuda Triangle]

The gigantic structure, also perhaps larger than the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, and initially identified by a doctor in the 1960s, has been independently verified by diving teams from France and the U.S.

A discovery that rewrites world history

Could such a discovery change Mankind’s view of history? Yes, it could change everything.

Fernandez writes, “It has confirmed that the stones were cut, carved and polished to make them fit together and thus form larger structures. On the strange inscriptions, some of them similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics, very little is known, except that they are very abundant and found in almost all parts of the field. They have also appeared symbols and drawings whose meaning is unknown.”

The exploration of Atlantis, called Project Exploramar, is expanding to discover more of the mysteries of the mega-city.

Speaking with a scientist about the possibility that the ruins are indeed Atlantis, Fernandez reports the expert replied:

“…in the Yucatan cultures today is possible that what still remains of the aborigines of those places perhaps the Olmecs or some very primitive civilization of Yucatan, the northern part of Central America—originated according to them on an island that sank by a cataclysm. This island is called Atlanticú.”

That too fits the stories about the sudden demise of the wondrous Atlantis.

Atlanticú. Atlantis. The aboriginal natives still call it that in their history.

Fernandez interviews Pauline Zalitzki about Atlantis [Image: LMF]

During an interview about the exploration of the mega-city, Fernandez asked lead scientist Pauline Zalitzki about the civilaztion that built it.

“When we published the first news of this finding,” she said, “the University of Veracruz was interested in our work and we had recorded images of these structures on the seabed. Specifically, the Institute of Anthropology of the University excavations invited me. They were doing [studies] on parts and ruins of the Olmec civilization.

Sonar images of mega-structures on the seabed [Image: LMF]

“When they saw these submarine images [they] found similarities and parallels with the ruins found in these excavations that the Institute was undertaking.

Another image of an Atlantean mega-structure [Image: LMF]

“The Olmecs and other native peoples all have primary morphology marking the arrival of this continent. This mean coming from the direction of Cuba, and had to occur in a very large earthquake where their land sank. Morphologies indicate that they belong to three families who were saved. One of these families came to the coast of Veracruz, which are supposedly the Olmec. Others came to Central America and traveled to the Pacific coast, and these families created the civilization of the Americas as we know it today, because they distributed all their knowledge.

“When these anthropologists saw underwater images of this city, and saw some stone monoliths, some symbol, and inscriptions, they identified with Olmec motifs. They were very surprised.”

The Olmecs devolved from the survivors of Atlantis, a much superior culture destroyed aft the end of the Ice Age flooding. The world was reshaped and a super-civilization destroyed, remembered for millennia only in legend and a passing refernce by the philosopher Plato.

But Atlantis was real, is real: scientists Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki have found it.

Terrence Aym

Some Nazca Lines are a Labyrinth, New Study Shows

Posted: December 10, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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0

A five-year study by British archaeologists sheds new light on the enigmatic drawings created by the Nazca people between 100 BC and CE 700 in the Peruvian desert.

This aerial view shows the southern part of the Nazca labyrinth, including the central mound and the spiral that marks the outer end (Clive Ruggles)

The Nazca Lines are located in the arid Peruvian coastal plain some 250 miles south of Lima. They have attracted a host of theories purporting to explain them ever since they were discovered during the 1920s – notably the bizarre ideas of Erich Von Daniken who supposed they were made by visiting extra-terrestrials.

British archaeologists Dr Nicholas Saunders of the University of Bristol and Prof Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester combined the experience and knowledge gained by walking the lines (they walked more than 900 miles of desert in southern Peru, tracing the lines and geometric figures), studying the layers of superimposed designs, photographing the associated pottery and using satellite digital mapping into the most detailed such study to date. The results have been published in the journal Antiquity.

In the midst of the study area is a unique labyrinth originally discovered by Prof Ruggles when he spent a few days on the Nazca desert back in 1984. Its existence came as a complete surprise.

“When I set out along the labyrinth from its center, I didn’t have the slightest idea of its true nature,” Prof Ruggles explained. “Only gradually did I realize that here was a figure set out on a huge scale and still traceable, that it was clearly intended for walking, and that I was almost certainly the first person to have recognized it for what it was, and walked it from end to end, for some 1500 years. Factors beyond my control brought the 1984 expedition to an abrupt halt and it was only 20 years later that I eventually had the opportunity to return to Nazca, relocate the figure and study it fully.”

Invisible in its entirety to the naked eye, the only way of knowing its existence is to walk its 2.7 miles (4.4 km) length through disorienting direction changes which ended, or began, inside a spiral formation.

“The labyrinth is completely hidden in the landscape, which is flat and virtually featureless. As you walk it, only the path stretching ahead of you is visible at any given point. Similarly, if you map it from the air its form makes no sense at all.”

“But if you walk it, discovering it as you go, you have a set of experiences that in many respects would have been the same for anyone walking it in the past. The ancient Nazca peoples created the geoglyphs, and used them, by walking on the ground. Sharing some of those experiences by walking the lines ourselves is an important source of information that complements the hard scientific and archaeological evidence and can really aid our attempts to make anthropological sense of it.”

The arid conditions have ensured the remarkable preservation of Nazca’s fragile geoglyphs for a millennium and a half. Nonetheless, segments of nearly all of the lines and figures – including the labyrinth – have been washed away by flash floods that occurred from time to time in the past. And, of course, people through the ages have walked across the desert plateau to cross from one valley to another.

The archaeologists have studied the integrity of many lines and figures within the study area.

“Meandering and well-worn trans-desert pathways served functional purposes but they are quite different from the arrow-straight lines and geometric shapes which seem more likely to have had a spiritual and ritual purpose. It may be, we suggest, that the real importance of some of these desert drawings was in their creation rather than any subsequent physical use,” Dr Saunders said.

This ground shot is taken along the innermost pathway of the labyrinth directly towards the central mound. This line widens out towards its terminus, creating a false perspective that makes it appear parallel as it stretches away into the distance (Clive Ruggles)

Certainly, the pristine state and well-preserved edges of the labyrinth suggest that it was never walked by more than a few people in single file. In fact, the survival of many geoglyphs seems remarkable given the proximity of the area to the pilgrimage center of Cahuachi, in the nearby Nazca valley, and the fact that people carried on walking across the pampa during the ensuing centuries right up to modern times.

Even if the labyrinth was not unique when it was built, it may well be the only such construction whose integrity has been preserved to the extent that it still can be recognized in today’s landscape.

“Excavations commonly uncover objects undisturbed for centuries and even millennia. But it is hard to conceive many places on the planet were you could still discover a human construction that has lain hidden on the surface of the ground for as long as 1500 years, simply by walking along it and seeing where your feet take you,” Prof Ruggles said.

_______

Bibliographic information: Clive Ruggles and Nicholas J. Saunders. 2012. Desert labyrinth: lines, landscape and meaning at Nazca, Peru. Antiquity, vol. 86, no. 334, pp. 1126–1140

Published: Dec 10th, 2012

 

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