Ancient Empires

[N Crestway]

Legend confirmed?

Mythical City of Underground Labyrinths Found Beneath Altar of 15th Century Church in Mexico

Get the impression that caverns were considered important and sacred throughout much of Mesoamerica. As in the case of the Zapotec caverns, they were seen as an entrance to the underworld. If they didn't exist sometimes they would be created or excavated beneath sites that had been consecrated as holy such as the religious "acropolis" at Teotihucan.

[SubGod22]

This one isn't so much ancient empires, but I didn't want to create a cool caveman discoveries thread.

Cavemen Used Glue to Make Stone Tools 40,000 Years Ago - the Evidence is Sticky

Neanderthals created stone tools held together with a glue made from scratch, a team of scientists has discovered.

They are the earliest evidence of a complex adhesive in Europe, suggest these predecessors to modern humans had a higher level of cognition and cultural development than previously thought.

The stone tools from an archaeological site in Le Moustier, France, were used by Neanderthals during the Middle Paleolithic period of the Mousterian between 120,000 and 40,000 years ago. Kept in the collection of Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History, they had not previously been examined in detail.

The tools were rediscovered during an internal review of the collection and their scientific value was recognized.

“The items had been individually wrapped and untouched since the 1960s,” said Ewa Dutkiewicz, from the Berlin museum. “As a result, the adhering remains of organic substances were very well preserved.”

The researchers discovered traces of a mixture of ochre and bitumen on several stone tools, such as scrapers, flakes, and blades. Ochre is a naturally occurring earth pigment; bitumen is a component of asphalt and can be produced from crude oil, but also occurs naturally in the soil.

“We were surprised that the ochre content was more than 50%,” said Patrick Schmidt from the University of Tübingen’s Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology section, who lead the reseach.

“This is because air-dried bitumen can be used unaltered as an adhesive, but loses its adhesive properties when such large proportions of ochre are added.”

He and his team examined these materials in tensile tests—used to determine strength—and other measures.

“It was different when we used liquid bitumen, which is not really suitable for gluing. If 55 percent ochre is added, a malleable mass is formed,” Schmidt says.

The mixture was just sticky enough for a stone tool to remain stuck in it, but without adhering to hands, making it suitable material for adding a convenient handle to a small blade of flint—like a cheese knife—allowing for much greater manipulation of the small tool by thick Neanderthal hands.

“The tools showed two kinds of microscopic wear: one is the typical polish on the sharp edges that is generally caused by working other materials,” explains Radu Iovita, an associate professor at NYU’s Center for the Study of Human Origins, who conducted this analysis.

[shoxlax]

Thought this thread was about the Gregg Marshall Era

[SubGod22]

Archaeologists Uncover Ancient City in Kingdom of Tonga That Rewrites History: 'First City of the Pacific'

A monumental discovery has been made on the island nation of Tonga, where the footprint of a large urban civilization from centuries past was uncovered using cutting-edge laser technology.

Consisting of almost 10,000 earthen mounds that today are hardly noticeable, it could be one of the first cities ever constructed in the Pacific.

With the introduction of aerial laser surveying, we’ve discovered that South and Central America could support urban centers with millions of inhabitants—more than anything archaeologists and historians thought possible 15 to 20 years ago.

That sort of urbanization seems even less likely on tropical archipelagos like Tonga, but there they are, just 12 kilometres from the current capital Nuku’alofa, in the eastern district of Tongatapu.

“Earth structures were being constructed in Tongatapu around AD 300. This is 700 years earlier than previously thought,” study author and Ph.D. scholar Phillip Parton at the Australian National University, told ABC News Down Under.

“As settlements grew, they had to come up with new ways of supporting that growing population. This kind of setup—what we call low-density urbanization—sets in motion huge social and economic change,” he added.

Insights into population centers in the Southern Hemisphere during the European Middle Ages are changing archaeologists’ understanding of the concept of urbanism. One tends, Mr. Parton argues, to imagine compact European cities from this time period—with windy cobblestone alleys and multi-tiered housing.

[SubGod22]

Kinda cool, potentially.

Archaeologists May Have Found the Villa Where the Roman Emperor Augustus Died

Excavations of a Roman villa dating to the start of the Imperial era show it may belong to the greatest of all the Roman emperors, Caesar Augustus.

Called the Somma Vesuviana, the villa was partially destroyed and buried by the same eruption that buried the city of Pompeii in 79 CE, but is located on the northern slopes of the mountain, the site where Augustus is said to have died at the end of a long rule.

Roman sources say he died in a villa north of Vesuvius, but scant further details remain. What might illuminate the matter would be evidence of extensive wealth worthy of a man who, in his own words, found Rome a city of stone and left it a city of marble.

At the moment, the Somma Vesuviana is being excavated by a team of Japanese researchers from the University of Tokyo who have been working in the area since 2022, and who recently released a statement on their progress.

“This archaeological discovery will be a key to unlocking an important phase in human history: the beginning of the ancient Roman Empire and emperor worship,” the translated statement read.

Indeed Roman sources say that the site where Augustus died was consecrated following his death, and the original structures buried by Vesuvius were used as an outline for a subsequent building constructed over top of it.

“[R]ecent excavations have revealed some rooms of the building before the eruption in 79 CE. So far, four rooms and spaces have been identified,” the statement explains.

“In particular, in what we call Room 22, as many as 16 earthenware vessels (amphorae) were found for transporting and storing wine and other items, many of which remained leaning against the walls. On the floor of a small space called Room 25, a large amount of charcoal and ash from the fire was found. This is thought to be the part of the kiln where water is thought to have been boiled.”

The evidence of a fire-heated bath points to someone of great personal wealth, though many Romans among the patrician class had such bathing halls. Greater evidence for it being Augustus’ villa comes from the second structure.

[Kung Wu]

Whoa, that's cool!

[SubGod22]

Egyptians Performed Brain Surgery 4,000 years ago: A Discovery Called a 'Milestone in the History of Medicine'

As with many things, a discovery from ancient Egypt has put a time stamp on the development of something: cancerous tumor removal from the brain.

A man living sometime between 2,686 BCE and 2,345 BCE was nearing 40 when he developed malignant brain tumors, scarring on his cranial walls revealed.

But scientists studying the skull with micro-computed tomography (CT) scans found evidence of tiny cut markets from sharp implements, meaning that ancient Egyptian physicians were either attempting to remove the malignancies or were performing an autopsy to study them.

Either way, scientists at the Duckworth Laboratory at Cambridge in the UK say it’s a first in medical history.

“It was the very first time that humanity was dealing surgically with what we nowadays call cancer,” senior study author Dr. Edgard Camarós, a professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Coruña told CNN.

“If those cut marks were done with that person alive, we’re talking about some kind of treatment directly related to the cancer,” or “it means that this is a medical autopsy exploration in relation to that cancer.”

Evidence of cranial surgery from the Neolithic period has been found, but this is the first case of it involving cancer.

The medical knowledge of Egyptian physicians is known to be sophisticated, as several treatises and medical dictionaries have come down to us on papyrus. They detail lists of ailments and treatments, including one in which a woman is marked as having breast cancer tumors. Interestingly, one such text, called the Edwin Smith papyrus, notes there’s no cure or treatment for breast cancer.

[SubGod22]

Ancient Temple and Theater 3,500 years Older Than Machu Picchu Discovered in Peru

An ancient temple and theater has been identified in Peru as dating back 4,000 years, placing it among the oldest man-made structures in Peru.

Located in the northern Peruvian town of Zaña, archaeologists had been alerted by authorities of looting taking place at a site called La Otra Banda / Cerro Las Animas, and a team from the Field University of Chicago accompanied by institutions in Peru got to work last June.

A mere 6 feet below the surface, the excavators found walls of mud and clay. Extending the survey plot to 33 feet in length, they uncovered what seemed to be a theater—with a backstage area and staircases that led up to a raised platform.

“It was so surprising that these very ancient structures were so close to the modern surface,” Luis Muro Ynoñán, a research scientist at the Field Museum who led the team, said in a release from the college. “This could have been used to perform ritual performances in front of a selected audience.”

Alongside one of the theater’s staircases were carved stone slabs decorated with intricate bird designs that are typical of carvings from a time dating back as far as 2,000 BCE known as the ‘Initial Period’ and that continued until 900 BCE.

If the temple were built during this period, it would long predate the Inca, but even the makers of the mysterious geoglyphs known as the Nazca Lines, as well as another civilization called Moche.

This could be massive for what we know about ancient peoples in the area.

[Shockm]

Ancient Temple and Theater 3,500 years Older Than Machu Picchu Discovered in Peru
This could be massive for what we know about ancient peoples in the area.

This isn't a huge deal to me (no need to debate it), but as a "student of history", I always take historical dating as a "grain of salt". It's accuracy is more likely (some say extremely more likely) to be wrong than right.

"Though one of the most essential tools for determining an ancient object’s age, carbon dating might not be as accurate as we once thought.

When news is announced on the discovery of an archaeological find, we often hear about how the age of the sample was determined using radiocarbon dating, otherwise simply known as carbon dating.

Deemed the gold standard of archaeology, the method was developed in the late 1940s and is based on the idea that radiocarbon (carbon 14) is being constantly created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays which then combine with atmospheric oxygen to form CO2, which is then incorporated into plants during photosynthesis.

When the plant or animal that consumed the foliage dies, it stops exchanging carbon with the environment and from there on in it is simply a case of measuring how much carbon 14 has been emitted, giving its age.

But new research conducted by Cornell University could be about to throw the field of archaeology on its head with the claim that there could be a number of inaccuracies in commonly accepted carbon dating standards.

If this is true, then many of our established historical timelines are thrown into question, potentially needing a re-write of the history books."
Just Something to Think About.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/carbon-dating-accuracy-major-flaw

[SubGod22]

Well, this is interesting.

4,000-year-old Tablet Details Ancient Lunchables of Cheese and Meat Carried in a Box

At the ruined site of a 4,000-year-old civilization in Anatolia, clay tablets have been found documenting a mundane but nonetheless fascinating aspect of culture: packed lunches.

The tablet speaks specifically of a Kültepe Cheese that was part of daily life for the people in the region, who, according to the tablet, used to carry it around with them on journeys.

Located in central Turkey today, in a province (Kayseri) that bears an astonishingly similar name to the German word for cheese dairy (Käserei) the ruins of Kültepe are considered the birthplace of Anatolian civilization.

It was an important city for the Hittites: the premier Anatolian civilization of its time, and today is known as the site where the earliest definitive example of an Indo-European language was written: in the form of Hittite, the loan words from which are mixed into Assyrian and Acadian cuneiform on the 20,000 tablets located at the city.

Professor Fikri Kulakoğlu, an archaeologist working on the site, which has been under excavation and study for 76 years, explained to Hurriyet Daily that the cheese would have been essential for life in the region.

“Four thousand years ago there was a cheese called ‘Kaniş Cheese.’ We read from these tablets that they took this with them,” Kulakoğlu told the Daily. “Obviously, whatever is in today’s geography, we see the same products in a similar way 4 thousand years ago.”

Ahead of their time...

[SubGod22]

Surprising Sophistication of the Viking Legal Code Newly Discovered in Carved Runes

A recent reinterpretation of the oldest extant Viking legal text in Scandinavia has shed light on the surprising societal sophistication of these raiders and traders.

The text is from an iron ring found in Sweden dating to the 9th century, called the Varsa Ring

Though an undoubtedly strange place to post civic information about fines, the runic inscription emblazoned on an iron door handle was once believed to read that fines had to be paid with an ox and two öre of silver, or “uksa … auk aura tua.”

But auk has multiple meanings, one of which is “also” and Professor of Economic History at Stockholm University, Rodney Edvinsson, believes this means that fines could be paid with an ox, or two öre of silver.

Along with being a reminder that the fine print in legal speak, whether medieval or modern, should always be read carefully, the inscription’s new meaning captures the depth of societal cohesion that the often isolated and disparate communities of Scandinavia maintained, even as their members were constantly sailing off to raid or settle in other lands.

“This indicates a much more flexible system, where both oxen and silver could be used as units of payment. If a person had easier access to oxen than to silver, they could pay their fines with an ox. Conversely, if someone had silver but no oxen, they could pay with two öre of silver,” Professor Edvinsson told his university press.

A Northman who spent the majority of his time going abroad on the trade routes, or to plunder England, France, the Low Countries, or the Baltic states would find it far easier to get his hands on two öre of silver than on ox, considering his unstable lifestyle.

Indeed, tens of thousands of silver coins from all over Europe have been found at Viking trading settlements like Birka and Gotland, where, along with honestly obtained goods, those stolen from royal or monastic settlements in Europe, or from other Scandinavian kings and jarls who would certainly be wanting to recover them, could be fenced.

Found this interesting.

[SubGod22]

This was an interesting story about the Temple of Artemis and the exceptionally long time it took to find.

How a Chatty Motorist Led to One of the Biggest Finds in Greek Archaeology - the Lost 2,800-year-old Temple of Artemis

From the magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America comes the story of an immense discovery 120 years in the making.

One of ancient Greece’s most hallowed sites has been uncovered thanks to a determined Swiss archaeologist, a chatty local, and the stroke of luck that brought them together.

The story begins with Strabo, a Roman geographer who gave history’s first account of the Sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia, near the Greek city-state of Eretria on its island of Euboea. (Eretria was one of the earliest city-states and a prolific colonizer of the Mediterranean.)

Several miles from the walls of the city, a magnificent temple complex was built for the worship of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. It was one of the most important sites for ancient Greek religious activities. But, despite its fame and Strabo’s precise location described as seven stades—around 8/10 of a mile—from Eretria’s walls, a flurry of excavation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries uncovered nothing.

Gradually, even the belief that there was such a place called the Sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia came to be questioned, and the quest to find its hallowed walls diminished.

Enter a young doctoral student in classics named Denis Knoepfler, who joined a Swiss archaeological team working in Eretria in the 1960s. By then, efforts to try and find the sanctuary had been ongoing for seven decades, and Knoepler, who told Archaeology Magazine’s contributing editor Jason Urbanus that he had been interested in the history of Eretria for years, decided a new approach was needed if this famous building was ever to be found.

He started by investigating any structure in the surrounding countryside that had reused marble blocks from earlier periods and zeroed in on a 13th-century church built like a patchwork quilt of marble in a town called Vathia. Nearby, earlier excavations had yielded artifacts that depicted Artemis’s form and name, and Knoepfler believed the site of the sanctuary would have been near the sea on a hill called Paleoekklisies, or Old Chapels.

In 1969, he filed a report with the Swiss Archaeological Mission in Greece (ESAG) stating he believed as a result of investigations that the sanctuary “must be” at the foot of that Hill.

So thoroughly did archaeologists working in Eretria believe in Strabo’s account that Knoepfler’s report was largely ignored and never even got published until 6 years ago. However, Knoeplfer continued following his hunch. In the following decades, he demonstrated how medieval monks translating Strabo’s Greek into Latin may have confused the number 7 with 60, because of how Ancient Greek used letters to represent numbers.

Kato Vathia and the Paleoekklisies Hill lay 60 stades away from the walls of Eretria.

As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, a construction boom began at the base of Paleoekklisies Hill, and because nobody had yet found the Sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia, Knoepfler managed to galvanize his department in Switzerland to take his theory seriously and apply for surveying permits before the imagined treasure was buried by modern villas.

I've always found ancient Greece to be fascinating and the thought of potentially losing so much history to a housing development is quite sad. I'm sure it's happened, but this is quite the find.

[SubGod22]

Mystery of Nazca Lines Deepens as AI Survey Doubles Number of Geoglyphs and Alters Their Meaning

It took nearly a century to locate the 430 geoglyphs hidden in the Nazca Desert of Peru, but archaeologists surveying almost the entire region with the help of AI just turned up another 303 in a single study period.

Nazca is one of the greatest mysteries in anthropology—why did the Nazca Culture, active perhaps around the first century BCE, take the time to carve, dig, and arrange the Earth into these massive motifs of animals and human figures all over the desert?

The mystery has now deepened considerably.

The artificial intelligence used by the research team, consisting of scientists and archaeologists from Japan, France, Germany, and New York, was poorly trained, the team said, because of the limited number of subjects for it to study.

AI programs trained to identify tumors in X-ray images or mammograms, for example, are trained using thousands of positive cases. In stark contrast, there were only 430 Nazca lines for it to study.

So when the team deployed their AI to examine photographs of the Nazca Pampas taken from airplane, it went ballistic—identifying 47,000 possible matches. The team eventually cut that number down to 1,309 high-potential candidates.

Between September 2022 and February 2023, the team visited as many of the high-potential sites as possible to see whether a geoglyph was there. Aided by drones, they eventually narrowed down the 1,309 to 303.

“Of the 303 newly discovered figurative geoglyphs, 178 were suggested by the model, and 125 were additional finds. Of those, 66 were found as part of an AI-discovered cluster of geoglyphs, while 59 were discovered during the fieldwork without any help from AI,” CNN reports.

There’s no leading theory in why the Nazca Culture carved or dug out the lines on the ground, which have been well preserved in their unique, dry ecosystem prohibitive to agriculture, and remain visible at least 2,000 years after they were carved. Ideas suppose they are some form of calendar, that they were a pilgrimage site that got out of hand, or that they played some role in communication, dancing, and ceremony.

The mystery continues.

[SubGod22]

I'm sure archeology has a lot of boring days, but then sometimes, you get this and it makes it all worth it.

Decorative Throne Room Unearthed May Have Belonged to an Ancient Peruvian Queen

Excavations on a pre-Inca site in northern Peru revealed the presence of a throne room where court was held by a woman.

Unfairly obscured by the glory of the Incan Empire, the medieval Moche Culture are known as prolific builders and inspired artists, but it was during this season’s excavations that a startling revelation was made.

Among the remains of the archaeological site known as Pañamarca, a throne room richly decorated with murals has been dug up. The murals are nothing new, because at Pañamarca, there’s not one surface that’s bear, to quote one archaeologist on the dig team.

But this time the murals threw up a surprise—images of a queen, a high priestess, or female god, dominated the depictions. Sometimes receiving lines of people, sometimes sitting on a throne, and other times wielding a scepter—signs of a sovereign almost everywhere, the queen of Pañamarca has breathed new life into the study of this antique culture.

In the shadows of the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya, many other great cultures, civilizations, and even empires flourished in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. The Moche Culture, with a heartland that rested around modern-day Trujillo in coastal northwest Peru, is just one of these peoples.

Existing from about 350 CE to 850 CE, the Moche painted every square inch of surface area on their large adobe temples and palaces with intricate murals. The most famous finds associated with the Moche are the Temples of the Sun and Moon a short drive from Trujillo.

In contrast to this important site and tourist attraction, Pañamarca is still under excavation, and is under the responsibility of the Archaeological Landscapes of Pañamarca, who released a statement on the discovery.

The adobe throne was found within what project director Jessica Ortiz Zevallos has named the “Hall of the Moche Imaginary” (Sala del Imaginario Moche). It is surrounded by walls and pillars depicting four different scenes of a powerful woman.

[SubGod22]

Have We Discovered All the Mayan Cities? Newly-Found Metropolis with Pyramids Shows We're Not Even Close

A major Mayan urban center has been found in a recent lidar survey on the Yucatan Peninsula that includes pyramids and ball courts.

The archaeologists triumphantly declare that the world is yet far away from the last major discovery under the jungles of Central America.

The survey was published in a recent study wherein the authors sought to answer a simple question: was the Mayan Lowland densely populated, or does it merely seem that way because of the collection of famous sites located there?

Lidar is an aerial survey tool that uses laser pulses to measure distances. It allows archaeologists to create detailed 3D topographs of forest area quickly whilst completely removing the trees from obscuring the view below, and as such has revolutionized archaeology in South and Central America.

Researchers avilaing themselves of lidar’s powers have shown that “low-density urbanism” is widely spread around many parts of Central and South America, where tens of thousands, even millions of inhabitants lived in collections of sophisticated settlements centered around keystone structures like the pyramid in Tikal or Tulum.

But doctoral student Luke Auld-Thomas and Francisco Estrada-Belli, a research professor in Tulane’s Department of Anthropology, wanted to test just how densely-populated the Mexican state of Campeche was during the Mayan Classical Period (250 CE – 900 CE) by essentially picking several survey plots in the state’s unexplored southeastern forests at random.

What they found is proof of what many of the most radical historians and archaeologists in the world are now proposing: that low-density urbanism in tropical forest was widespread across the continents.

“We didn’t just find rural areas and smaller settlements. We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area’s only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years,” said Auld-Thomas to his university press.

Pretty cool. Anytime they find more on the big three civilizations of south and central America it's pretty damn cool.

Not that it isn't cool when they find more on the lesser known civilizations of times past.