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Posted on 10/06/2025 2:51:15 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Centuries of human history have been frozen in time inside the towering nests of bearded vultures, Europe’s most endangered raptors, and have revealed a surprising archive of ancient artefacts carried aloft by the birds themselves.
A Spanish research team who were excavating 12 ancient eyries in southern Spain’s rugged cliffs uncovered 2,483 preserved remains in a study published recently in the Ecology journal. Among them: 2,117 animal bones, 86 hooves, 72 leather scraps, 43 eggshell fragments—and 226 human-made objects, some dating back over 650 years via carbon-14 analysis.
“These nests have acted as natural museums,” the authors wrote, who credited the birds’ stable cave perches and dry microclimates for safeguarding fragile items like a 674-year-old sandal called an agobía, a 651-year-old ochre-painted sheep hide, a woven esparto slingshot, basket fragments from 151 years ago, and even a wooden lance.
Bearded vultures (Gypaetus barbatus), expert bone-crushers, hauled the treasures, along with ungulate remains from their diet, over generations, revealing ecological and ethnographic tales. The artefacts are a snapshot of Mediterranean pastoral life: shepherds making ropes, baskets, and footwear from local plants.
Using stratigraphic digs, radiocarbon dating, and proteomic tests, researchers pieced together a timeline of human-vulture coexistence across Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia. With just 309 breeding pairs left continent-wide (144 in the Pyrenees), the findings carry urgent conservation weight.
Future pollen and twig analyses could refine environmental histories, making collaborations among ecologists, archaeologists, and historians to help in habitat restoration efforts and reintroductions of the species.
As one researcher put it, these “accidental time capsules” not only chronicle the past but also chart a path to save the vultures, and the stories they hoard, from vanishing forever.
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And the article has no photos of the objects.
[snip] ...inside the towering nests of bearded vultures... a surprising archive of ancient artefacts carried aloft by the birds themselves. A Spanish research team... uncovered 2,483 preserved remains... 72 leather scraps... and 226 human-made objects, some dating back over 650 years via carbon-14 analysis... fragile items like a 674-year-old sandal called an agobía, a 651-year-old ochre-painted sheep hide, a woven esparto slingshot, basket fragments from 151 years ago, and even a wooden lance. [/snip]
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