Posted on 01/20/2006 2:48:28 PM PST by The_Republican
ROME - Archaeologists digging beneath the Roman Forum have discovered a 3,000-year-old tomb that pre-dates the birth of ancient Rome by several hundred years.
State TV Thursday night showed an excavation team removing vases from the tomb, which resembled a deep well.
Archaeologists were excavating under the level of the ancient forum, a popular tourist site, when they dug up the tomb, which they suspect is part of an entire necropolis, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
"I am convinced that the excavations will bring more tombs to light," ANSA quoted Rome's archaeology commissioner, Eugenio La Rocca, as saying.
Also found inside the tomb was a funerary urn, ANSA said.
State TV quoted experts as saying the tomb appeared to date to about 1,000 B.C., meaning the people who constructed the necropolis pre-dated the ancient Romans by hundreds of years.
Legend has it that Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god of war, Mars.
Last year, archaeologists who have been digging for some two decades in the forum said they believed they found evidence of a royal palace roughly dating to the period of the legendary founding.
Glad to see Rome's founders were so terribly human.
ping
The idea of using the year of Christ's birth as the epoch year of the Julian Calendar was first proposed by the Monk Dionysius Exiguus in 525 AD. At the time, a variety of epoch years were in common use, with the year when Diocletian ascended to the office of Emperor of Rome being the most widely used. Although the Imperial and post-Imperial Romans counted time from various reference points that changed frequently, there was one "epoch date" that was canonically (albeit infrequently) used to unify all their various time counts: the date of the founding of the city of Rome (an era that was called "Ab Urbe Condita," Latin for "From the Founding of the City.") Dionysius explicity specified the year that would be the year 1 of the Anno Domini Era as the year 754 A.U.C. ("Ab Urbe Condita.")
Thanks for dropping the knowledge!!!
She's not getting anywhere near my artifact!
This is cool. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
BTTT
bump
Romulus?
"Brad Pitt, Womb Raider"
Do you have any idea where in the Forum this was located? My wife and I were just in Rome about 10 months ago. We spent half a day exploring the Forum. It extends over quite a vast area. Do they think there are burial sites throughout?
So then who were these ancient pre-Roman people? Etruscans, colonizing Greeks, Gauls?
Great questions. Maybe someone would enlighten us all.
Remus??
Etruscans, perhaps? Should be easy to identify, as Rome and the surrounding area is full of their artifacts, especially delightful at the Etruscan Museum. Anything other than Etruscan would be interesting indeed.
Could it be?
Nah. Remus hangs out with Br'er Rabbit.
I think there were lots of tribes on the It. penninsula before Rome.
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