Keyword: ancientnavigation
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Roman Amphora were discovered in 1975 buried in the sediment deep in the bay of Rio de Janeiro. Renowned scientists Sir Robert Marx, Dr. Harold Edgerton, Dr. Elizabet Will and I believe the Romans may have arrived in the New World over a thousand years before Columbus, and we are out to prove it. Mystery of the Roman Amphora in Rio de Janeiro Bay | 2:38 | 802 subscribers | 1,056 views | August 7, 2021 Bay of Jars Robert Marx [YouTube search]
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...for over two millennia, the great civilizations of the Mediterranean... possessed copper in abundance. They had gold, timber, and grain... What they did not have was tin... in the early centuries, tin came from... Central and South Asia, from the Zeravshan Valley in what is now Tajikistan and the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan... By the Late Bronze Age, the kingdoms had turned to the sea... In 1982, a sponge diver off the coast of Grand Cape in Turke... found what came to be known as the Uluburun shipwreck... mostly, it carried metal. There were ten tons of copper, in the...
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According to a statement released by the Public Library of Science, a new study of the 2,400-year-old Hjortspring boat, discovered with a cache of weapons in the early twentieth century on Denmark's island of Als, suggests that it may have been constructed in the Baltic Sea region. First, Mikael Fauvelle of Lund University and his colleagues radiocarbon dated cording and caulk found with the boat to the fourth or third century B.C. Then, they used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine that the caulk had likely been made of animal fat and pine pitch. At the time, there were...
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The infamous Black Death -- a pandemic that killed as many as one third to one half of Europeans within just a few years -- may have been aided in its devastation by an unknown volcanic eruption.That's the hypothesis presented in research published December 4 in Communications Earth & Environment, which argues that the eruption triggered several seasons of climate instability and crop failures. That instability, in turn, forced several Italian states to import grain stores from new sources -- specifically, from regions surrounding the Black Sea. Riding along on those grain stores, the researchers posit, were fleas infected with...
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For students of ancient civilizations, one of the curious facts is that the site of Troy (Hisarlik in western Turkey), whose walls Homer describes as overlooking the sea, is now 6.5 kilometers inland at the closest point to the Aegean. Millions of modern-day tourists have visited that inland site since Schliemann excavated it in the 19th century. Portions of the walls and towers are clearly visible — but the Aegean is nowhere in sight. Why? Because the world's oceans and seas were different at the time of the Trojan War that Homer celebrated in the Iliad. The seas were higher...
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Thousands of 'Vikings' took to the streets brandishing burning torches and axes as the ancient Up Helly Aa festival got under way on the Shetland Islands. The event, a celebration of the Scottish island's Norse heritage, drew massive crowds with many 'warriors' wearing winged helmets and sheepskins.
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Climate records back to Viking times show the 20th century was unexceptional for rainfall and droughts despite assumptions that global warming would trigger more wet and dry extremes, a study showed on Wednesday. Stretching back 1,200 years, written accounts of climate indicated that variations in the extremes in the 20th century were less than in some past centuries. "Several other centuries show stronger and more widespread extremes," lead author Fredrik Ljungqvist of Stockholm University told Reuters. "We can't say it's more extreme now." Ljungqvist said many existing scientific models of climate change over-estimated assumptions that rising temperatures would make dry...
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New clues suggest slaves were vital to the Viking way of life -- and argue against attempts to soften the raiders' brutish reputation... Archaeologists are using recent finds and analyses of previous discoveries -- from iron collars in Ireland to possible plantation houses in Sweden -- to illuminate the role of slavery in creating and maintaining the Viking way of life. "This was a slave economy," said Neil Price, an archaeologist at Sweden's Uppsala University who spoke at a recent meeting that brought together archaeologists who study slavery and colonization. "Slavery has received hardly any attention in the past 30...
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Archaeologists have found the figure of a goddess that dates back to the early Hittite period as well as a Viking amber necklace during an ongoing excavation in the ancient city of Bathonea by Lake Kucukcekmece in Istanbul. An archaeological excavation was launched in 2009 near Lake Kucukcekmece in the Avcilar district of Istanbul to uncover the ancient city of Bathonea, which is estimated to be 1,600 years old. The excavation is being conducted under the supervision of Associate Professor Fengul Aydingun from Kocaeli University. in an earlier interview with the press, she had said the first two years of...
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A Norwegian further education college is starting a programme for want-to-be Vikings where students will learn essential Viking crafts, such as sword forging, jewellery making, and roof thatching. During the course at Seljord Folkehøgskule 150km west of Oslo, students -- many inspired by TV series such as ‘Game of Thrones’ -- will celebrate even celebrate the Norse rituals of the year, going so far as to make animal sacrifices during the winter feast. “We see a large number of applicants who have applied for different reasons," the school's principal, Arve Husby, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. "Some have become interested through...
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A new examination of ninth-century A.D. burial sites in the central Norwegian region of Trondelag has revealed they contain many more artifacts from Britain, such as brooches, drinking horns, and swords, than had been previously believed. "These graves are some of the earliest proof that we have of contact between Norway and the British Isles," archaeologist Aina Margrethe Heen Pettersen told Science Nordic. She argues that Vikings from Trondelag were among the first to voyage across the North Sea, and emphasizes that they were not simply bent on raiding. "Contact with the Anglo-Saxons means more than just violent pillaging. Drinking...
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Dr Garcia Losquino, who is from the region, was compelled to visit Galicia in Northern Spain unexpectedly when a number of Viking anchors were washed ashore in a storm in March 2014... "On the beach where the anchors were found there was a big mound which locals thought might have been a motte-and-bailey construction, which was used by the later Vikings in France. But with the help of a geographer using tomography we now think this was a longphort -- a Viking construction only found in Ireland during the early Viking age, and very similar to English Viking camps, where...
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Rome's rise created a supply challenge on a massive scale. This segment uncovers the harbour system at Portus and Ostia that helped keep the empire running, and why its remains are so important today. The Roman 'Mega-Harbour' that Powered an Empire | 6:00 BBC Timestamp | 905K subscribers | 3,502 views | December 10, 2025
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A lost 16th-century ship buried deep in a Namibian desert has stunned archaeologists with a treasure haul that rewrites the story of early global trade. In Namibia’s remote Sperrgebiet—a name that translates from German as “forbidden zone”—miners looking for diamonds stumbled upon something far more valuable: the buried wreck of a 16th-century Portuguese carrack, laden with gold, ivory, and copper. Preserved beneath the hyper-arid sands of the Namib Desert, the ship, identified as the Bom Jesus, disappeared in 1533 while en route to India. Discovered in 2008 within a high-security mining concession near Oranjemund, the site quickly drew attention from...
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Bronze tools found in Sweden dating from 3,600 years ago were made using copper from the Mediterranean, archaeologists have shown. They now also believe that rock carvings of ships found in Bohuslan, Sweden were visual documentation of trade between ancient Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. Most of the copper circulating in Bronze Age Europe apparently originated from Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian peninsula - and Cyprus, going by isotope analysis... The precious copper was exchanged for Nordic amber, which was as cherished as gold in Mycenaean Greece and in the prehistoric Middle East... The ancient Cypriot copper industry produced relatively pure stuff,...
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...Why do the Greek descendants of the Minoans share a gene in their DNA with the Chippewas and no one else on the planet? In November of 1896, near the town of Newberry, Michigan. In Michigan's Upper Peninsula two woodsmen clearing land on a farm uprooted a tree and discovered three statues, and a clay tablet. The tablet was 19 by 26 inches in size. 140 small squares were cut into the stone. In each square a letter or character. The University of Michigan and the Smithsonian Institution were notified. Both of these institutions, at the time refused to look...
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Lentil plant grown at Fuerteventura. Credit: Fayna Brenes =============================================================== Ancient lentils preserved in volcanic silos link modern Canarian crops to 2,000-year-old North African origins. Lentils cultivated in the Canary Islands today have roots that extend nearly 2,000 years into the past. This finding comes from the first-ever genetic study of archaeological lentils, conducted by researchers at Linköping University and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain. Because these lentils have been adapted for centuries to thrive in hot and arid environments, they may offer valuable genetic traits for future crop breeding in response to ongoing climate change....
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Just a hundred meters off Pantelleria's main road, and just under ten minutes south from the island's main settlement, a round stone mausoleum represents the most impressive evidence of an ancient civilization. These structures were crafted by a group that inhabited the island 5,000 years ago.The so-called Sese Grande, (sese is a local island term for a pile of rocks) is an impressive funerary monument reaching almost 20 feet (six meters) high. The 12 cells inside the structure can be reached through corresponding corridors.In some cells, archaeologists during the 19th-century discovered pottery and sarcophagi. There was also evidence that showed...
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Phys.org reports that Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans) may have played a larger role in the deforestation of Rapa Nui than previously thought. Some 15 million Rapa Nui palm trees (Paschalococos disperta) are estimated to have covered Easter Island before the arrival of Polynesians around A.D. 1200. When Europeans arrived in 1722, they observed just a few isolated trees, grasses, and shrubs. Terry Hunt of the University of Arizona and Carl Lipo of the University of Birmingham developed an ecological model of the island and found that a single pair of rats, feasting on nutritious palm nuts, could grow into a...
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Genetic and archaeological evidence now points to Aboriginal Australians arriving around 50,000 years ago, later than once believed. Credit: Shutterstock =================================================================== A new study by a Utah anthropologist, based on genetic evidence, concludes that the colonizers of Sahul arrived later than the commonly held estimate of 65,000 years ago. Aboriginal Australian culture is recognized as the world’s longest continuous living tradition. Earlier studies estimated that the ancestors of today’s Indigenous Australians, known as the Sahul peoples, first reached the continent about 65,000 years ago. Yet new genetic research from the University of Utah, which examines traces of Neanderthal DNA in...
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