Free Republic

ANKARA (Reuters) – Archaeologists in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 B.C., the time of the legendary war chronicled by Homer, a leading German professor said on Tuesday. Ernst Pernicka, a University of Tubingen professor of archaeometry who is leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey, said the bodies were found near a defense line within the city built in the late Bronze age. The discovery could add to evidence that Troy's lower area was bigger in the late Bronze Age than...

Archaeologists excavating the site of a future golf course were surprised to find evidence of a prehistoric village — including a rare chariot wheel dating back millennia. The excavation took place near Inverness, Scotland, at the site of the future Old Petty Championship Golf Course at Cabot Highlands. Experts working for Avon Archaeology Highland also found a Bronze Age cremation urn estimated to be 3,500 years old, along with flint tools and quern stones, which were used to grind grains. Remnants of at least 25 Neolithic-era wooden buildings were also uncovered at the site, according to the BBC. Archaeologists told...

Phys.org reports that a pair of rare copper-alloy Bronze Age cymbals were uncovered at a site in Oman. The instrument has highlighted a shared musical connection between ancient cultures on both sides of the Arabian Gulf. “These cymbals are the first of their kind to have been found in good archaeological contexts in Oman and are from a particularly early context that questions some of the assumptions on their origin and development," said archaeologist Khaled Douglas. When the objects were first recovered from a third-millennium b.c. Umm an-Nar culture site in Dahwa, experts recognized their similarity to examples that had...

A press release published Monday detailed the discovery of a "mysterious" 4000-year-old monolith in Cyprus.The Erimi Archaeological Team at the University of Siena described the large monolith as having a "circular motif of cups in the center," which "tells the story of a distant era of an artisan community in Cyprus." It stands roughly 7.55 feet tall and is part of a sprawling Bronze Age community complex, according to Ancient Origins.The site has also revealed dyeing vats, warehouses and workshops, suggesting it was the site of a significant textile industry. The monolith was uncovered inside a room in the western...

Long before Karen, there was Nanni. (Geni/Wikimedia Commons) ****************************************************************** Almost 4,000 years ago, a Mesopotamian man named Nanni was so disappointed with the copper he bought from a trader named Ea-nāṣir, that he decided to write a formal complaint. Today, this Bronze Age clay tablet is the oldest customer complaint we know of – and it's a doozy. Writing and trade have an inseparable history. Some of the oldest surviving examples of written language are stocktakes and ledgers recorded in the ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform script. Since copper is a key ingredient in the very bronze the age was named for,...

Artifacts at Kach Kouch reveal stable agricultural settlements in mediterranean africa over 3,000 years ago.Recent archaeological discoveries at the Kach Kouch site in Morocco transform the understanding of ancient civilizations in North-West Africa. A team of young researchers from Morocco's National Institute of Archaeology carried out extensive excavations in 2021 and 2022, utilizing technology such as drones, differential GPS, and 3D models, as reported by The Independent. The findings at Kach Kouch suggest that stable agricultural settlements existed on the African coast of the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago. This was at the same time...

According to a Live Science report, radiocarbon dating of ancient human skeletons recovered from the River Thames indicates that they date to between 4000 B.C. and A.D. 1800. Nichola Arthur of London's Natural History Museum said that most of the remains dated to the Bronze Age, between 2300 and 800 B.C., and the Iron Age, between 800 B.C. and A.D. 43. These bones were recovered in upstream zones of the river, she added. "We can now say with confidence that these don't appear to just be bones that have steadily accumulated in the river through time," she explained. "There really...

Bronze Age footprints, both from animals and from humans, were initially identified as work was conducted on the Diramazione Nocera-Cava dei Tirreni methane pipeline in the municipalities of Nocera Superiore, Nocera Inferiore, Roccapiemonte, and Castel San Giorgio. This prompted a two-year-long archaeological investigation.SoGEarch, an Italian archaeological society, oversaw the excavations through the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Salerno and Avellino.The footprints found near the Casarzano stream in Salerno, roughly 20 miles away from Pompeii, contained rock fragments from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Experts believe the people who left behind these prints were trying...

Paleoanthropologists from the University of Vienna and Harvard University have analyzed ancient DNA from 435 individuals from Eurasian archaeological sites... They've discovered a previously unknown group, called Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) people, and found out that this population can be connected to all Indo-European-speaking populations.Indo-European languages, which number over 400 and include major groups such as Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and Celtic, are spoken by nearly half the world's population today...These migrations out of the steppes had the largest effect on European human genomes of any demographic event in the last 5,000 years and are widely regarded as the probable vector...

Excavations at an ancient Iraqi site called Shakhi Kora have revealed new clues about the origins of the world's earliest governing institutions, according to research led by the University of Glasgow.The research published in the journal Antiquity today (Wednesday 4 December 2024) suggests these early governing institutions emerged partly from their ability to provide large-scale meals, potentially as payment for labour. However, the later abandonment of these centralised structures, without signs of violent overthrow or environmental stress, points to a deliberate rejection of centralised forms of organisation that likely involved increasing top-down control...Shakhi Kora is a Late Chalcolithic site in...

A recent interdisciplinary study has revealed the copper mining practices of the Argaric societies during the Bronze Age (2200–1550 BCE), highlighting a decentralized and diversified network of resource exploitation.Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR), in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and other institutions, analyzed archaeological samples from southern Spain's Betic Mountain Range, particularly the Guadix-Baza basin, to better understand the metallurgical landscape of the time...Through lead-isotope and trace-element analyses, researchers identified inland mining regions, particularly the Betic Cordillera from Granada to Baza, as critical sources of copper, surpassing the importance of earlier coastal deposits in the...

According to a statement released by the University of Central Florida, excavations at the Mesopotamian site of Kurd Qaburstan in northeastern Iraq have uncovered cuneiform tablets, a game board, and traces of a large structure dated to about 1800 B.C. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni of the University of Central Florida said that these are the first cuneiform tablets from the period to be uncovered in the region. “We hope to find even more historical records that will help us tell the story of [the city] from the perspective of its own people rather than relying only on accounts written by their enemies,'...

A recent study using drone mapping has revealed that Dmanisis Gora, a 3,000-year-old mountainside fortress in the Caucasus Mountains, is far bigger than previously thought. The discoveries also prompted a reassessment of settlement dynamics during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages...Their work, ongoing since 2018, has revealed that Dmanisis Gora is not only a major archaeological site in the South Caucasus but also a critical case study for understanding ancient urbanism and population dynamics...Initial excavations took place near a fortified promontory between two deep gorges. However, the fall visit — when thick summer foliage had receded — revealed remains...

A new study by researchers from Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University reveals that geodynamic shifts over millions of years reoriented the ancient Rujm el-Hiri site, challenging its long-held identification as an astronomical observatory. Using advanced geophysical methods and remote sensing, the team uncovered the site’s original alignment and provided new insights into its potential purpose and the surrounding archaeological landscape. Credit: Abraham Graicer, Wikimedia Commons. CC 4.0 A scientific discovery challenges the common perception of Rujm el-Hiri in the Golan Heights. A new study by Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has unveiled groundbreaking insights into...

According to a report in Notes from Poland, a pointed bronze Celtic helmet with a neckpiece has been unearthed in northern Poland by researchers from the University of Warsaw and Poland's National Museum of Archaeology (PMA). The artifact has been dated to the fourth century B.C. "At first we thought it might be some kind of ancient vessel, as bronze vessels are much more common on Polish soil than helmets," said Bartłomiej Kaczyński of PMA. Conservators at PMA have begun to restore the helmet, which is in poor condition.

New research suggests that dozens of Bronze-Age era Britons were killed in an attack unlike any previous known to archaeologists studying that time period and location. The research on human remains from Charterhouse Warren in southwest England, conducted by a team of researchers from multiple institutions including Oxford University, was published in Antiquity, a journal of world archaeology. It found that at least 37 Bronze Age-era men, women and children were "killed and butchered" and then cannibalized, with their bodies then thrown down a nearly 50-foot deep natural shaft. While archaeologists have found the remains of Bronze Age and later...

For decades, it's been a common belief that the Ancient Egyptians were responsible for the very first alphabet. Now, a shocking finding challenges this assumption, pushing back the age of the first known alphabetic writing by about 500 years. ... The finger-length cylinders were found at Tell Umm-el Marra, a former city located in today's northwestern Syria, once a bustling crossroads for two trade routes. Carbon dating techniques reveal that the objects date back 4,400 years to 2400 BC – preceding any other known alphabetic scripts by roughly 500 years. ... However, the academic admits he 'can only speculate' exactly...

Bashplemi Lake tablet. (Shengalia et al., Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology, 2024) A few years ago, late in the fall of 2021, locals fishing Georgia's Bashplemi Lake in the municipality of Dmanisi came across a long-forgotten piece of history – a small stone tablet inscribed with dozens of mysterious symbols. Now a team of archaeologists from across Georgia has confirmed the impressions represent samples of a script that has never been documented, raising questions on the spread and preservation of writing across the transcontinental region. Roughly the size of an iPad, the basalt tablet features just 39 different characters...

Nebra, Germany - Archaeologists offered a first glimpse on Wednesday of a lost culture's holy site atop a German peak, and confirmed it as the source of the world's oldest map of the heavens. The exact location has been kept secret for weeks, amid fears that treasure-seekers would move in and disturb Bronze Age remains. The site is atop the Mittelberg, a 252m hill in the Ziegelroda Forest, 180km south-west of Berlin. Adding a spooky touch is the discovery that, seen from the Mittelberg, the sun sets every June 22 behind the Brocken, the highest mountain in northern Germany. The...

Live Science reports that a 4,400-year-old settlement site has been discovered in western Saudi Arabia by a team of researchers led by Guillaume Charloux of the French National Center for Scientific Research. The settlement was made up of a central district, a residential district, and protective ramparts measuring about nine miles long. Such Bronze Age settlements in Saudi Arabia tended to be smaller than those found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Charloux said. "These were small towns connected to networks of monumental ramparts surrounding the large local oases," he explained. This small town, dubbed al-Natah, is estimated to have been home...