arcaeological news thread

[ScienceRocks]

Polychrome Maya Frieze Discovered at Maya Site of Holmul
http://www.archaeology.org/news/1181-130808-guatemala-maya-holmul-frieze

PETEN, GUATEMALA—A stucco relief still bearing traces of its original red, yellow, blue, and green paint has been found by an international team of archaeologists and scholars at the Maya site of Holmul. The relief, which is thought to depict the crowning of a new ruler when Holmul switched its allegiance from the kingdom of Tikal to the Snake kingdom, stands on the exterior of a staircase tomb. The tomb contained the skeletal remains of a high-status man whose front teeth had been drilled and decorated with jade beads. The pots in his tomb depict the nine gods of the Maya underworld. Archaeologists found the well-preserved relief carefully packed with dirt by later rulers who built a pyramid over it. “It is one of the most fabulous things I have ever seen,” said archaeologist Francisco Estrada-Bell of the Holmul Archaeological Project.

Tomb of a Moche Priestess-Queen Opened in Peru
Tomb of a Moche Priestess-Queen Opened in Peru - Archaeology Magazine

JEQUETEPEQUE VALLEY, PERU—The eighth tomb of a series of powerful Moche priestess-queens has been unearthed at the site of San José de Moro. Some 1,200 years ago, her body had been placed in a coffin that was resting on a low platform, near a tall silver goblet associated with human sacrifice and blood consumption in Moche artworks. The wooden coffin has decayed, but its copper decorations, including a funerary mask and sandal-shaped pieces, have survived. The earthen walls of the tomb had been painted red, and ceramic vessels had been placed in its niches. Two adults, perhaps sacrificed attendants, and five children had been buried with the priestess-queen.

 

[ScienceRocks]

How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World


Tuesday, August 06, 2013

STONY BROOK, NEW YORK—The invention of the bow and arrow triggered the growth of increased levels of social complexity wherever it was adopted, according to biologists Paul Bingham and Joanne Souza of Stony Brook University. They argue that the technological revolution of the bow and arrow gave social groups a safe and effective way to coerce uncooperative individuals into compliance, or to encourage them to leave. A review of archaeological data in North America by John Blitz and Eric Porth of the University of Alabama supports this “social-coercion hypothesis.” They say the invention of the bow made hunters and warriors more efficient, and eventually led to population increases and the metropolises of the Mississippian era.

How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World - Archaeology Magazine

 

[ScienceRocks]

New CU-Boulder led research effort dates oldest known petroglyphs in North America

New CU-Boulder led research effort dates oldest known petroglyphs in North America

A new high-tech analysis led by a University of Colorado Boulder researcher shows the oldest known petroglyphs in North America, which are cut into several boulders in western Nevada, date to at least 10,500 years ago and perhaps even as far back as 14,800 years ago.

The petroglyphs located at the Winnemucca Lake petroglyph site 35 miles northeast of Reno consist of large, deeply carved grooves and dots forming complex designs on several large limestone boulders that have been known about for decades, said CU-Boulder researcher Larry Benson, who led the new effort. Although there are no people, animals or handprint symbols depicted, the petroglyph designs include a series of vertical, chain-like symbols and a number of smaller pits deeply incised with a type of hard rock scraper.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe

Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe

Two research teams from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have jointly reported the discovery of Neandertal bone tools coming from their excavations at two neighboring Paleolithic sites in southwest France. The tools are unlike any others previously found in Neandertal sites, but they are similar to a tool type well known from later modern human sites and still in use today by high-end leather workers. This tool, called a lissoir or smoother, is shaped from deer ribs and has a polished tip that, when pushed against a hide, creates softer, burnished and more water resistant leather. The bone tool is still used today by leather workers some 50 thousand years after the Neandertals and the first anatomically modern humans in Europe.

 

[ScienceRocks]

World's oldest temple built to worship the dog star
16 August 2013 by Anil Ananthaswamy

THE world's oldest temple, Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, may have been built to worship the dog star, Sirius.

The 11,000-year-old site consists of a series of at least 20 circular enclosures, although only a few have been uncovered since excavations began in the mid-1990s. Each one is surrounded by a ring of huge, T-shaped stone pillars, some of which are decorated with carvings of fierce animals. Two more megaliths stand parallel to each other at the centre of each ring (see illustration).

Göbekli Tepe put a dent in the idea of the Neolithic revolution, which said that the invention of agriculture spurred humans to build settlements and develop civilisation, art and religion. There is no evidence of agriculture near the temple, hinting that religion came first in this instance

World's oldest temple built to worship the dog star - space - 16 August 2013 - New Scientist

 

[jon_berzerk]

How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World


Tuesday, August 06, 2013

STONY BROOK, NEW YORK—The invention of the bow and arrow triggered the growth of increased levels of social complexity wherever it was adopted, according to biologists Paul Bingham and Joanne Souza of Stony Brook University. They argue that the technological revolution of the bow and arrow gave social groups a safe and effective way to coerce uncooperative individuals into compliance, or to encourage them to leave. A review of archaeological data in North America by John Blitz and Eric Porth of the University of Alabama supports this “social-coercion hypothesis.” They say the invention of the bow made hunters and warriors more efficient, and eventually led to population increases and the metropolises of the Mississippian era.

How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World - Archaeology Magazine

of course it did

but beer saved man

 

[jon_berzerk]

Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe

Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe

Two research teams from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have jointly reported the discovery of Neandertal bone tools coming from their excavations at two neighboring Paleolithic sites in southwest France. The tools are unlike any others previously found in Neandertal sites, but they are similar to a tool type well known from later modern human sites and still in use today by high-end leather workers. This tool, called a lissoir or smoother, is shaped from deer ribs and has a polished tip that, when pushed against a hide, creates softer, burnished and more water resistant leather. The bone tool is still used today by leather workers some 50 thousand years after the Neandertals and the first anatomically modern humans in Europe.

"tools" went further back then bone

the first tools was nothing more then a broken stick to stick down ant holes

to extract the delicious little critters

several primates have that level of technology

 

[jon_berzerk]

my brothers and myself have a large collection of artifacts we found over the years

in the Midwest

personally i like the pottery pieces the best

 

[ScienceRocks]

Archaeologists find massive fortifications from the Iron Age

Researchers from Tel Aviv University have unearthed the remains of massive ancient fortifications built around an Iron-Age Assyrian harbor in present-day Israel.

At the heart of the well-preserved fortifications is a mud-brick wall up to more than 12 feet wide and 15 feet high. The wall is covered in layers of mud and sand that stretch for hundreds of feet on either side. When they were built in the eighth century B.C.E., the fortifications formed a daunting crescent-shaped defense for an inland area covering more than 17 acres.

Archaeologists find massive fortifications from the Iron Age

 

[BlueGin]

Ancient wall in Israel matches up with Bible's tale of Assyrian attack

Archaeologists say they have unearthed the remains of massive fortifications built about 2,700 years ago around an Iron Age Assyrian harbor in present-day Israel. The ruins appear to have a connection to Assyria's takeover of the region, as mentioned in the Book of Isaiah.

"The fortifications appear to protect an artificial harbor," Tel Aviv University's Alexander Fantalkin, leader of the excavations at the Ashdod-Yam archaeological dig, said in a news release issued Monday. "If so, this would be a discovery of international significance, the first known harbor of this kind in our corner of the Levant."

Ancient wall in Israel matches up with Bible's tale of Assyrian attack - NBC News.com

 

[jon_berzerk]

Archaeologists find massive fortifications from the Iron Age

Researchers from Tel Aviv University have unearthed the remains of massive ancient fortifications built around an Iron-Age Assyrian harbor in present-day Israel.

At the heart of the well-preserved fortifications is a mud-brick wall up to more than 12 feet wide and 15 feet high. The wall is covered in layers of mud and sand that stretch for hundreds of feet on either side. When they were built in the eighth century B.C.E., the fortifications formed a daunting crescent-shaped defense for an inland area covering more than 17 acres.

Archaeologists find massive fortifications from the Iron Age

that is pretty cool

 

[ScienceRocks]

Newly unearthed ruins challenge views of early Romans

(Phys.org) —In a long-buried Italian city, archaeologists have found a massive monument that dates back 300 years before the Colosseum and 100 years before the invention of mortar, revealing that the Romans had grand architectural ambitions much earlier than previously thought.

Read more at: Newly unearthed ruins challenge views of early Romans

 

[jon_berzerk]

i dont know if you do much in the United States

but i sure like the stuff that can be found right here

my favorite is cord wrapped stick pottery

never have found an unbroken one

but have several 5 gallon pails of busted pieces

on some of the pieces on the inside

you can actually see the person who made it

finger prints and hand impressions

fascinating

 

[ScienceRocks]

Assyrian Fortified Harbor Discovered in Israel

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL— A crescent-shaped, mud-brick wall that was more than 12 feet wide and 15 feet tall and covered with layers of mud and sand has been unearthed at Ashdod-Yam, an area under Assyrian rule in the eighth century B.C. This massive, Iron-Age fortification may have protected a large artificial harbor. “If so, this would be a discovery of international significance, the first known harbor of this kind in our corner of the Levant,” said Alexander Fantalkin of Tel Aviv University. The structure may have been built in connection with a rebellion led by the Philistine king of nearby Ashdod.

Assyrian Fortified Harbor Discovered in Israel - Archaeology Magazine

 

[ScienceRocks]

This 1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows that the Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers

Researchers have finally found out why the jade-green cup appears red when lit from behind

The colorful secret of a 1,600-year-old Roman chalice at the British Museum is the key to a super*sensitive new technology that might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints.

The glass chalice, known as the Lycurgus Cup because it bears a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, appears jade green when lit from the front but blood-red when lit from behind—a property that puzzled scientists for decades after the museum acquired the cup in the 1950s. The mystery wasn’t solved until 1990, when researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers: They’d impregnated the glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50 nanometers in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt. The exact mixture of the precious metals suggests the Romans knew what they were doing—“an amazing feat,” says one of the researchers, archaeologist Ian Freestone of University College London.

Read more: This 1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows that the Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine
Follow us: [MENTION=25239]smith[/MENTION]sonianMag on Twitter

 

[ScienceRocks]

Bolivia’s Shell Middens are 10,000 Years Old

Bolivia?s Shell Middens are 10,000 Years Old - Archaeology Magazine

BERN, SWITZERLAND--Soil samples collected from forest islands in Bolivia’s western Amazon reveal that humans were living there as early as 10,400 years ago. Umberto Lombardo of the University of Bern and his team found freshwater snail shells in the older layers, and pottery, bone tools, and human bones in the outer layers. The mounds reflect a 6,000-year-period of human use. “We have discovered the oldest archaeological sites in western and southern Amazonia. These sites allow us to reconstruct 10,000 years of human-environment interactions in the Bolivian Amazon,” Lombardo said. He thinks that these early Amazon residents may have moved away as the climate became wetter. Some had thought that the unusual mounds were formed by termites or erosion.

 

[editec]

How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World


Tuesday, August 06, 2013

STONY BROOK, NEW YORK—The invention of the bow and arrow triggered the growth of increased levels of social complexity wherever it was adopted, according to biologists Paul Bingham and Joanne Souza of Stony Brook University. They argue that the technological revolution of the bow and arrow gave social groups a safe and effective way to coerce uncooperative individuals into compliance, or to encourage them to leave. A review of archaeological data in North America by John Blitz and Eric Porth of the University of Alabama supports this “social-coercion hypothesis.” They say the invention of the bow made hunters and warriors more efficient, and eventually led to population increases and the metropolises of the Mississippian era.

How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World - Archaeology Magazine

of course it did

but beer saved man

Beer was actually the FORBIDDEN APPLE that caused the downfall of man.

Women discovered how to make beer...they gave that knowledge (about beer as food) to men.

Men realized that they'd need more wheat to make more beer.

In order to have more wheat *they started farming, thus ending their hunter gathering lifestyle.

It's been steadily downhill for mankind ever since.


*(well..actually it's more likely men made women start farming)

 

[jon_berzerk]

How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World


Tuesday, August 06, 2013



How Bow & Arrow Technology Changed the World - Archaeology Magazine

of course it did

but beer saved man

Beer was actually the FORBIDDEN APPLE that caused the downfall of man.

Women discovered how to make beer...they gave that knowledge (about beer as food) to men.

Men realized that they'd need more wheat to make more beer.

In order to have more wheat *they started farming, thus ending their hunter gathering lifestyle.

It's been steadily downhill for mankind ever since.


*(well..actually it's more likely men made women start farming)

i suppose down hill if down hill is

modern medicine and running water

for example

--LOL