Historical (& Archeological) Uncommon, Interesting, and/or Unusual Events/Items

[Stryder50]

Lead off with this one.

Why a Thriving Civilization in Malta Collapsed 4,000 Years Ago​

Malta’s lost civilisation only lasted 1,500 years but it produced some of the oldest buildings still standing today.​

...
The mysteries of an ancient civilization that survived for more than a millennium on the island of Malta—and then collapsed within two generations—have been unravelled by archaeologists who analyzed pollen buried deep within the earth and ancient DNA from skulls and bones. It’s part of a field of work that is expanding the use of archaeological techniques into environments where they were previously thought to be unusable.

The Temple Culture of the Maltese archipelago in the Mediterranean began nearly 6,000 years ago and at its height probably numbered several thousand people—far denser than the people of mainland Europe could manage at the time. The island people constructed elaborate sacred sites, such as the famous Ġgantija temple complex, and their buildings are among the earliest free-standing buildings known. But, after 1,500 years, they were gone.
...

Why a Thriving Civilization in Malta Collapsed 4,000 Years Ago

Malta’s lost civilisation only lasted 1,500 years but it produced some of the oldest buildings still standing today.

getpocket.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is happening while the civilization of Sumer, as supposed 'First" was just getting started.
Also implies some rather developed sailing/ship handling/navigation skills to have gotten to Malta in the first place.

 

[Stryder50]

The empire the Aztecs couldn't conquer

The P'urhépechas were one of the only indigenous groups in Mexico the Aztecs failed to conquer – but despite that feat, they were nearly lost to history.
...
"This is the legacy of our people," my uncle said as we gazed at the pyramids. We were not in Egypt, but rather in the town of Tzintzuntzan, in Mexico's south-western state of Michoacán. The pyramids, or yácatas, looming in front of us were uniquely round and made of volcanic stone – perhaps the most intact relics of the P'urhépechas, a pre-Hispanic indigenous group that once reigned here, but that most people have never heard of. In fact, I'd never heard of them either until a few months ago, when I found out that I was a direct descendant.

Born and raised in California, I grew up unaware of this part of my heritage as it was lost in my family after my grandfather passed away in 1978. My grandmother was left with five kids and no income, but after saving up, she brought my dad and his siblings to the United States in 1983. Under pressure to assimilate, my father disconnected from our P'urhépecha culture, and it was only recently, when I began to be curious about my identity, that I started questioning him about our past. So in 2021, at the age of 31, he brought me to Michoacán for the first time. That's when I met my uncle Israel, and he revealed that not only were we P'urhépecha, but that my great-grandmother, Juana, was still alive and living in the small pueblo of Urén nearby.

When people think about Mexico before Hernán Cortéz, they automatically think about the Aztecs, but what they don't know is that the P'urhépecha existed at the same time – and they were such a mighty kingdom that they were one of the only indigenous groups in Mexico that the Aztecs failed to conquer.

In fact, that's the most common thing people in Mexico know about them, said Fernando Pérez Montesinos, assistant professor of indigenous environmental history at the University of California, Los Angeles. "That's a very usual [way] of referring to the P'urhépechas and their history, but that's because we know that the P'urhépechas were as powerful as the Aztecs," he said, explaining that the Aztecs tried to fight the P'urhépecha in battle, but couldn't defeat them.
...

The empire the Aztecs couldn't conquer

The P'urhépechas were one of the only indigenous groups in Mexico the Aztecs failed to conquer – but despite that feat, they were nearly lost to history.

www.bbc.com

 

[whitehall]

Volcanic activity and a big tidal wave.

 

[Stryder50]

Journeys of the Pyramid Builders

The story of the highly skilled workers who helped build Egypt’s Great Pyramid is emerging from a papyrus cache unearthed at the world’s oldest harbor
...

Journeys of the Pyramid Builders - Archaeology Magazine

The story of the highly skilled workers who helped build Egypt’s Great Pyramid is emerging from a papyrus cache unearthed at the world’s oldest harbor

www.archaeology.org

 

[Mushroom]

The empire the Aztecs couldn't conquer

The P'urhépechas were one of the only indigenous groups in Mexico the Aztecs failed to conquer – but despite that feat, they were nearly lost to history.

Well, your reference would not load, but largely it does not matter because I am aware of them.

They were the foremost metalworkers in Pre-Columbian America, and were already working with several advanced alloys of copper, and were starting to use bronze. As such, they had a significant advantage over the Aztecs, who were still literally using paleolithic era weapons. Much of what is now thought of as the "Bronze Age" in Eurasia has been drastically changed by seeing much closer in history how it was starting to change North and South America at the time the Europeans arrived.

The region was actually about to experience a "golden age" that would have changed the area drastically at least in Mesoamerica. The collapse of the Mississippian Culture had left the Aztecs as the leading nation on two continents, and they were on the cusp of a great many discoveries. Among them were the wheel, and bronze and other alloys. If the Europeans had not arrived for another 100 or so years, the continents would have been very different. As the diaspora from the Mississippians would have died out and the more "civilized tribes" of the Atlantic region would have expanded to fill much of the void they had left. And in Central America they would have entered the Bronze Age, and even animal husbandry. In South America they had already domesticated the llama, This would have eventually spread to the Mesoamerican area, and finally given them a reason to use the wheel, which at that time was only seen in toys.

A late 16th or early 17th century "discovery" might well have seen things more closely resembling the Bronze Age Levant than the rock and stick wielding cultures they did discover. Mostly rising in Central and South America, as they really had the only large domesticated animals, and had discovered bronze.

 

[Stryder50]

Remnants of ancient civilizations are all around us. How much can we uncover?​

As technology makes it easier to locate Native American ruins, an archaelogical site could be in your subdivision.
...
I ride shotgun in a utility vehicle, holding archaeologist Jarrod Burks’s laptop as he drives across a farm in southern Ohio, over the shaved stubble of corn stalks. Back and forth we go at 18 miles per hour, each pass making a T roughly two yards wide and 100 yards long and tall. We’re pulling a trailer with five magnetometers, which measure the Earth’s magnetic field at surface level and below. Burks is using them to look for evidence of ancient Native American activity.

I wouldn’t have known that this location, known as Snake Den, was an archaeological site if Burks hadn’t invited me to meet him there. I wouldn’t have known that the mounds, not much taller than I am, among the trees are 2,000-year-old burial mounds, not natural knolls. And I wouldn’t have known about the mysteries Burks’s magnetometers have found in previous trips to this farm: ancient features called enclosures, which make me think of modern fence lines, except we have no idea what they once enclosed.

After an hour, Burks — director of archaeological geophysics at Ohio Valley Archaeology Inc. and president of Heartland Earthworks Conservancy — climbs out of the vehicle and downloads the magnetometers’ data. On his laptop, we look at a map of the ground we drove over, with dark blotches representing differences in the magnetic field. Blotches forming an obvious shape could mean a discovery, as when Burks found an enclosure shaped like a “squircle”: a square with rounded corners.

There will be no such discovery today, which is both good news and bad. Archaeologists learn where not to dig by confirming, as we did today, that nothing is there. But they also sometimes realize that something used to be there, but modern development wiped it away.

For more than 12,000 years before Europeans arrived in North America, Native American cultures dotted what is now the American Midwest. Some subsisted by hunting and moved with the seasons. Some formed complex civilizations whose populations grew to thousands of people. They left behind countless relics, from pottery shards to arrowheads to delicately carved artwork. They left architectural remnants, too, in the form of earthworks like the ones I drove over with Burks, and also mounds shaped like animals, conical mounds and burial mounds.
...

Remnants of ancient civilizations are all around us. How much can we uncover?

As technology makes it easier to locate Native American ruins, an archeological site could be in your subdivision.

expmag.com

 

[Mushroom]

I ride shotgun in a utility vehicle, holding archaeologist Jarrod Burks’s laptop as he drives across a farm in southern Ohio, over the shaved stubble of corn stalks. Back and forth we go at 18 miles per hour, each pass making a T roughly two yards wide and 100 yards long and tall. We’re pulling a trailer with five magnetometers, which measure the Earth’s magnetic field at surface level and below. Burks is using them to look for evidence of ancient Native American activity.

+laughs+

I actually touched on that in my last post. The Mississippian Culture.

Which thrived for around 600 years, but was already imploding by the time that Columbus "discovered" the Americas.

A huge culture, that had huge impact across a huge area of the US. But when it disintegrated, caused disruptions that would follow for 400 years and more.

Like the Lakota, who were originally from the area of Louisiana, and were part of that culture. In fact, most of the tribes from the Central US east to the coast were members to one degree or another. And when it broke apart in essentially "civil war", like Yugoslavia the tribes then reformed into their original allegiances and went their own ways. For the Lakota, it was really a journey. They for some reason headed North, until they hit the Algonquin Nations (in roughly modern Michigan). There they had many decades of warfare, until they were finally defeated and forced to turn west. Where they then passed through many other tribes and territories, where they eventually picked up the common name for them "Sioux" from the Ojibwe (essentially "Little Rattlesnake"). By the time the "Whites" arrived, they were in Nebraska, and by the time the Whites started to inhabit the area, they were in the Dakotas and Wyoming and pushing into Idaho.

However, I often find it fascinating that to most living in the US, they have absolutely no idea that there was a huge Indian Culture living right under their feet. I also laugh whenever somebody tries to claim that the Dakotas were the "Sioux Historical Lands". Hell, they had taken them by force only decades before the treaties primarily from the Crow. That was no more "Their Land" than Manhattan belonged to the Lenape.