Archeaology

Milanese Friar And North America

The Cronica universalis, written in Latin by the Milanese friar Galvaneus Flamma (in Italian, Galvano Fiamma, 1283 – c. 1345), contains an astonishing reference to a land named Marckalada (terra que dicitur Marckalada), situated west from Greenland. This land is recognizable as the Markland mentioned by some Icelandic sources and …

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Teotihuacan Style Citadel

Using LiDAR data, archaeologists from Brown University, the University of Texas at Austin, the Fundación Patrimonio Cultural y Natural Maya and Proyecto Arqueológico Sur de Tikal discovered that what was long assumed to be an area of natural hills in the Classic Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala, was actually a …

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Jordan Valley City

Archaeologists have found evidence that in 1650 BCE (Middle Bronze Age), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, an ancient walled city in the Jordan Valley close to the north end of the Dead Sea. An eyewitness description of this catastrophic event — which was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska …

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Prehistoric New Guineans

As early as 18,000 years ago, early foragers in the montane rainforests of New Guinea preferentially collected eggs of cassowaries (Casuarius sp.) in late stages of embryonic growth and may have hatched them to rear chicks, according to an analysis of ancient eggshells from two Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene rock shelter …

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World’s Earliest Coin Mint

Archaeologists have uncovered 2,640- to 2,550-year-old clay moulds for casting spade coins as well as fragments of finished spade coins at Guanzhuang in Xingyang, Henan province, China. The technical characteristics of the moulds demonstrate that the site — which was part of the Eastern Zhou period (770-220 BCE) bronze foundry …

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51,000-Year-Old Engraved Bone

Archaeologists have uncovered a 51,000-year-old engraved giant deer phalanx in a cave in the Harz Mountains, Germany. The find, which came from an apparent Middle Paleolithic context that was linked to Neanderthals, demonstrates that conceptual imagination, as a prerequisite to compose individual lines into a coherent design, was present in …

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Hunted for Honey

Historical and ethnographic literature from across Africa suggests bee products, honey and larvae, had considerable importance both as a food source and in the making of honey-based drinks. To investigate this, a team of researchers from the University of Bristol and Goethe University analyzed lipid residues from 458 prehistoric pottery …

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Northern Bahamas

Humans were present in Florida by 14,000 years ago, and until recently, it was believed The Bahamas — located only a few km away — were not colonized until about 1,000 years ago. New evidence indicates that Lucayans — an Arawakan-speaking Taíno people, whose name translates as ‘island men’ in …

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Australia’s Oldest Kangaroo

A 2-m- (6.6-foot) long painting of a kangaroo in a rock shelter in the north-eastern Kimberley region of Western Australia is dated to between 17,500 and 17,100 years on the basis of the ages of three overlying and three underlying wasp nests. Traditional Owner Ian Waina inspecting a naturalistic painting of …

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Old Seashell Horn

About 18,000 years ago, the Magdalenian occupants of Marsoulas Cave in what is now France transformed a shell of the predatory sea snail Charonia lampas into a wind instrument. A team of researchers in France has now released a recording of what the instrument would have sounded like. Reconstruction of …

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