America’s Ancient ‘Ten Commandments’ Rock: The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone
This is a strange bit of disputed archaeology. Check it out over the web and Wikipedia does have a good description:
The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about 35 miles south of Albuquerque, that bears a very regular inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock. The inscription is interpreted to be an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments in a form of Paleo-Hebrew. A letter group resembling the tetragrammaton YHWH, or “Yahweh,” makes four appearances. The stone is controversial in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas.
The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when professor Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, saw it. Hibben was…
Oldest Known “Beds” Had Insect Repellent
Insects have bugged human beings for a long time. Via Discover:
In a South African cave, researchers have uncovered traces of the oldest known human bedding, 77,000-year-old mats made of grasses, leaves, and other plant material. While it’s not especially surprising that early humans would have found a way to improve the cold, generally unpleasant experience of sleeping on a cave floor, archaeologists know little about our ancestors’ sleeping habits and habitats.
Using scanning electron microscopy, the researchers identified several species of local rushes and grasses that made up the bulk of the mattress, as well as leaves of the Cryptocarya woodii tree. These leaves contain chemical compounds that repel mosquitoes, lice, and other insects, suggesting that the cave’s ancient residents protected their bedding with natural insecticide.
Alien Skeleton Unearthed In Peru?
A mummified skeleton with huge eye sockets and triangular head almost as large as its body has been discovered in Peru, and at least some scientists (of indeterminate repute?) believe it to be “extraterrestrial,” writes io9:
Behold a giant-headed alien mummy that turned up in Peru. Stare into the all-knowing eye sockets of an alien that somehow wound up on Earth many years ago, and was mummified by the locals. But what was is it doing here?
Website RPP is claiming that Renato Davila Riquelme, an anthropologist working at the Privado Ritos Andinos museum in Cusco, has discovered remains of something that isn’t human. Measuring at 20 inches tall, the tiny remains were originally believed to be that of a child, but Spanish and Russian doctors disagree, saying:
“It has a non-human appearance because the head is triangular and big, almost the same size as the body. At first we believed it to…
Early Humans Likely Practiced Ritualistic Cannibalism
To be fair, 30,000 years ago, there were few other recreational activities to occupy one’s spare time. The Archaeology News Network writes:
Archaeologists have found 32,000-year-old human remains in southeastern Europe, which suggest that the earliest humans practiced “mortuary” or “ritual” cannibalism.
The excavated human remains, the oldest known in Europe, were found at a shelter-cave site called Buran-Kaya III in Ukraine and exhibit post-mortem cut marks, the MSNBC reports. “Our observations show a post-mortem treatment of human corpses including the selection of the skull,” said the paleozoologist and archaeologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, Stephane Pean.
However, Pean said that the treatment of the human bodies, which came with ornaments, did not follow nutritional purposes, rejecting the possibility of dietary cannibalism.
“Observed treatment of the human body, together with the presence of body ornaments, indicates rather a mortuary ritual: either a ritual cannibalism or a specific mortuary practice for secondary…
Archaeologists Discover First ‘Gay Caveman’
Example of a 'Squat Burial'. Photo: Hamed Saber (CC)
Researchers have found the remains of a skeleton that may be an early homosexual man. This conclusion did not come from the findings of any ‘gay gene,’ but rather the burial placement and its social implication. The man was given the burial of a woman which prompted archaeologists to believe that his social role reflected his sexual orientation. Via TIME:
Kamila Remisova Vesinova and her team of researchers from the Czech Archeological Society believe they have unearthed the remains of an early homosexual man. The remains date from around 2900-2500 B.C., on the outskirts of Prague.
That claim stems from the fact the 5,000-year old skeleton was buried in a manner reserved for women in the Corded Ware culture: its head was pointed east rather than west, and its remains were surrounded by domestic jugs rather than by hammers, flint knives and weapons that typically…
The Pets We Kept Before Dogs Found In 16,500-Year-Old Cemetery
Source: Mariomassone (CC)
Alasdair Wilkins writing at io9.com:
A burial site recently uncovered in Jordan is the oldest ever discovered in the Middle East, at least 1,500 years older than any other cemetery previously discovered. But it’s not just its great age that makes it special — the cemetery also reveals what animals humans kept as pets long before the domestication of dogs.
The site, which dates back about 16,500 years, was discovered in ‘Uyun al-Hammam in Jordan. The University of Toronto researchers discovered the site back in 2000, but it’s taken eleven years just to come to grips with what the site has to teach us. Indeed, this cemetery stands to be particularly useful, as it has eleven different sets of human remains — more than all other burial sites of this type combined.
But it isn’t just the human corpses that have attracted attention, as they’ve also discovered remains of ancient pets.…
Giant Rodents Lead Scientists To Discover Ancient Face Carvings In East Timor
Face carving found in Lene Hara Cave. Photo: John Brush
CSIRO News reports:
Ancient stone faces carved into the walls of a well-known limestone cave in East Timor have been discovered by a team searching for fossils of extinct giant rats.
The team of archaeologists and palaeontologists were working in Lene Hara Cave on the northeast tip of East Timor.
“Looking up from the cave floor at a colleague sitting on a ledge, my head torch shone on what seemed to be a weathered carving,” CSIRO’s Dr Ken Aplin said.
“I shone the torch around and saw a whole panel of engraved prehistoric human faces on the wall of the cave.
“The local landowners with whom we were working were stunned by the findings. They said the faces had chosen that day to reveal themselves because they were pleased by the field work we were doing.”
The Lene Hara carvings, or petroglyphs, are frontal, stylised faces each…
Teeth From Homo Sapiens Older Than Accepted History Of Homo Sapiens
Qesem Cave, Israel. Source: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University
In keeping with Disinfo’s tradition of challenging accepted boundaries in all things, as well as in the spirit of the disinformation book Underground!, here’s a little jewel of a discovery written by Daniel Estrin for AP via Yahoo News. Homo Sapiens teeth … potentially 400,000 years old. So much for the old timeline of human history!
Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.
A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.
“It’s very exciting to come to this…
Climate Change and the 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence
Matriarchy.info reviews Dr. James DeMeo’s book SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World:
A new geographical study on the ancient historical origins of human violence and warfare, drawing upon global archaeological and anthropological evidence, has just been published presenting substantial proof that our ancient ancestors were non-violent, and far more social and loving than are most humans today – moreover, the study points to a dramatic climate change in the Old World, the drying up of the vast Sahara and Asian Deserts, with attending famine, starvation and forced migrations which pushed the earliest humans into violent social patterns, a trauma from which we have not yet recovered in over 6000 years.
The study and book, titled SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World, by retired professor James…
Dry Summer Weather Reveals Lost ‘Cropmarks’
Photo from English Heritage
Summers with dry weather seems uncommon in England, but this summer the dry agricultural fields revealed new marks depicting buried features from the past. BBC News reports:
Hundreds of ancient sites have been discovered by aerial surveys, thanks to a dry start to the summer, English Heritage has said.
The surveys show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby.
The newly-discovered Roman and prehistoric settlements include a site near Bradford Abbas, Dorset.
The Roman camp was revealed in June after three sides became visible in sun-parched fields of barley.
The lightly-built defensive enclosure would have provided basic protection for Roman soldiers while on manoeuvres in the first century AD and is one of only four discovered in the south west of England, English Heritage said.
Continues at BBC …
Stonehenge Expert Julian Richards on The Black Fridays!
The Black Fridays Episode 16 — Julian Richards
Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS
The Black Fridays is pleased to bring you Julian Richards! We believe Julian to be one of the foremost experts on Stonehenge today and we were thrilled that stopped by for a chat! We cover most of the new discoveries that have been made in the areas around the site, as well as other sites of interest in the vicinity. Our honor to talk to Julian … we hope you enjoy!
You can learn more about Julian Richards at www.archaemedia.net.
Randall Carlson: “Earth Changes and The Precession of The Equinoxes”
From renegade scholar Randall Carlson, he takes the viewer through the relationship of Sacred Geometry in Time and Space and it’s manifestation of the phenomenon of the Precession of The Equinoxes (POE). The POE cosmic time cycle presents the frame work for understanding the cosmic cycles of destruction and rebirth.
Enter Syria’s ‘Tell Zeidan’: A 7,500 Year-Old Harbinger of The World’s First Cities
Truly fascinating article from John Noble Wilford in the New York Times. Is this the place where social classes — the rich and the poor — as we know them today first emerged? Reports the New York Times:
Archaeologists have embarked on excavations in northern Syria expected to widen and deepen understanding of a prehistoric culture in Mesopotamia that set the stage for the rise of the world’s first cities and states and the invention of writing.
In two seasons of preliminary surveying and digging at the site known as Tell Zeidan, American and Syrian investigators have already uncovered a tantalizing sampling of artifacts from what had been a robust pre-urban settlement on the upper Euphrates River. People occupied the site for two millenniums, until 4000 BC — a little-known but fateful period of human cultural evolution.
Scholars of antiquity say that Zeidan should reveal insights into life in a time called the…
Dr. Robert Schoch on The Black Fridays!
The Black Fridays Episode 14 — Dr. Robert Schoch
Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS
Well, what can we say? Dr. Robert Schoch! How humbling it has been to have the guests we’ve had so far! But, this goes beyond our expectations. We talk with Dr. Schoch about his findings in Bosnia and Japan and of course his discoveries that turned the scientific world on it’s head.
Dr. Robert M. Schoch, a full-time faculty member at the College of General Studies at Boston University since 1984, earned his Ph.D. (1983) in Geology and Geophysics at Yale University. He also holds an M.S. and M.Phil. in Geology and Geophysics from Yale, as well as degrees in Anthropology (B.A.) and Geology (B.S.) from George Washington University.
Dr. Schoch is the author or coauthor of both technical and popular books, including the trilogy with R. A. McNally: Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and…
Vampire Exorcism Skull Found in Venice
Move over Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, looks like the Old World had their fair share of these abominations. Christine Dell’Amore reports on National Geographic:
Among the many medieval plague victims recently unearthed near Venice, Italy, one reportedly had never-before-seen evidence of an unusual affliction: being “undead.”
The partial body and skull of the woman showed her jaw forced open by a brick (above) — an exorcism technique used on suspected vampires.
It’s the first time that archaeological remains have been interpreted as belonging to a suspected vampire, team leader Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Florence, told National Geographic News.
“I was lucky. I [didn't] expect to find a vampire during my excavations,” he said. Belief in vampires was rampant in the Middle Ages, mostly because the process of decomposition was not well understood.
For instance, as the human stomach decays, it releases a dark “purge fluid.” This bloodlike liquid can flow…
Oldest ‘Writing’ Found On 60,000-Year-Old Eggshells
What do they say? (Image: Pierre-Jean Texier/Diepkloof Project)
By Kate Ravilious for New Scientist:
Could these lines etched into 60,000-year-old ostrich eggshells (see photo) be the earliest signs of humans using graphic art to communicate?
Until recently, the first consistent evidence of symbolic communication came from the geometric shapes that appear alongside rock art all over the world, which date to 40,000 years ago (New Scientist, 20 February, p 30). Older finds, like the 75,000-year-old engraved ochre chunks from the Blombos cave in South Africa, have mostly been one-offs and difficult to tell apart from meaningless doodles.
The engraved ostrich eggshells may change that. Since 1999, Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues have uncovered 270 fragments of shell at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape, South Africa.
They show the same symbols are used over and over again, and the team say there are signs that the symbols…
Researchers Uncover 30,000-Year-Old Written Language
The Globe and Mail reports on the discovery of what might be the earliest written language, comprised of lines and geometric shapes:
A graphic code uncovered by researchers at the University of Victoria suggests that written communication may have started 30,000 years ago.
Compiling the cave signs of nearly 150 sites across Ice Age France, researchers found striking similarities that suggest human beings may have used a graphic language made up of simple lines and geometric shapes to communicate shortly after the first African civilizations arrived in Europe…suggesting that the “creative explosion” occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
26 signs illustrated in a consistent style were found across the sites using images from a digital archive. While the illustrations may be rudimentary – composed of circles, straight lines and triangles – she said they suggest the seeds of a prehistoric mode of communication.
An Archaeological Dig in Turkey is Reshaping Human History
Patrick Symmes writes on Newsweek:
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.
They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot — the exact spot — where humans began that ascent.
The Roman Army Knife Predates the Swiss Army One by 1,800 Years
Via the Daily Mail:
The world’s first Swiss Army knife’ has been revealed — made 1,800 years before its modern counterpart. An intricately designed Roman implement, which dates back to 200 AD, it is made from silver but has an iron blade. It features a spoon, fork as well as a retractable spike, spatula and small tooth-pick.
Experts believe the spike may have been used by the Romans to extract meat from snails. The Roman army pen knife It is thought the spatula would have offered a means of poking cooking sauce out of narrow-necked bottles.
The 3 in x 6 in (8 cm x 15 cm) knife was excavated from the Mediterranean area more than 20 years ago and was obtained by the museum in 1991. The unique item is among dozens of artefacts exhibited in a newly refurbished Greek and Roman antiquities gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge.
Read More: Daily…
