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Discoveries in the Shadow of the Step Pyramid
Zahi Abass Hawass is an Egyptian archaeologist, Egyptologist, and former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, serving twice. He has also worked at archaeological sites in the Nile Delta, the Western Desert, and the Upper Nile Valley.
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Caral, America’s Oldest City
Freelance writer, researcher and photographer, Georges Fery (georgefery.com) addresses topics from history, culture, and beliefs to daily living of ancient and today’s indigenous societies of Mesoamerica and South America. His articles are published online at travelthruhistory.com, ancient-origins.net and popular-archaeology.com, and in the quarterly magazine Ancient American (ancientamerican.com). In the U.K. his articles are found in mexicolore.co.uk.
The author is a fellow of the Institute of Maya Studies instituteofmayastudies.org, Miami, FL and The Royal Geographical Society, London, U.K. (rgs.org). He is a member in good standing with the Maya Exploration Center, Austin, TX (mayaexploration.org) the Archaeological Institute of America, Boston, MA (archaeological.org), NFAA-Non Fiction Authors Association (nonfictionauthrosassociation.com) and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. (americanindian.si.edu).
The cluster of valleys on the banks of the Supe River in the north-central coastal region of Peru, known as the Norte Chico, stands out among other geographical areas for the number, size, and complexity of its very early monumental ancient human settlements. It is a witnesses to an extraordinary past. Its early urban centers include Banduria (4000-2000BC), Aspero (3700-2500BC), and Caral, also referred to as Caral-Supe (3500-2000BC). Caral far surpasses the other two in power and influence and has been called “the oldest city in the Americas, and one of the earliest cities in the world” (Mann, 2005). In fact, the rise of civilization in Peru preceded the Olmec civilization, believed to be the oldest in Mesoamerica, by at least 1500 years (Shady, 1994). However, unlike cultures in other parts of the world, the Peruvian urbanization took place in total isolation.
The Beginning
Hunting and gathering for subsistence, in what is now Peru’s Norte Chico, is documented as early as 9500-8000BC. Small groups started plant selection and gardening, and the remains of irrigation channels have been dated to that period. New concerns with the cosmos and religion led to the unification of nascent social groups around spiritual concepts. In turn, this collective perception brought social stratification, followed by an economic cooperation that swept the Andes and Northern Peru’s coastal communities (Shady, 1997). Agriculture expanded, and by 3200 BC, harvested cotton was an already important trade crop, used to make nets for fishing, and later net-bags (shicras) employed in construction. Domestication of camelids such as llamas also grew around this time.
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The Great Pyramid @peruinfo.com
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The Rise
So, let’s follow the field notes of renowned Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady Solis and others, to look at how ancient civilizations in this region rose and fell. The fertile Supe River and its affluents wind their way to the coast from the western piedmont of the Andes to the dry coastal plains. Its lush valley is host to twenty-one ancient settlements that share a common architecture and urban distribution dating from the Late Archaic period (3500BC). On the Pacific Coast, at the mouth of the Supe River, is the Late Archaic site of Aspero (3700-2500 BC). This coastal town seems to be the origin of human settlement in this part of the Norte Chico. As demographic pressure increased at Aspero together with social complexity, communities split into groups that moved up the Supe River valley, establishing villages upstream. Aspero’s location, however, gave the town a key role in the initial economic development of the region, providing access to the abundant schools of fish that rode the cold northbound Humboldt current, as well as control of the sea salt trade with growing inland communities.
Caral and other close communities were built fourteen miles up the coast in the 60-mile-long Supe River valley, on the arid plateau extending on both banks of a ravine and the fertile but narrow valley where crops were planted. The settlements on the plateau on each of the upper sides of the ravine were thus protected from seasonal floods. In the 3500-3200 BC time frame, Caral (165 acres) grew from a village to a city together with Era de Pando (200 acres) and Pueblo Nuevo (135 acres), while neighboring hamlets such as Cerro Colorado, Liman, or Cerro Blanco did not exceed two or three acres.
By 3000-2900 BC, Caral was the seat of regional power, with Curacas – or heads of lineages – in control of political, socio-economic, and religious affairs. The foremost Curaca was the principal of a network of districts that spread up from the Pacific coast to the foothills of the Andes, an organization that was based on trade and reciprocity (Shady, Dolorier, Casas, 2000). What kept the network together was religion, used as a means of cohesion and coercion, as well as a symbol of mutual cultural and spiritual identity (Shady, 2004). Today, Caral’s monumental pyramidal stepped structures associated with sunken circular plazas, emphasized its importance as a secular and religious power center. Its seven massive temple-pyramids dot the landscape together with remains of residential complexes large and small. Its antiquity as the oldest in the Americas has been confirmed by 29 radiocarbon dates (Shady, 1993, 2000).
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Caral site map. @mdpi.com
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Caral and its neighboring communities on both sides of the Supe River may have housed over 20,000 people. Shady stresses, in agreement with Feldman (1980) and Grieder et al. (1988), that “field research indicates that the Caral-Supe society was organized into socially stratified ranks with local authorities connected to a state government, sustained by a productive and diversified crop production and fishing economy.” Farmers cultivated fields irrigated by means of a simple system of canals guiding water from the Supe River and its affluents, as well as from numerous springs.
The socio-economic dynamics were driving internal and external exchanges that allowed for the development of complex technological and social organization. “Caral’s direct control and economic dominance included populations of the Supe, Pativilca and Fortaleza valleys. Its interaction and prestige extended across the entire north-central Peru region from the Andes foothills to the coast. Furthermore, Shady stresses that evidence shows that “Caral was the model of a socio-political organization that other societies achieved only in later times throughout Peru” (2002).
The impressive achievements of Caral’s inhabitants (called Caralinos by archaeologists), from architecture to religion is owed to their dynamism, creativity, and interactions with social groups in the upper reaches of the Andes. Caral’s history and culture was closely associated with its ceremonial calendar which was set in harmony with nature and the seasons. However, they were also influenced by two major natural disrupters that are historically associated with the demise of cultures in northern Peru. These disrupters were, and still are, inextricably linked to the ebb and flow of Norte Chico cultures. The first of the disrupters are the combined climate episodes triggered by El Niño and La Niña, which affect global weather patterns. In a few words, El Niño is associated with a band of nutrients-poor warm water and atmospheric convection that develops in the east-central equatorial Pacific and spreads to South America’s east coast. ENSO-El Niño Southern Oscillation refers to the cycle of warm and cold Sea Surface Temperature (SST) of the tropical central and eastern Pacific Ocean, with high air pressure in the western Pacific and low air pressure in the eastern Pacific.
El Niño’s moisture-laden clouds produce intense rains, floods, and landslides, devastating cultures and could be, but is not always, followed a year or so later by La Niña, the El Niño colder counterpart. During La Niña episodes, strong winds blow warm water on the ocean’s surface away from South America across the Pacific Ocean. SST in the eastern Pacific is, at that time, below average. Cold water from the ocean then rises to the surface near South America’s coast. La Niña is associated with droughts that may last months over the South American continent. These complex occurrences vary in intensity and may recur in cycles of seven or fourteen years.
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Peru Tectonic Plates @Scott Nash-USGS/Wikimedia Commons
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The second set of disrupters are earthquakes triggered by the collision of the massive South American tectonic plate and the far heavier Nazca plate as it moves eastward from the Pacific and slides beneath the South American plate. The friction between the plates, in the subduction zone along the Peru-Chile trench, is the main cause of earthquakes and volcanic activity in the region. To mitigate the disruptive effects of earthquakes, Caralinos found an ingenious way to give their constructions a certain “flexibility” during seismic events. Their answer was the shicra, a net made of cotton mixed with vegetal fibers that was packed with loose rocks. Shicras that held over a thousand pounds of rocks were found in the foundations of structures. Smaller shicras were used to carry stone loads of fifteen to twenty pounds from quarries to building sites, where they were placed in retaining walls to allow structures to absorb a certain number of disturbances from quakes with little or no damage.
Together with the shicras, quinchas-lintels or beams made of the huarango, a hard wood of a mesquite tree species such as the “algarrobo blanco” (Prosopis alba), were used to shore up doors and passageways in buildings, along with massive stone pillars as central support. All structures, large and small, were built of shaped stone blocs set with mud.
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Shicra Nets @Xauxa – wikipediaPD, CC-BY-SA 2.5
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Monumental Florescence
Caral’s thirty-two monumental structures, and its residential complexes, large and small, underscore the ancient city’s importance. In the upper half of the city are seven large pyramidal structures. Two of them, the Great Pyramid, and the Pyramid of the Amphitheater, are associated with large sunken circular courts. Major structures encircle multifunction open spaces or plazas. There are two subgroups: the one to the west includes the Great Pyramid, the Central Pyramid, the Quarry Pyramid, and the Lesser Pyramid. The subgroup to the east includes the Pyramid of the Amphitheater, the Pyramid of the Gallery, and the Pyramid of the Huanca (a huanca is a tall upright monolith, usually an uncarved stone). The eight-foot-tall huanca is found three hundred feet away from the plaza and the two pyramids, at the end of a causeway.
Archaeologist Shady notes that at Caral “the structures in the nuclear space are grouped into two great halves: an upper half, nearest the water where the most impressive pyramidal structures are located, and a lower half with smaller public buildings, but for one large complex that also has a circular sunken court attached to it” (2002)
This spatial organization likely expresses the Andean binary division into hanan and hurin (upper and lower, respectively). Pyramidal structures vary in size and exhibit distinct elements, but all share a model for the façade, which are comparable in style and design. Shady remarks that “all buildings follow a similar model with superimposed terraces placed at intervals and contained by stone walls. Each façade has fixed stellar direction and an axis that internally divides the space. This axis is usually marked by a staircase traversing the center of the terraces from the base to the summit. The flight of stairs also divides the building into a central body with two left and right extensions, each with rooms and passageways. The central body of each structure consists of segments set apart by their sequential location at specific elevations” (2001).
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Circular Court Complex @georgefery.com
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An exhaustive description of this 5000–year-old city would require far more space than is available here. So, together with archaeologists Shady, Machacuay and Aramburu, we will focus on three major structures: the Great Pyramid (Sector.E), the Pyramid of the Galeria (Sector.I), and the Temple of the Amphitheater (Sector.L). The Great Pyramid is the largest and most extensive and important complex in the upper half (hanan) of the city. It measures 561 feet from east to west and 495 feet from north to south. Its south facing façade is 65-five feet in height while its north side, facing the valley, reaches to slightly less than 100 feet. Its main feature is an important circular sunken court and an imposing stepped pyramidal structure made of a central body and two side components.
An important feature in the structure is that of the Altar of the Sacred Fire, which is located at the top of the pyramid, in a small quarter with a ventilation shaft running below it. The diameter of the circular sunken court, attached to the north side of the pyramid, is 120-feet, and its sunken interior is 72-feet across. An entrance stairway leads up from the exterior and up the south side of the court, in line with the axial staircase of the pyramid. On the north-south axis, two other staircases descend to the court, each framed by two large upright monoliths. The internal wall of the court is made of stone blocks reset one-and-a-half feet to an elevation of five feet giving it a stepped appearance. The walls, stairs and floors of the plaza were plastered and painted. Given its size, location, and association with the circular court, this was probably the city’s main public building” (2000).
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Pyramid la Galeria and the Huanca @georgefery.com
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The Pyramid la Galeria owes its name to the monolith located about three hundred feet from the pyramid’s main stairway. This pyramid is of a quadrangular plan, located in the east subgroup, at the extreme southeast of the upper half of the city (hanan). The façade is oriented toward the urban space shared with the Pyramid of the Gallery (Sector.H). The eight-foot-high monolith or huanca, seems to have been the axis common to the two buildings. The Pyramid of the Huanca has the typical stepped profile, consisting of five superimposed terraces and four sides. It measures 177 feet on its east-west axis, 171 feet from north to south and reaches 42 feet in height. Its eighteen18-foot-wide central stairway leads at the summit to an atrium, assumed to be an observatory. Notable among the finds in the building, is a headdress made of grassy fiber.
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The Great Pyramid and the Supe Valley @cordilleraviajes.com
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The Complex of the Amphitheater and its monumental circular sunken court is dated to 2160 BC. It is an important structure in the lower part (hurin) of the city, the counterpart to the Great Pyramid (hanan), but is not as commanding as the latter. The walled complex is made of various components: a deck with a series of aligned cubicles; a large circular sunken plaza and a building with platforms that ascend sequentially. “On the east side of its perimeter is a circular altar and an elite dwelling. In the building were found several ceremonial hearths or Altars of the Sacred Fire, with their ventilation shafts built underneath. Buried in the circular sunken plaza of the Amphitheater were found 32 flutes finely carved from condor and pelican bones, as well as 37 bugles made of deer and llama bones, which point to the building’s ceremonial importance. They were “decorated with incised designs and painted with figures of local fauna and humans” (Shady, 1999b).
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The main Altar of the Sacred Fire was found in an isolated area within the wall encircling the Amphitheatre complex. The religious ceremonies that took place there, as for most ancient agrarian societies, revolved around the powers of the sun, the moon, water, earth, celestial bodies, and their respective deities. This religious structure stems from the Kotosh religious tradition of the Late Archaic (4200 BC) in the upper Andes, which influenced Caral religion through most of the millennium between 3000 and 2000 BC.
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Altar of the Sacred Fire @en.wikipedia.org
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The priests were believed to draw their spiritual power from predicting cyclical natural events, such as the cycles of the sun, the moon, and other heavenly bodies. For that reason, they were acknowledged as the anointed intercessors between people and the deities of nature. However, the priests lacked the scientific knowledge associated with their observations that would be acquired much later in time, so they merely acknowledged the repetition of those events that indeed appeared at predicated times. But what the priests could not predict were nature’s variables such as the intensities of the above-mentioned disrupters. At Caral as in most societies of the past, there was no separation between secular and creed for, as Shady notes, “religion was the nexus of cohesion and the ideology of the state acted as the instrument of domination of its government. Most of the activities carried out at Caral were, in some form or another, related to religious rituals and sacrifices” (1999a). The most important religious ceremonies may have taken place around the Altars of the Sacred Fire in the Great Pyramid, as well as in that of the Amphitheater. Less important ceremonies took place in other buildings. The shrine for the Sacred Fire is often made of a small circular platform with a fire pit in which small offerings were burned, such as those found at Kotosh.
The circular platform of the Sacred Fire was enclosed in a low quadrangular six-foot-high wall open space with access for only one person, most probably the high priest. A ventilation duct was built underneath the hearth that led the heat and smoke outside. In the shrine, the high priest called on natural forces and their deities to ascertain the timely arrival of natural events such as rains, winds, or other phenomena, and their consequences on crops. Planting and harvesting were daily concerns for most societies of the past associated, as they were, with the weather — rain, specifically. Delayed rains, or their diminished downpour, could translate into a bad or no crop at all, and the consequences: famine, the return of fear, and death. So the priests had to assure the city’s elite that the gods indeed helped in understanding nature’s hidden behavior.
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Amphitheater Sunken Court @qosqoexpeditions.com
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Two other prominent architectural features at Caral are the large sunken circular courts built at the foot of the monumental staircases of the Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of the Amphitheater. They were used, as were the Maya rectilinear ball courts, for multi-function events at dedicated times. Religious ceremonies were likely prominent to celebrate major events such as spring and autumn equinoxes, the Austral solstices and the rising and setting of stars and planets mythologically associated with gods, deities, and seasonal celebrations, such as planting and harvesting. The discovery of finely carved flutes and bugles beneath the Pyramid of the Amphitheater’s sunken court, point to the importance of musical instruments used during ceremonies and pageants. Remains of drums have not been found, so far, for their material may not have survived the test of time. Drums or percussion instruments, however, are recorded far back in time as the oldest device used by most cultures. Secular games may have taken place in the arena-like courts to celebrate social and sport events, an answer to ingrained human needs to compete in a controlled environment.
Through history, the universal use of games for secular or ritual purposes, underscore a commitment to maintain peace and balance between communal factions. Essential to ritual games, and to a certain extent secular games as well, was the need to keep in check latent antagonism within the same polity, as well as between polities.
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Condor and Pelican Bone Flutes @noticiasdelaciencia.org
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In several buildings, archaeologists found human burials, mainly of children or young adults that are generally associated with specific rituals. As Shady points out, “the discovery of the body of a young man, deposited among stones that were used in an atrium in preparation for the construction of a new one, demonstrates this concept. The body was found above a layer of soil and stones, covered with other stones and the floor of the new atrium. It was nude and had no offerings except for the careful arrangement of the hair. Forensic analysis by Dr. Guido Lombardi indicates that it was a male of about twenty years of age, who was subjected to hard labor for most of his short life. He had received two forceful blows, one to the face and the other to the head (which was the cause of death); some of his fingers were placed in one of the niches of the temple” (2002). The remains of children were found underneath the floor of dwellings. This burial practice, as found in later cultures, was related to the belief that such offerings would contribute to the long life of the building.
Caral, Ceramic Figurines @enperublog.com
Also found in residences were Quipus, the knotted strings made of camelid fibers such as llama or alpaca wool. Quipus were used, from the Late Archaic or probably earlier, as recording and communication devices arranged on a base ten positional system. Those identified at Caral are among the oldest found in Peru. Furthermore, small low fired ceramic figurines – on average: five high by two inches wide – were found in secular and religious contexts. Their similarity with those of the San Pedro’s phase of the Valdivia culture of Ecuador (2700 BC), is striking. The small Caral figurines are low fired with red and gray colors applied. The arms of the figurines, like those at Valdivia, are usually short and bent toward the chest or placed under the chin. In the Americas, diffusion of ceramics took place over a long span of time and across extensive geographical areas through trade, and some found their replicas at Caral.
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The floor plans of residential houses vary according to their proximity to a pyramid complex, a direct reflection of the status of their residents. Their architecture is similar in both upper and lower Caral and, as for collective structures, are built of rocks set with mud. The largest household complex in Caral is found in Sector.A, in the upper half of the city (hanan). The quadrangular houses are built with a main entrance at the front and a door at the back, the later perhaps used for the kitchen or other services. Their sizes vary from 530 to 860 square feet, and they had interconnected rooms, also an indication of the status of a household. In several rooms small platforms and benches (beds?) were found. The walls and floors were covered with white, beige, or light-grey colored plasters, while those with red and yellow paints may indicate that they were the homes of the Caral elite” (Shady, 1997).
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The central point still argued today about the diffusion of Peruvian cultures is whether it initiates from the coast, with its bountiful marine resources, or from the Andes Mountains to the Pacific Coast. In the view of archeologists Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, “a complex society arose in Peru, thanks to irrigation agriculture, the same way it did in the world’s five other “pristine” civilizations, Mesopotamia, ca. 3500 BC, Egypt, ca. 3000 BC, India, ca. 2600 BC, China, 1900 BC and Mexico, ca.1200 BC (2005). Historian Karl Wittfogel points out that “irrigation was the catalyst that transformed tribal societies into city-states; for it required forced labor, central planning, a managerial elite, and provided the excess food necessary to support workers and administrators.” (1957). At Caral, the state government was sustained by dynamic diversified crops and a fishing economy. “Its sphere of domination and control included the populations of the Supe, Pativilca and Fortaleza valleys.
However, its connections and prestige extended across the entire north-central Peruvian region” (Shady, 2005). Social groups shared water through five ecological zones. The rivers begin in the high Andean Altiplano and flow through the mountain’s piedmont and, ultimately, to the coastal plains and the Pacific Ocean, a topography that was at the core of Caral’s survival for over a thousand years.
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Residential Complex @incatrail.com
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Haas and Creamer raise a pertinent point about “how ancient South Americans made the leap from subsistence fishing to urban sophistication.” Their main argument: “If the exploitation of marine resources is the reason for cultural complexity, why don’t you get a string of these big, complex societies up and down the Pacific coast? You don’t.” Haas maintains that the Late Preceramic sites of Aspero and Banduria, “grew as complex as they did because they could trade with inland settlements that had been revolutionized by irrigation agriculture.”
It takes a complex society to undertake big public construction projects, and the consensus is that complexity sprang from mastering agriculture. Hunter-gatherers had neither the means nor the need to create social hierarchies. That process (which entailed the division of labor and the emergence of a managerial caste), got under way only after humans settled down to farm” (2005). However, Aspero at the mouth of the Supe River, may still reveal surprises since recent radiocarbon dating showed that the village, with its two large platforms and circular sunken courts, had flourished as early as 3033 BC.
The End Time
Caral and its neighboring communities in the Pativilca and Fortaleza valleys were abandoned between 1800 and 1600 BC. Why? We are not sure, but archaeological and geological data point to the relentless onslaught of disrupters and their cumulative effects, which priests could not foresee. Geological data uncovered that an earthquake estimated at 7.2 on the Richter scale took place in about 1820 BC and destroyed much of Caral and Aspero (Sandweiss et all., 2009). This major earthquake was most probably followed by successive tremors of various intensity over the following weeks and months and contributed to more unstable rock and mud slides into the valleys.
The damages may have been worsened by an El Niño event that came concurrently or followed closely the earthquake and its aftershocks. Remains of torrential rains and consecutive gravel and dirt slides from the surrounding hills found by geologists are testimonies to the destruction of agriculture, with the clogging rivers and wells in the valleys. The mouth of the Supe River was heavily choked by sediments that, together with storms, gale force winds and ocean current shifts over months, built up a sand belt along the coast that, to this day, is referred to as the “Middle World.”
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Banduria, the Middle World @georgefery.com
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This situation exacerbated an already unstable food supply, for the shift in ocean temperatures with La Niña pushed schools of fish farther and deeper offshore. Worsening an already catastrophic situation were climate shifts and sands blown inland from the coast to agricultural fields in the valleys, further destroying cultures and obstructing canals already damaged by rock and mud slides.
Furthermore, Caral’s neighbors on its north and south were likewise severely impacted by these disastrous events. Food shortage worsened to such an extent that, together with the loss of cotton, produce and fishing, the economy collapsed. The pleas and tears of Caral’s priests could not prevent nor help in such a tragic situation, and Caralinos had no alternative but to flee and seek refuge in less afflicted communities.
The powers of nature were thus harsh on Caral and, so it seems, were its gods and deities. Garcia-Acosta points out that disasters are “triggers and revealers that have been important catalysts of change for much of human history.” As people begin to rebuild their lives in the wake of calamity, “one of their pressing concerns is for closure, for people need to understand why things happened in order to seek ways to make sure it does not happen again” (2002). Under severe conditions, new religious ideas and new leaders often emerge that take cultures in new directions.
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Cover Image, Top Left: Caral Jbenthien, Pixabay
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Further Reading:
Ruth Shady Solis, 2001 – The Oldest City in the New World
Jennings, J., 2008 – Catastrophe, Revitalization and Religious Change on the Prehispanic North Coast of Peru
Ruth Shady and Carlos Leyva, 2003 – La Ciudad Sagrado de Caral-Supe
Roxana Hernandez Garcia, 2015 – Caral: 5000 Años de Identidad
Jesús Sánchez Jaén, 2008 – Caral, la Cultura de las Plazas Circulares
Ruth Shady Solis, J. Haas, and W. Creamer, 2001 – Dating Caral, a Preceramic in the Supe Valley on the Central Coast of Peru (Science, 292).
J. Haas and M. Piscitelli, 2004 – The Rise of Andean Pre-Inca Civilizations
Ruth Shady Solis, 2006 – La Civilización Caral: Sistema Social y Manejo del Territorio y sus Recursos; sus Transcendancia en el Proceso Cultural Andino
Eva Jobbova, Ch. Elmke & A. Bevan, 2018 – Ritual Responses to Drought: An Examination of Ritual Expressions
Arthur D. Faram, 2010 – A Geographic Study of the Ancient Caral, Peru
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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The Larger-than-Life Story of the Egyptian Mummy: An Interview with Dr. Salima Ikram
Editor’s Note: Salima Ikram is a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. She is the co-director of the Animal Mummy Project at the Egyptian Museum and since 2001 she has directed the North Kharga Oasis Survey (NKOS) with Corinna Rossi, and directed the North Kharga Oasis Darb Ain Amur Survey and the Amenmesse Mission of KV10 and KV63 in the Valley of the Kings. She co-directed the Predynastic Gallery Project. Ikram has been very active and sought out by the media for her expertise, contributing to articles on Egyptology in Egypt Today and National Geographic, writing for Kmt, a journal of modern Egyptology, and appearing in documentary series and specials for PBS, Channel 4, Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic Channel, Netflix, and the BBC.
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RM (Richard Marranca): I just viewed the documentary, Secrets of the Dead: Egypt’s Darkest Hour. It was so interesting and macabre – this mass grave of mummies and body parts strewn about from the collapse of the Old Kingdom. Can you describe that history and carnage?
SI (Salima Ikram): The end of the Old Kingdom was brought about by a variety of factors. The most significant was of course climate change, where a series of Low Niles and an increasing desertification caused famine, and therefore civil unrest. In addition to that, King Pepi II had an extraordinarily long reign, during which time a lot of power slipped out of his hand and into the provincial nobility. He also allowed the Royal women to marry provincial elites, which gave those people even greater power legitimacy. In order to make sure that the priesthood supported him, he allowed temples not to pay taxes to him and this series of exemption decrees also decreased royal power and general control. In general, what happened was that a lot of the provincial elites started to flex their muscles and challenge central authority, particularly upon the death of the King. Egypt fell into a group of warring city states, with the nobles having their own armies, and probably also bringing in mercenaries, both from the south and north East. It is these battles that are in part responsible for mass graves. Of course, what you saw on television is really also a result of secondary looters in modern times.
RM: What does the word mummy mean, and what is a mummy?
SI: The word mummy comes from the Arabic word mum or mumia, which basically means wax or a black bitumenous substance originating from the mummy mountain in Persia. A mummy is an artificially preserved body of a human or an animal.
RM: Can you mention the highlights in the process of mummification in ancient Egypt?
SI: Mummification changed a great deal over the 3000 years of Egyptian history in which it was practiced. Some of the key components were: learning to eviscerate and desiccate using natron; and also the judicious use of resins and oils, giving the body a more lifelike appearance.
RM: What are some of the greatest ancient writings and images of mummification?
SI: One of the reasons people think of mummification as mysterious is that the ancient Egyptians did not leave a recipe book or manual telling us how to carry out mummification. There are very few images showing mummies being made, and these all date from the later periods of Egyptian history and mainly show the wrapping of the body. Textual evidence is also limited to receipts from embalmers and a text mentioning the wrapping of an Apis bull. Thus, information comes from the mummies themselves and to a large extent, from classical writers such as Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
RM: Can you tell us about the Egyptian tomb and its purpose? What are some types?
SI:
The tomb of Den, the 4th king of Egypt’s 1st Dynasty, at Abydos. E M, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons
There are many different types of Egyptian tombs, varying depending on the date and whether they were for a king or for a commoner. However, tombs basically had the same function, regardless of who owned them. A tomb acts as a machine coma if you will – a coma that transports the deceased from this world to the next. A tomb also is a parallel cosmos in and of itself, of an eternal Egypt. The tomb is divided into two sections; one is the public area where people celebrate the cult of the deceased, and the other is underground where the body is buried. This is sealed up and after the funeral is not supposed to be accessible, unless you have a group tomb in which case more and more bodies will be placed there. The upper part of the tomb, which is what people visit even today, is where there are scenes of daily life as well as religious, which are the cosmos of eternity that the deceased will enjoy.
RM: Are there curses in the tombs?
SI: The idea of curses is actually a false one. Tutankhamen’s tomb had no curse inscribed in it. That was made up by journalists. There are some tombs though that do have curses and they basically say that if anyone comes in to violate the tomb, or is impure, then may they be strangled like a goose and may the gods sit in judgement of the violator. A few of them do have more colorful variations on this theme, saying may the snake, may the crocodile, may the lion destroy you.
RM: Can you tell us about the relationship between Egyptian religion and mummification? Also, what is the Book of the Dead?
SI: The Book of the Dead is more properly called the book of coming forth by day and consists of a series of spells that help the deceased go from this world to the next. It is a bit like a crib sheet. As the Egyptians believed that you lived forever they felt that the aspects of your soul needed to have a body to animate, which is why mummification was born, so that the soul could live in a proper body. Of course images, both 2 and 3 dimensional, were also available for the soul to animate. The soul had a variety of components: the ka — one’s doppleganger; the ba — a human-headed bird that was the part of your soul that could fly here — the closest we get to a ghost; and the akh, which is the divine spark that can go off and be eternally joined with the stars.
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Above and below: Vignettes from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
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RM: My students love the Isis & Osiris story. Why is this so important, so foundational?
SI: The Story of Isis and Osiris is so compelling because it is a love story as well as a promise of eternal life and resurrection. It has all the components for a good tale of swashbuckling, good vs evil, drama, romance, with the good guys winning in the end. For the ancient Egyptians this established and explained the role of divine kingship as well as the idea of eternal life and with us key to both state religion as well as personal piety in terms of funerary beliefs. What did ancient authorities do when they realized it wasn’t safe to keep mummies in their tombs – that is, to bring them into more secure hiding spots? Seems cloak and dagger. Moving mummies was something that really seemed to happen most in the Third Intermediate, although it is quite possible that violated tombs were reconsecrated and bones gathered together and reburied in earlier periods as well. Of course, in times of political turmoil when raiders, whether Egyptian or from abroad, were terrorizing the countryside, burials had to be protected and this is why bodies were moved about and put into caches for safe keeping.
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The family of Osiris. Osiris on a lapis lazuli pillar in the middle, flanked by Horus on the left and Isis on the right (22nd dynasty, Louvre, Paris). Rama, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France, Wikimedia Commons
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RM: Who were some of the colorful early figures early in the search for mummies?
SI: A lot of doctors had agents who would go out and collect mummies because in Europe mummies were ground up and eaten as medicine because of the mistaken belief that they were made using this bituminous substance. An enjoyable explorer who also worked with mummies was Belzoni, who collected several mummies and sent them off to Europe for collectors; one of his friends, Thomas Pettigrew — also known as Mummy Pettigrew — staged some of the earliest scientific unwrapping and studies of mummies.
RM: About when and with whom did Egyptology become scientific?
SI: One can say that the start of proper Egyptology is after 1822 with the decipherment of hieroglyphs and slowly the Egyptians could speak to us in their own voices and there was less speculation about how they lived and what they did. Of course, Egyptology is continuing to become increasingly scientific as more and more technologies become available to us. The majority of the early mummy and skeletal studies used basic tools to extract limited information from mummies.
The most simple and common method, sometimes the sole one used when in the field, is visual examination. Such examinations yield crucial information about the bandage patterns, amulets and other objects placed on the mummy, body and arm positions, cosmetics, tattooing, and hairstyles. Although the unwrappings and resulting autopsies are destructive, they still provide invaluable detailed and useful information. Several scientific autopsies were carried out on mummies during the 1970s, with multidisciplinary teams of researchers involved in the investigations (Cockburn et al. 1975; Hart et al. 1977; David 1979; Cockburn et al. 1980: 52–70; Millet et al. 1980; Reyman and Peck 1980; David and Tapp 1984; Goyon and Josset 1988). Diseases can also be tentatively identified with the naked eye, although such identifications are unreliable. For example, visual examination identified a possible case of poliomyelitis in the mummy of the Pharaoh Siptah (Smith 1912: 70–73). Polio is a viral infection of the central nervous system that manifests itself in the paralysis of one or more muscle groups: Siptah has one short and withered leg. On the other hand, the same symptoms can result from certain types of cerebral palsy. Smallpox has also been suspected in the mummy of the pharaoh Ramesses V, due to the pox markings visible on his face (Smith 1912: 90–92). Visual examination can be augmented by scientific analyses that can provide information about other aspects of mummification, such as identification of the materials used in mummification, or a study of mummified tissues. As the sciences evolved, so did mummy studies.
The first mummy to be submitted to a professional chemical analysis (in an effort to determine the materials used in its manufacture) was the ‘Leeds Mummy’ (George 1828); although the results of this examination raised more questions than answers, it was the first such scientific investigation carried out on a mummy, setting the foundation for further studies, particularly those performed by Alfred Lucas in the early twentieth century. Lucas collaborated extensively with Egyptologists and physical anthropologists on identifying the different materials used in mummification (Lucas 1910, 1931, 1932, 1962).
The first microscopic examination of ancient Egyptian tissue was performed by the Viennese laryngologist, Johan Czermak (1852). This sort of study increased dramatically in the twentieth century with the advent of ‘palaeopathology’—a term coined by Marc Armand Ruffer (1921), Professor of Bacteriology in Cairo, meaning the study of ancient diseases from the tissues. One of this field’s major aims is to trace the origins, development, and disappearance of specific diseases and to study the effects of diseases on society (Brothwell et al. 1967). Ruffer used microscopic examination on many samples from mummies and managed to identify diseases as well as organs that had dried beyond recognition (Ruffer 1921, 1911; Moodie 1931). Nowadays of course we have X-rays and very good CT scans that allow for much more nuanced imaging. Of course, it is always helpful to have the data from the earlier studies as it helps us to interpret things that might not be immediately clear or apparent on the CT scan. Imaging methods allow us to study mummies nondestructively, which is a great boon.
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The mummy of the ancient Egyptian noblewoman Tjuyu. Quibell, J. E.; Smith, Grafton Elliot (1908). Tomb of Yuaa and Thuiu. Le Caire Impremerie De L’Institut Francais D’Archeologie Orientale Plate LIX, E. Brugsch, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
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Mummy of Ahmose, at Luxor Museum in Luxor Egypt. Tim Adams, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons
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RM: Beginning in ancient times, the theft and abuse of mummies has been rampant. Can you tell us about them being used for fuel and medicine, for amusement and parties?
SI: In addition to eating them for medicine (see above): Once the mummies got to Europe they provided people with further ghoulish entertainment: unwrappings. These became social events and were very much a part of Victorian parlour entertainment, with special invitations being sent out for them. Mummy unwrappings did not start in the nineteenth century; many other curious individuals had staged unwrapping shows in previous years. One of the earliest recorded unwrappings occurred in September 1698, when Benoit de Maillet (1656-1738), Louis XIV’s consul in Cairo, unwrapped a mummy before a group of French travelers. Unfortunately he, as with most of his successors in unwrapping, did not record anything concerning the mummy; they only mention some of the amulets found on it. Mummies were so abundant that despite the mania for collection and unwrapping, there still remained sufficient mummies in Egypt for what might be termed, ‘useful purposes’. A special paint, called Mummy Brown, was derived from fragments of mummified bodies and used in oil painting. One singularly pious artist was so upset to find that actual bodies of humans had been used to manufacture his paint, that he took all his tubes of Mummy Brown into the garden and gave them a decent burial.
In the nineteenth century, an American paper manufacturer from Maine, Augustus Stanwood, used linen mummy wrapping to make brown paper. This paper was sold to butchers and grocers who wrapped meat, butter, and the like in it—once people found out the source, this stopped being common practice. Cat mummies were shipped from Egypt to Europe for a twofold purpose: first, they helped provide a bit of ballast for the boats; second, they were used as fertilizer until public outcry put a stop to it. Mummies suffered many ignominies in Egypt. They were burnt as firewood since wood was scarce and mummies plentiful. Their arms and legs were used as torches when people wished to explore sepulchers or see their way at night. Mark Twain reports (one suspects with his tongue firmly in his cheek) that they were even reported as being used as fuel to fire locomotives.
RM: Can you tell us about the tomb-raiding Abd el-Rassul family’s amazing discovery and the plot to sell stuff?
SI: Perhaps the most spectacular of all mummy finds occurred in the early 1870s, although not revealed to the world until the beginning of the next decade. In 1871, according to one of the many versions of the story, Ahmed Abd el-Rassul of Qurna (d.1918/19) went in search of a lost goat near Deir el-Bahari and found that it had fallen into a tomb-shaft. Descending, he discovered some antiquities lying half-covered with sand at the bottom. As he scraped away the sand from his new-found treasures, he came upon the outline of an opening that had been hidden by the sand and rock debris in the shaft. The opening proved to be a sealed doorway. With growing excitement, he chipped a small hole through it and peered into the darkness where he saw coffins: dozens of them. He found the tomb of Pinudjem II (Dynasty 21; tomb DB320), which not only contained several members of the priest’s family, but also sheltered the coffins and mummies of over 30 individuals who had been placed there for their protection in antiquity.
For the next 10 years he, his brother Mohammed (d. 1926), and a few other members of his family steadily removed smaller objects from the cache and sold them, piece by piece, to antiquities dealers in Luxor, notably Mustapha Agha Ayat (d.1887), who traded extensively abroad — typical examples were papyri and canopic jars from Pinudjem’s family. This flood of antiquities, which were especially noticeable as some bore royal cartouches, came to the attention of Gaston Maspero (1846-1916), the Director General of the Antiquities Service. He ordered an investigation, and on 4 April 1881 the Abd el-Rassul brothers were arrested. Both pleaded their innocence and were released due to insufficient evidence. After their temporary incarceration, the brothers had a falling out over the apportioning of the profits from the illicit sales of antiquities. The quarrel became exceptionally heated, and the secret of the tomb’s existence became public. The upshot of all this was that Mohammed Abd el-Rassul, after obtaining some guarantees from officialdom, decided to make a full confession to the Governor of Qena Province. On 6 July 1881, he took the Antiquities officials, Emile Brugsch (1842-1930) and Ahmed Kamal (1851-1923), along with their colleagues and policemen to the tomb.
The tomb, reached by a 12 m shaft, extended for many meters into the mountainside. Its first corridor was stuffed full with coffins, shabti boxes, canopic jars, and metal libation vessels; at its end lay a leather tent belonging to Isetemkheb D, one of the original inhabitants of the tomb. The second corridor, at right angles to the first, contained many more coffins, with a large stack of these in a chamber to one side. Beyond this side chamber a long empty corridor led to the burial chamber of Pinudjem II and his family. In all, the tomb contained mummies, statues, jars, shrines, and other objects from the burials of 54 individuals, many royal, and all mainly dating from the New Kingdom. The bodies of Amenhotep I, Tuthmosis II, Seti I, Ramesses II, Merneptah, and Ramesses III, among others were recovered from this most dramatic and large royal cache. 300 workmen were hired to remove the contents of the cache and the 40 mummies and their paraphernalia, loaded onto a steamboat for their passage to Cairo. As the boat passed the villages along the banks of the Nile the villagers would come out, lining the way of the steamboat, and wail, ululate, and fire guns in tribute to the dead monarchs. The atmosphere of these events is recaptured by the greatest of all Egyptology-inspired movies: Shadi Addelsalam’s “Night of the Counting of the Years,” made in 1966. The family finally went to work with the Antiquities Service but did not give up entirely on its nefarious ways—they possibly helped steal from the tomb of Amenhotep II, but were also part of Carter’s workers, with a young Abd el Rasul being the famous model for the Tutankhamun necklace. Now they run hotels and cafes on the west bank.
RM: Soon after X-rays were discovered, archaeologists began X-raying mummies. Could you tell us about the powerful tools in the study of mummies, such as X-rays and CT scanning? Also, in your book, The Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity (co-written with Aidan Dodson), you mention many superb and damaged mummies. Can you tell us about a few of these?
Tutankhamun skull x-ray. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
SI: Poor King Taa the 2nd has so many wounds on his head and his hands are all tensed and cramped suggesting that he died and was mummified in a way when they could not straighten out his fingers. He has wounds from battles that might have started to heal but again maybe he was healing but assassins came and devastated him. The mummy of Ramses III is really interesting because CT scans have been carried out and it seems that there is a cut on his neck and he might have been or, in fact, he probably was assassinated. This is very interesting because there is actually a court case recorded about an attempted assassination of that king. Of course Ramses II has lots of great stories associated with him because he’s the only pharaoh to have a passport from the modern Egyptian state. He was greeted by the French president and afforded all the honors of a live ruler!
RM: In “From Thebes to Cairo, the Journey, Study, and Display of Egypt’s Royal Mummies, Past, Present, and Future,” you wrote that for a long time there have been “religious and political sensibilities.” Can you speak about this?
SI: It is an issue as to whether one should display dead bodies and how one should display them if one is going to do this. It is hard to say that there is one right or wrong answer. I think that if I were dead and on display in a museum after my death I would not mind particularly, though I would like to be shown in a slightly decent way with some covering. We cannot ask each ancient Egyptian about what he or she thought about this display business. I think that perhaps the way they have been displayed in the Royal Mummy Room with only the heads visible is acceptable. And I also think that maybe if one says a prayer that is also helpful, but that is a personal opinion. Depending on each person’s religious or personal beliefs the ideas of whether one should or should not display the dead will vary.
RM: You recommended “Thinking Makes it So, Reflections on the Displaying of Egyptian Mummies” by Jasmine Day. She believes that public education (and more) can “effectively cultivate in visitors a sense of respect for ancient Egyptians.” Are we getting there?
SI: To some extent, yes, but it will also depend on the general level of education and sensibility of the museum visitor.
RM: You also recommended “The Living Dead: Egyptian Mummies and the Ethics of Display” by Margaret M. Sweeney, who wrote that the Manchester Museum covered some mummies with white shrouds but that visitors mostly found it to be a bad idea. Can things get too politically correct?
SI: I would probably in an unpopular way say that things can become too politically correct.In your books (as well as essays you shared with me), there are state-of-the-art displays of mummies. I recall Meresamun, a temple singer, at the Oriental Institute. The exhibit includes objects from her life, CT scans, and forensic reconstructions of her face. Is the concept here to be as very informative, respectful and holistic? I think yes, because then you can see her in all of her glory as a mummy as well as a human being. And for me the most important thing is to think of the ancient Egyptians as human beings, because that is why I’m interested in them. I want to know as much as I can about them as individuals, which is why I perhaps prefer nonroyalty to royalty.
RM: You are a very active archaeologist in doing fieldwork, prolific writing and publication, and appearances on media. Egypt holds a lot of secrets. What else would you like to accomplish?
SI: I would like to excavate in a scientific way an undisturbed animal necropolis and be able to carry out all the analysis that would yield as much information as possible from it, and I would adore it if we had some text that went with it. Of course, I would also like to do something similar with a human cemetery. And if this is a wish list, I would love to dig up a few houses of the Old Kingdom.
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Cover Image, Top Left: Salima Ikram at work. Salima Ikram, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons
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Memorializing in Stone: The Family Monuments of Augustan Rome
Professor Frank J. Korn has retired from his teaching position on the Classical Studies faculty at Seton Hall University. He is a Fulbright Scholar at the American Academy in Rome and the author of nine books on various aspects of the Eternal City. He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who as “a notable classical educator and writer.” Recipient of the Princeton Prize for Distinguished Teaching, he resides with his wife Camille in Scotch Plains, N.J. The couple’s three sons – Frank, Ronald, and John and their families live nearby. His latest book – Below Rome, the Story of the Catacombs – which he co-authored with his wife, is available on Amazon or from the publisher, St. Johann Press, Haworth, N.J.
Beautify Rome!
That was one of the top priorities of Caesar Augustus soon after he came to power in 27 B.C. as the first emperor of the far-flung Empire. He was not corrupted by power. On the contrary, he was driven by a desire to improve the quality of life for his subjects and was able to show what can be achieved through magnanimity. From early on, he instituted many positive changes in the government. He greatly improved conditions for the plebeians. His principal cabinet members were two very able men, Marcus Agrippa and Gaius Maecenas, who gave him very wise counsel and valuable assistance.
Whenever these highly intelligent aides observed that the populace was getting restless and beginning to lodge grievances, they advised Augustus to distribute money and corn to the poor and provide grand festivals and spectacles to keep them amused and distracted. Augustus would follow their advice and in doing so made himself immensely popular.
Augustus of Prima Porta, discovered at the Villa of Livia. Till Niermann, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons
He loved the city of his birth and boyhood and wanted to make his imperial capital the showpiece of the world. He longed to be able to boast – as he often later did – that he found Rome a city of brick and left her a city of marble. Or as he would put it in his native tongue, ”Memoriam relinquo quam latericiam”.
He encouraged literature and art and was himself an author. His reign saw the Golden Age of Latin Literature, spearheaded by the poets Virgil, Varius, Horace, and Ovid. Then, too, there was the great historian Livy who wrote the history of Rome up to that point.
Augustus planned to adorn Rome with architecturally splendid new temples, theaters, libraries, baths, porticoes, monuments, arches, and other lavish public works. So that he would not drain the state treasury, he strongly encouraged many of his well-heeled friends and associates to do their civic duty by funding some of these ambitious projects. The biographer Suetonius tells us this:
“He often urged men of rank and wealth to gift the city with new monuments or to restore and embellish old ones, each according to his means. And many such works were built at that time by many prominent citizens; for example, the Temple of Hercules by Marcus Philippus, the Temple of Diana by Lucius Cornificius, the Hall of Liberty by Asinius Pollo,the Temple of Saturn by Munatius Plancus, a theater by Cornelius Balbus, and by Marcus Agrippa, in particular, many magnificent structures”.
Family Honors
Another top priority of Augustus was to honor members of his family by naming various edifices after them – a temple for his great uncle, a portico for the sister he adored, another for his wife, a library and a theater for his beloved, recently deceased nephew, a library and an arcade for two grandsons who passed away as young men of great promise, and so forth.
In truth, the beautification of Rome and the monumentalizing of family members was on Augustus’ agenda even before he assumed the title of emperor. In 31 B.C., he became the lone survivor of the Second Triumvirate with his naval victory over Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium. (Marcus Lepidus, the other triumvir, had been forced out years earlier.) Now as sole ruler, Augustus at once set about building a temple in honor of his maternal great uncle, Julius Caesar (the brother of the emperor’s mother’s mother), who had been deified by the Roman Senate soon after his death.
In 29 B.C., Augustus presided over the dedication ceremonies for the relatively small yet still impressive shrine that rose over the site where the body of Caesar was cremated fifteen years earlier. The spot had previously been marked only with a tall, slender marble column bearing the honorary title: Pater Patriae (Father of His Country).
The temple had a pronaos with just four Ionic-style columns and was situated in the virtual center of the Forum, just in front of the Regia or palace of the Pontifex Maximus and to the left of the round Temple of Vesta. Officially called the Aedes Divi Julii (Aedes being a Latin synonym for Templum), the sacred edifice was enriched with artistic treasures including a painting by the Greek master Apelles of the goddess Venus, from whom Julius had always claimed descendancy.
Despite its modest size, the aedes was built on a lofty podium, or platform, which extended out and was often put to use as a stage for speakers to deliver panegyrics to Caesar on special days of the year, particularly the 15th (Ides) of March. In 11 B.C., Augustus gave a eulogy for his beloved big sister Octavia (she was two years older) whose death left him deeply bereaved. In A.D. 14, Tiberius did the same for the funeral of Augustus. A coin minted in the early part of the next century showed Hadrian delivering an oration from here.
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Remains of the Temple of Divine Julius, or the Temple of Caesar. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
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Computer generated image of the Temple of Caesar by the model maker, Lasha Tskhondia – L.VII.C. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons
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The Temple of the Divine Julius was the first such tribute paid to a mortal in Rome. It survived intact into the late Middle Ages but was eventually quarried away for its marble. Today there remains only parts of the brick substructure. As the poet Horace liked to say: “Sic transit gloria Mundi.”
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The Portico of Octavia
Down in Rome’s Jewish quarter, in the shadow of the square-domed, Babylonian styled synagogue, rises an impressive remnant of the Porticus Octaviae, among the most ambitious constructions of the Augustan Age and one of the finest public works of early Western Civilization. It stands as testimony to Augustus’ resolve to beautify his capital, foster civic pride, while honoring his kin at the same time.
What we behold today is part of the south propylaeum, or access gate, that has the aspect of a typical pagan temple, with its triangular pediment resting on an entablature supported by columns. As did its vanished twin on the north side of the portico, the propylaeum once led into a colonnaded rectangular enclave measuring one hundred and twenty by one hundred and thirty meters. Two parallel rows of roofed-over Corinthian columns – three hundred in all – formed a spectacular yet dignified open-air vestibule for two shrines, side by side, to Jupiter Stator and Juno Regina, the principal divinities of pagan Rome.
As part of his grand urban renewal program, in 23 B.C. Augustus had redesigned and enlarged an existing portico, erected on this site in 146 B.C. by Quintus Metellus, and renamed it for his dear sister who was still mourning the loss of her son Marcellus who died earlier that year.
With the Portico of Octavia, as with all his architectural projects, Augustus had deftly managed a felicitous marriage of Greek refinement to Roman splendor. While foremost a covered passage for worshippers attending temple rites, it soon began to serve also as a veritable cultural complex. Two large matching apses added to the section of the colonnade to the rear of the temples housed well-stocked public libraries– one for Latin volumes, the other for Greek. Augustus named these facilities for his late nephew Marcellus, greatly pleasing the young man’s grieving mother, who was one of the most admired Roman women for her many virtues: her noble character, dignity, kindness, generosity, devotion to family, and compassion for the poor.
The portico itself was also a museum of sorts, thanks to its vast collection of statuary, including thirty-four equestrian bronzes produced by the renowned sculptor Lysippus. Carted back to Rome from a monumental park in Macedonia, these masterpieces represented Alexander the Great with his cavalry at the Battle of Granico. Also gracing the structure was an outstanding carving of Cornelia, proud but saddened mother of the slain civil rights advocates, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. This we learn from Pliny the Elder in his magnum opus, Naturalis Historiae.
The same writer and researcher offers a charming anecdote on the two Greek architects hired by Augustus to design the entire complex. Their names were Saurus and Batrachus, which meant in their language respectively, lizard and frog. When their request for permission to engrave their names on the project was denied, they found another way to leave their imprint for posterity. On the bases of some of the temple columns they carved, in relief, a lizard and a frog.
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Portico of Octavia in Rome by Luigi Bazzani. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
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Pliny also relates another somewhat curious development. When the temples were completed and ready to receive their statues, the deliverymen by mistake set up the colossus and other symbols of Jupiter in the cella of Juno’s sanctuary and vice-versa. When the priests of both cults discovered the error, they were shocked and distraught. They submitted the problem to the College of Augurs who, after much deliberation, decided it was the will of the gods. Thus things were left as they were.
After its dedication, the Portico of Octavia soon became one of the city’s favorite gathering places and pleasure grounds. People came in streams each day to enjoy the architectural ambience, the objets d’art, and the relief from the relentless turmoil and din of the surrounding streets. It was always an eclectic collection of visitors: groups of out-of-towners being shown about by free-lance guides, clusters of friends just hanging out, teachers with their little charges in tow, businessmen negotiating peripatetically, lovers promenading hand-in-hand amid a romantic forest of tall sturdy marble pillars, all of them shielded from a torrid sun or a soaking rain, all of them well-behaved and soft-spoken out of respect for the sacred character of the place.
With the decline and fall of Rome, the portico and its temples, like most other public sites, suffered desecration and dismantlement stone by stone. Before long, homely dwellings encroached upon the gloomy ruins. Sometime in the Middle Ages, the one surviving gateway was partially shored up with a red-brick arch, relieving two tottering columns from duty.
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The church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, the Holy Angel in the Fish Market, is built up against the back of the columns, which were restored rather badly after a fire in AD 283 using bits of other columns. Anthony Majanlahti, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons
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Early in the sixth century, Pope Boniface II built a church to St. Michael the Archangel right behind the old gateway, thus rendering it a unique pagan ceremonial entrance to a Chrisitian house of worship.
At yet some later time, this church came to be known as Sant’ Angelo in Pescheria because of the fish market that thrived here just outside the temple precincts, from pre-imperial times to the mid nineteenth century. Still embedded in the outer wall of the brick arch is an age-old marble slab that reveals how the Weights and Measures commissioners from city hall cut themselves in on a piece of the market’s action:
CAPITA PISCIUM HOC MARMORIO SCHEMATE LONGITUDINE MAIORUM USQUE AD PRIMAS PINNAS INCLUSIVE CONSERVATORIBUS DANTO.
“Let there be given to the wardens the heads, down to the fore-fins, of all fish that are longer than this marble measure.”
A rather cozy deal for the officials, inasmuch as the Romans of the time considered this portion of the fish the most desirable, and especially good for making their ever popular fish soups. It is interesting to note that even in our current era the numerous hosterie of the district all boast of their excellent zuppa di pesce, especially the colorful eatery called Da Gigetto al Portico d’Ottavia.
Porticoes were known as far back as the second century B.C. They were often located adjacent to outdoor theaters, providing shelter for the spectators in the event of a sudden storm. Pompey had one next to his theater.
They were also popular rendezvous spots, particularly in the evening for the traditional stroll. No one wanted to pass up this daily opportunity to see and be seen. (Just like today’s Romans.) What the piazza is to the current populace, the porticus was to the ancients. The idea was copied often. At the peak of the imperial era there were as many as twenty five porticoes in Rome.
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The Portico of Octavia. Rabax63, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons
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The Portico of Livia
By 15 B.C. Augustus was again feeling the itch to name a public project for a relative, this time for his wife Livia. The Carinae quarter of old Rome, on the Esquiline Hill, was a fashionable neighborhood with beautiful estates. One wealthy citizen, Vedius Pollio, had a magnificent mansion there on a sprawling piece of property, all of which he left in his will to his long-time friend, the Emperor Augustus. At the death of the benefactor in 15 B.C, Augustus razed the lavish dwelling to clear the way for the Porticus Liviae.
Construction took nearly eight years on this awesome enclave. Augustus proudly presided and orated at dedication ceremonies in January of 7 B.C. While not a trace of it remains today, we know a few things about this pleasure ground thanks to mention of it in the writings of Livy, Suetonius, Ovid and Pliny the Elder and his nephew Pliny the Younger.
Ovid, whose risque literary efforts would ultimately draw the disapproval of the somewhat puritanical emperor who drove the poet into exile, cites the monument in his Ars Armatoria:
“Do not fail to visit that lovely portico which, ornamented with ancient paintings, is called the Portico of Livia”.
In another of his works, Fasti, Ovid waxes poetic once again:
“Where Livia’s Colonnade now stands there once stood a huge palace, occupying an area larger than many towns. Caesar Augustus decided to level the vast structure and destroy so much wealth to which he himself was heir, to provide the space for a community gathering place that would pay honor to his wife.”
Like most porticoes, that of Livia was rectangular, some 120 meters long and nearly 100 wide. Among other things, such as art works, it also featured lovely gardens and areas for strolling. In the midst of the gardens was a beautiful ara, or altar honoring the goddess Concordia, who, as her name indicates, was the goddess of Harmony and to whom Livia had a special devotion. Pliny the Elder writes of a beautiful colorful vine that draped over the walkways (perhaps Wisteria).
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Fragments of the Forma Urbis showing the Portico of Livia. Ptyx, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons
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The Theater of Marcellus
The year 11 B.C. saw Augustus’ next public-family project, the Theatrum Marcelli, a state of the art theater honoring the late son of Octavia. Marcellus, born in 42 B.C., was a bright, precocious, and handsome lad who already held public office, aedile, i.e. commissioner of public works and festivals, while still in his teens. He was the apple of his uncle’s eye. In fact Augustus, whose only offspring was his daughter Julia, adopted Marcellus as his son and was grooming him as his successor to ensure that someone of his own bloodline would ascend to the throne. Tragically, Marcellus died at the age of nineteen from a prolonged fever. The emperor was grief stricken, Octavia inconsolable. They both had high hopes for the gifted young man.
Marcellus was commemorated by Virgil in the Aeneid (Book 6, verses 860-886). One evening some years later, at a palace dinner party, the poet sang the pertinent lines. Octavia fainted, overcome with emotion. Augustus wept.
The Theater of Marcellus was completed just in time for Octavia to witness the solemn dedication. A few months later she too was gone.
During the Republic, the prudish censors had blocked construction of permanent theaters since they considered most plays to be a threat to public morality. Only wooden theaters that could be easily dismantled after a program of performances ran its course were allowed. At the end of the Republic, Pompey built the first stone theater. Ten years later, the Theater of Balbus went up a few blocks away. Julius Caesar began construction of a permanent theater which was left unfinished with his murder in 44 B.C. About three decades later Augustus decided to complete work on it in a grandiose manner. He bought up numerous private property lots in the vicinity so that the theater could be greatly enlarged. The site was just a stone’s throw from the Portico of Octavia. When the project was finished, the emperor formally dedicated it to the memory of Marcellus. (The location had been chosen by Julius Caesar because of the nearness of the already ancient Temple of Apollo (431 B.C.), the god of music, poetry and art.)
Theatrum Marcelli could seat comfortably 20,000 spectators. On the ground floor was the throne of the emperor surrounded by a semi-circle of seats for the proud senators, while above them, up to the crowning colonnade, in ever lengthening tiers of seats sat first the white toga-clad patricians, then the knights (Rome’s sort of middle-class). The uppermost seating section was for the plebeians.
The exterior wall consisted of three stories of open arcades, each flanked with impressive pilasters: those on the ground level had Doric capitals, the second Ionic, the top level Corinthian. Enough of the theater survives to our time that we can observe and appreciate the Greek touch. This structure served as the inspiration for the architect Gaudentius, who designed the Colosseum almost a century later.
Unlike the Athenians, however, who constructed their public buildings entirely of marble, the pragmatic Romans used a brick substructure and veneered it with marble, or to be more precise, with travertine, a limestone from the abundant quarries out near Tibur ( the modern Tivoli), twenty miles southeast of Rome.
Augustus, a man of consummate propriety and dignity, rarely allowed the old bawdy comedies. He preferred refined theatrical performances, pantomimes, poetry recitals, dance, and concerts. But despite his best efforts to elevate his countrymen’s comportment, many Romans were not particularly well-behaved at theater. They did not go to witness drama, tragedy and art but rather just as a pastime and for amusement, and humbug as was proven by the unrest, murmur, or downright impolite noise among the audience. Horace compared it to the rustling of wind among the trees of the forest, or the roar of the ocean’s waves.
When a favorite politician went to take his seat there would be spontaneous applause and cheers. (Such expression of popular favor, Cicero informs us, was purchased and paid for by ambitious office holders and seekers.} A not so favorite political figure would be greeted with boos and hisses and catcalls laced with obscenities. Sometimes brawls would break out in the audience. When the theater-goers were not happy with a presentation they would not hesitate to let the actors know. {The acting profession was not highly regarded or respected. It was considered to be one step above prostitution.}
The Theatrum Marcelli remained intact until A.D. 365 when despoliation started. Some of the travertine blocks on the ground level were removed for use in the restoration of the Pons Cestius, one of the two bridges that still link the Tiber Island to the city. With the fall of Rome came the fall of many of its architectural treasures. The third tier of Marcellus’ theater has disappeared in the course of nineteen centuries of metamorphoses in which the structure was put to use as a quarry, a fortress, a palace.
From the 12th to the 14th centuries the powerful Pierleoni family used it as a stronghold. The constant warfare in which they were engaged with their equally powerful neighbors caused great destruction. The interior was reduced to a mass of ruins forming a mound upon which the architect Peruzzi built the Palazzo Savelli, another powerhouse Roman clan that somehow came into possession of the property in the 15th century. Over the ruined cavea (seating sections) Peruzzi laid out plush gardens for the Savellis. Today the rooms of the old Palazzo have been partitioned into small apartments where the third tier used to be. They are inhabited by low-income families whose laundry can be seen drying at the windows. Nevertheless, even in ruins, the Theater of Marcellus remains an imposing sight and site.
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Above and below: The Theater of Marcellus as it appears today. Jensens, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
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Around the year 2 B.C., Augustus had his architect design a two-tiered arcade adjacent to the Basilica Aemilia in the Forum. In this elegant structure there were numerous tabernae, i.e. small shops, vending an assortment of goods. This work he named for his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, who had recently come of age and were given the title of Consul. (By this time the emperor had reduced the consulship to an honorary office.) Each young man was also named Princeps Juventutis (Prince of the Youth).
Augustus was so impressed with the intelligence, character, and political savvy of each grandson that he adopted them with the aim that as his sons they would inherit a co-emperorship upon his passing. Sadly, though, they, like Marcellus, would die at a young age, in their early twenties, Gaius in A.D. 2 and Lucius two years later.
There is some confusion on exactly what was named for them – just the arcade, or that plus the basilica as well. Suetonius makes mention of porticum basilicamque Gai et Luci. At any rate all that is left of the arcade is this Latin inscription on massive travertine blocks:
I CAESAR AUGUSTI F DIVI N PRINCIPI IUVENTUTIS COS DESIG CUM ESSET ANN NAT XIIII AUG
SENATUS
To Lucius Caesar, son of Augustus, grandson of the Divine, Prince of the Youth, Consul-Designate when he was fourteen years old.
The Senate
Just two or three years after their untimely deaths, Augustus, still grieving, ordered the building of a modest sized Roman-style temple in far-off Gaul, in a town called, at the time, Nemausus (the modern Nimes in southern France).
This stately edifice he also dedicated to Gaius and Lucius. The attractive temple survives, virtually totally intact, to our time. It rests on a podium about ten feet high and boasts a graceful pediment and entablature and a facade of six Corinthian columns. While the dedicatory inscription is gone, a French scholar in 1758, by studying the pockmarks in the frieze and architrave that held the bronze lettering in place, was able to deduce the following:
To Gaius, son of Augustus, Consul To Lucius, son of Augustus, Consul designate, Princes of Youth.
(Note: The French of today for some strange reason call this memorial temple, Maison Carree which means “Square House” – strange, because it is neither square nor a house.)
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Maison Carrée in Nîmes, Gard, France. Krzysztof Golik, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons
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Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, Augustus never named anything for his only offspring, daughter Julia, who was the talk of the town. He was disgusted, nay appalled, by her reckless way of life and her promiscuity. This exception aside, however, it was still clear that with the long-reigning emperor (27 B.C – A.D. 14), family came first.
Cover Image, Top Left: Portico of Octavia Detail. MumblerJamie, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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A 39,600-year-old punctured bone fragment may have been used to pierce holes for tailored leather
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—A punctured bone fragment found at an Upper Paleolithic site in Gavà, Spain could have been used as a hide-piercing tool to make clothing and other leather works around 39,600 years ago, anthropologists say. Luc Doyon and colleagues suggest that the leather punch board, likely used by Aurignacians, precedes the arrival of eyed bone needles in Europe by around 15,000 years. Punctured bone artifacts discovered from the European early Upper Paleolithic period are thought to have been produced by Aurignacian hunter-gatherers, who used an array of tools to make jewelry, artwork, and other instruments. Puncture marks have typically been interpreted as decorations or notation systems, but few studies have explored other possible functions. Now, Doyon et al. have performed a series of experiments to demonstrate that the 39,600-year-old punctured bone fragment, found at Terrasses de la Riera dels Canyars in Gavà, Spain, was likely used as a leather punch board. To reproduce punctures observed on the 10-centimeter-long artifact, trained experimenters used various tools to apply pressure to Bos taurus short ribs under leather hides. This helped researchers to identify that burins were likely used as stitching chisels to prick the hides and, in so doing, puncture the bone underneath. After further analysis of the artifact’s punctures – some aligned and some randomly clustered – experimenters reproduced aligned, evenly-spaced punctures on the short ribs. After comparing these reproductions with the artifact, the researchers deduced that groups of punctures must have been made over different sessions, with some purposely aligned and equidistant to produce holes for stitching leather pieces together. “The evidence from Canyars indicates that an effective pricking technique was well established in Southern Europe at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic,” the authors write. “We argue that this innovation documents a previously unrecorded tipping point in cultural adaptation favoring modern-human niche expansion.”
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A 39,600-year-old leather punch board from Canyars, Gavà, Spain. Francesco d’Errico and Luc Doyon
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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release
*A 39,600-year-old leather punch board from Canyars, Gavà, Spain, Science Advances, 12-Apr-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.adg0834
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Archaeological sites at risk from coastal erosion on the Cyrenaican coast, Libya
PLOS—Archaeological sites along the Libyan shoreline are at risk of being damaged or lost due to increasing coastal erosion, according to a study published April 12, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kieran Westley and Julia Nikolaus of Ulster University, UK and colleagues.
The Cyrenaican coast of Eastern Libya, stretching from the Gulf of Sirte to the current Egypt-Libya border, has a long history of human occupation back to the Palaeolithic era, and it therefore hosts numerous important and often understudied archaeological sites. However, the coastline also experiences high rates of erosion which threatens to damage or even erase many of these important sites. Detailed assessments of coastal erosion and vulnerability of archaeological sites are available for other important coastlines, but not yet for this one.
This study combined historical and modern records of the Cyrenaican shoreline using aerial and satellite imagery and field observation to assess patterns of coastal erosion near important archaeological sites. Near the sites of Apollonia, Ptolemais, and Tocra, they identified extensive shoreline erosion and increasing rates of erosion in recent years, likely linked to human activities such as sand mining and urbanization. Their results show that current rates of coastal erosion are already a major problem for these sites and are likely to increase in the future with further human activities and rising sea levels due to climate change, putting these sites at risk of progressive damage and loss of valuable historical information.
The authors stress the need for detailed management and mitigation plans to protect these sites, as well as the need for increased awareness of the factors that exacerbate coastal erosion. They also urge further research to investigate other sites along this and other Mediterranean coastlines to assess the full extent to which our understanding of human history is threatened by coastal erosion.
The authors add: “The impact of erosion here is considerable and could get worse in the future. Our research highlights the critical need to support our Libyan colleagues in mitigating the damage to these endangered and irreplaceable heritage sites.”
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Recent drone image (2022) showing damage to archaeological structures at the ancient harbor of Apollonia (Eastern Libya) caused by coastal erosion. Saad Buyadem, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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Present-day erosion impacts at Apollonia. A) Erosion of the Roman road (decumanus) in front of the Byzantine installations. B) eroding edge in front of the Byzantine Installations and Roman bath. C) eroding edge in front of the insula. Also indicated is the stretch of backshore where undocumented buildings and mosaics are eroding out. D) Example of a mosaic floor exposed by backshore erosion (photos A and D: 2019, S. Buyadem; photos B and C: 2021, F. El-Gumati). Westley et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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Article Source: PLOS news release
*Westley K, Nikolaus J, Emrage A, Flemming N, Cooper A (2023) The impact of coastal erosion on the archaeology of the Cyrenaican coast of Eastern Libya. PLoS ONE 18(4): e0283703. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283703
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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Dairy foods helped ancient Tibetans thrive in one of Earth’s most inhospitable environments
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF GEOANTHROPOLOGY—The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “third pole”, or “roof of the world”, is one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. While positive natural selection at several genomic loci enabled early Tibetans to better adapt to high elevations, obtaining sufficient food from the resource-poor highlands would have remained a challenge.
Now, a new study in the journal Science Advances reveals that dairy was a key component of early human diets on the Tibetan Plateau. The study reports ancient proteins from the dental calculus of 40 human individuals from 15 sites across the interior plateau.
“We tried to include all the excavated individuals with sufficient calculus preservation from the study region,” states Li Tang, lead author of the study. “Our protein evidence shows that dairying was introduced onto the hinterland plateau by at least 3500 years ago,” states Prof. Hongliang Lu, corresponding author of this study.
Ancient protein evidence indicates that dairy products were consumed by diverse populations, including females and males, adults and children, as well as individuals from both elite and non-elite burial contexts. Additionally, prehistoric Tibetan highlanders made use of the dairy products of goats, sheep, and possibly cattle and yak. Early pastoralists in western Tibet seem to have had a preference for goat milk.
“The adoption of dairy pastoralism helped to revolutionize people’s ability to occupy much of the plateau, particularly the vast areas too extreme for crop cultivation,” says Prof. Nicole Boivin, senior author of the study.
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Tracing dairying in the deep past has long been a challenge for researchers. Traditionally, archaeologists analyzed the remains of animals and the interiors of food containers for evidence of dairying, however the ability of these sources to provide direct evidence of milk consumption is often limited.
“Palaeoproteomics is a new and powerful tool that allowed us to investigate Tibetan diets in unprecedented detail,” says coauthor Dr. Shevan Wilkin. “The analysis of proteins in ancient human dental calculus not only offers direct evidence of dietary intake, but also allows us to identify which species the milk came from.”
“We were excited to observe an incredibly clear pattern,” says Li Tang. “All our milk peptides came from ancient individuals in the western and northern steppes, where growing crops is extremely difficult. However, we did not detect any milk proteins from the southern-central and south-eastern valleys, where more farmable land is available.”
Surprisingly, all the individuals with evidence for milk consumption were recovered from sites higher than 3700 meters above sea level (masl); almost half were above 4000 masl, with the highest at the extreme altitude of 4654 masl.
“It is clear that dairying was crucial in supporting early pastoralist occupation of the highlands,” notes Prof. Shargan Wangdue. Li Tang concludes: “Ruminant animals could convert the energy locked in alpine pastures into nutritional milk and meat, and this fueled the expansion of human populations into some of the world’s most extreme environments.”
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Dental calculus of the highest altitude individual investigated in the study (cal. 601-758 CE) Li Tang
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Tibetan pastoralist in a winter pasture churning yak milk to make butter and cheese. Li Tang
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Map of samples studies in this article. Michelle O’Reilly and Dovydas Jurkenas
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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF GEOANTHROPOLOGY news release
*Palaeoproteomic evidence reveals dairying supported prehistoric occupation of the highland Tibetan Plateau, Science Advances, 12-Apr-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.adf0345
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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Protecting the cultural heritage of ancient bone artifacts is now possible.
UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA—An innovative method developed by an Italian team is emerging that will revolutionize the field of archaeology and radiocarbon dating and protect our cultural heritage. The researchers have used it with surprising results on archaeological bones, making the ‘invisible’ visible.
This important achievement-published in the journal Communications Chemistry of the Nature group-is the result of extensive research work coordinated by Professor Sahra Talamo, in which experts in the field of analytical chemistry from the University of Bologna and the University of Genoa collaborated.
The group has developed a new technique for analyzing archaeological bones that, for the first time, makes it possible to quantify and map at high resolution the presence of collagen, the invisible protein that is essential for making radiocarbon dates and thus obtaining new information on human evolution.
“Our results will offer significant advances for the study of human evolution,” says Talamo coauthor of the study and director of the Radiocarbon dating lab BRAVHO at the University of Bologna. “as we will be able to minimise the destruction of valuable bone material, which is under the protection and enhancement of European cultural heritage and thus allow us to contextualise the valuable object by providing an accurate calendar age.”
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Many of the rarest prehistoric bones found by archaeologists are enormously precious and are considered to be part of our cultural and historical patrimony. Bones can provide a great deal of information about ancient populations’ lives: what they ate, their reproductive habits, their diseases and the migrations they undertook. However, bones cannot give us all the information we so covet. Their potential to convey information is limited by how much collagen is preserved in them.
In order to combine the need to preserve the integrity of the artifacts as much as possible with the need to carry out radiocarbon analyses, the researchers therefore developed an innovative method that, thanks to a camera coupled with near-infrared, allows them to detect the average collagen content in the observed samples.
“We used imaging technology to quantify the presence of collagen in bone samples in a non-destructive way to select the most suitable samples (or sample regions) to be submitted to radiocarbon dating analysis,” says Cristina Malegori, first author of the article and researcher at Genoa University Department of Pharmacy. “Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (HSI) was used along with a chemometric model to create chemical images of the distribution of collagen in ancient bones. This model quantifies the collagen at every pixel and thus provides a chemical mapping of collagen content.”
It is extremely difficult, costly, and time-consuming to analyze all the bones present at one archaeological site for collagen preservation, most importantly, it would result in the destruction of valuable material. In fact, human fossils and/or bone artifacts are increasingly rarer and more precious over time. Because of the diagenetic alteration of collagen over time, large starting weights of Palaeolithic bones (≥ 500 mg bone material) are necessary to extract sufficient collagen for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating (minimum 1% yield). Moreover, many of the most precious archaeological bones are too small (< 200 mg of bone material) and/or too beautiful for sampling. Therefore, obtaining preliminary, non-destructive information about the distribution of collagen on a bone sample is crucial.
It is in this context that the technique described in this study really shines because it allows obtaining information both on the location and on the content of the collagen still present in a bone sample.
“The near-infrared hyperspectral imaging camera (NIR-HSI) used in the present study is a line-scan (push-broom) system that acquires chemical images in which, for every pixel, a full spectrum in the 1,000–2,500 nm spectral range (near infrared) is recorded,” says Giorgia Sciutto, co-author of the article and professor of environmental and cultural heritage chemistry at the University of Bologna. “NIR-HSI analysis is completely non-destructive. The time required for the analysis of a single bone sample is of few minutes and, therefore, the system can examine many samples in a single day to find those suitable for analysis, saving time and money and the unnecessary waste of valuable material, greatly reducing time, costs and destruction of valuable samples.”
This technique is expected to support the selection of samples to be submitted to radiocarbon analysis at many sites where previous attempts have not been possible because of poor preservation.
“This new technique allows not only selecting the best specimens but also choosing the sampling point in the selected ones based on the amount of collagen predicted,” says Paolo Oliveri co-author of the paper and professor at the Genoa University Department of Pharmacy. “This method helps to drastically reduce the number of samples destroyed for 14C analysis, and within the bone, it helps to avoid the selection of areas that may present a quantity of collagen not sufficient for the dating. This increases the preservation of precious archaeological materials.”
“The potential of the method proposed in the present study lies in the type and amount of information that the predictive model provides, addressing two fundamental and complementary questions for the characterization of collagen in bones: how much and where,” says Cristina Malegori, first author of the article.
Thus, this experimental approach can provide quantitative information related to the average collagen content present in the whole sample submitted for investigation. The examination can be performed not only in small and localized areas (as in single-point analysis), but it can also consider the entire surface of the sample, thus producing a higher and much more significant amount of data. In addition, combining the HSI system with PLS regression allowed, for the first time, on samples of ancient bones, not only to determine the overall collagen content but also to localize it at a high spatial resolution (about 30 um), obtaining quantitative chemical maps.
“As far as radiocarbon is concerned, we could strategically sample bones of high patrimonial value. For example, knowing the precise amount of collagen concentrated in a precise area of the bone allows us to cut only this portion,” says Talamo. “Moreover when the prediction of collagen shows that the bone was poorly preserved, we can decide to perform a soft 14C pretreatment to minimize collagen loss during the extraction”.
Overall, this innovative and incisive combination of NIR-HSI spectroscopy prescreening and the radiocarbon method provides, for the first time, detailed information about the presence of collagen on archaeological bones, reducing laboratory costs by dating only materials suitable for 14C and increasing the number of archaeological bones that can be preserved, and, therefore, available for future research.
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Cristina Malegori and Sahra Talamo at the Radiocarbon dating lab BRAVHO at the University of Bologna. University of Bologna
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Article Source: University of Bologna news release
*Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging to map collagen content in prehistoric bones for radiocarbon dating, Communications Chemistry, 11 April 2023.
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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Archaeology: Evidence of drug use during Bronze Age ceremonies
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS—An analysis of strands of human hair from a burial site in Menorca, Spain, indicates that ancient human civilizations used hallucinogenic drugs derived from plants, reports a new paper published in Scientific Reports. These findings are the first direct evidence of ancient drug use in Europe, which may have been used as part of ritualistic ceremonies.
Previous evidence of prehistoric drug use in Europe has been based on indirect evidence such as the detection of opium alkaloids in Bronze Age containers, the finding of remains of drug plants in ritualistic contexts, and the appearance of drug plants in artistic depictions.
Elisa Guerra-Doce and colleagues examined strands of hair from the Es Càrritx cave in Menorca, which was first occupied around 3,600 years ago, and contained a chamber used as a funeral space until around 2,800 years ago. Previous research suggests that around 210 individuals were interred in this chamber. However, strands of hair from only certain individuals were dyed red, placed in wooden and horn containers decorated with concentric circles, and removed to a separate sealed chamber further back in the cave. These hair strands date to approximately 3,000 years ago.
The authors used Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography and High Resolution Mass Spectroscopy to test for the presence of the alkaloids atropine, scopolamine, and ephedrine. Atropine and scopolamine are naturally found in the nightshade plant family, and can induce delirium, hallucinations, and altered sensory perception. Ephedrine is a stimulant derived from certain species of shrubs and pines, which can increase excitement, alertness, and physical activity. The authors detected scopolamine, ephedrine and atropine in three replicated hair samples.
The authors suggest that the presence of these alkaloids may have been due to consumption of some nightshade plants, such as mandrake (Mandragora autumnalis), henbane (Hyoscyamus albus) or thorn apple (Datura stramonium), and joint pine (Ephedra fragilis). The authors suggest that these drug plants may have been used as part of ritual ceremonies performed by a shaman. The concentric circles on the wooden containers may have depicted eyes and could have been a metaphor for inner vision related to a drug-induced altered state of consciousness. Due to cultural changes around 2,800 years ago, the authors speculate that the wooden containers were sealed in the cave chamber in order to preserve these ancient traditions.
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Article Source: A Scientific Reports news release
*Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age Menorca (Western Mediterranean) from human hair analysis, Scientific Reports, 6-Apr-2023. 10.1038/s41598-023-31064-2
Cover Image, Top Left: Menorca landscape, Shreib-Engel, Pixabay
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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A Sabaean Inscription on a Large Clay Jar Deciphered and Discovered Less Than 300 Meters from the Site of the Jerusalem Temple
Jerusalem, Israel – April 3, 2023 – In a new study published in Hebrew University’s Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, Dr. Daniel Vainstub deciphered a partially preserved inscription that was found on the neck of a large jar dated back to the time of King Solomon.
The jar was originally discovered together with the remains of six other large jars during excavations carried out in 2012 in the Ophel area south of the Temple Mt., led by the late Dr. Eilat Mazar from the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From the original inscription, only seven letters survived. Over the course of the last decade, more than ten researchers suggested various readings without reaching a consensus, but they agreed the inscription is written in Canaanite script, from which the ancient Hebrew script that was used during the time of the First Temple, was developed. In the study, Dr. Daniel Vainstub determined the script is “Ancient South Arabian,” the script that was used in the south-west part of the Arabian Peninsula (the Yemen region of today), where the Kingdom of Sheba was the dominant kingdom at that time.
Dr. Vainstub explains, “Deciphering the inscription on this jar teaches us not only about the presence of a speaker of Sabaean in Israel during the time of King Solomon, but also about the geopolitical relations system in our region at that time – especially in light of the place where the jar was discovered, an area known for also being the administrative center during the days of King Solomon. This is another testament to the extensive trade and cultural ties that existed between Israel under King Solomon and the Kingdom of Sheba.”
According to the new interpretation, the inscription on the jar reads, “[ ]shy l’dn 5,” means five “ šǝḥēlet,” referring to one of the four ingredients mentioned in the Bible (Exodus 30:34) required for the incense mixture. The “ šǝḥēlet ” was an essential ingredient in the incense that was burnt in the First and Second Temples and was called “tziporen” in Rabbinic literature. This indicates a clear connection between Jerusalem of the 10th century BCE (the days of the Kingdom of Solomon) and the Kingdom of Sheba. It appears that the pottery jar was produced around Jerusalem and the inscription on it was engraved before it was sent for firing by a speaker of Sabaean, who was involved in supplying the incense spices.
The Ophel site in the Archaeological Park at the foot of the southern wall, within the area of the Jerusalem Walls National Park, includes a trail that passes between 2,000-year-old mikvahs used by pilgrims to the Temple. This is also the area where an administrative center of the kingdom of King Solomon was located.
During the 10th century BCE, the Kingdom of Sheba thrived as a result of the cultivation and marketing of perfume and incense plants, with Ma’rib as its capital. They developed advanced irrigation methods for the fields growing the plants used to make perfumes and incense. Their language was a South Semitic one. King Solomon is described in the Bible as controlling the trade routes in the Negev, which Sabaean camel caravans carrying perfumes and incense plants passed through on their way to Mediterranean ports for export.
The initial excavation led by Dr. Eilat Mazar was funded by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman of New York, with assistance from Herbert W. Armstrong College in Oklahoma, USA, and the East Jerusalem Development Company.
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The 10th century BCE inscribed pithos jar fragment from the Ophel. Photo: Daniel Vainstub; Dr. Eilat Mazar, after Mazar 2015
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Trans-Arabian trade routes to the Mediterranean. Provided courtesy Shani Jaffe of FINN Partners
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About the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel’s leading academic and research institution. Serving some 24,000 students from 80 countries, it produces a third of Israel’s civilian research and is ranked 12th worldwide in biotechnology patent filings and commercial development. In 2022 Hebrew University was ranked at number 77 in the 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Ranking, making it the leading Israeli university in the world. Faculty and alumni of the Hebrew University have won eight Nobel Prizes and a Fields Medal. For more information about the Hebrew University, please visit http://new.huji.ac.il/en
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Article Source: News release provided by FINN Partners, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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The untold history of the horse in the American Plains, a new future for the world
CNRS—“Horses have been part of us since long before other cultures came to our lands, and we are a part of them,” states Chief Joe American Horse, a leader of the Oglala Lakota Oyate, traditional knowledge keeper, and co-author of the study. In 2018, at the instruction of her elder knowledge keepers and traditional leaders, Dr. Yvette Running Horse Collin contacted Prof Ludovic Orlando, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) scientist. She had completed her PhD, which focused on deconstructing the history of horses in the Americas. Up until that point, the field had been dominated by western academics, and Indigenous voices had been largely dismissed. She sought an opportunity to develop a research programme in which traditional Indigenous sciences could be brought forward and considered on equal footing with western science. For the Lakota, scientifically investigating the history of the Horse Nation in the Americas was a perfect starting point, as it would highlight the places of connection and disconnection between Western and Indigenous approaches. The elders were clear: working on the horse would provide a roadmap for learning how to combine the power of all scientific systems, traditional and western alike. And by doing so, eventually provide new solutions to the many challenges affecting people, communities and biodiversity around the globe. For now, as her ancestors before her, Dr. Running Horse Collin would follow the lead of the Horse Nation.
Part of the programme was to test a narrative that features in almost every single textbook on the history of the Americas: whether European historic records accurately captured the story of Indigenous people and horses across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. This narrative reflects the most popular chronicles of the Europeans who first established contact with Indigenous groups and contend a recent adoption of horses following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
Archaeological science has emerged as a powerful tool to understand the past, and, if done collaboratively, a strong technique for countering biases built into historical narratives. Over the last decade, Prof. Orlando and his team of geneticists have extracted the ancient DNA molecules still preserved in archeological remains to rewrite the history of the domestic horse. They have sequenced the genomes of several hundred horses that lived on the planet thousands of years ago, up to even 700,000 years ago. This technology could, thus, be reasonably expected to reveal the genetic makeup of horses that lived in the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains post-European contact.
To tackle this question, Prof. William Taylor, Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado and a large team of partners including archaeologists from the University of New Mexico and University of Oklahoma set out to track down archaeological horse bones from across the American West together with his Lakota, Comanche, Pawnee and Pueblo collaborators. Using both new and established practices from the archaeological sciences, the team identified evidence that horses were raised, fed, cared for, and ridden by Indigenous Peoples. An early date from a horse specimen from Paa’ko Pueblo in New Mexico provides evidence of Indigenous control of horses at the turn of the 17th century, and possibly earlier. Direct radiocarbon dating of discoveries ranging from southern Idaho to southwestern Wyoming and northern Kansas showed that horses were present across much of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains by the early 17th century, and conclusively before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Clearly, the most common narrative for the origin of the American horse needed correction.
The genome evidence demonstrated that the horses surveyed in this study for many Plains Nations were primarily of Iberian ancestry, but not directly related with those horses that inhabited the Americas in the Late Pleistocene more than 12,000 years ago. Likewise, they were not the descendants of Viking horses, despite Vikings establishing settlements on the American continent by 1021. Archaeological data show that these domestic horses were no longer in exclusive Spanish control by at least the early 1600s, and were integrated into Indigenous life-ways. Importantly, this earlier dispersal validates many traditional perspectives on the origin of the horse from project partners like the Comanche and Pawnee, who recognize the link between archaeological findings and oral traditions. Comanche Tribal Historian and study coauthor Jimmy Arterberry states: “These findings support and concur with Comanche oral tradition. Archaeological traces of our horse culture are invaluable assets that reveal a chronology in North American history, and are important to the survival of Indigenous cultures. They are our heritage, and merit honor through protection. They are sacred to the Comanche.”
Further work involving new archaeological excavations at sites dating to or even predating the 16th century, and additional sequencing, will help shed new light on other chapters of the human-horse story in the Americas. Pawnee archaeologist and study coauthor Carlton Shield Chief Gover says: “The archaeological science presented in our research further illustrates the necessity for meaningful and genuine collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities.”
The genome analyses did not just address the development of horsemanship within First Nations during the first stages of the American colonization. These analyses demonstrated that the once dominant ancestry found in the horse genome became increasingly diluted through time, gaining ancestry native from British bloodlines. Therefore, the changing landscape of colonial America was recorded in the horse genome: first mainly from Spanish sources, then primarily from British settlers.
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In the future, this team is committed to continue working on the history of the Horse Nation in the Americas to include the scientific methodologies inherent in Indigenous scientific systems, as well as a greater contribution regarding migratory patterns and the effects on the genome due to climate change. This study was critical in helping to bring Western and Indigenous scientists together so that authentic dialogue and exchange may begin.
The challenges that our modern world faces are immense. In these times of massive biodiversity crisis and global climate warming, the future of the planet is threatened. Indigenous Peoples have survived the chaos and destruction brought about by colonization, assimilation policies and genocide, and carry important knowledge and scientific approaches centered around sustainability. It is now, more than ever, time to repair history and create more inclusive conditions for co-designing strategies for a more sustainable future. Importantly, this study created a collaboration between western scientists and many Native Nations across the United States, from the Pueblo to the Pawnee, Wichita, Comanche, and Lakota. We expect to be joined by many more soon. “Our Horse Nation relatives have always brought us together and will continue to do so. Our horse societies are organized and ready. As this collaboration develops, we invite all Peoples of the Horse to join us. We call to you.” (Dr. Antonia Loretta Afraid of Bear-Cook, traditional knowledge keeper for the Oglala Lakota, a study co-author).
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Award (#1949305, #1949304, #1949305, and #1949283), Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (programmes HOPE and MethylRIDE), the CNRS and Université Paul Sabatier (International Research Program AnimalFarm), the French Government “Investissement d’Avenir” France Génomique (ANR-10-INBS-09), and the European Research Council (PEGASUS). All protocols for the transmission of sacred and traditional knowledge were followed, and research activities and results were endorsed by an Internal Review Board involving 10 Lakota Elder Knowledge Keepers, who now serve as the Board of Directors of Taku Škaŋ Škaŋ Wasakliyapi: Global Institute for Traditional Sciences (GIFTS).
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Horse and rider petroglyph at the Tolar site, located in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. This depiction was likely carved by ancestral Comanche or Shoshone people From Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies, AAAS, 30 March 2023. Pat Doak
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Wild horses on the American Great Plains. Pixabay
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Article Source: CNRS news release
*Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and Northern Rockies, Science, 30-Mar-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9691
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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A reconstruction of prehistoric temperatures for some of the oldest archaeological sites in North America
DESERT RESEARCH INSTITUTE—Scientists often look to the past for clues about how Earth’s landscapes might shift under a changing climate, and for insight into the migrations of human communities through time. A new study* offers both by providing, for the first time, a reconstruction of prehistoric temperatures for some of the first known North American settlements.
The study, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, uses new techniques to examine the past climate of Alaska’s Tanana Valley. With a temperature record that reaches back 14,000 years, researchers now have a glimpse into the environment that supported humans living at some of the continent’s oldest archaeological sites, where mammoth bones are preserved alongside evidence of human occupation. Reconstructing the past environment can help scientists understand the importance of the region for human migration into the Americas.
“When you think about what was happening in the Last Glacial Maximum, all these regions on Earth were super cold, with massive ice sheets, but this area was never fully glaciated,” says Jennifer Kielhofer, Ph.D., a paleoclimatologist at DRI and lead author of the study. “We’re hypothesizing that if this area was comparatively warm, maybe that would have been an attractive reason to come there and settle.”
Kielhofer conducted the research during her doctoral studies at the University of Arizona, and was attracted to the Alaska location because of the wealth of research expertise being focused on the area. She also saw an opportunity to contribute to scientific understanding of a part of the world that is particularly sensitive to global climate change.
“We have to look to the past to try to better constrain how these areas have responded previously,” she said, “and how they might respond in the future under climate scenarios that we predict.”
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Earlier research had relied on coarse temperature records by examining changes in vegetation and pollen. However, this information can only provide a general sense of whether a region was warming or cooling over time. To obtain a more precise history of temperatures, Kielhofer examined soil samples from the archeological sites. Using a technique known as brGDGT paleothermometry, she examined temperature records stored in bacteria to obtain a record of mean annual air temperature above freezing with a precision within about 2.8 degrees Celsius.
“Bacteria are everywhere,” she said. “That’s great because in areas where you might not have other means of recording or assessing past temperature, you have bacteria. They can preserve for millions of years, so it’s a great opportunity to look at pretty much anywhere on Earth.”
The results were surprising, she said, because many scientists had previously believed that the region experienced large swings in temperature, which may have contributed to the movement of early humans. But Kielhofer’s data showed that temperatures in the Tanana Valley remained fairly stable over time.
“The region wasn’t really responding to these global scale climate changes as we might expect,” she said. “Because temperatures are really stable through this record, we can’t necessarily use temperature as a way to explain changes in human occupation or adaptation through time, as scientists have previously tried to do.”
Kielhofer is now turning her attention to other historical records, like changes in aridity, that could help explain how conditions in this region influenced early human communities.
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Jennifer Kielhofer sampling for charcoal and biomarkers (GDGTs) at Keystone Dune in Alaska, one of the study sites as well as one of the older archaeological sites in the area (dating back ~13,000 years). Jennifer Kielhofer
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About DRI
The Desert Research Institute (DRI) is a recognized world leader in basic and applied environmental research. Committed to scientific excellence and integrity, DRI faculty, students who work alongside them, and staff have developed scientific knowledge and innovative technologies in research projects around the globe. Since 1959, DRI’s research has advanced scientific knowledge on topics ranging from humans’ impact on the environment to the environment’s impact on humans. DRI’s impactful science and inspiring solutions support Nevada’s diverse economy, provide science-based educational opportunities, and inform policymakers, business leaders, and community members. With campuses in Las Vegas and Reno, DRI serves as the non-profit research arm of the Nevada System of Higher Education. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu.
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Article Source: DESERT RESEARCH INSTITUTE news release.
*BrGDGT temperature reconstruction from interior Alaska: Assessing 14,000 years of deglacial to Holocene temperature variability and potential effects on early human settlement, Quaternary Science Reviews, 1-Mar-2023. 10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.107979
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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The “Stonehenge calendar” shown to be a modern construct
POLITECNICO DI MILANO—Stonehenge is an astonishingly complex monument, which attracts attention mostly for its spectacular megalithic circle and “horseshoe”, built around 2600 BC.
Over the years, several theories have been put forward about Stonehenge’s meaning and function. Today, however, archaeologists have a rather clear picture of this monument as a “place for the ancestors”, located within a complex ancient landscape which included several other elements.
Archaeoastronomy has a key role in this interpretation since Stonehenge exhibits an astronomical alignment to the sun which, due to the flatness of the horizon, refers both to the summer solstice sunrise and to the winter solstice sunset. This accounts for a symbolic interest of the builders in the solar cycle, most probably related to the connections between the afterlife and winter solstice in Neolithic societies
This is, of course, very far from saying that the monument was used as a giant calendrical device, as instead has been proposed in a new theory published in the renewed Archaeology Journal Antiquity. According to this theory, the monument represents a calendar based on 365 days per year divided into 12 months of 30 days plus five epagomenal days, with the addition of a leap year every four. This calendar is identical to the Alexandrian one, introduced more than two millennia later, at the end of the first century BC as a combination of the Julian calendar and the Egyptian civil calendar.
To justify this “calendar in stone”, the number of the days is obtained by multiplying the 30 sarsen lintels (probably) present in the original project by 12 and adding to 360 the number of the standing trilithons of the Horseshoe, which is five. The addition of a leap year every four is related to the number of the “station stones”, which is, indeed, four. This machinery was allegedly kept in operation using the solstice alignment of the axis and was supposedly taken from Egypt, much refining, however, the Egyptian calendar, which was of 365 days (the leap year correction was not present until Roman times).
This is the admittedly fascinating theory that has been subjected to a severe stress test by two renewed experts of Archaeoastronomy, Juan Antonio Belmonte (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain) and Giulio Magli (Politecnico of Milan). In their paper*, which is going to be published on Antiquity as well, the authors show that the theory is based on a series of forced interpretations of the astronomical connections of the monument, as well as on debatable numerology and unsupported analogies.
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First of all, astronomy. Although the solstice alignment is quite accurate, Magli and Belmonte show that the slow movement of the sun at the horizon in the days close to solstices makes it impossible to control the correct working of the alleged calendar, as the device (remember: composed by huge stones) should be able to distinguish positions as accurate as a few arc minutes, that is, less than 1/10 of one degree. So, while the existence of the axis does show interest in the solar cycle in a broad sense, it provides no proof whatsoever for inferring the number of days of the year conceived by the builders.
Second, is numerology. Attributing meanings to “numbers” in a monument is always a risky procedure. In this case, a “key number” of the alleged calendar, 12, is not recognizable anywhere, as well as any means of taking into account the additional epagomenal day every four years, while other “numbers” are simply ignored (for instance, the Stonehenge portal was made of two stones). Thus, the theory suffers also from the so-called “selection effect”, a procedure in which only the elements favorable to a desired interpretation are extracted from the material records.
Finally, cultural paragons. The first elaboration of the 365 plus 1-day calendar is documented in Egypt only two millennia later than Stonehenge (and entered into use further centuries later). Thus, even if the builders took the calendar from Egypt, they refined it on their own. In addition, they invented on their own also a building to control time, since nothing of this kind ever existed in ancient Egypt – probably the Egyptians reflected the drift of their 365-day
calendar through the seasons in their architecture but this is far different. Besides, a transfer and elaboration of notions with Egypt occurred around 2600 BC and has no archaeological basis.
All in all, the alleged “Neolithic” solar-precise Stonehenge calendar is shown to be a purely modern construct whose archaeoastronomical and calendrical bases are flawed.
As occurred many times in the past – for instance, for the claims (shown untenable by modern research) that Stonehenge was used to predict eclipses – the monument returns to its role of the silent witness of the sacred landscape of its builders, a role which – as Magli and Belmonte stress – does not take anything away from his extraordinary fascination and importance.
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he solstitial axis of Stonehenge viewed from the entrance. Juan Belmonte
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Article Source: POLITECNICO DI MILANO news release.
*Archaeoastronomy and the alleged ‘Stonehenge calendar’, Antiquity, 23-Mar-2023. 10.15184/aqy.2023.33
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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Ancient human DNA from the Tibetan Plateau shows Tibetan ancestry was shaped by a rich history
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Researchers have characterized the DNA of 89 ancient individuals from the Tibetan Plateau, some of whom lived as early as about 5,100 years ago, revealing population differences across time and space that helped to shape the unique gene pool of present-day Tibetans. The ancestry of the Tibetan Plateau is of interest to many researchers, including those seeking to understand the origins of many Tibetans’ genetic adaptations to the plateau’s harsh environments and high altitudes. One example is the EPAS1 allele carried by many Tibetans, which is likely an adaptation to lower oxygen levels found at high elevation and is thought to have originated from archaic humans known as Denisovans. This study* shows that frequencies of the EPAS1 allele increased over about the last 2,800 years on the Tibetan Plateau, with an especially sharp increase over about the past 700 years. Recent studies have explored the shared ancestry between present-day Tibetans and ancient Tibetans who lived along the Himalayan arc near Nepal as early as 3,400 years ago, but these analyses were limited in geographic and temporal scope. Now, Hongru Wang and colleagues have analyzed DNA from the remains of 89 ancient Tibetan individuals dating from about 5,100 to 100 years ago at 29 sites across the Tibetan Plateau. They identified stark genetic differences between populations occupying the northeastern, southeastern, and southern regions of the plateau as recently as about 2,500 years ago. Subsequent genetic shifts suggest that human migrations and interactions within and between highland and lowland populations may have influenced genetic mixing over time. “We show that the unique ancestry in present-day plateau populations can be found in ancient individuals across the entire Tibetan Plateau, extending as far back as 5,100 [years before present],” Wang et al. write. “The largest genetic shifts are caused by the mixture of populations from different regions of the plateau, potentially associated with large-scale political shifts related to the expansion and collapse of major state-level societies in historical times.”
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Tibetan Plateau composite image from NASA photos. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release.
*Human genetic history on the Tibetan Plateau in the last 5,100 years, Science Advances, 17-Mar-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.add5582
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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Cyprus’s copper deposits created one of the most important trade hubs in the Bronze Age
UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—The coveted metal copper and a sheltered location turned the Cypriot village of Hala Sultan Tekke into one of the most important trade hubs of the Late Bronze Age. This has been shown by excavations led by researchers from the University of Gothenburg. Their study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science confirms the importance of the Bronze Age city in the first period of international trade in the Mediterranean.
“We have found huge quantities of imported pottery in Hala Sultan Tekke, but also luxury goods made of gold, silver, ivory and semi-precious gemstones which show that the city’s production of copper was a trading commodity in high demand,” says Peter Fischer, emeritus professor at the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Gothenburg and the leader of the excavations.
The Swedish Cyprus Expedition is a research project that began in 1927 to map the island’s archaeological history. The most recent expedition led by Peter Fischer at Hala Sultan Tekke, near the modern-day city of Larnaca on the south coast of Cyprus, started in 2010 and has continued for 13 seasons. The excavations have shown that the city covered at least 25 hectares, 14 of which comprised its centre, surrounded by a city wall. The Expedition has also found objects from this period scattered over an even larger area.
“Our investigations and excavations show that Hala Sultan Tekke was larger than was previously thought, covering an area of some 25 to 50 hectares, which is a big city by that period’s standards. Usually, settlements at this time and in this area covered only a few hectares,” says Peter Fischer.
During the Bronze Age, Cyprus was the largest copper producer around the Mediterranean. This metal alloyed with tin formed the basis for making bronze which was then used for casting tools, weapons and jewellery before iron started being used.
“Remains in the city show extensive copper production in the form of smelting furnaces, cast moulds and slag. The ore from which the copper was extracted was brought into the city from mines in the nearby Troodos Mountains. The workshops produced a lot of soot and were placed in the north of the city so that the winds mainly from the south would blow the soot and the stench away from the city. Today, this type of production would be impossible, since the production process generates waste products such as arsenic, lead and cadmium, but at that time people did not know how dangerous the process was,” says Peter Fischer.
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Large quantities of imported goods
The central location of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean and a well-protected harbour created very favourable conditions for lively trade in Hala Sultan Tekke. Large quantities of imported goods in the form of pottery, jewellery and other luxury goods from neighbouring regions such as modern-day Greece, Türkiye, the Middle East and Egypt, as well as longer-distance imports from Sardinia, the Baltic Sea region, Afghanistan and India have been found. These finds show that the city was one of the largest trade hubs in the period 1500–1150 BC and was of great importance during the initial period of international trade in the area.
In addition to copper, highly sought-after purple-dyed textiles were also produced. The dye came from purple dye murex species from which the mucus that produced the purple dye was extracted. The city also produced and exported pottery with characteristic painted motifs of humans, animals and plants. The researchers refer to the artist behind these painted motifs as the ‘Hala Sultan Tekke painter’.
“The great thing about the many pottery finds is that we can assist our colleagues around the Mediterranean and beyond. No pottery has the same spread as the coveted Cypriot pottery during this period. By finding locally made pottery that we can date in the same layer as other imported pottery that was previously difficult to date, we can synchronise these and help colleagues date their finds,” says Peter Fischer.
The name of the Bronze Age city comes from the expedition having initially named the site after the mosque, Hala Sultan Tekke, which now stands close to the excavation site. Trade flourished in the city for almost 500 years, but like several other sophisticated Bronze Age civilisations around the Mediterranean, Hala Sultan Tekke collapsed just after 1200 BC. The prevailing hypothesis was that the ‘Sea Peoples’ invaded the eastern Mediterranean around this time, destroying its cities and bringing the Bronze Age civilisations to an end.
“In the past, it was thought that the ‘Sea Peoples’ were the sole explanation. Our research in recent years has given more nuance to this explanation. For example, there are now new interpretations of written sources from this period in Anatolia (modern-day Türkiye), Syria and Egypt, which tell of epidemics, famine, revolutions and acts of war by invading peoples. In addition, our investigations indicate that a deterioration in the climate was a contributing factor. All of this may have had a domino effect, that people in search of better living conditions moved from the central Mediterranean towards the south-east, thus coming into conflict with the cultures in modern-day Greece, on Cyprus and in Egypt,” concludes Peter Fischer.
The study entitled Interregional trade at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus: Analysis and chronology of imports is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X22003856
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Copper slag from one of the city’s workshops. Photograph by T. Bürge
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Imported goods from Sardinia (1), Italy (2), Crete (3), Greece (4), Türkiye (5), Israel (6), Egypt (7), Iraq (8), necklace with beads and a scarab (Ramesses II) from Egypt, Afghanistan and India (9) have all been found in Hala Sultan Tekke. Photographs T. Bürge
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Article Source: University of Gothenburg news release.
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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Uncovering the ritual past of an ancient stone monument in Saudi Arabia
PLOS—A comprehensive analysis of an archaeological site in Saudi Arabia sheds new light on mustatils—stone monuments from the Late Neolithic period thought to have been used for ritual purposes. Melissa Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, Perth, and colleagues, in conjunction with The Royal Commission for AlUla present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on March 15, 2023.
Built around 7,000 years ago, mustatils are rectangular, low-walled, stone structures that range from 20 to 600 meters in length. Researchers first discovered them in the 1970s, and more than 1,600 mustatils have now been discovered, primarily concentrated in northern Saudi Arabia.
Recent excavations in the city of AlUla suggest that mustatils were used for ritualistic purposes involving placement of animal offerings. Now, Kennedy and colleagues have conducted an extensive excavation at a mustatil located 55 east of AlUla. This mustatil is 140 meters long and is constructed from local sandstone.
The researchers’ analysis included identification of 260 fragments of animal skulls and horns, primarily from domestic cattle, as well as from domestic goats, gazelle, and small ruminants. Nearly all of these remains were clustered around a large upright stone interpreted to be a betyl. Radiocarbon dating suggested that the betyl is one of the oldest identified in the Arabian Peninsula, and the bones provide some of the earliest evidence for domestication of cattle in the northern Arabia.
This study also uncovered evidence for several phases of offerings at the mustatil, as well as interment of an adult male human, suggesting that the site may have been the destination of repeated pilgrimages.
Taking all the new data into consideration, the researchers suggest that ritualistic belief and economic factors were more closely intertwined for Neolithic people in northwest Arabia than previously thought, and that this entanglement was shared over a broad geographic area.
The authors add: “The ritual deposition of animal horns and upper cranial element within the mustatil suggests a profound intersection of belief and economic life-ways in the Late Neolithic of Northern Arabia. The incorporation of these two facets suggests a deeply rooted ideological entanglement, one which was shared over a vast geographic distance, indicating a far more interconnected landscape and culture than had previously been supposed for the Neolithic period in north-west Arabia.”
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Main architectural features of a mustatil. Kennedy et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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Spatial relationships between the main and secondary chamber. Kennedy et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release
*Kennedy M, Strolin L, McMahon J, Franklin D, Flavel A, Noble J, et al. (2023) Cult, herding, and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia: Excavations at a mustatil east of AlUla. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0281904. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281904
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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Stone flakes made by nut-cracking macaques resemble early human tools, challenging some assumptions in paleoanthropology
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Stone flakes made unintentionally by modern long-tailed wild macaques in Thailand (Macaca fascicularis) while cracking nuts strongly resemble those described as being made intentionally by early hominins more than one million years ago, according to a new analysis. Tomos Proffitt and colleagues’ findings* challenge archaeologists’ current characterization of the emergence of intentional tool production in our earliest human ancestors. Efforts to find evidence for the evolutionary uniqueness of humans from other primates often involve explorations of how and when our ancestors began intentionally producing tools. Ongoing studies into the origins of intentional tool production rely on a set of criteria to infer how the tools could have been made – such as the presence of similar repeated fracture patterns. However, modern primates have also been observed to use stone tools for nut cracking, digging, and other activities. The resemblance of some tools used by primates to early hominin tools has led many to speculate that similar behavior could have been a precursor to intentional tool production by hominins. To explore further, Proffitt et al. collected and analyzed 1,119 artifacts from 40 macaque nut-cracking locations on Ya Noi Island in Lobi Bay, Thailand, that resembled different stone flakes, fragments, hammerstones, and anvils. They compared these with Oldowan and Lomekwian artifacts previously recovered from sites in Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia which had been associated with intentional tool use by our ancestors as long as 3.3 million years ago. The researchers found that fracture patterns from modern macaque flakes fell within the same range as many of the prehistoric flakes, and that the former could replace up to 70% of Oldowan flakes before statistical differences could be observed. “The results of this study demonstrate that a fundamental reassessment of how we define and identify this uniquely hominin behavior in the archaeological record is still needed,” the researchers conclude.
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A sharp-edged flake accidentally produced by a long-tailed macaque during nut cracking. Proffitt et al, 2023; Technological Primates Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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Examples of sharp edged flakes produced unintentionally by long-tailed macaques. Proffitt et al, 2023; Technological Primates Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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Example of a long-tailed macaque using a stone tool to access food. Lydia V. Luncz
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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release
*Wild macaques challenge the origin of intentional tool production, Science Advances, 10-Mar-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.ade8159
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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The colors on these ancient pots hint at the power of an empire
FIELD MUSEUM—Color plays a huge role in our lives — the hues we wear and decorate with are a way for us to signal who we are, where we’re from, and what we care about. And it’s been that way for a long time. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, archaeologists compared the colors on pieces of ancient Peruvian pottery. They found that potters across the Wari empire all used the same rich black pigment to make ceramics used in rituals: a sign of the empire’s influence.
The Wari empire spread over Peru’s highlands and coastal areas from 600-1050 CE. “People sometimes think of the Inka as the first big empire in South America, but the Wari came first,” says Luis Muro Ynoñán, the study’s corresponding author and a research associate and former postdoctoral scientist at the Field Museum in Chicago.
The Wari didn’t leave behind a written record (or at least a system similar to the one we use now). “Since they didn’t use writing, material culture — things like pottery — would have been an important means for conveying social and political messages,” says Muro Ynoñán. “The visual impact of these objects would have been super powerful.” Even little details, like using the correct shade of a color, could help signify an object’s importance and legitimacy as a part of the empire.
“I remember seeing some of these Wari-influenced pots as an undergraduate archaeology student in Peru, they’re fascinating,” says Muro Ynoñán. “The rich black color on them is very distinctive, I’ve been obsessed with it for years.” Muro Ynoñán finally got to pursue his interest in the pigment in-depth during his postdoctoral position at the Field Museum.
He and his co-authors, including Donna Nash, an adjunct curator at the Field and associate professor and head of anthropology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, examined pottery from different regions under Wari influence, focusing on the chemical makeup of the black pigment used.
The exact formulation of pigments varied from site to site, but overall, there was one striking similarity: many of the Wari pots examined in the study used black pigment made from minerals containing the element manganese.
“Some of the sites, specifically in northern Peru,used a different recipe for black, using iron- and calcium-rich minerals, before the Wari arrived, but after the Wari took over, they switched to the manganese-based recipes,” says Muro Ynoñán. The shift makes the authors suspect that the Wari empire asserted some sort of “quality control” over the pottery produced in different regions, perhaps even supplying artisans with the “correct” black pigment. “In general, black minerals are relatively easy to obtain from the valleys we looked at,” says Muro Ynoñán. But just any old black mineral didn’t fit the official Wari look — instead, he thinks that artisans may have been supplied with the manganese-bearing minerals from the Wari capital to produce the right shade of black.
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The changes in hue are subtle, but Muro Ynoñán says that the symbolic meaning of using “Wari black” may have been very important. “In general in the Andean region, the color black is related to the ancestors, to the night, to the passage of time. In Wari times, the color was likely important for imposing a specific Wari ideology to the communities they conquered.”
While the colors on Wari pottery might indicate imperial control, the ceramics from different regions do maintain their own local character. “Local potters had a lot of flexibility in producing hybrid material culture, combining the Wari imperial style and decoration with their own,” says Muro Ynoñán. The ceramics were unified by the use of black pigments that were controlled and put in circulatation by the Wari empire through its imperial trade channels, but from there, artists could put their own spin on their work.
“One thing I hope people will take away from this study is that every beautiful artifact you see in a museum was made by real people who were very intelligent and possessed specific technologies to achieve their goals,” says Nash, co-author of the study. “Further, these people shared technologies and made choices. Artisans talked to each other and learned from each other, but sometimes multiple ways of doing things, such as creating black lines and decoration on a decorated pot, co-existed.These different approaches to the same problem may have persisted because of wealth or class differences, but it may have been that some people were willing to try new things, while others preferred their traditions.”
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A ceramic vessel from the Moche region of northern Peru with Wari-influenced pigments and decoration techniques. Photo courtesy of the Field Museum anthropology collections (FM 2959.171668)
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Article Source: Field Museum news release
*The Colors of the Empire: Assessing techno-decorative innovations in local, hybrid and intrusive ceramic pigments within the sphere of Wari cultural interaction, Peru, Journal of Archaeological Science, 7-Mar-2023.
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Analysis of ancient skeletons reveals earliest likely evidence for human horseback riding
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Studying the skeletal remains of five people who lived roughly 4,500 to 5,000 years ago in the ancient Yamnaya culture, now recovered from archaeological sites in modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, anthropologists have documented telltale signs of physical stress incurred by horseback riding – possibly marking the earliest known evidence for horses being used as transportation. The findings bridge an important gap between the first evidence for horse domestication (likely for meat and milk) about 5,500 years ago, and the first use of horse-drawn chariots roughly 4,000 years ago. The adoption of horses to traverse long distances shaped modern human history by accelerating exploration, trade, and warfare. But when this key transition first occurred has remained unclear. Bits, leads, and other riding equipment are scarce in ancient archaeological sites, and a lack of well-preserved domesticated horse skeletons has stymied the analysis of physical stresses to the animals. Martin Trautmann and colleagues instead looked for evidence in the skeletal remains of 24 individuals excavated from sites in southeastern Europe, noting that lifelong riding would likely take an observable toll on the human body. Building on the concept of “horsemanship syndrome,” a collection of symptomatic skeletal alterations likely to impact habitual horseback riders, the researchers developed a set of six specific indicators, including changes and/or damages to the femurs, vertebrae, and pelvic bones. Of the 24 individuals studied – most of Yamnaya origin, but some from adjacent cultures – nine showed at least four of these six characteristics, marking them as likely horseback riders. Of these, five individuals exhibited at least five of the six characteristics, with one well-preserved skeleton from Strejnicu, Romania, evincing all six symptoms. “Together, our findings provide a strong argument that horseback riding was already a common activity for some Yamnaya individuals as early as [~5,000 years ago],” Trautmann et al. write.
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Map of the Yamnaya and Afanasievo overall distribution in Eurasia, situation of approximately 5000 years ago.
Trautmann et al., Sci. Adv. 9, eade2451 (2023)
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View of the kurgan in Malomirovo during the archaeological excavation in June 2021 in the context of its wider landscape of Upper Thrace in Bulgaria. Michał Podsiadło
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Overview of the archaeological excavations of a Yamnaya kurgan in Malomirovo, Bulgaria. Michał Podsiadło
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Yamnaya grave (no. 17) of a horse rider discovered in Malomirovo, Bulgaria. He was a man of 65-75 years old when he died. Michał Podsiadło
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Detail of the horse rider discovered in Malomirovo, Bulgaria. He displays the typical burial custom of the Yamnaya. The radiocarbon date puts him into the 30th century BC. Michał Podsiadło
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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release.
*First Bio-Anthropological Evidence for Yamnaya Horsemanship, Science Advances, 3-Mar-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.ade2451
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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.
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