Archeologists Olle Hemdorff and Eva Thäte investigate finds of older artifacts in younger graves; Source: Science Daily; Credit: Image courtesy of The University of Stavanger

In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300. Archaeologist Olle Hemdorff at the University of Stavanger’s Museum of Archaeology was responsible for a series of excavations at Avaldsnes in 1993-94 and 2005-06.

“It became clear to us quite early that the grave had been plundered. The material in the grave had been messed up and now contained brick and porcelain fragments from younger layers of soil,” Hemdorff says.

Plundering of graves was very common in the 19th century and actually legal. It was not until the Cultural Heritage Act in 1905 made it a criminal offence for lay persons to excavate cultural monuments.

Axes and pearls

The German archaeologist Eva Thäte is in the spring of 2010 visiting researcher at the Museum of Archaeology. She is also a guest researcher at the University of Chester in England. The cooperation with Hemdorff started in 2003 when Thäte came to Stavanger in connection with a doctoral work on the recycling of ancient tombs. The latest research project carried out by the two archaeologists is on finds of older artifacts in younger graves. In the grave at Avaldsnes the researchers found seven handsome glass pearls in the dirt.

“In the late Iron Age glass was the most common material for making pearls, and therefore glass pearls are often found in men’s and women’s graves from this period. The women wore the pearls in a cord around the neck and brought more pearls with them into the grave than men did. The discovery of the seven pearls made us assume that it was a woman’s grave we investigated,” Hemdorff says.

“But then we suddenly found a stone axe. It was in the same layer of soil as some of the pearls. The axe is from the Stone Age and more than a thousand years older than the pearls! It is a so-called greenstone axe. All the other indicators suggested that the cairn was from the Iron Age and belonged to a buried woman. So why was there an old axe from the Stone Age in the grave?,” the archaeologist asks.

Not accidental

During the last three years documented discoveries of artifacts have been made that are typical for the Stone Age — marks from flint, flint fragments, quarts, axes, etc. in younger burial mounds.

“Unfortunately this documentation did not begin until the 1970s. Up to that date neither archeologists nor grave robbers were aware of these objects. They were just seen as unimportant and without archeological value. It is only now that we are beginning to have enough data for analysis, and we have made many enough discoveries of Stone Age artifacts in younger graves to say that they make a clear pattern,” Thäte says.

She points to a good example from Sogndal in Sogn og Fjordane where a stone axe was found in an untouched stone coffin from the 5th century.

“The axe must have been placed there intentionally. Other finds in Scandinavia make this pattern even clearer. In Halland in Sweden they have found a burial site consisting of almost one hundred graves from the late Iron Age where one has registered processed flint objects in nearly every grave,” Hemdorff says.

Starting with the finds around the grave at Avaldsnes and taking the other finds into account, it is not likely that the axe ended up in the grave by accident. Why was it deposited there?

Thunderstones from the sky

The researchers say that people back in the Iron Age had a conscious relationship to objects from earlier times that connected them to their past.

“People probably considered old objects as a heritage from their ancestors. Recycling of old burial mounds for new graves is an indication of this relationship. The idea was that the mounds were memories from a distant past, and written sources indicate that recycling of mounds had a double function. Apart from providing a grave for the dead they also legitimized property and rights. People asserted their control over an area by burying their family in a gravesite belonging to their ancestors,” Thäte explains.

The archeologists think that people in pre-history were superstitious and that the axe was deposited in the grave as a part of the burial ritual.

“People believed that the lightning created thunderstones and that individuals who owned such stones would not be hit by the lightening,” Hemdorff says.

The idea of a rock falling from the sky caused by lightening is known all over the world. It is certainly found in Roman times and it is connected to objects like meteors, flint stone axes and petrified sea urchins.

“According to folklore a flint axe might protect against lightening and function as a kind of charm,” Thäte says.

In Northern Europe the old idea of the thunder god Thor, who throws his hammer when lightning strikes, is common property. It was alive all the way up to the 19th century.

“Thor’s mission was to protect gods and people against evil and chaos and it was therefore believed that Thor’s rocks protected houses and people. Two things seem to be important when choosing thunderstones: The form had to be similar to an axe or a hammer, that is a ground stone or flint, or the stone had to have “flaming” properties, which flint and quarts have,” Hendorff says.

Phallus and fertility

“Both the form of the axe and the flint stones to make fire may be associated with fertility. Thor’s hammer is clearly linked to fertility and prosperity. The hammer is a phallus fertilizing the soil, which gives it apotropaic quality, i.e. it has the ability to protect against evil and accidents,” Thäte explains.

Since people imagined that thunderstones fell to the ground in connection with lightning, it is possible that the rocks incorporated some of the qualities of lightening or had the power to create a bright light.

“Here is a clear pattern once more. We find old artifacts made of flint in the younger burial mounds. Flint had a strong symbolic power. The stones created fire and were seen as important objects. They can also symbolize the power of lightning,” Hemdorff says.

The Avaldsnes axe

But now back to the axe at Avaldsnes and the question why it was in the plundered grave.

“If you consider how widespread the idea of thunderstones was all the way up to the 19th century, and how common superstition was, it is not unlikely that the grave robbers left a protective amulet to make up for their misdeed. After all they opened a grave and committed sacrilege. Maybe they hoped that the axe provided protection against the spirit of the dead and their ghosts,” Hemdorff says.

More excavations of graves and houses with unusual artifacts and comparing them to data from different places will probably yield an even clearer pattern.

Thunderstones are definitely of great archaeological value.

Source: Science Daily

(A) & (b) convey bones of a cave lion; Source: USA Today; Credit: JAS. Elsevier

In the current Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by Ruth Blasco of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, describes lion bones found at the Gran Dolina site in Sierra de Atapuerca. The cave contains hundreds of animal bones, largely red deer and horses, but also a few carnivores in rock layers dating to 250,000 to 350,000 years ago.

One set of lion bones stands out among the other carnivores like foxes and bears. “The relatively high occurrence of cutmarks on lion bones (11.76%) indicates an association between hominids (humans) and this predator,” says the study, adding, “cutmarks related to the skinning and defleshing are identified and the human use of bone marrow is documented by diagnostic elements of anthropogenic (man-made) breakage. All these evidences suggest that the lion was used for food.”

But did the cave diners hunt the lion, Panthera leo fossilis, a cave lion about seven feet long, considerably bigger than today’s African lions, or just pick up some roadkill? “The fact that no pathologies have been documented on the P. leo fossilis remains, which indicate possible diseases or injuries of a traumatic nature that make this predator vulnerable,” suggests that they hunted the big cat.

Even though early humans didn’t hunt lions often, they likely resided higher than the cats on the food chain, the team argues, concluding, “the hunting of this predator suggests that the hominids of the Middle Pleistocene are successful hunters able to face the large predators.”

Source: USA Today

The Tomb of Ptahme, which was discovered south of Cairo at Saqqara; Source: www.drhawass.com; Credit: Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)

The 3,300-year-old tomb is believed to belong to a mayor of the ancient capital of Memphis.

It was originally discovered by artefact hunters in the 19th Century, who then lost the tomb’s location.

The tomb was located by a team of Egyptian researchers after a five-year search and they are hopeful mummified remains are still inside.

Nile hunt carvings

The tomb belongs to Ptahmes, who was also army chief, overseer of the treasury and a royal scribe under the Pharaohs Seti I and his son Ramses II, during the 13th Century BC.

“Since 1885 the tomb has been covered in sand and no-one knew about it,” Professor Ola el-Aguizy of Cairo University said.

“It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb.”

The 70m-long tomb, located in the Saqarra necropolis, contains carvings depicting Ptahmes and his family hunting and fishing on the Nile River.

The team is still looking for the main chamber where it is believed the mummified remains and sarcophagus of the occupants may still remain.

Source: BBC News

On Friday, he presented his theory in the form of a new book at a seminar at the Theological Seminary in the northeastern Italian city of Vicenza.

“Actually it’s not a theory, it’s a reality. I’m sure of it, Anati told The Jerusalem Post by telephone from his home in Capo di Ponte. “My archeological discoveries at Har Karkom over many years and my close reading of the Bible leave me with no doubt that it is the real Mount Sinai. I’m now sure that Karkom is the real mountain of God.”

Is this the real Sinai? Image by Flickr user Jonathan Gopp

In 2001, Anati published the English edition of a book that was first issued in Italian two years earlier and titled The Riddle of Mount Sinai – Archaeological Discoveries at Har Karkom. In the book, he postulated that Karkom, 25 km. from the Ramon Crater, was probably the peak at which Moses received the Ten Commandments – and not the summit in southern Sinai where Santa Catarina (Saint Catherine’s Monastery) stands.

“I know this is revolutionary,” he conceded. “I’m not only changing the location, but I’m moving Mount Sinai to Israel, and I’m sure it will anger the Egyptians. But Israel should be proud of this. The Negev is empty and should be developed.”

“I’m also changing the date of the Exodus from Egypt to some 1,000 years earlier than previously thought,” he added. “I know this will drive everyone crazy. But I am right. I’m sure of it.”

Anati reasoned that if the account in the Book of Exodus was historically accurate, it must refer to the third millennium BCE – and more precisely to the period between 2200 and 2000 BCE.

Jewish tradition puts the Exodus around the year 1313 BCE. According to Catholic tradition, Helena of Constantinople – the mother of Emperor Constantine credited with finding the relics of Jesus’s cross – determined the location of Mount Sinai and ordered the construction of a chapel at the site (sometimes referred to as the Chapel of Saint Helen) in about 330 CE.

According to Anati, however, an abundance of archeological evidence showed that Mount Karkom had been a holy place for all desert peoples, and not just the Jews, which substantiated his case.

He said more than 1,200 finds at Karkom – including sanctuaries, altars, rock paintings and a large tablet resembling the Ten Commandments – indicated that it had been considered a sacred mountain in the Middle Bronze Age. In addition, he said, the topography of its plateau perfectly reflected that of the biblical Mount Sinai.

Finally, he concluded, the biblical tale clearly backed up his geographic argument.

“When the Children of Israel left Egypt, they reached the Arava. They couldn’t have been in Santa [Catarina], because it says in the Bible that they reached Nahal Tzin, and moved on to Hebron,” Anati said. “The whole story of receiving the Torah must have taken place in the Negev. The Children of Israel wandered in the north and not the south, in the Negev and not the Sinai.”

He was just as certain that the Holy See would officially sanction his stance, and that millions of Catholic pilgrims could soon be visiting Mount Karkom instead of Mount Sinai.

“Actually, they have already accepted my theory,” he said. “They are already organizing pilgrimages. There is already a plan, and I have meetings scheduled with theologians and others, including the Vatican pilgrimage office. They want to start pilgrimages to Karkom as soon as next year.”

Anati said he was aware that he had his detractors, especially among archeologists in Israel, several of whom were interviewed refuting his claims on a Channel 1 Mabat Sheni documentary aired on Wednesday night.

“I know there are all kinds of people – including professors – who resist my theory, and it’s natural that this occurs,” he said. “I urge them all to read my book and study the evidence before criticizing me.”

Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a world-renowned expert on the subject, said he could not accept Anati’s hypothesis.

“I do not see any connection between the third millennium BCE finds at Har Karkom and the Exodus story. The latter was put in writing not before the 7th or 6th centuries BCE, and as such depicts realities which are many centuries later than the finds of Har Karkom,” Finkelstein told the Post. “Roaming the desert with the Bible in one hand and the spade in the other is a 19th-century endeavor which has no place in modern scholarship.”

Anati said it had taken the Catholic Church several years to be persuaded by his argument, and recognition had been a slow process.

“About three-and-a-half years ago, I had a telephone call from the Vatican that a priest of high standing wanted to meet with me, and he arrived here with a driver. I live 500 km. from Rome, and he sat with me for a whole day and asked me a lot of questions,” Anati recalled.

“Then he disappeared, and after about a year, a group of theologians from the Catholic Church appeared and wanted to investigate the matter more deeply. Seven theologians sat here for the whole day, and I later met with them four times.

“Six months ago they spent four days with me at Karkom, and as a result of this, the Vatican publisher – Edizioni Messaggero Padova – asked me to write up my findings. I revised and updated my book, and they have now published it in Italian, changing the title to The Rediscovery of Mount Sinai.”

“Twenty years ago, I had a hunch that Har Karkom was the real Mount Sinai,” Anati said. “Three years ago I was convinced I was correct. Today I know I’m right.”

There was no official Vatican response to Anati’s claims, nor was there an immediate reaction from the Egyptians.

Anati was born in Florence in 1930 to Jewish parents, and soon after the establishment of Israel, he moved to Jerusalem and received a bachelor’s degree in archeology from the Hebrew University. He later became a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard and was awarded a doctorate at the Sorbonne.

Fluent in Hebrew, he taught prehistory at Tel Aviv University and conducted extensive research in the Negev.

Upon his return to Italy, he founded the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici in Capo di Ponte in 1964, and he remains its executive director today. It is believed to be the only institute in the world that specializes in prehistoric art.

Anati’s study of rock paintings in Valcamonica spurred UNESCO to include the alpine valley in its list of World Cultural Heritage sites.

[Article via JPost]

Skull Stw 53, that helped inspire the controversial new human-species designation; Source: National Geographic; Credit: Darren Curnoe

Though only fragmentary fossils from about six individuals have been found, upright-walking H. gautengensis is thought to have stood a squat three and a half feet (one meter) tall and weighed about 110 pounds (50 kilograms), according to Curnoe, an anthropologist at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Compared with modern humans, the new species had proportionally long arms, a projecting face somewhat like a chimp’s, larger teeth, and a smaller brain—though not too small for verbal communication.

“While it seems possible that Homo gautengensis had language,” Curnoe said via email, “it would have been much more rudimentary than ours, lacking the complex tones and lacking a grammar, as all human languages have.”

Human But Not Habilis?

Though it’s said to be the oldest named human species, H. gautengensis, or “Gauteng man,” appears too late in the evolutionary time line to be our direct ancestor, Curnoe believes.

“Large-bodied hominins like Homo erectus, which are likely to be our ancestors, have been found dating to the same period as [some] Homo gautengensis”—which suggests H. erectus’s predecessor arose earlier than H. gautengensis, he said. Hominins, or hominids, are humans plus human ancestral species and their close evolutionary relatives.

Furthermore, Curnoe noted, human fossils some 300,000 years older than H. gautengensis have been found in East Africa and have yet to be classified.

“I think, in all honesty,” he said, “we don’t yet know which species was our earliest direct ancestor in the human evolutionary line.”

Even though H. gautengensis isn’t likely in our direct lineage, the potential new species had humanlike characteristics, according to Curnoe.

The anthropologist said he’s detected 40 features that appear to separate the bipedal creature from the more apelike human ancestors called australopithecines. The traits include “a much smaller face, with narrow teeth, and much smaller chewing muscles and jaws, compared to the australopithecines,” he said.

For decades scientists—including Curnoe—have assigned the fossils now marked H. gautengensis to Homo habilis (“handy man”). Believed to have arisen between 2 million and 1.5 million years ago, H. habilis is widely considered the oldest named human species.

But, he said, “after 14 years of work on the South African Homo record, I decided that there was a strong case for recognizing and naming a new species”—one separate from, and older than, H. habilis.

For one thing, H. gautengensis individuals have smaller brains—perhaps only a third the size of our own. The new species also has smaller teeth and jaws than H. habilis, which may indicate a different diet and lifestyle, Curnoe said.

H. Gautengensis a Sometime Swinger?

While H. gautengensis likely lived mainly on the ground, there’s evidence the human ancestor spent some time in the trees, Curnoe said.

Fossil traces of “inner-ear organs of balance suggest that there may have been a mixture of lifestyles,” with “some individuals engaging in regular arboreal behavior and others perhaps much more terrestrial,” Curnoe said.

Today it isn’t unusual for gorillas and forest baboons to show such behavior, with females typically climbing trees more than males, the anthropologist noted.

Tools … and a Touch of Cannibalism?

The H. gautengensis fossils were found alongside basic stone tools and evidence of the use of fire. The most complete human ancestor skull from the sediments associated with H. gautengensis is a widely studied mid-1970s discovery labeled Stw 53.

The stone tools would have been used for “‘de-fleshing’ and cutting open bones to access marrow, and probably also for digging and [preparing] plant foods,” he said. “They might also have been used for processing animal hides.”

Cut marks on the Stw 53 skull hint at darker practices—”that it was de-fleshed, either for ritual burial or cannibalistic consumption.”

Along with the burned bones of a prehuman of the genus Paranthropus found in the same cave, the marks suggest that “hominin was certainly on the menu ofHomo gautengensis,” Curnoe added.

But H. gautengensis wasn’t exclusively carnivorous. The new species had teeth apparently adapted for eating plant material that looks to have required plenty of chewing, according to the study, soon to be published in the human-biology journal HOMO.

New “Missing Link” Broken Already?

The new species hails from a region called the Cradle of Humankind, which also produced the recently announced Australopithecus sediba, said to be the “key transitional species” between the apelike australopithecines and the first human species.

But the new study casts doubt on those findings, Curnoe said.

The newfound Australopithecus—with its tiny brain and long, apelike arms and wrists adapted to life in trees—“is much more primitive than Homo gautengensis” yet they both “lived at the same time and in the same place,” he said.

Assuming A. sediba co-existed with the new early human species, then A. sediba is “less likely to be the ancestor of humans” than its proponents say it is—it’s simply too late in the fossil record‚ Curnoe argued.

Unruly Evolutionary Tree

Paleontologist Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany agrees that H. gautengensis and A. sediba appear to contradict each other.

In fact, he noted, the A. sediba team had argued that Stw 53 is a more primitive skull than that of A. sediba. In other words, H. gautengensis may not be human at all but an apelike australopithecine.

Spoor, who wasn’t involved in either study, said experts have puzzled over Stw 53 for years.

For one thing, “there is not enough bone preserved to make an uncontroversial reconstruction” of the skull, Spoor said.

Furthermore, South African fossil hominins are much harder to date than those from East Africa, “where you have all these beautiful volcanic ash layers which you can date.”

The “bizarre specimen” doesn’t fit in with other known hominin skulls and may well signal a new species, he said—”a lot of people have suggested it.” But whether that new species is human or australopithecine will continue to be debated.

Study author Curnoe, for his part, said, “The real significance of the new species is that it shows just how complicated, how bushy, our evolutionary tree was.

“There were many different species living at the same time, and alongside our own species and ancestors, until really very recently.”

As for the fate of H. gautengensis, he said, “It is up to my colleagues to decide whether they are convinced that a new species is warranted and whether they will use [the designation] in their research.

“Ultimately, history will decide.”

Source: National Geographic

(Above) These were the many flint stones unearthed near Daraa in Southern Syria; Source: Global Arab Network

The pieces were discovered by the expedition of Damascus University in cooperation with the Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in the governorate. Head of the expedition Prof. Ahmad Diab said the findings prove that the Acholic and Mousteric civilizations existed in Horan, proved to be in light of the findings one of the most important and old-inhabited places in Syria.

He indicated that the area where the study was done enjoys lime characteristics and rain-fed agriculture, especially olives, in addition to its proximity to al-Zaidi Valley, one of the most important places of residence for the ancient men where dozens of caves and grottos are found.

He stressed the importance of cooperation between these missions and the Antiquities Directorates in the governorates to discover more on the history of the Syria, and thus exploring the civilizations prevalent thousand of years ago.

For his part, archeological researcher Yaser Abu Nokta said the Directorate works since 1999 to explore all the ancient places of residence in Horan area.

The expedition discovered a set of stone tools belonging to many pre-historic phases, especially the Paleolithic age, in addition to a number of pieces dating back to the Neolithic age, indicating that there is scarcity in the findings which date back to the Paleolithic era.

”Hence the importance of these missions in pursuing the discoveries of the directorate seven years ago at al-Maisari site, 4 km southeast of Daraa, one of the most important sites dating back to the Paleolithic age (8000 B.C.) and Neolithic age (500 B.C.),” Abu Nokta added.

Source: Global Arab Network 

One of the Island's Moai statues; Source: The Independent UK

But the first British archaeological expedition in nearly a century to the archipelago, whose giant artifacts have long baffled academics and explorers, has arrived at a conclusion which threatens to overturn a 50-year-old consensus about the role played by the island’s ancient road system.

The team, from London and Manchester, travelled to the island off Chile to examine the toppled minimalist statues which researchers have long believed were abandoned on the roadside during failed attempts to haul them from inland quarries to their final vantage points overlooking the coast. There are about 1,000 statues, most on platforms on the island’s perimeter, with others inland in an apparently random fashion.

The theory about these inland rock effigies, which are known as moai and weigh up to 86 tons each, was first outlined in 1958 by the Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdhal, who suggested that the ancient Polynesians simply left the broken statues beside the track and they served no spiritual purpose.

But evidence from the researchers, from University College London (UCL) and Manchester University, has upset this convention after hi-tech equipment discovered that, far from being the detritus of clumsy construction workers, each of the tumbled statues had a stone platform and would have had pride of place on the road system as part of a religious avenue.

The discovery confirms the findings of the last British archaeologist to work on the island, Katherine Routledge, in 1914, and suggests that rather than serving solely as a transportation route for coast-bound statues, the system of tracks criss-crossing the archipelago had a more complex role.

Researchers have long assumed that the quarry in an extinct volcano, Rano Raraku, where the statues were carved, was merely a workplace from which the roads fanned out to the coastal sites. The latest findings show that the volcano was in fact also a sacred site.

Dr Sue Hamilton, of UCL, said: “Ever since Heyerdhal, it has been assumed that the roads were used for transportation and little else. But what we know now is that the roads very much had a ceremonial function and the quarry was where the islanders would go because it was a sacred centre.

“The statues by the roadside were not abandoned. They had individual platforms and faced in towards the road. They ended up on the ground after falling over in the intervening centuries but we think it is beyond doubt that they intended to stand where they were found. Volcano cones were considered as points of entry to the underworld by the ancient inhabitants of the island. It seems that the volcano was a holy place. It was the birthplace of the statues and people would come to it rather like a cathedral.”

The British team say that as the roads approach Rano Raraku, the statues become more frequent, suggesting they form the climax of a processional route to the volcano.

The inhabitants of Easter Island, carved their figures between 1200 and 1500AD. The tallest statue, named Paro, is almost 10m high and weighs 75 tonnes. Several expeditions have tried to re-create their transport, using wooden rollers and timber A-frames. But Dr Hamilton said: “If you just focus on one part of the story of Rapa Nui [the tribal name for Easter Island], then you will miss the wider history. We will not get the answers to how the statues were moved; we need to consider them in the context of their landscape and its spiritual dimension.”

Source: The Independent UK

A Statue of Ajax; Could the tomb be the final resting place of his niece or Could the tomb of an ancient princess, the daughter of King Teukros of Salamis?; Source: www.terraspirit.com/archives/2005/04/

But whether a tomb recently uncovered on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus contains the bones and booty of a close relative of a Trojan war hero straight from the pages of Homer, or will just yield better evidence for understanding the rituals and lives of ancient Greeks, is yet to be revealed.

Construction workers in the eastern coastal town of Paralimni, popular with tourists, literally stumbled onto a rare unlooted tomb dating back to the ancient world, when they were digging up the roadside to lay new paving stones in the “Fig Tree Bay” area.

“The ground just gave way,” said Andreas Evangelou, said the mayor of the once sleepy fishing village.

Beneath the road’s surface, a burial chamber, untouched by looters was awakened from thousands of years of slumber, and will now give experts the opportunity to piece together a more accurate picture of the life and rituals of the ancients.

“It’s a usual tomb found in the area of Protaras, which is unlooted. We don’t know yet what it is, the only unique thing is that it is unlooted, which may give us a better understanding of their life and rituals during that period,” said Maria Hadjicosti, the director of Cyprus’s Antiquities Department.

At least four clay coffins (sarcophagi) were found, along with the usual offerings of pottery and glassware, accompanying the dead to the next life. At least one of the clay coffins is adorned with floral motifs.

“It looks like it was in continual use because there are four sarcophagi with their remains,” Evangelou said.

Local press on the east Mediterranean island have carried wild claims that the tomb belongs to an ancient princess, the daughter of King Teukros of Salamis. Salamis was once the capital of Cyprus’s 10 city kingdoms.

Legend has it that the king — whose brother was Ajax and uncle was the Trojan King Priam — ordered that his daughter be buried along with her golden throne and chariot at the point where the sun meets the sea.

Cypriot experts don’t share the local speculation on the tomb’s relationship with the figures of Greek mythology.

“It is impossible to connect the content of this tomb with ancient sources,” Hadjicosti said.

According to Evangelou, it is likely that this is not the only burial site in the area.

“Personally, I believe that this area is full of tombs and ancient relics, and it looks like this legend has a basis,” Evangelou said.

Plans are now underway to share this glimpse into the past with visitors.

“We want to create something similar to that outside the Acropolis museum in Athens, with a glass pavement,” Evangelou said.

On a darker note, the mayor said an old wives’ tales says the person who uncovers the princess’s grave site will come to a sticky end.

Source: The Vancouver Sun

The pyramid was discovered at Huaca Colorada, which translates as ‘coloured hill’. Excavation leader Professor Edward Swenson, of the University of Toronto, describes how he suspected that the area may be archaeologically significant. “I knew it was more than a natural hill – this was modified.”

Swenson’s hunch paid off. With the pyramid so far only partially uncovered, archaeologists have already made remarkable discoveries. “Our biggest surprise was that at the top of this pyramid construction we found elite residences”, said Prof Swenson, who added that it is very unusual to find pyramids used in this way. The Moche are known to have used pyramids for burials and ritual activity rather than everyday living.

The living complex would have housed no more than 25 people, and was complete with patios, a kitchen, and stands for ‘paica’ – large vessels for storing water and corn beer. The team also identified a bin used to hold guinea pigs: “The preservation was so good that we actually came across guinea pig coprolites (faeces).”

Several murals covered the corridors at the pyramid’s summit. The best-preserved of these depicts a Moche warrior – who Swenson describes as looking “like a Smurf” – carrying a club. Other murals include a depiction of what appears to be a cactus with two mountain peaks and a rainbow, and a representation of two litter-bearers carrying a person.

Evidence of ritual sacrifice was also discovered at the site. The skeletons of three adolescent girls, and body parts belonging to four other individuals, were found on a platform at the top of the pyramid. The girls were buried with beads around their neck and their feet were close together, suggesting that they had been bound. Charring on the girls’ knees indicate that their bodies were subject to “ritualistic burning.”

This evidence raises the possibility that the girls were sacrificed as part of a ritual, something not uncommon among the Moche. However physical anthropologists examining the skeletons could find no evidence of trauma. This means the girls either died naturally or were killed in such a way that no evidence was left on their bones. “It’s possible they were sacrificed but we don’t know,” adds Prof Swenson.

To the south of the pyramid the team found a large number of copper artefacts including spatulas, knives, smelting receptacles and ornaments. “I’ve never found such a high quantity of copper,” says Swenson. “The power of these elites could very much have been grounded in control of copper production.”

Huaca Colorada is near the coast of Peru where copper is scarce, so the site’s rulers would have had to trade with people living in the mountains, at least 200km to the east. Swenson speculates that the rulers “may have been considered lords – but lords of a particular kind – in transforming ore into finished products”. Alternatively, says Swenson, there could have been a “corporation of co-operating but high status practitioners.”

Huaca Colorada appears to be undefended. Swenson said the team found “no walls, no sling-stones… unlike many of the sites built on the coastal hills.” The area surrounding the settlement was mostly flat, and would have offered little resistance from invaders. There was certainly warfare in the Moche world, but perhaps, for some unknown reason, Huaca Colorada and its pyramid were off-limits to invaders. “It’s kind of like (the) open city of Rome in World War II,” says Swenson. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”

Excavation work continues at the site, and researchers will conduct a GPR survey on the pyramid this summer to determine its size.

Source: The Independent UK

There are so many archaeological developments being made that we can’t keep up with them all. So we want your help…

If you’ve read about or have anything interesting to say whether it be about a discovery, a theory, or even something more general, we want to hear from you. You could become a regular writer for the site, write one off articles, or just tip us off when you hear about something.

So whether you are a student, an established archaeologist, or just somebody with an interest, we want to hear from you.

So email us at presentthepast@gmail.com or fill out the form below. We look forward to hearing what you have to say!

From all in the Present the Past team (something you could soon be part of!)