No Etruscan Link to Modern Tuscans

July 16, 2009

A few days ago I reported on the discovery in Tuscany of a lotion that is over 2000 years old, left almost intact in the cosmetic case of an aristocratic Etruscan woman (that's what I call an anti-ageing cream).

Her name was Thana Presnti Plecunia Umranalisa. But don't look for any of her descendants in Tuscany.

Researchers at the Universities of Florence, Ferrara, Pisa, Venice and Parma established that modern Tuscans show no genetic relationship to the Etruscans who occupied the area during the Bronze Age.

The research team compared DNA from the remains of Etruscans, Medieval Tuscans -- those who lived between the 10th and 15th centuries -- and people living in the region today.

While there was a clear genetic link between Medieval Tuscans and the current population, no link could be found between modern Tuscans and the Etruscans.

"Some people have hypothesized that the most ancient DNA sequences, those from the Etruscan era, could contain errors or have been contaminated, but tests conducted with new methods exclude this,'' said David Caramelli of Florence University and Guido Barbujani of Ferrara University.

The researchers believe that the structure of the Tuscan population underwent important demographic changes in the first millennium before Christ.

"Immigration and forced migration have diluted the Etruscan genetic inheritance so much as to make it difficult to recognise," they said.

The scientific data does not necessarily mean that the Etruscans died out.

Teams from Florence and Ferrara Universities are working to identify whether traces of the Etruscans' genetic inheritance may still exist in people living in isolated locations in the region.

Race To Preserve The World’s Oldest Submerged Town

July 09, 2009

The world's oldest submerged town is about to give up its secrets, according to a statement by the University of Nottingham, UK.

Laying in three to four metres of water off the coast of southern Laconia in Greece, the ancient town of Pavlopetri dates from at least 2800 BC.

A thriving harbour town where the inhabitants conducted local and long distance trade throughout the Mediterranean - its sandy and well-protected bay would have been ideal for beaching Bronze Age ships - Pavlopetri is now at risk from treasure-seeking tourists and boats.

Indeed, the submerged buildings, courtyards, streets, tombs and graves, lie just off a sandy stretch of beach close to an area popular with holiday makers and campers.

Underwater archaeologist Jon Henderson, from the University of Nottingham, will be the first archaeologist to have official access to the site in 40 years.

The survey will be carried out using equipment originally developed for the military and offshore oilfield market.

Henderson's team will carry out a detailed millimeter accurate digital underwater survey of the site using an acoustic scanner. The equipment can produce photo-realistic, three dimensional digital surveys of seabed features and underwater structures to millimetre accuracy in a matter of minutes.

Henderson will publish his research in 2014, following four fieldwork seasons of underwater survey and excavation.

Photo: courtesy of University of Nottingham.

New Discoveries at Saqqara

June 30, 2009

Egyptian archaeologists carrying routine conservation work at the southern side of Saqqara’s step pyramid have stumbled upon what is believed to be a deep hole full of the remains of animals and birds.

The team has also unearthed a large quantity of golden fragments. These may have been used by the ancient Egyptians of the Late Period to decorate wooden sarcophagi or to cover cartonnage.

Thirty granite blocks were also discovered, each weighing five tons. According to Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the blocks belonged to the granite sarcophagus that once housed Djoser’s wooden sarcophagus - the final resting place of the king’s mummy.

While cleaning the internal corridors of the pyramid, the mission has also found limestone blocks bearing the names of King Djoser's daughters, as well as wooden instruments, remains of wooden statues, bone fragments, the remains of a mummy, and different sizes of clay vessels.

Here is a slide show of the discovery. To fully appreciate it, just choose the fullscreen mode on the player's menu bar (click on the pictures to advance to the next slide).

Do You Remember The Time?

June 27, 2009

Maybe you think there has been too much Michael Jackson coverage already, but I could not resist posting this 1992 video.

Directed by John Singleton, and featuring an all-star cast, "Do You Remember the Time?" is set against an ancient Egyptian backdrop. The King of Pop serenades an Egyptian Queen (Somali former model Iman) in front of a pharoah (Eddie Murphy) and a bare chested announcer (Magic Johnson).

At the end, he disappears from the chasing guards and turns into dust.

Perhaps inspired by the ancient Egyptian quest for immortality, Jackson admitted he wanted that song -- and the entire “Dangerous” album -- to live forever.

“I wanted to do an album that was like Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite,” he said in a 1992 interview. “So that in a thousand years from now, people would still be listening to it. Something that would live forever.”

Blue Parthenon

June 26, 2009

The Parthenon Marbles again. A new imaging technique developed by the British Museum has found that the Elgin Marbles were originally coated with shades of blue (here is the full story).

Although scholars have long suspected that the Parthenon was once brightly colored, no evidence has previously been found to support this belief. Now the new study finally confirms that Athens' most sacred shrine was brigthly colored.

The splash of color in the Parthenon was not exception in antiquity. Last year, an intriguing exhibition called Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity clearly showed that antique marble sculpture was not white, but colored.

Resulting from a 25 year research by an international team of of scholars led by Vinzenz Brinkmann, head of the Collection of Antiques of the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt, Germany, the exhibition reproduced more than 20 copies of famous ancient Greek marble statues and sculptures in their true colors of blue, red, green and yellow.

Here is a  slide show from that exhibit. To fully appreciate it, just choose the full screen mode on the player's menu bar.

The New Acropolis Museum

June 19, 2009

One of the oldest international cultural disputes, the battle over the Parthenon Marbles, is taking a new twist as the new Acropolis Museum officially opens tomorrow.

Housed in a striking modern building situated at the foot of the Acropolis, the 130 million-euro ($181 million) museum is Greece’s answer to the British argument that there is nowhere in Greece to house the Marbles. The 17 figures and 56 panels were chiseled off in 1801 by Lord Elgin from a giant frieze that once decorated the Parthenon.

Greece has just rejected an offer from the British Museum to return a section of the Parthenon Marbles on a three-month loan.

Antonis Samaras, the Greek culture minister, said the deal would have meant acknowledging the British Museum as the legal owner.

Should the Parthenon Marbles be returned to Athens? Here is what the twitter community says about the dispute:

Photo: Rossella Lorenzi

A plague of snakes

June 15, 2009

Speaking of Iraq, classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor has emailed me about an interesting ancient link to a news story from the southern province of Nasiriyah.

There, an unprecedented plague of snakes is driving people to leave their land.

According to Mayor, the mass migration of snakes helps explain a passage in Herodotus (4.105, 5th century BC Greek historian), about a tribe called the Neurians. Their story was thought to be folklore.

Herodotus referred that the Neurians, who lived north of the Black Sea, "had been forced to leave their homeland beacuse a great number of snakes which suddenly appeared in their territory, and continued assailing them from the north," in the 6th century BC.

"Finally, under the great pressure and stress from the onslaught of snakes, the Neurians left and settled in lands farther east," Herodotus wrote.

Indeed, the land the Neurians left behind became known as Ophioussa, "Snake-Land."

The Neurians also claimed that they turned into "werewolves" for a few days each year. Herodotus was dubious about their claim; modern historians interpret this Neurian tale as a garbled description of a religious ritual.

Mayor writes: “The plague of invading snakes was thought to be a story that the Neurians made up to justify their invasion of the territory of the neighboring tribe. But the recent plague of snakes in southern Iraq, caused by drought, now suggests that the Neurians' story of the infestation of migrating snakes was a real natural phenomenon, a historical event in the history of the tribe.

In southern Iraq today, the snake plague is due to depletion of Euphrates wetlands due to dams and irrigation further north. In antiquity, the snakes migrated en masse from the north, due to drought conditions brought about by natual causes.

Yet another example of information related by Herodotus--once pooh-poohed by skeptics--turning out to have a basis in fact after all.”

Italy Puts Iraqi Treasures Online

June 09, 2009

The treasures of Baghdad's National Museum, which basically represent 6,000 years of Mesopotamian history, are now just a click away.

Looted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Baghdad's museum partially reopened in February after six years.
Italy contributed €1 million ($1.4 million) and provided expert staff to help restore the museum. The country will also help Iraq create a new police unit to fight trafficking of stolen works.

Viewable in Arabic, English, and Italian, the virtual museum makes its most important artifacts accessible to everyone. Visitors can "walk" through eight virtual halls and see works from the prehistoric to the Islamic periods, while video clips reconstruct the history of Iraq’s main cities.

Many are the treasures on display. In the Sumerian hall, look for the Warka Mask, a marble head of a woman from Uruk dated to 3,400-3,100 BC.

In the Assirian hall, don't miss the colossal limestone statues of human-headed, winged bulls called lamassu. Dating to the eight and ninth centuries BC, they guarded the ancient cities of Nimrud on the River Tigris and Dur Sharrukin, modern-day Khorsabad.

Visitors can also rotate the artworks to get a full, 360 degree view.

To enter the Virtual Museum of Iraq, just click here

US President Barack Obama tours the Pyramids

June 05, 2009

"It was amazing to meet President Obama."

This is today' s update of my "Facebook friend" Dr. Zahi Hawass, the chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

And here's a video of the event.

Digging Out Sharks Teeth

May 29, 2009

You never know what you'll find when you dig.

Amateur paleontologists have discovered that some three million years ago, eel-like sharks snaked through the Chianti, the region that now supports Tuscany's finest vineyards.

Indeed, hundreds of fossilized teeth belonging to primitive shark-like creatures have been uncovered near the village of Castelnuovo Berardenga, not far from Siena.

The teeth turned out to belong to Chlamydoselachus lawleyi, a species which strongly resembles the living frilled shark Chlamydoselachus anguineus.

Along with the Chlamydoselachus shark teeth, the team from the Mineralogy and Paleontology Group of Scandicci unearthed other fossils which included otoliths (ear stones which in fish play a role in hearing and balance) and teeth from other deep-water sharks.

According to Adrienne Mayor, a classical folklorist who authored "The First Fossil Hunters," a book which explores the connection between Greek and Roman myths and the fossil beds around the Mediterranean, “these fossil shark teeth and fish earbones (otoliths) were collected by ancient Romans for medicine--and to neutralize poison assassination attempts.”

Indeed, calcium in fossils can absorb arsenic.

To read the full story, just click here

_{Picture courtesy of Franco Cigala Fulgosi}