Ancient Civilization Collapsed After Cutting Key Trees

November 02, 2009

From today’s Discovery News story on the Nazca people:

We have important lessons to learn from this ancient civilisation, which exposed itself to floods after chopping down thousand year old trees in order to make way for agriculture.

Best known for carving in the Peruvian desert hundreds of geometric lines and images of animals and birds that are fully visible from the air, the Nazca slid into oblivion by the time the Inca Empire rose to dominate the Andes.

"It was not just that they were hit by a huge mega El Niño in about AD 500, but that they had already cleared their forests of huarango, a tree that lives in highly arid zones and stabilizes the soil with some of the deepest roots of any tree known," Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, told Discovery News.

Basically, the Nazca could have survived the devastating El Nino floods had they kept their forests alive. Without the huarango trees to cushion that major event, the Nazca land was soon turned into an empty desert.

A similar scenario threatens Peru as few remaining pockets of old-growth huarango trees on the south coast are being cleared by illegal charcoal burning.

Want to know more about the remarkable huarango tree and the Nazca land? Just watch this video:

Amelia Earhart Eaten By Coconut Crabs?

October 25, 2009

As a new biopic about legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart launches onto movie theater screens this weekend, speculations about her mysterious disappearance over the Pacific on July 2, 1937 have resurged.

One of the most plausible theories comes from researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft (TIGHAR).

For years TIGHAR experts have been searching Nikumaroro, an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, for evidence of Earhart.

A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR would suggest that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island's smooth, flat coral reef.

According to TIGHAR, who is set to embark on a new $500,000 Nikumaroro expedition next summer, the two became castaways.

Abandoned on a desert island where temperatures often exceed 100 degrees, even in the shade, Earhart and Noonan likely eventually succumbed to any number of causes, including injury and infection, food poisoning from toxic fish, or simply dehydration.

The coconut crabs' great pincers would have done the rest, likely removing some of the last physical traces of this pioneering aviatrix.

"If Amelia died on Nikumaroro, her body was eaten by crabs. That's pretty much a given,” Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR’s executive director, told Archaeorama News.

The largest land-living anthropod in the world, the coconut crab, or Birgus latro, is famous for being able to crack a coconut with its great pincers. Nikumaroro is indeed home to a large population of coconut crabs and other land crabs of all size.

The following is a chilling fictional account of Amelia's death on this tiny coral atoll by Tom King, TIGHAR's chief archaeologist. Although entirely imagined, King's account (taken from his book "Thirteen Bones") is consistent with TIGHAR's archaeological findings.

Prologue: Nikumaroro – 13th October, 1937

The face of death was purple.

With beady red eyes on stalks, a dark, shiny lump between them that resembled a nose but wasn’t, wiggling feelers on top, a bulbous body trail­ing along behind.

“Bigger than my head,” she thought mildly, and shifted her eyes – aware of the effort – to examine the creature’s huge, battered pincers.

The giant crab – purplish-black, she decided – sidled out of her field of vision, clattering over the rubbly ground. She tried to keep it in sight, but found she couldn’t lift or turn her head.

Decided she didn’t need to.

“Going for my gut,” she thought, with relentless practicality.

Smaller crabs, clattering in a different key, dragging the pilfered sea shells in which they lived, were already nibbling at her legs and arms. Tiny ones too, hardly bigger than insects, but so many of them, so very many. She no longer felt them as more than an itch.

Hermit crabs, she thought fleetingly, eating a hermit. Alive.

Was she alive?

The ground seemed to be. Everything around where she lay, by the cold remains of her fire, seemed to pulsate with crabs.

So intent on their business. Eating her.

Alive, she thought, turning the word over in her mind. What was it to be alive, and how did it differ to be dead?

And which was she, now, under this tree, on this island, covered in crabs?

Alive, she decided, if barely so. And certainly – her brain began replay­ing it – she had been alive.

The memories, fragments, glimpses, fluttered across her dimming con­sciousness. Banking through canyons of cloud, skirting rain squalls and thunderstorms, watching the farms and roads and oceans, jungles and deserts pass under her wings. Seeing the great cities rising up on the hori­zon – San Francisco, New York, Mexico City.

The freedom she had felt, the sheer fierce joy of it, would have brought tears to her eyes, but she was far too dehydrated to produce them.

With an almost academic curiosity, she wondered what was killing her – besides the crabs.

Dehydration, of course, but something had made her too sick to move around and find water, and had brought on the explosive diarrhea that had left her so drained, weak, delirious. It was good the delirium had passed. Or had it? It didn’t matter.

Had it been the fish? The pretty little fish, caught on the retreating tide in the pools she had blocked off with the window screen from the ship­wreck? Cooked on the coals, torn apart by hand? They had tasted all right. Or the bird, caught by hand, plucked and cooked? It had been a fishy tast­ing thing, but why would it have made her sick? The baby turtles? The canned food from the pile near the shipwreck?

Or was it her infected foot? She couldn’t feel it now, but it had been swollen and horribly painful at times, ever since she had cut it on the way down here from the other end of the island. Thank goodness for Fred’s shoe when the foot got too big to fit in her own.

Her mind flickered. What would dying bring? For a moment she felt fear, but with a familiar act of will she put it away. She found it replaced by regret, especially for Mommie. Wished she could speak with her one last time, reassure her.

George would see to it, though; George had a way, and he was kind....

And he cared so for her life’s work, her story. She wondered vaguely who, if anyone, would find its last chapter, the scribbled pages stuffed in Fred’s sextant box. The last words marked in big block letters with pieces of dried-up rouge from her compact, after her pencil had gone missing.

Fred’s sextant box. For what he called his “preventer” – the nautical sextant tricked out with a bubble level to use in the air. She could almost see his face, his wry smile. Wondered if he would stay buried in the grave she had scraped out with her hands and a piece of wood. Or would the crabs get him, too?

With a sigh – had she sighed? Was she breathing? — she put it all aside, let herself sink away into her surroundings. The coolness of the coral gravel after the heat of the day. The darkening sky beyond the glowing green-gold leaves. The boom of the surf, unseen but so near. The squabbling cries of birds settling for the night, the vaguely felt nibbling of the crabs. A light misting of rain as a small shower passed over.

Another adventure.

The clouds were parting, and the sky was endless and glowing.

Her body’s last act was to smile.

“Wheels up,” she whispered. 

Excerpt from Thirteen Bones, by Tom King

Photo: courtesy of TIGHAR

Fingerprint Points To New Leonardo Da Vinci's Work

October 14, 2009

Is this chalk, pen and ink drawing made on animal skin a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci?

Leading scholars seem to have little doubt about the attribution. With her an elaborated hairstyle and dress, the aristocratic young girl in profile is almost certainly a work by the Renaissance master.

Amazingly, the portrait appears to have Leonardo’s fingerprint on it (just click here for the full story)

The news has gained worldwide attention. Indeed, if the experts are correct, the drawing will be the first major work by Leonardo Da Vinci to be identified for 100 years.

However, the attribution to Leonardo was already made a year ago by Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where the artist was born in 1452.

Vezzosi, who has extensively worked on the master’s fingerprints, published the portrait as a Leonardo in his book Leonardo Infinito, rechristening the picture as "Nuptial Profile Of A Young Lady."

"The attribution was made after a rigorous examination, which took into consideration artistic, historic, and stylistic aspects," Vezzosi told Archaeorama News.

The portrait will go on display next March at a show curated by Vezzosi.  Called And There Was Light: The Masters of the Renaissance Seen in a New Light, the exhibition will be held in the Eriksbergshallen, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Photo: courtesy of Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci

Buried Coins Speak Of Population Declines in Ancient Rome

October 06, 2009

Buried Roman coins that citizens hid to protect their savings in times of instability, indicate that during the 1st century B.C the population of ancient Rome was smaller than sometimes suggested.

The approximate population size of the late Roman Republic in the first century B.C., a time that marked the assassination of Julius Caesar and the fall of the Roman Republic, remain the subject of intense debate.

Depending on who historians believe was counted in the early Imperial censuses (adult males or the entire citizenry including women and children), the Italian population either declined or more than doubled during that period.

In an article published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Connecticut theoretical biologist Peter Turchin and Stanford University ancient historian Walter Scheidel attempt to answer the population question by mapping out the times when the coins were buried.

"In times of violence, people tend to hide their valuables, which are later recovered unless the owners had been killed or driven away. Thus, the temporal distribution of unrecovered coin hoards is an excellent proxy for the intensity of internal warfare," the researchers wrote.

Basically, more stashes means a dropping population, due to the greater frequency of violence.

Turchin and Scheidel developed their mathematical model using census data of the period before 100 BC, when Roman population history is relatively uncontroversial.

Indeed, the model’s trajectory successfully captured major demographic trends during that period, including the short-lived population increase before the Second Punic War, demographic contraction during the war, and sustained population growth in the second century BC.

The researchers then tested the model using coin hoard data after 100 BC, and found that the trajectory mirrored a declining population.

"Judging by the number of hoards found during the first century BC, this period was as calamitous as the war with Hannibal. Actually it was even worse, because there was not just one, but two large clumps of hoards. It is very difficult to imagine how a population could grow during a period of such violence, and the model provides a precise quantitative statement of this," Turchin said in a statement.

Photo: Denarius of Augustus,17 B.C. Used by permission of James Pickering. http://jp29.org 

Nero's Dining Room Found

September 29, 2009

Archaeologists in Rome announced today the discovery  of what they believe to be the remains of emperor Nero’s dining room.

Known as "coenatio rotunda", the circular room was found by French archaeologist Francoise Villedieu in the Domus Aurea (“Golden House”), the emperor’s sumptuous residence on the Palatine Hill.

Dating to the 1st century AD, the room has a diameter of over 50 feet (16 meters) and is 33 foot (10 meter) high.

It was supported by a 13 foot (4 meter) wide pillar, which was connected to the perimetral walls by a series of arches.

The room, whose structure is unprecedented, matches a description by the ancient historian Suetonius, who described Nero’s dining room as a circular, rotating, wooden-floored platform.

According to Suetonius, the platform rotated day and night to imitate the Earth's movement.

Here is a slide show of the room’s remains. 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).

VIDEO: The New Inscribed Finds from the Valley of the Kings

September 21, 2009

In  Zahi Hawass in the Valley of the Kigns: Part1,  Dr. Zahi Hawass talked about the possibility of new discoveries in  the Valley of the Kings.

In the second part,  Dr. Hawass finds new evidence about the lives of the workmen who built the tombs. 

"One very interesting object we found is a piece of limestone that shows the plan of a tomb, sketched by a workman over 3000 years ago. Another piece bears an inscription containing the title weret hemet netjer, which means the “great god’s wife.” The title is of an unknown queen, Tiy. We hope to find more evidence of this queen through our work here," Dr. Hawass said.

Dr. Hawass' team also found new clues about the destruction of Hatshepsut’s monuments after the female pharaoh's death:

"On a piece of pottery, we found two cartouches next to each other that make a very interesting combination. One was of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh and one was of Thutmose III, her successor. It has long been thought that when he came to the throne, Thutmose III gave an order to destroy Hatshepsut’s monuments. This piece shows that that idea may not be right, and now it seems more likely that the destruction happened around the end of Thutmose III’s reign, when his son Amenhotep II succeeded him. The damage was likely caused by people who did not like to see a female as pharaoh," Dr. Hawass concluded.

Here is the video (keep watching until after the video credits).

Italian Police Recover Priceless Ancient Jar

September 17, 2009

Italian police have recovered a priceless protocorinthian jar during an investigation on objects illegally dug up from archaeological sites in Emilia Romagna.

Used for holding lotions such as ointments and perfumed oils, the 9 cm tall jar dates to the 7th century BC and is decorated in black figures.

“It is indeed an extraordinary finding. The female head is unique as well as the jar’s decoration. It might represent an epic fight, and this is extremely rare in such objects,” archaeologist Maria Grazia Maioli said.

The precious jar will go on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Ferrara.

Here are some more pictures and details of the tiny "balsamario" (ointment container). Just click on the images to zoom.

Photos: courtesy of Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell'Emilia Romagna

VIDEO: KV64 To Be Discovered By An All Egyptian Team

September 14, 2009

In this new video, Dr. Zahi Hawass talks about the possibility of new discoveries in  the Valley of the Kings:

"I disagree with people who believe that nothing more can be discovered in the Valley. And I'm saying now that KV64 is going to be discovered. KV64 is going to be discovered by the Egyptian team for the first time in the Valley of the Kings," he said.

Will KV64 be the tomb of Ramesses VIII? 

For a transcription of this video, just visit Heritage-Key.com.

"Giza Cave" Controversy Continues

September 10, 2009

Dr. Zahi Hawass,  Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has just entered the  "Giza cave" debate. 

In a blog posting on his website, complete with pictures, he debunks Collins' claim that a massive cave system lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza and clearly states that that "there is no underground cave complex at this site." 

Dr. Hawass' firm statement prompted the immediate reaction of British explorer Andrew Collins and Egyptological researcher Nigel Skinner-Simpson, who claim to have rediscovered the entrance to a cave system explored by Henry Salt and Giovanni Caviglia in 1817.

Using the official statements,  I attempted to create a sort of three voice, round table debate, so that everybody can try to draw conclusions on their own considering the various points of controversy.

Since this three voice debate is based on excerpts from the official statements, I strongly recommend to read these statements in their entirety. 

Here is Dr. Hawass's blog posting, and here is Collins and Skinner-Simpson's official response. For sure this is not the end of the story.

The debate begins with Dr. Hawass posting a satellite image that indicates the precise location in the plateau’s northern cliff-face of the rock-cut tomb (named by Collins and Skinner-Simpson "Tomb of the Birds") from which the caves are claimed to extend.
Dr. Hawass mentions a book called Porter and Moss: A Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings, which contains information about all the sites in Egypt.

Dr. Hawass: If you consult this resource, it will tell you that this “cave” is a rock-cut tomb that was found and opened in 1816-1817 by Henry Salt. Salt was the British consul in Egypt, not an archaeologist, who worked with Giovanni Caviglia to discover this tomb. When they explored it, they called it a catacomb because it contains some tunnels and corridors cut deep into the rock. Anyone who enters this tomb may feel they are in a maze corridor because of the multiple tunnels, and it seems more than its 35 meters long. Henry Salt and Caviglia noticed that the structure was similar to catacombs known from the Graeco-Roman Period. Years later, Howard Vyse and John Shae Perring came to examine the rock cut tomb. It has also recently been re-explored by my office, the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Collins: Dr Hawass is wrong here. He is not taking into account the existence of the natural caves, which exit the tomb for at least the 100-120 meters, and arguably the “several hundred yards” that Salt reported that he and Caviglia reached before coming upon the four spacious chambers. Remember also that Caviglia journeyed “300 feet further” in one direction, and that clearly they never reached the end of the tunnels, which arguably extend even further beneath the pyramid field.

Skinner-Simpson: Dr. Hawass mentions the standard reference work Porter and Moss and says it contains information on all the sites in Egypt and what has been found. I was of course aware of this work... It is a work I refer to constantly and it was my first port of call years ago when I first wanted to know more about the tomb. I would be most grateful if Dr. Hawass could cite a full reference as to where in this volume it mentions Salt’s discovery of the rock-cut tomb, as I have never been able to find any mention of it.

Dr. Hawass: Andrew Collins and Nigel Skinner-Simpson came to Egypt in order to rediscover the tomb. They thought that they were the first to fully explore the tomb although it had been found almost two centuries ago and has been explored and reported by many scholars.

Collins: If such reports do exist, then we would be more than happy to receive copies, and update our findings and conclusions accordingly...It would be naïve to imply that we were the first to “rediscover the tomb”, as it is clearly visible in the northern face of the plateau’s Moqattam formation. Moreover, we openly acknowledge that Salt and Caviglia in 1817, and Vyse and Perring in 1837. We simply came here to check whether the tomb did indeed lead into a system of natural caves.

Dr. Hawass: "This rock-cut tomb is about 150 meters from my excavation in the western field and extends from north to south with the entrance in the north. About 3.2 meters high, the entrance leads south into the front hall, shaped like an inverted T. From there two halls are visible, one to the right and one to the left. The left leads to a big room cut into the rock, about 6 meters long, which contained Latin inscriptions on the ceiling, showing that this tomb has been opened throughout the ages. To the right there is another square hole cut into the rock, which leads to a descending passage filled with sand, and contains pottery sherds, bones and other artifacts. There are other passageways cut into the rock from the main corridors, but these are short tunnels.

Collins: Dr Hawass’s statement that we have simply become confused by the maze-like layout of the tomb, and in doing so have labelled it a cave complex is simply not correct. Firstly, the tomb itself is relatively basic in its construction. After entry via a massive, deep-cut façade, you come upon a double lobed anteroom, with two worn, square-cut pillars. This leads you into a north-south corridor, at the rear of which is a raised area cut out of the living rock, with an east-west altar or bed-like platform carved out of the back wall. On the left before you reach the raised area is a large room, as described by Dr Hawass, and on the right is a small opening in the rock into a large cave chamber, which Dr Hawass refers to as “leading to a descending passage.” Although entirely natural, the room has been partially hewn to give it a more rectilinear appearance. A large natural cave compartment can be found in its northwest corner, while a small hole on the south side of this enormous compartment leads into a cave tunnel that we travelled for some considerable distance. It is here that Salt and Caviglia, and arguably even Vyse and Perring, came in the early nineteenth century. There is no confusion here, we entered a natural cave system that permeates the limestone bedrock of the plateau’s Moqattam formation.

Dr. Hawass: It can be clearly shown that this tomb has been entered recently due to finds of modern debris and gypsum plaster coating the walls, as well as the modern lighting found in one of the chambers. Also, this tomb is known to have been used as a storeroom by George Reisner during his excavations at Giza in the 1910’s to 1920’s.

Skinner-Simpson: Mr. Collins and I were in no doubt that the front part of the tomb has been visited in modern times for the reasons cited by Dr. Hawass. What was in doubt and the cause of our interest was the extent to which the rear or "cave" section of the tomb has been examined in modern times given the extremely unpleasant environment within, and that there appears to be a possible continuation at the furthest point reached.

Dr. Hawass: My academic opinion, based on the offical report, is that this is likely a catacomb cut during the Graeco-Roman Period that was used for the burial of sacred animals, similar to the catacombs at Saqqara and Tuna el-Gebel.

Collins: I agree that the site was indeed the focus of a local bird cult, and it might even be the lost raptor cemetery known to have existed at Giza, and alluded to in the book Divine Creatures by Dr Salima Ikram (2005). Such bird cults flourished initially during the Late Period, and continued to expand during Graeco-Roman times...Even if the tomb was constructed in Graeco-Roman times, there is no reason to conclude that the natural caves were not previously accessible to the outside world.

Dr. Hawass: These burials of sacred animals are well known in Egyptological literature, and were made for the purpose of offering to the gods, they have nothing to do with the idea of a lost civilization or other unscientific ideas that people come up with and circulate on the Internet.

Collins: We are quite aware of the purpose of bird cemeteries, and would not use this, or the existence of the caves, to prove the existence of a lost civilization. What I will state, however, is that the caves perhaps form part of an interconnected cave system that GPR work has suggested exist in the eastern part of the plateau (see Abbas et al, 2006), and that the “several hundred yards” travelled by Salt and Caviglia has to have taken them somewhere. It is my suspicion that the underlying northwest-southeast orientation of the plateau’s Moqattam formation will have directed them into the vicinity of the Second Pyramid, where the four chambers Salt and Caviglia entered, along with the “labyrinthick” passages that continued into the darkness, might still await discovery.

Dr. Hawass: I hope people who wish to learn more about the Giza tombs will consult academic sources, for example books published by scholars such as myself and not rely on unsupported Internet accounts.

Photo: Giza caves?  copyright:  Andrew and Sue Collins, 2009

Photos: Colossal Apollo Statue Unearthed In Turkey

September 08, 2009

A colossal statue of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, music and poetry, has emerged in southwestern Turkey.

Split in two huge marble fragments, divided along the bust and the lower part of the sculpture, the 1st century A.D. statue was unearthed at the World Heritage Site of Hierapolis, now called Pamukkale.

Standing at more than four meters (13 feet) in height, the newly discovered statue, which is missing the head and the arms, might have been one of the most impressive sights in the city.

As shown in these pictures, the bust  depicts the god wearing a wonderfully draped tunic. The cloth has a transparency effect to reveal mighty muscles. Just click here for the full story.

Photo: courtesy Francesco D'Andria