Posts Tagged ‘ancient’
Bronze Age boat replica doesn’t sink! (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
The hand-crafted replica of a 4000-year-old sewn-plank boat was successfully launched into the waters of Falmouth Harbour Wednesday. At noon, she was officially christened Morgawr, “sea monster” in Cornish, and before a crowd of onlookers, she was guided into the bay.
Carrying a crew of 18 paddlers plus a coxswain, the oak plank boat put together with yew twigs, moss, tallow and beeswax, managed to not sink during two 500-meter (1640 feet) trial runs. The team who spent 11 months building the boat is in seventh heaven.
“I’m so happy with the responsiveness of the boat. We always ...
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Ancient shoe-filled jar found in Luxor temple (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
There were no coins stuffed into these shoes. The survival of seven leather shoes for 2000 years was the great treasure in and of itself. They were discovered in 2004 in a jar placed between two mudbrick walls in the mortuary temple of King Amenhotep II at Luxor. Amenhotep II ruled from 1427 to 1401 B.C., but stratigraphic evidence and dating of the shoes indicate they were placed in the temple around 2000 years ago, during the Ptolemaic period.
There are three pairs of shoes, two of them in children’s sizes, and one pair of adult shoes. The seventh ...
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Bronze Age sewn-plank boat replica ready to launch (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
A project that began in April 2012 to recreate a Bronze Age sewn-plank boat using Bronze Age tools is about to face its final trial: when the boat is launched from Falmouth Harbour in Cornwall at noon on Wednesday, March 6th, will it actually float? It’s almost 50 feet long and weighs approximately five tons, and it is literally stitched together with yew twigs. Nails hadn’t been invented yet in Britain 4,000 years ago, so there are none to be found on this boat.
The construction process alone has been a voyage of discovery. A team of 30 volunteers — ...
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Lod Mosaic at Penn Museum in last US stop (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Three panels of the huge and breathtakingly beautiful 4th century A.D. Roman mosaic unearthed in Lod, Israel, in 1996, is now on display at Penn Museum in Philadelphia, the last chance for US audiences to see the masterpiece before it leaves the country. The mosaic began its tour of the US in New York City in 2010. Since then it’s been to San Francisco, Chicago, and Columbus, Ohio. After the Penn exhibit closes on May 12th, the mosaic panels will travel to the Louvre in Paris until August 19th, and then they go home to be reunited with the rest ...
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2,200-year-old warrior’s grave found in Russia (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
In the summer of 2004, the Krasnodar regional museum near the village of Mezmay in the Central Caucasus was notified of a site that had been looted on a large scale. Staffers reconnoitered the area and found an ancient necropolis disfigured by 100 pits dug by looters. Upon inspection of the spoil heaps (material discarded by looters), experts found artifacts of archaeological significance like iron spear-heads, two complete bronze helmets in pieces, an iron mace in the shape of a Tree of Life and a fragment from a gold torque.
The discoveries spurred systematic excavation of the one-acre necropolis. Archaeologists ...
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Dense cluster of 35 pyramids found in Sudan (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Researchers have discovered the remains of 35 pyramids clustered together in surprisingly close quarters in the archaeological site of Sedeinga on the left bank of the Nile in Sudan. The entire site is huge, covering more than 30 hectares, and has a range of monuments from the temple of Queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III, built in the second half of the 14th century B.C. to a 10th century A.D. Christian church.
In Amenhotep’s day, Sedeinga was in the Egyptian colony of Nubia but it became part of the independent Kingdom of Kush after the collapse of Egypt’s New Kingdom ...
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Traprain Law silver dish digitally reconstructed (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Traprain Law, a hill of volcanic rock in East Lothian, Scotland, looms ferociously over the surrounding plain making it an ideal location for a fort. Excavations have found evidence of dense settlement and defensive ramparts going back to 1000 B.C. In the first century A.D. it was occupied by a tribe the Romans called the Votadini (Gododdin in ancient British) who used it from about 40 A.D. certainly until about 400 A.D., with a short break around the end of the 2nd century when Romans went deeper into Scotland and built the Antonine Wall only to pull back to Hadrian’s ...
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Lion Man figurine gets new pieces, older date (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
In late August 1939, geologist Otto Völzing was digging in the Stadel cave on Hohlenstein Mountain in the Swabian Alps when he found hundreds of fragments of a mammoth ivory statuette. He packed them hastily into a box but had no time to examine them. The excavation, funded by the SS, ended that very day because World War II was about to begin. The box went to the University of Tübingen and eventually found its way to the Ulm Museum. Thirty years would pass before anyone paid them any mind.
The first attempts at reconstruction in 1970 revealed a ...
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Puzzling sacrificial remains found in Mexico lake bed (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
In winter of 2007, Dr. Christopher Morehart, assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia State University, was examining the dry bed of the former Lake Xaltocan as part of project on pre-Hispanic chinampa agriculture (a method that used small rectangular islands in shallow lakes to grow crops). The team first surveyed the area remotely with likely chinampas identified on satellite imagery and aerial photos. They then walked the site to collect samples and select places for further excavation only to find that looters had beaten them to the punch. The ground was disturbed and artifacts and bones scattered around. Moreheart ...
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Calcified teratoma found in pelvis of Roman woman (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
A teratoma, for those of you who have not delved into the fascinating world of medical oddities, is a tumor, usually benign, in which abnormal germ cells cause random bits of body to grow inside organs that bear no relation to said bits. Teratomas have been found to contain hair, teeth, bone, skin, muscle, bronchi, fatty cells, thyroid tissue, and more. These are not parasitic twins or fetus in fetu situations. Early in embryonic development, germ cells are triggered by our genes to form sperm in males and eggs in females, but they are also pluripotent meaning they have the ...
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Greeks, Romans wiped their asses with pottery discs (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
In China paper was used for intimate cleaning as early as the second century B.C., but there was no toilet paper in classical Europe. In my many, many visits to ancient Roman toilets over the years, I had always heard that Romans used a sponge on a stick to wipe after defecating. In public latrines, the sponge-stick, or tersorium, would then be rinsed in running water and left in a bucket of vinegar for the next poor bastard to use.
The existence and use of the tersorium is confirmed in ancient writings. Seneca describes the implement in a deeply ...
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3000-year-old tombs found in Luxor temple (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Italian archaeologists excavating the mortuary temple of 18th Dynasty (1550-1291 B.C.) pharaoh Amenhotep II in Luxor have discovered a number of rock tombs from the Third Intermediate Period (1075 – 664 B.C.). Each tomb has been cut into the rock with a deep shaft leading down into a burial chamber. The burial chambers contain the remains of wooden sarcophagi painted in black and red with funerary and religious scenes, skeletal remains, canopic jars and furniture for use in the afterlife.
The canopic jars are of excellent quality. There are 12 in total, some in limestone, the others in burnt clay. ...
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1000-year-old Sri Lankan temple step found in Devon garden (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
A Sandakada pahana, a beautifully carved semi-circular granite slab which a thousand years ago graced the entrance to a temple in Anuradhapura, a sacred Buddhist city and a capital of Sri Lanka from the 4th century B.C. to the 11th century A.D., has been found in the garden of a modest bungalow in Devon. Sam Tuke, an appraiser at Bonhams, happened to hear about it from a woman who was in the office picking up something else. When she mentioned the elaborate carvings of animals which she had loved tracing with her fingers since she was a small child, ...
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Two hoards found buried in Black Sea citadel (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
A team of Russo-Ukrainian archaeologists have unearthed two buried hoards in the citadel of Artezian, an ancient town in the Crimean Peninsula of southeastern Ukraine on the coast of the Black Sea. The hoards contain 244 copper coins from the second half of the 1st century B.C., 10 silver denarii from the reigns of Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius, glass vessels and jewelry made out of gold, silver, bronze and gemstones. The discovery was made during the dig season of 2009 but is being published in this month’s Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia (article not available online yet).
...
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Seven Augustan era statues found in Ciampino (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Archaeologists with the regional superintendence of Lazio have unearthed seven statues from the 1st century B.C. on the site of the villa of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, consul of Rome and patron of the poet of Ovid. The statues are larger than life at around 2 meters (6.5 feet) high and they represent characters from the myth of Niobe, a story Ovid told in Book VI of Metamorphoses.
Niobe’s story is a classic cautionary tale about hubris. She was the daughter of Tantalus, wife of Amphion, ruler of Thebes, and mother of 14 children known as the Niobids. She ...
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2000-year-old shipwreck pills were an eyewash (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
A shipwreck from 140 – 130 B.C. first discovered in 1974 off the coast of Tuscany near the Etruscan town of Populonia was found upon later excavation to contain a vast collection of trade goods from around the Mediterranean. Packed in the small ship (it’s at most 60 feet long and 10 feet wide) were Syrian glass bowls found still in stacks, pottery from Pergamon, wine amphorae from Rhodes, lamps from Ephesus, coins, lead vessels and other consumer goods. The most intriguing find, however, was a large cache of medical equipment. Tin cylinders called pyxides, 136 boxwood vials, a ...
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Return to Antikythera (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
The Roman shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera, famous as the source of the bronze gear device of incredible complexity known as the Antikythera mechanism, hasn’t been surveyed since Jacques Costeau led an expedition to the wreck in 1976. The wreck was first discovered in 1900 by sponge divers using those old timey diving suits with metal helmets which allowed them to go 200 feet down to the steep Aegean slope where artifacts from a first century B.C. wreck were piled on the floor. Over the next two years, divers recovered bronze and marble sculptures and ...
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Staffordshire Hoard officially 81 pieces larger (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Eighty-one pieces of gold and silver discovered by archaeologists this past November in the same field where the Staffordshire Hoard was found in 2009 have officially been declared treasure. The South Staffordshire Coroner Andrew Haigh ruled that out of the 91 recently discovered pieces, 8 were modern “waste”, 2 were found far enough away that they should not be considered part of the original hoard. The remaining 81 he ruled to be 7th century Anglo-Saxon pieces buried along with the more than 3,900 pieces of the Staffordshire Hoard.
The next step is for the 81 pieces to be valued ...
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Zapotec effigy pot may reveal name of buried noble (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
The Zapotec anthropomorphic clay pot that was discovered in the third chamber of the vertical tomb in the Atzompa Archaeological Zone in Oaxaca last August has now been fully excavated and may prove to be a vital clue to the identity of the nobleman buried in the chamber. It’s also incredibly beautiful. In addition to the brilliant red pigment on the face which was immediately visible when it was first discovered, rich ochre and grayish green pigments remain intact on other parts of the vessel.
According to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the ceramic pot is about ...
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Apocalypse tourists damage Mayan pyramid (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
The crowds of tourists who flocked to Tikal in Guatemala to embrace the end of the world as not-really predicted by the Maya on December 21st, 2012, were as careless as they were ignorant. Tikal is the largest extant Mayan urban center and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The temples are too fragile to support climbers so they’re for looking only. I suppose when you’re expecting the world to end just because the 13th Bak’tun cycle of the Mayan Long Count calendar is coming to a close, you can’t be bothered to give a crap about preserving irreplaceable archaeological remains.
...
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Athenaeum of Hadrian dig completed (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Three years ago archaeologists surveying Piazza Venezia in the center of Rome for a much-needed third subway line found the remains of an athenaeum built by the emperor Hadrian in the second century A.D. The brick manufacturers’ stamps confirmed that the arts center was built in 123 A.D., 12 years earlier than first suggested based on ancient documentary sources.
It had three rectangular rooms in which poets, philosophers, authors and rhetoricians recited their work and taught lessons to audiences of up to 900 people. Characteristic of Hadrian’s particular interests in architecture, it had an unusual arched roof. Hadrian loved him ...
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Russell Crowe stops Gladiator tomb reburial (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Not single-handedly like he did with that Tigris guy, but his movie star prominence certainly garnered a great deal of media attention to the plight of the tomb of Marcus Nonius Macrinus, Roman general and one of the inspirations for the role Crowe played in Gladiator. After the news broke that the beautifully preserved remains of Macrinus’ imposing mausoleum were slated to be reburied due to lack of funds for proper conservation, the non-profit American Institute for Roman Culture (AIRC) launched a petition campaign to encourage the city to explore alternative options before resorting to burying the site.
American ...
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New finds made in Staffordshire Hoard field (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
In the same field in Hammerwich where three years ago metal detectorist Terry Herbert found the massive 3,900-piece collection of Anglo-Saxon gem-studded gold and silver known as the Staffordshire Hoard, archaeologists have now found another 90 pieces of gold and silver. Archaeologists excavated the find site right after the initial discovery in 2009 and thought they had recovered everything there was to find. The dig was closed.
This November the field was plowed for the first time since the discovery. On November 19th, a team of archaeologists aided by metal detectorists with experience in scanning delicate archaeological sites and ...
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Remains of man in armor found at ‘Pompeii of Japan’ (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
Archaeologists excavation the site of an ancient volcanic eruption in Gunma Prefecture, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo, have found the well-preserved remains of man in armor. He was trapped under hot ash by the eruption of Mount Haruna in the early 6th century A.D. Unusually, the body was found facing the volcano. From the position of the lower limbs, it seems he was standing and then fell to his knees, finally falling forwards onto his face before the hot ash swept over him.
“Under normal circumstances, you would flee if pyroclastic flows are rushing toward you and bringing waves ...
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President John F. Kennedy