Archaeology

[Kinslaughterer]

The explorer Thor Heyerdahal of Norway had long hypothesized an Egyptian/North American connection. He went so far as to construct a pair of papyrus reed boats named the Ra and Ra II. Using some careful navigation and ,I think, a few modern instruments, Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic and arrived in Barbados.

[Skyweir]

now that is cool .. I would love to hear more about such a connection ..

and i dont have that maths book any longer .. so I cant actually cite stuff they posited .. but i do recall they were careful to say that it was only a theory ..

[Ylva Kresh]

When I visited in California I passed a cave known as Moaning Cave (had nothing to do with Covenant, I´m afraid). It was a large cavern with a small opening - hence it made the sound of "blowing in a bottle" when the wind was right. When the modern explorers went down they landed on a heap of child bones. Our guide told us that this was probably because the children hade crept into the hole to check on the sound. I find this rather unlikely... The bones were of different dates (though rather close in time) and all from children. Can´t they possibly have been some kind of sacrifices to the "moaning God"???

[Kinslaughterer]

I don't know of any Native American groups from California that practiced any form of human sacrifice. The California tribes were very peaceful compared any other Native American group.Your theory is interesting however. I wonder if autopsies were ever performed on any of the bodies? I might do some checking...

I do remember a story of Carthage were children were sacrificed to a god. I'll have to look that one up, as I can't recall the details offhand.

[[Syl]]

Ba'al?

[Kinslaughterer]

Yeah, I'm fairly certain it was Baal but I can't remember the book or article I read referring to it.
I did however find some websites talking about it...
i-cias.com/tunisia/carthage02.htm
www.tourismtunisia.com/culture/carthage_m.html
Again I must say that I've never heard of child or human sacrifice in virtually any area of North America with the exception of Mexico and possibly the Natchez culture but I'd better check my sources on that.

[Ylva Kresh]

I just saw a TVshow on some native american culture in i the western part of the US that had always been regarded as a peaceful culture but now traces of cannibalism had been found. The professor most hysterical about this did however seem a little bit mad . I´ll go and try to find what this culture was called. It was really famous (but I had of course never heard of them before) and they had built several cities in areas that are now very dry.

[Ylva Kresh]

Found it: the culture was called Anasazi. The "mad professor" did conclude that the reason for the cannibalism was immigrated mexicans (he found one sharpened tooth).

[Kinslaughterer]

Ancient Chaco Canyon, which an enormous complex of buildings and settlements over a wide area, displayed signs of cannibalism. Many excavations have been and will continue on this region. Much of the evidence for it is up for interpretation. The "mad professor" you refered to is probably Chris Turner from ASU. His lifes work is this evidence for cannibalism, which includes smashed bones, sharpened teeth, human bite marks on human bones, and the appearance of specific slaughter pits in as many as 38 individual sites. I recommend further reading on the subject. I need to do some more myself. As for me, I think cannibalism is unlikely but certainly plausible on a smaller scale than Turner proposes.

To be fair the term "Anasazi" is a broad term that groups together several unique cultures from a specific region.

[Landwaster]

*looks at subject matter, then looks it Kins' username*

*has sudden flashback of movie 'Ravenous'*

*utters* "uh-oh"

PS : My one great unfulfilled love of life is caves/tunnels. Have been infatuated with them forever, and yet never been in a natural one

[Skyweir]

never been caving? wow! mate you got to do it!

you must have tonnes of places to go caving in Victoria

[Kinslaughterer]

Earliest Stone Tools and Bones Site Discovered

Michael Rogers, an assistant professor of anthropology at Southern Connecticut State University, has discovered the earliest direct evidence of stone tool manufacture and use in a controlled setting, in an excavation in Gona, Ethiopia. Rogers and his research team date the tools they found to 2.6 million years old. An article reporting their findings was published in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.

Three years ago, Rogers was in Ethiopia working on a paleoanthropological research project in Gona, in an area that hadn’t been looked at before. He found a few flakes—tools that are pieces of stone chipped off of a larger stone—and began digging with a crew of experienced excavators. What they eventually discovered is a significant development in the field of paleoanthropology: the earliest stone tools and animal bones at the same site, clearly associated with each other, indicating early humans’ use of tools to provide food for themselves.

“This is the earliest site that really documents the two together,” says Rogers, adding, “There’s no question that they are associated with each other. Our ancestors were using the artifacts to process animal parts, which probably shows that humans were expanding their diets to include animals and were no longer largely vegetarians—they were becoming at least partly carnivorous.”

[The Leper Fairy]

Wow, it's amazing that sites like that are still intact after 2.6 million years!

[Kinslaughterer]

Dirt has a certain ability to protect things hidden beneath it. Rock and fossils last forever.

I should also stress that the creators of that site are not humans but in the human line. At 2.6 million years the most likely candidate for such an enterprise is Homo rudolfensis, an early form of Homo habilis.

[Kinslaughterer]

This is potentially one of the most amazing finds in history if it holds up to further archaeological scrutiny.

Submerged city may be older than Mesopotamia
Utpal Parashar
Dehra Dun, December 3

A submerged coastal city near Poompuhar in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, is the focus of a major expedition being conducted jointly by the Indian Naval Hydrographic Department (INHD) and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

Both the organisations are trying to piece together the city's past, which some noted marine archaeologists consider to be the birthplace of modern civilisation. The once flourishing port city is located about one mile off the Nagapattinam coast.

"We have been able to locate a section of the city at a depth of 7 m and will soon start operations to recover objects that will help ascertain its past," said Rear Admiral K.R. Srinivasan, chief hydrographer to the Indian government.

English marine archaeologist Graham Hancock, who conducted an underwater exploration in the area in 2001, believes that the Poompuhar site could be older than Sumeria in Mesopotamia, where modern civilisation is believed to have originated nearly 5,000 years ago.

The 2001 expedition was funded by Channel Four of Britain and Learning Channel of the US in association with the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa.

It led Hancock to surmise that the city could have been submerged by a tidal wave as high as 400 ft somewhere between 17,000 and 7,000 years ago.

Other experts like Glenne Milne, a geologist at the University of Durham, UK, agree with Hancock. Video footage of the site shows that the submerged city near Poompuhar was far superior to constructions found in Harappan sites.

Although NIO had conducted similar offshore expeditions in the area in the late 1980s and early 1990s — and discovered objects like ring wells, brick structures and megalithic wares — it did not evince much interest till Hancock revealed his findings.

The new venture by the INHD and ASI may put an end to the debate on the submerged city. It could also rekindle a new interest in locating other such submerged towns and shipwrecks along India's coastline.

Hancock is one of the leading proponents of the existence of an Atlantis-like culture dating to the beginning of the current inter-glacial period. I am not aware of him being an acreditted archaeologist however unless that occurred very recently. Needless to say this site stands to be one of the most dramatic finds in history. Poompuhar is near Chennai on the SE coast of India by the way.

[Ylva Kresh]

*Pssst* I have put up some pictures in the album (member gallery) with the storyline of the Gap-series as a rock-carving dating from around 1000ad.

And I hate to see this beloved thread fall so far down.

[Kinslaughterer]

You and me both, my little ranyhyn

[Dani]

I'm afraid the only thing I know about archeology is what I see on the science channel. I love to watch the quest for discovery, though I suppose it must be frustrating to never know FOR SURE of what you are really seeing since no time machine has been built yet that I know of

I do also research ancient societies on my own time when I need some inspiration for writing (I'm an as yet unpublished fantasy/sci-fi writer in my free time for any who want to know). I've found that studying our own history often gives me great ideas for my own stories. Some of the best fantasy has a healthy dose of reality behind it, in my humble opinion.

On a side note, my four-year-old son wants to be an archeologist some day...and a paleontologist (and a football player, but I'm planning on talking him out of that one).

Thank you, Kin, for such a wealth of information. I will be sure and keep track of this thread for more. I'm not sure how much knowledge I can contribute, but I will be hanging about watching the show.

Dani

[Kinslaughterer]

Thanks for the appreciative words. I'll do my utmost to swell the future ranks of archaeology!

Ancient Egyptian official's tomb found
By Maamoun Youssef, AP, in Cairo
01 January 2004


Polish and Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed a necropolis containing the 4,000-year-old stone tomb of a royal official, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said yesterday.

Farouk Hosni, the Culture Minister, said the necropolis near the pyramids of Saqqara, about 25km (15 miles) south of Cairo, contained the tomb of Ny-Ankh-Nefetem, identified in hieroglyphic writing as the priest of the pyramids of kings Unas and Teti, who ruled successively from 2375 to 2291BC.

The rectangular-shaped tomb had false doors, a chapel and a burial chamber decorated with scenes showing part of the deceased's daily life and his titles - including keeper of the king's property and the head steward of the Great House, the minister said in a statement.

Most of the reliefs were very well preserved, the most impressive being one showing the deceased walking with his son, Mr Hosni's statement said.

Zahi Hawass, chief of antiquities, said the tomb was found below a dense cluster of mummy remains, wooden coffins and skeletons that dated back to the late ancient Egyptian period, Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman periods.

[Kinslaughterer]

Archaeologists can be rather ingenius folk given the proper technology. I hope to work with Jane Buikstra, one of the grand women of archaeology, a professor at the University of New Mexico and researcher on the project described below.

Isotopic Analysis of Teeth and Bones Solves a Mesoamerican Mystery

Natural variations in isotope ratios show up in tooth enamel and can reveal where a person--even an ancient Maya king--spent his earliest years.

At the start of the fifth century AD, Copán was a modest village set in a fertile, mountainous valley on the eastern fringe of the Maya world. Within decades, the village embarked on a remarkable rise to become, at its zenith in the eighth century, among the most accomplished Maya cities in art, architecture, and astronomy.

The transfiguration's instigator was a man named Yax K'uk Mo. According to glyphs carved on a stone altar, Yax K'uk Mo arrived at Copán on 8 February 427, five months after his coronation on 5 September 426. The dynasty he founded ruled Copán for the next four centuries.

Despite their calendrical exactitude, the terse carvings are vague about Yax K'uk Mo's origin or where and by whom he was crowned. Like ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy, the Maya world consisted of independent city-states linked by trade and vying for hegemony. Conceivably, any one of the rival cities could have been Yax K'uk Mo's hometown and source of power.

But there's another possibility. Beyond the Maya world, in the valley of Mexico, lay Teotihuacán, the largest city in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. At its height, Teotihuacán spread over 20 square kilometers and accommodated upward of 200 000 people. Its influence pervaded the region. Cities hundreds of miles away copied its style of temples and adopted its fashions and gods. If Teotihuacán exerted influence through military might, Yax K'uk Mo could, quite plausibly, have been one of its provincial warlords.


Copánec artisans certainly depicted Yax K'uk Mo with Teotihuacáno trappings. Figure 1 shows the king wearing goggles that form part of a characteristically Teotihuacáno war helmet. And in his tomb, which was discovered in 1995, archaeologists found pottery from Teotihuacán.

But the tomb also contained pottery from Tikal, a Maya city north of Copán, as well as pottery from Copán itself. As for the goggles, it's understandable that a local magnate would want, if only through symbols, to draw authority and legitimacy from the region's preeminent power.

The question of Yax K'uk Mo's provenance is now much clearer. By analyzing isotope ratios in Yax K'uk Mo's teeth and bones, a team led by Jane Buikstra of the University of New Mexico has ruled out Teotihuacán as Yax K'uk Mo's place of birth and early childhood.1 Instead, it appears the king grew up in central Yucatán, the heart of the Maya world.


Strontium and oxygen
Isotope-based sourcing relies not only on nuclear physics, but also on Earth science and biology. Strontium, which sits just below calcium in group II of the periodic table, has four naturally occurring isotopes. One of them, strontium-87, is the decay product of rubidium-87. The other three, 84Sr, 86Sr, and 88Sr are nonradiogenic.

Rubidium-87's halflife of 4.7 × 1010 years makes 87Sr a useful tracer for the age and Rb content of rocks. Globally, the abundance ratio of radiogenic 87Sr to nonradiogenic 86Sr ranges from 0.703 in young rocks of low initial Rb content up to 0.750 in ancient rocks of high initial Rb content.


Fortunately for Maya archaeologists, the Yucatán peninsula formed from marine sediments that engendered a near-continuous variation of 87Sr/86Sr across its length. As figure 2 shows, 87Sr/86Sr peaks in northern Yucatán and drops steadily southward.

By contrast, the valley of Mexico formed from volcanic rock. There, the variation from place to place is less smooth, but at Teotihuacán, the value of 87Sr/86Sr differs significantly and measurably from values found in the Maya world.

Oxygen isotopes provide another location tracer. When clouds form over the ocean, the ratio of 180 to 16O in their constituent droplets matches the ratio in seawater. That ratio changes, however, when clouds make rain. The more of the heavier isotope a droplet contains, the more readily the droplet will fall. As a result, rain from clouds close to shore tends to be richer in 180 than rain from clouds that travel far inland.

How do variations in 87Sr/86Sr and 180/16O end up in human remains? And how can those variations reveal a person's hometown? The answers lie in the biology of teeth and bone.

Tooth enamel, the hardest substance in our bodies, provides a durable coating for the softer dentin underneath. Both materials consist predominantly of calcium phosphate, but differ in how they form. Enamel mineralizes only once: when the tooth it protects first grows. Dentin and bone, however, form continuously throughout life.

Because of its chemical closeness to calcium, strontium can comfortably replace the lighter element in enamel, dentin, and bone. Strontium enters the body through food, whose 87Sr/86Sr ratio reflects that of the local soil. Oxygen enters the body mostly through the water supply.

So, in times and places where food and water are locally supplied, people's tooth enamel bears the isotopic signature of their early childhood home. Isotopes in bone and dentin reflect their recent home.


Mass spectrometry
At Copán, where Yax K'uk Mo's remains are kept, Buikstra collected samples of his teeth and bone and sent them to her collaborators: Douglas Price and James Burton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison tackled the strontium; Lori Wright of Texas A&M University tackled the oxygen.

In principle, the procedure for analyzing the two elements is similar. The element of interest is extracted, purified, and then put through a mass spectrometer. In practice, however, there are differences. Oxygen is the most abundant element in calcium phosphate. For the 180/16O measurement, a standard stable isotope mass spectrometer suffices.

However, determining 87Sr/86Sr demands more precision. Burton and Price enlisted the help of Paul Fullagar of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Fullagar's thermal ionization multiple collector mass spectrometer provided the requisite fourth significant digit in the ratio's value.

Of course, measuring Yax K'uk Mo's ratios won't, by itself, place him anywhere. A set of reference values is needed. For the past 15 years, Price and Burton have been measuring 87Sr/86Sr at major archaeological sites throughout Mesoamerica. Figure 2 shows some of the values they obtained. And since 1996, Wright has mapped 180/16O in the Maya world.

As expected, the values of 87Sr/86Sr and 180/160 in Yax K'uk Mo's dentin and bones indicate that his last home was Copán. And the ratios in his enamel confirm what the glyphs recorded: that the city's founding king was an outsider. But, belying several lines of archaeological evidence, Teotihuacán wasn't his hometown, nor did he come from the southern Maya outpost of Kaminaljuyú or the Zapotec stronghold of Monte Albán in the west. Rather, Yax K'uk Mo spent his formative years in land controlled by one of the central Maya city states, such as Tikal or Calakmul.

Ironically, resolving Yax K'uk Mo's origin makes the nature of Teotihuacán's influence seem more, not less, mysterious.

Reference
1. J. E. Buikstra, T. D. Price, L. E. Wright, J. A. Burton, in Understanding Early Classic Copán, E. E. Bell, M. A. Canuto, R. J. Sharer, eds., University Museum Publications, Philadelphia (2003), chap