Rechalking the Cerne Abbas Giant

Readers here will certainly be familiar with the Cerne Giant.  What I had not appreciated from casual reading is the depth to which the chalk is embedded in the hillside.  Makes sense, of course, explaining how the figure came to be buried by natural growth and why it lay "hidden" for so long.  Details re the history here.

Photos in a Guardian article show volunteers "rechalking" the figure.

The custom has been to rechalk the 55-metre-tall giant roughly every seven to 10 years. It was last done in 2019 and before that in 2008... The rechalking technique is being adapted. In 2008 and 2017, it involved packing in dry chalk and tamping it down. “But that’s very difficult because the hill is so steep,” Dawson said.

So this time they are experimenting with mixing chalk (they need 17 tonnes of it) with water to create a paste. Dawson said: “It’s like a putty, which makes it easier to make it stick.”

I'm impressed by the quality of the preservation work being undertaken.

O.K - here's the photo, for those unfamiliar with it.  Now go to the links and read.  And please nobody tell Donald Trump about this; a ballroom/bunker is bad enough.

Mortar holes in a California suburban backyard

If you are momentarily startled by the title of this post, that may be because you are associating the word "mortar" with artillery.  Reconfigure your thought process toward "mortar and pestle."

I found the embedded image (which I've cropped for size and emphasis) in the archaeology subreddit.  The accompanying text is limited to a caption, which indicates that the homeowner's yard is in Mariposa County, California.  The current owners correctly note that these holes were created by generations of Sierra Miwok, who used them for grinding acorns into meal for food.

If you zoom the photo, it's evident that this outcropping of rock had over several centuries become covered with dirt and eventually turf, which has been scraped away toward the front and back. It is a careful restoratioin of an historic site, evidently destined to be protected for the future.   Nicely done.

For completeness, I'll add that the word "mortar" is almost as ancient as the practice, and is virtually unchanged from the Middle English: 

The English word mortar derives from Middle English morter, from old French mortier, from classical Latin mortarium, meaning, among several other usages, "receptacle for pounding" and "product of grinding or pounding"; perhaps related to Sanskrit "mrnati" - to crush, to bruise.

The Black Sea deluge

Another addition to my list of recommended books, this one explaining in detail the hypothesis that an immense and abrupt irruption of water into the Black Sea from the Aegean/Mediterranean seas was responsible for major cultural disruptions and may have been the basis for the "great flood" hypothesis seen in so many cultures.

In prehistoric times what is now the Black Sea was an immense freshwater lake, fed by glacial meltwaters.  When the outflow drainage at the Bosphorus closed and when the climate changed (disappearance of glaciers, aridity of the overall watershed), the lake evaporated to a smaller size.

The schematic at right shows the approximate relative sizes and shapes of the ancient freshwater lake and the current Black Sea.  That freshwater lake was a magnet for early human civilization because of the presence of water, game, and arable land.

When the Bosphorus "opened up," the inflow of seawater was on a scale not seen anywhere in the modern world.  The Mediterranean was open to the Atlantic, and the sea level was about 500 feet higher than the lake.  When water found a crack in the Bosphorus the flow would have started as a trickle, then as the passage eroded the flow would increase exponentially.  

"Ten cubic miles of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls, enough to cover Manhattan Island each day to a depth of over half a mile."  

The lake then began to rise 6" per day, and depending on the gradient, the shore would expand by as much as a mile a day - every day, without pause.  The people living on the shores of the lake would be forced to flee.

"It is hard to imagine the terror of those farmers, forced from their fields by an event they could not understand, a force of such incredible violence that it was as if the collected fury of all the gods was being hurled at them.  They fled with family, the old and the young, carrying what they could, along with fragments of the other languages, new  ideas, and new technologies gathered from around the lake."

The diaspora is detailed in several chapters of the book.

"All these people appeared in Europe shortly after the flood.  All have been described [by archaeologists] as outsiders: people who migrated from some distance... all seem to have been more culturally advanced than those [original European residents] whom they displaced.  Perhaps not so coincidentally, at that time in the middle of the sixth millennium B.C., Europe began a rapid ascent into what has been called a "Golden Age"...

The diaspora also happened in the other direction, creating enormous population changes in Anatolia and the Middle East.

"In the [Mesopotamian] epic of Gilgamesh the seven sages are credited with building the walls of Uruk and bringing the arts of civilization to the Sumerians - irrigation, farming, and the use of copper, gold, and silver.  The question of where the Sumerians came from is still unanswered."

"The oldest known written versions of the flood were committed to clay tablets over two millennia after [this flood] event in Sumerian, the language of the first known writing, a language with no known roots and no known descendants..."

The final point to make is that the story of the flood would have been passed by oral history down through dozens of generations.  Archaeologists have noted that the peoples who fled to Europe tended to settle some distance away from freshwater lakes and streams.  But those who fled to the fertile crescent would have been reminded of the great flood because their new territory was also subjected to annual flooding from the Tigris and Euphrates, which may explain why the legend was maintained there until the invention of cuneiform writing.

If you don't have time for the book, you can browse the high points at the Wikipedia page for the Black Sea deluge hypothesis.

Other interesting bits from the book:

"[King Darius I the Great] governed skillfully and managed a vast empire long before that of Alexander the Great, a regime that encompassed all the prior realms of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Ionians, Persians, and Medes, extending to the east as far as the Indus Valley, to the west into Europe, and to the south into Africa, flourishing in economy and culture."

"Apparently what had so deeply moved Smith was the realization that the [cuneiform] fragments he had assembled contained an independent version of the biblical deluge.  The heathen words told almost exactly the same story as the Hebrew narrative, right down to the selection of a survivor of the deluge through the intervention of a god, the forewarning that gave time to build a wooden ark, the refuge in it of every kind of animal, bird, and reptile, the grounding of the boat on the side of a mountain, the details of dispatching a swallow, raven, and dove to find land, the offering of a sacrifice, and the pledge that the gods would never again return the world to its primeval watery chaos."  "... after the feast one of the goddesses flung her jeweled necklace into the sky to be the sign of a covenant never again to drown the world."  "There was no doubt that the deluge described so vividly in the Gilgamesh legend had been inscribed on stone tablets long before the writing of the first books of the Old Testament."

The fact that the Mediterranean basin had once been a desert is confirmed by the discovery that the Nile River has an immensely deep central gorge (now filled with sediment) as a result of erosion when the Nile used to empty into a much lower basin.  The separation of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic occurred during the Messinian time interval between 7.2 and 5.4 million years ago.  "The transition from sea to land and back to sea had taken less than half a million years."  "Although no humans lived five million years ago, had any been present, they would have witnessed the Mediterranean desert disappearing permanently beneath a mile of salt water in a matter of a single human lifetime."

"... the Sumerians and Akkadians, and even the Greeks, did not believe in a reward after death.  Death might be postponed through a petition to a god, but  no one could escape it.  The body returned to clay, and a duplicate "phantom" entered a new abode through an aperture in the grave, leading to an immense, dark, silent, and sad netherworld where one had a torpid and gloomy existence forever."

Reposted from 2022 to accompany other posts. 

"Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global"

This is one of the three best books I read in 2025 (the others being Orbital and Playground).  As the title indicates, this book elucidates in extensive but clear detail how one early proto-language radiated from the area north of the Black Sea outward toward what is now Europe and southeast into what is now the Indian subcontinent.

An analysis like this requires more than just linguistic skills.  Understanding the processes involved requires familiarity also with the anthropology of the movements of people, their occupations, their trading networks, their social behaviors, and also an understanding of archaeological findings, including DNA extracted from ancient bones. The author, Laura Spinney, is not a professional linguist, anthropologist, or archaeologist.  Instead (and presumably for the better), she is a professional science writer, able to compress immense volumes of information into a form suitable for the general public.  After reading this book, I immediately placed a request at our library for her previous work - Pale rider: the Spanish Flu of 1918 and how it changed the world.

The book is interspersed with excellent maps clarifying the locations of peoples and languages (two of which I am embedding).  I can't summarize all of the text, but here are some salient excerpts (my transcription will lack the umlauts and diacritic marks on some words):

"Now, eight billion humans speak arouind seven thousand languages.  Those languages fall into about a hundred and forty families, but most of us speak languages that belong to just five of them: Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic and Austronesian... If you include second or subsequent language-speakers, Indo-European is by far the largest language family the world has ever known... Almost every second person on Earth speaks Indo-European." (11)

"The suggestion [in 1786] that an archaic link existed between Europe and the Orient electrified the public imagination... there was awe to be had in gazing upon Latin-Sanskrit word pairs like domus-dam (house or home), deus-deva (god), mater-mata (mother), pater-pita (father), septem-sapta (seven) and rex-raja (king).  Or in comparing the first three numbers in German (eins-zwei-drei), Greek (heis-duo-treis) and Sanskrit (ekas-dvau-trayas)..." (15)

"... when the future emperor Hadrian addressed the Senate around 100 CE, the senators mocked his Spanish accent (he was born in what is now the Spanish province of Seville).  The fragmentation of Latin was underway, but Hadrian still spoke recognisable Latin rather than an early version of Spanish..." (25)

"The catfish of the Dnieper were up to two and a half metres or over eight feet in length, and three hundred kilogrammes - over six hundred pounds - in weight... They are wels catfish, where wels, the common name of the species in German, shares a root with English 'whale'." (37)

"As in the Balkans, people used fleeces to pan for gold in those mountain streams.  It was in Georgia, in the ancient kingdom of Colchis, that the Greek mythological hero Jason found the golden fleece..." (56)

"A word meaning 'star'... shines steadily through all its descendants.  Waypoint for night travellers since all humans were African, it was known to Sogdian merchants on the camels as stare, to homebound Odysseus as aster, and to Icelanders fishing for herring after dark as stjarna." (77)

"... migrants had radiated east and west from the steppe around five thousand years ago, and in Europe their ancestry had replaced up to ninety per cent or more of the gene pool... No later movement had anything like their genetic, cultural or linguistic legacies: not the massive migrations set in train by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, not the displacements that followed the Black Death, the 1918 flu or either of the world wars.  Most European men alive today, and millions of their counterparts in Central and South Asia, carry Y chromosomes that came from the steppe." (102)

"The core vocabulary of Tocharian was clearly inherited from Proto-Indo-European.  You can see that in these Tocharian B - Latin - English triplets:  pacer-pater-father, macer-mater-mother, procer-frater-brother, and ser-soror-sister.  Or in the Tocharian B words for 'cow' (keu), 'ox' (okso) and 'to milk' (Malk)." (127)

"The yearning for a better world is alive and well and as doomed to disappointment as it ever was (the word 'utopia' contains that disappointment within it, since it means 'nowhere') (140)

"Like the Greeks, the Etruscans and Italic-speakers wrote from right to left at first.  Later they went through a phase called boustrophedon or 'ox-turning', when a line written right to left alternated with one written left to right, until they plumped definitively for left to right." (146)

[note the four major rivers emptying into the Black Sea all begin with the letter D] "An Iranic word for 'river' was danu, which is the root of both Don and Danube.  Dniester comes from Danu nazdya, 'river to the front'. and Dnieper from Danu apara, 'river to the rear'.  These names were the legacy of the Scythians... One remnant of the Scythians survived, however, by retreating to the safety of the Caucasus.  Their modern descendants, the Ossetians, call 'water' don."

"Smok or Zmij, or Zmei or Zmaj, depending on which Slavic-speaking country you happen to be in, is the archetypal serpent, denier-of-life, and any resemblance you may notice to J.R.R. Tolkien's dragon Smaug is not coincidental.  Tolken was a philologist... There was actually a Proto-Indo-European word, smeuk that probably meant 'to slide' or 'glide', and if the Slavic dragon names are derived from it then they are living exhibits of taboo deformation - the phenomenon whereby taboo words [names of Gods you are not allowed to speak] are rapidly recycled through euphemism and circumlocution." (230)

Page 264 includes an interesting discussion of shibboleths (words or phrases, the pronunciation of which identify nationalities or ethnicities), which I don't have time to retype.  See also this list of shibboleths.

BTW, it's also useful to at least browse the endnotes, where I discovered that "Some Indo-European languages do without a word for 'one' entirely.  If there is only one of something, after all, you hardly need to count it.  Old Irish did have a word for 'one' (oen), but if a person wanted to say 'one cow' they would just say the word for 'cow'. 

The book concludes with this language tree:

This will not be a book for everybody.  It will delight those with a general intellectual curiosity, but will be TMI for the casual reader.  On the other hand, it's easy to skim over the parts where the details are beyond one's personal needs or interests.  For those TL;DR people, I would encourage reading the excellent "Introduction" and the equally excellent "Conclusion" chapters.  The latter closes with this observation:

"Language is becoming a battleground in the identity wars, and preserving our linguistic 'purity' a justification used by those who want to raise walls.  Unfortunately for them, the most successful language the world ever knew was a hybrid trafficked by migrants.  It changed as it went, and when it stopped changing, it died."

Superb Paleolithic art

I previously blogged about the deteriorating conditions of the famous cave paintings at Lascaux. On a more upbeat note, there is another extensive cave system - the Chauvet Cave - that also has spectacular Paleolithic art. Especially when you consider that the images embedded above were drawn 30,000 years ago - it's truly impressive artwork.

All of the source links from this 2008 post have undergone linkrot over the years, but I'm reposting it for 2025 to add some interesting observations from the most recent issue of The Atlantic:

When the American republic was founded, the Earth was no more than 75,000 years old. No contemporary thinker imagined it could possibly be older. Thus Thomas Jefferson was confident that woolly mammoths must still live in “the northern and western parts of America,” places that “still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us.”

The idea that mammoths or any other kind of creature might have ceased to exist was, to him, inconceivable. “Such is the œconomy of nature,” he wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, “that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.”

Those illusory behemoths roaming out there somewhere beyond the Rockies remind us that the world of the Founding Fathers is in some ways as alien to us as ours would be to them... The originalist fallacy that dominates the current Supreme Court—the pretense that it is possible to read the minds of the Founders and discern what they “really” meant—in fact turns the Founders into ventriloquists’ dummies. We express our own prejudices by moving their lips.

It is fascinating to me that Thomas Jefferson, arguably one of the best educated and progressive thinkers of colonial America, would not have any concept of the age of the earth (or the cosmos, of course).  

Humans were never hypercarnivores. Neanderthal consumption of maggots clouds the data.

Excerpts from an interesting paper in Science Advances.

Reconstructions of Eurasian Neanderthal diets based on stable nitrogen isotope ratios (δ15N) typically place hominins at the top of the food web, together with, or above, hypercarnivores, such as lions and wolves. We suggest that these high δ15N values may, in part, reflect the regular consumption of 15N-enriched fly larvae (maggots) occurring in stored animal foods. The ethnohistoric record contains countless examples of Indigenous peoples routinely consuming putrefied animal foods with maggots... We suggest that frequent consumption of animal foods laced with maggots should be considered as a contributor to the high δ15N values observed in Late Pleistocene hominins...

Indigenous peoples almost universally viewed thoroughly putrefied, maggot-infested animal foods as highly desirable fare, not starvation rations. Many such peoples routinely, often intentionally, allowed animal foods to decompose to the point where they were crawling with maggots, in some cases even beginning to liquify, and inevitably emitting a stench so overpowering that early European explorers, fur trappers, and missionaries were sickened by it. Yet such foods were viewed as “good to eat,” even a delicacy, and when asked how they could tolerate the nauseating stench, they simply responded, “we don’t eat the smell”. While our Western sensibilities might abhor the thought of maggot-infested foods, one even finds vestiges of larvae consumption in Europe with the delicacy of casu marzu, a traditional Sardinian cheese replete with the larvae of cheese flies (Piophila casei)...

Our principal goal in this study was to determine whether 15N enrichment occurred in maggots raised on putrid tissue and whether the degree of enrichment was of sufficient magnitude to account for, or at least contribute notably to, the unusually elevated δ15N values observed in Eurasian Late Pleistocene hominins...

Many nitrogen isotope studies place Late Pleistocene hominins alongside hypercarnivores, giving the misleading impression that both had broadly similar diets. They did not. Hominins are primates with largely vegetarian-derived digestive and metabolic systems, not specialized flesh eaters. While it is possible for humans to subsist on a very “carnivorous” diet, many traditional northern hunter-gatherers such as the Inuit subsisted mostly on animal foods, hominins simply cannot tolerate the high levels of protein consumption that large predators can. A modern human weighing ~80 kg, the estimated body weight for a robust cold-adapted Neanderthal male, cannot consume more than ~300 g of protein per day (<4 g/kg of body weight) without serious health consequences. At sustained intakes above that level for as little as 1 to 2 weeks, the individual becomes vulnerable to a debilitating and potentially lethal condition known to early explorers as “rabbit starvation”...

In modern medical terms, the consumption of such high levels of protein exceeds the capacity of the liver to up-regulate enzymes involved in the synthesis of urea, with the result that the liver can no longer effectively deaminize the amino acids, leading, in turn, to a buildup of ammonia and excess amino acids (hyperaminoacidemia) in the blood. In notable contrast, a modern African lion can readily subsist on protein intakes that would probably prove lethal to a human in a matter of a few weeks. Thus, northern hunter-gatherers were carnivorous only in the sense that they relied heavily on animal foods, but most of what they ate was fat, not muscle...

To stay below the critical protein threshold, hunters deliberately targeted the fattest prey available at a given time of year and harvested mostly the “choice parts” of their kills, i.e., the brain, tongue, briskets, ribs, adipose tissue, fatty organs and entrails, marrow, often the carbohydrate-rich chyme and partly digested stomach contents, and, time and fuel permitting, also the grease in the cancellous tissue of the bones...

...meat and fish surpluses were procured in the summer and fall; processed by drying, salting, or freezing; and cached for later use…. The preparation of food surpluses was an intrinsic part of the seasonal round.” Such reserves were often repeatedly tapped over periods of weeks or months, many over multiple seasons, and some for a full year or more. Foods were often already maggot infested before they were placed in caches (i.e., in summer and autumn), and, by the time that the contents were lastly exhausted (commonly in winter and/or spring), they were almost invariably in an advanced state of putrefaction and filled with both living and dead maggots...

I think this is absolutely fascinating, so I've excerpted way too much, but I encourage interested readers to go to the primary source for more data and discussion.  The general public will focus way too much on the "ick" factor of eating maggots, but there are serious matters to consider here re components of a healthy diet, limitations of protein intake, and the consumption of fat.  In particular, this report gives me new insight into the well-known use of "buffalo jumps" to slaughter entire herds of large animals, such as at the Itasca (Minnesota) Bison Kill site and the more famous Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Canada.  I had always viewed such hunting techniques as extravagantly wasteful, but now I understand that humans could return to the kill site months later to harvest meat, fat, and maggot.

You learn something every day.

Today I learned something about arrowheads

The embedded photo was posted in the Arrowheads subreddit with the question "why so small?"

The short answer is "because it is a true arrowhead."  Here are a couple comments from a good discussion thread:

"That’s a true arrowhead. Most of the technology used was atlatl and the atlatl points are very large compared to arrowheads. Once the bow was invented, they could hunt game from further away and with more penetrating power using smaller points. These little points can still kill a deer. An atlatl dart point is like a .45, versus an arrowhead which is more like the stopping power of a 9mm."

"In archaeology we call them PPK'S (Projectile Points/Knives) because bow and arrows didn't appear in the Americas until around 600 years ago. The larger stuff that people call "arrowheads" are actually spear or lance points, atlatl points, or knives. You would be surprised by how many arrowhead shaped items are actually just knife blades."

"General rule about artifacts, Oldest hunting points were the Spear and Knife designed for Mega-Fauna in Paleo Era requiring LARGE ROBUST POINTS. Archaic are large to medium sized designed for new technology of the Atlatl and the smaller available game, deer elk, bear, beaver, antelope, Pronghorn Sheep, etc. The "bird points" are mostly modern Woodland Era and made more effective due to the near extinction of the main food source for the lower 48, the American Bison, Mule Deer, Elk and White Tails. Prairie Chickens, Grouse, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, etc became the alternative out of pure necessity. Feed an entire village with Bison VS Small game, what could go wrong."

Fascinating artifacts found in the nests of vultures

A professor of prehistory at the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain conducted a proper archaeological "dig" in the nest of a bearded vulture, excavating methodically downwards through ever-older strata.  The image embedded above shows some of the material that one might expect in a large raptor's nest - mammal and bird bones and teeth, hooves, horns, eggshells, and droppings.  

But there's more (click to embiggen):

The second image shows a collage of items handcrafted by humans, to wit -

A collection of handcrafted materials found in ancient Bearded Vulture nests. (A) Part of an esparto grass slingshot. (B) A detail of a crossbow bolt and its wooden lance. (C) Agobía (Sierra Nevada, Granada), a rough footwear made of several species of grass and twigs, C-14 dated at 674 ± 22 years Before Present (ETH-138982). Agobías typically lasted for a few days of wear and were continuously repaired and replaced by hand by the wearer. (D) A basketry fragment C-14 dated at 151 ± 22 years Before Present (ETH-138980). (E) A piece of sheep leather C-14 dated at 651 ± 22 years Before Present (ETH-138981) with red lines drawn, and (F) a piece of fabric. Scale bars are in centimeters. Photographs: Sergio Couto (A, B, D, and F) and Lucía Agudo Pérez (C and E).

That's why the nest was being excavated by an archaeologist, not a biologist.  "...the most exciting one was a shoe, because the shape is totally identical to ones found in an archaeological site called the Cave of the Bat, which is also in the region where these nest have been found. And those are dating 12,000 years ago. 

The scientific findings are reported in the journal Ecology (not behind a paywall), where it is noted that some raptor nests have been located at the same sites for thousands of years.  And the location of these nests, in caves sheltered from the weather affords optimal conditions for preservation of organic material.

"The study of the material preserved in caves housing ancient Bearded Vulture nests can therefore provide interesting information not only about the feeding ecology of the species but also about historical ethnographic and biocultural conditions."

Note the human footwear they found in the nest was carbon dated to the 13th century. This investigation has only sampled the upper layers so far.  More to come.  Fascinating, and kudos to the investigators for coming up with the investigation.

I first heard about this from my favorite podcast - the CBC's As It Happens (transcript).

An interesting anomaly in a rock found in Arkansas

A deep linear groove not caused by power tools or modern equipment, and not a "natural formation."  Explanation at the rocks subreddit.

Tomb of the "real Santa Claus" located

As reported by Archaeology News:

"Recent excavations at the Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Antalya, Turkey, have revealed a limestone sarcophagus that may be the burial site of Saint Nicholas, the Greek bishop whose life and deeds inspired the legend of Santa Claus...

The sarcophagus, found within the church’s two-story annex, is believed to be the original burial site of Saint Nicholas, who lived in the ancient city of Myra during the 4th century CE. Measuring approximately two meters in length and buried at a depth of 1.5 to 2 meters, the sarcophagus features a raised lid and a pitched roof consistent with burial styles of the region. Its proximity to the church—constructed in the 5th century CE by order of Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II—adds credibility to the theory that this was the saint’s original resting place...

Saint Nicholas, known for his acts of generosity and miraculous intercessions, served as the Bishop of Myra and died in 343 CE. Centuries after his death, his remains were moved to the Church of St. Nicholas, which was built over his original burial site. By the 11th century, his bones were reportedly taken to the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy, and later, additional remains were transported to Venice during the First Crusade. In 1953, scientific studies confirmed that bones from both Bari and Venice belonged to the same individual, though whether they were Saint Nicholas himself remains inconclusive."

More on Saint Nicholas at Wikipedia.

"In one of the earliest attested and most famous incidents from his life, he is said to have rescued three girls from being forced into prostitution by dropping a sack of gold coins through the window of their house each night for three nights so their father could pay a dowry for each of them."

Geoglyphs damaged in Chile

The embedded screencap from The New York Times tells the story in a nutshell.

Vehicles — also including trucks from mining operations — run roughshod over the geoglyphs in Alto Barranco and other zones of the desert, scarring them with hundreds of tracks.

“When we saw the drone footage, we couldn’t believe it,” Dr. Pimentel said, noting that several key figures were now barely recognizable. The worst part, he added, is that “the damage is irreversible.”..

Marcela Sepúlveda, president of the Chilean Society of Archaeology, noted that big signs had been placed around archaeological zones to prevent damage, meaning that drivers should be fully aware of what they’re heading into. “The geoglyphs are gigantic,” she said. “No one can claim they didn’t see them. That’s impossible.”

Mudlarking - updated

This past week [In 2009] the BBC featured an article on "mudlarking," (treasure hunting along riverbanks at low tide).

"... there is no place better to mudlark than on the 95-mile foreshore of the Thames, considered by some the largest open-air archaeological site in London...

While a general permit to look for artefacts allows the aspiring treasure hunter to dig only 7.5cm into the ground, a special mudlark's licence allows the enthusiasts to venture much further underneath the surface.

"The best thing I've ever found," says Tony, "is a silver wine taster, dated 1634, that is now in the Museum of London's collection."

Over the last 30 years, Tony and his friends from The Society of Thames Mudlarks have amassed a collection of more than 2,500 buttons ranging in date from the late 14th to the late 19th Century. They are now being donated to the Museum of London and include examples of buttons made of silver, pewter and semi-precious stones...

I think it sounds like fun, although I think I remember references in some Dickens' novels that it was not viewed that way in earlier times:

During the Industrial Revolution, mudlarks were usually young children or widowed women. Becoming a mudlark was a cry of desperation as it is considered one of the worst "jobs" in history. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, excrement and waste would wash onto the shores from the raw sewage which wasn't treated. The corpses of humans, cats and dogs would also wash up. Mudlarks would be lucky if they made a penny a day selling what they had found during low tide, which was the only time people could scavenge along the shores of the rivers.

I'm sure lots of murder weapons and wedding rings have been tossed into the Thames.

Reposted from 2009 to add a report of the recovery of a neolithic skull fragment by a mudlarker:

The fragment of a neolithic skull was mudlarked from the south bank of the river’s foreshore by Martin Bushell last September... The discovery, which Bushell initially believed was just a shard of pottery, was handed in to the Metropolitan police. The force commissioned radiocarbon dating of the bone, which revealed that the man had died about 5,600 years ago...

Last month, a rare Roman oil lamp found on the river’s foreshore by Alan Suttie, an amateur treasure hunter, also went on display at the Museum of London. Other ancient objects found in the Thames in previous years include a neolithic polished macehead, a sword dated to the late bronze age and a bust of the Roman emperor Hadrian, dated to his visit to Britain in AD122 – all of which are on display at the British Museum.

See also:  Love tokens retrieved from the mud of the Thames (2011).

Reposted from 2019 to add a link to a Bloomberg article on the subject:

The number of mudlark permits, which are valid for three years, surged from a few hundred around 2016 to more than 5,000 during the pandemic, fueled largely by social media. Worried about a plundered foreshore, the Port of London Authority that oversees the riverbank halted issuing new permits in November 2022...

The publicity has been a headache for riverbank conservationists, and the multitude of mudlarks is part of the problem. Maiklem argues that using metal detectors, shovels and hand tools hastens erosion and are unnecessary given the river’s powerful 20-foot tidal swing that unearths buried treasures...

Miller says that because the number of mudlarks has “gone through the roof,” it’s harder to find buried artifacts. “It’s basically the same size cake, but now thousands of people are trying to get a slice of that cake.”..

Lots of rivers in old cities hold troves of sunken antiquities but nowhere else are they as readily accessible as the Thames. “London is really quite unique, in that we have that combination of having a tidal river and a foreshore that’s stable enough to be walked on,” Sumnall says. “And we are a global city with a very long history of human occupation that stretches back 400,000 years.”

How bog bodies were secured underwater

Wet sites have yielded some of the most spectacular archaeological finds in the world. Prior to Windover’s discovery, ancient human remains had been uncovered at four others in Florida:  Little Salt Springs (Sarasota County), Warm Mineral Springs (Sarasota County), Republic Groves (Hardee County), and Bay West (Collier County). Known as mortuary ponds, these sites served as cemeteries during the Early and Middle Archaic periods, roughly 10,000 to 5,000 years ago...

Toward the end of the first field season, Doran and Dickel made an astonishing discovery: a mushy, greasy, tan substance inside one of the skulls... confirmed that a sample was actually human brain tissue. By the end of that year, several intact brains had been recovered. Though shrunken to a quarter of their original size, they still retained the shape and surface features of a typical human brain...

The bodies were tucked into a “flexed” position, bundled in fabric along with a variety of grave goods, and submerged beneath the water, typically on their left sides, facing west. Wooden stakes driven through the cloth kept them anchored to the bottom of the pond. Generation after generation returned to the pond to bury their dead in this manner for the next 1,000 years.

More information at the Orange County Regional History website.

A modern long barrow

Another interesting video by Tom Scott, featuring the Soulton Long Barrow which began construction in 2014.  It is a surprisingly beautiful structure, created for educational and spiritual purposes by a young man who speaks with great sensitivity regarding the purpose of the project.

Via Neatorama, because Miss C and John Farrier keep finding all sorts of neat stuff before I do...

Earliest evidence of humans in North America

The video above is from several years ago, by the Bureau of Land Mangement, describing Rimrock Draw Rockshelter and why it is important.  

The content below is from an announcement this week by the same organization of new discoveries in the rockshelter:

"Oregon archaeologists have found evidence suggesting humans occupied the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter outside of Riley, Oregon more than 18,000 years ago... 

In 2012, O’Grady’s team found camel teeth fragments under a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption of Mount St. Helens that was dated over 15,000 years ago.... Radiocarbon-dating analysis on the tooth enamel – first in 2018 and then again in 2023 – by Dr. Thomas W. Stafford, Jr. of Stafford Research and Dr. John Southon of University of California, Irvine, yielded exciting results: a date of 18,250 years before present (14,900 radiocarbon years).

That date, in association with stone tools, suggests that Rimrock Draw Rockshelter is one of the oldest human-occupation sites in North America..."

The upside of hurricanes

This is the ultimate dream discovery for every old man with a metal detector.  The authorities of course respond by asking the public to stay away because it could be dangerous (i.e. "please leave the gold doubloons for us").

Archeological evidence of crucifixion in Britain

From Smithsonian Magazine:

Sometime between 130 and 360 C.E., a 25- to 35-year-old man in what’s now Cambridgeshire, England, died by crucifixion at the hands of the Roman Empire. His skeleton—found with a telltale nail hammered through its heel bone—represents one of the few surviving physical traces of the ancient punishment, report David Ingham and Corinne Duhig for British Archaeology magazine...

Archaeological evidence of crucifixion is rare, as victims often didn’t receive a proper burial. Additionally, most crucifixions used rope rather than nails to bind the condemned to a cross.

According to BBC News, scholars know of only three other possible physical examples of crucifixion during the ancient era: one found in La Larda in Gavello, Italy; one from Mendes in Egypt; and one from Giv’at ha-Mivtar in north Jerusalem...

Excavators discovered the remains, dubbed Skeleton 4926, during a dig conducted ahead of construction in the village of Fenstanton in 2017, reports PA Media. The community stands along the route of the Via Devana, an ancient Roman road that connected Cambridge to Godmanchester...

Skeleton 4926 showed evidence of severe suffering endured before death. According to a separate Cambridge statement, the man’s legs bore signs of infection or inflammation, possibly caused by binding or shackles. Six of his ribs were fractured, likely by blows from a sword.

Photo from British Archaeology magazine, where there is lots more information and many photos of the dig and the objects found.

See also: A modern equivalent of death by crucifixion

Ancient Roman blanket

It looks like a blanket, but it's a mosaic floor, warped by earthquakes.

Antakya, anciently Antiochia on the Orontes, is a Turkish city renowned for its superb collection of Roman mosaics and a stunning museum. It can now add a truly remarkable geometric mosaic, lauded as being the largest surviving example in the world, to its public attractions...

Now a new attraction has opened to the public, displayed beneath a futuristic hotel. It takes the form of a unique archaeological park, the Necmi Asfuroğlu Archaeology Museum, which is home to the impressively sized great mosaic. This 1,050m² 4th-century pavement was discovered in 2009, when the Asfuroğlu family began constructing what was supposed to be a new luxury hotel on a site 2km from the centre of the modern city. However, it soon became apparent that the proposed location was full of incredible archaeology.

Instead of abandoning the project, the family decided to preserve the archaeological treasures by integrating them into their new hotel. The Asfuroğlu family worked alongside the Antakya Municipality, the Hatay Archaeology Museum, and the Adana Conservation Council for Cultural and Natural Assets to conduct the largest archaeological excavation in Turkey since the 1930s, and to plan a hotel that would cause the least disturbance to the archaeology. A team of 200, including 35 archaeologists and five restorers, worked for 18 months to complete the excavation and restoration. The finds were superb and included the great geometric pavement, beautiful mosaics such as the 2nd-century AD Bathing of Pegasus, panels devoted to the Muses, and a 5th-century mosaic of Megalopsychia, the physical embodiment of magnanimity, surrounded by birds...

The superb Pegasus or Helikon mosaic, with its Greek inscriptions, is said to contain a remarkable 160 colour shades of plant-dyed tesserae.

More information (and three additional images) at World Archaeology.  And kudos to that family for their preservation efforts.

Peruvian "whistling jars"

 

The video is a study of the physics and fluid dynamics of a modern "whistling jar."  What amazes me is that the concepts involved here date back to pre-contact Mesoamerica.   Here is a whistling jar from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Whistling jar with seated man wearing a headdress [circa 1000-1476]

Although numerous pottery instruments survive from pre-Conquest South and Central America, little is known of how they were used before Spanish invaders ravaged the native cultures. Whistles, trumpets and rattles in animal or human form probably had ceremonial functions or served as playthings. The "whistling jar" is a 1- or 2-chambered vessel in which a whistle, often concealed by a bird's head, is sounded by blowing into the spout, or by pouring liquid from one chamber to the other to create a bird-like twittering sound. Smaller whistles in animal shapes, perhaps worn suspended from the neck, sometimes have fingerholes that allow variation of pitch.

With a tip of the blogging hat to Neatorama.

NOT the skull of an extraterrestrial alien - updated

An archaeological discovery of 13 Conehead-shaped skulls in Mexico has people recalling the famed Saturday Night Live sketch. The bones, which are about 1,000 years old, dating back to 945 A.D. to 1308 A.D., were discovered accidentally during a dig for an irrigation system in the northwest state of Sonora in Mexico. While it’s not unheard of for archaeological sites to be unearthed during modern excavations, the misshapen skulls discovered on the site are fairly uncommon, especially as far north as Sonora. “This was a Hispanic cemetery with 25 skulls, and 13 of them have deformed heads,” Cristina Garcia Moreno, who worked on the project with Arizona State University, told ABC News. “We don’t know why this population specifically deformed their heads.”

Some news videos of the discovery have described the procedure of cranial deformation as a "rite of passage into adulthood," but clearly deformation to this degree has to be undertaken on a pliable skull of an infant.

There's more information at the Artificial Cranial Deformation page at Wikipedia, where I found the image at right ("Painting by Paul Kane, showing a Chinookan child in the process of having its head flattened, and an adult after the process") and these notes:

Early examples of intentional human cranial deformation predate written history and date back to 45,000 BC in Neanderthal skulls, and to the Proto-Neolithic Homo sapiens component (12th millennium BCE) from Shanidar Cave in Iraq.  It occurred among Neolithic peoples in SW Asia.  The earliest written record of cranial deformation dates to 400 BC in Hippocrates' description of the Macrocephali or Long-heads, who were named for their practice of cranial modification.

Reposted from 2012 to add information from a new BBC article about cranial modification in Australia:

...they owe their strange appearance not to the blind hand of evolution but to the guiding hand of humanity. Australia's ancient inhabitants were among the first in the world to deliberately transform the shape of their own skulls...

H. erectus had a wide skull and a small braincase, while the unusual Australian skulls are narrow and have large braincases, just like today’s humans do. This makes it highly unlikely that their flat foreheads were shaped by ancient H. erectus genes - and far more likely that they were actually sculpted by human hands...

The modern counterpart to this occurs when parents place babies on their backs to minimize the chances of SIDS:

Encouraging parents to routinely putting babies to sleep on their backs before their soft skulls harden led to a dramatic increase in cases of plagiocephaly, also known as flat head syndrome. A study published last year found almost half of a sample of 440 healthy young babies attending two clinics in Calgary, Canada, showed signs of it.

Reposted from 2014 after encountering some more examples.