Press TV:

A British geologist claims the Egyptian Sphinx could be much older than previously thought and might have originally had a lion’s face.

Colin Reader says the rain erosion on the Sphinx’s enclosure suggests it was built before the first pyramid was constructed about 4,500 years ago.

Reader believes the monument’s style shows that it dates back to the Early Dynastic period, making it several hundred years older than what previously thought.

Experts also found that the body of the Sphinx is disproportionate to its head, showing that the sphinx’s original head was something else – a lion for instance – and re-carved later to be modeled on Pharaoh Khufu’s face.

Since the monument already has the body of a lion, experts think it could have had the face of a lion as well, dailymail reported.

Furthermore, lion was a symbol of power to early Egyptians and the animal inhabited the wilds of Giza in ancient Egypt.

Geologist Robert Schoch was another expert who studied the Sphinx in the 1990s and claimed that it was built at least two thousand years before the widely accepted construction.

Both Reader and Schoch based their claims on the weathering features found on the Sphinx and the surrounding enclosure as well as the ones found on other Giza monuments such as the Sphinx Temple, believed to be constructed at the same time when the Sphinx was built.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

Recent carbon dating tests of the Thera Eruption provides a date contradicting the established chronological sequence of Egyptian and Cypriot pottery found on the island.

www.an.gr:

Two olive branches buried by a Minoan-era eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years, according to two researchers who presented conclusions of their previously published research during an event on Tuesday at the Danish Archaeological Institute of Athens.

Speaking at an event entitled “The Enigma of Dating the Minoan Eruption – Data from Santorini and Egypt”, the study’s authors, Dr. Walter Friedrich of the Danish University of Aarhus and Dr. Walter Kutschera of the Austrian University of Vienna, said data left by the branch of an olive tree with 72 annular growth rings was used for dating via the radiocarbon method, while a second olive branch — found just nine metres away from the first — was unearthed in July 2007 and has not yet been analysed. …

On the other hand, as the two researchers pointed out, archaeological evidence linked with the Historical Dating of Ancient Egypt indicate that the Thera eruption must have occurred after the start of the New Kingdom in Egypt in 1530 BC.

The two researchers said their find (olive tree) represents a serious contradiction between the results of the scientific method (radiocarbon dating) and scholarly work in the humanities (history-archaeology), with both sides holding strong arguments to support their conclusions.

The radiocarbon dating places the cataclysmic eruption, blamed for heralding the end to the Minoan civilisation, a century earlier than previous scientific finds.

The eruption and the subsequent devastation throughout the Aegean has long piqued researchers’ interest, with many scholars pointing to Plato’s reference of the “lost continent of Atlantis” on vague memories, passed down generation to generation in the ancient Greek world, of the catastrophe.

Physorg.com:

A hobbyist with a metal detector has found a cache of ancient Celtic and Germanic coins in a cornfield in the southern city of Maastricht. The city says the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins are dated to the middle of the first century B.C. The hobbyist, Paul Curfs, 47, found several coins this spring and called attention to the find, which eventually led to an archaeological investigation by Amsterdam’s Free University. ..

Nico Roymans, the archaeologist who led the academic investigation of the find, believes the gold coins in the cache were minted by a tribe called the Eburones that Caesar claimed to have wiped out in 53 B.C. after they conspired with other groups in an attack that killed 6,000 Roman soldiers.

The Eburones “put up strong resistance to Caesar’s journeys of conquest,” Roymans said.

The silver coins were made by tribes further to the north – possible evidence of cooperation against Caesar, he said.

Both coin types have triple spirals on the front, a common Celtic symbol.

Andrew Lawler describes an interesting approach to linguistic archaeology.

Measuring teeth from dead horses in upstate New York seems an unlikely way to get at the truth behind some of the most controversial questions about the Old World. But David Anthony, a historian and archaeologist at Hartwick College, discovered that by comparing the teeth of modern horses with their Eurasian ancestors, he could determine where and when the ancient ones were ridden. And answering that seemingly arcane question is important if you want to explain why nearly half the world today speaks an Indo-European language.

The origin of Indo-European tongues has roiled scholarship since a British judge in eighteenth-century Calcutta noticed that Sanskrit and English were related. Generations of linguists have labored to reconstruct the mother from which sprang dozens of languages spoken from Wales to China. Their bitter disputes about who used proto-Indo-European, where they lived, and their impact on the budding civilizations of Mesopotamia, Iran, and the Indus River Valley are legion.

That contentious debate, says Anthony, has been “alternately dryly academic, comically absurd, and brutally political.” To advance their own goals, Nazi racists, American skinheads, Russian nationalists, and Hindu fundamentalists have all latched on to the idea of light-skinned and chariot-driving Aryans as bold purveyors of an early Indo-European culture, which came to dominate Eurasia. So the search for an Indo-European homeland is now the third rail of archaeology and linguistics. Anthony compares it to the Lost Dutchman’s mine—“discovered almost everywhere but confirmed nowhere.”

Read the whole thing.

————————————–

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Lichtensteinhöhle skeletons

British newspapers report that living residents of Nienstedt, a village in the foothills of the Harz Mountains in Lower Saxony, have been found by DNA analysis to be relatives of 3000-year-old Bronze Age inhabitants of the same area interred in the nearby Lichtensteinhöhle cave.

—————————————————————

London Times:

The good news for two villagers in the Söse valley of Germany yesterday was that they have discovered their (127th times)-great grandparents.

The bad news is that their long-lost ancestors may have grilled and eaten other members of their clan.

Every family has its skeletons in the cave, though, so Manfred Hucht-hausen, 58, a teacher, and 48-year-old surveyor Uwe Lange remained in celebratory mood. Thanks to DNA testing of remarkably well-preserved Bronze Age bones, they can claim to have the longest proven family tree in the world. “I can trace my family back by name to 1550,” Mr Lange said. “Now I can go back 120 generations.”

Mr Lange comes from the village of Nienstedt, in Lower Saxony, in the foothills of the Harz mountain range. “We used to play in these caves as kids. If I’d known that there were 3,000-year-old relatives buried there I wouldn’t have set foot in the place.”

The cave, the Lichtensteinhöhle, is made up of five interlocked natural chambers. It stayed hidden from view until 1980 and was not researched properly until 1993. The archaeologist Stefan Flindt found 40 skeletons along with what appeared to be cult objects. …

Analysis showed that all the bones were from the same family and the scientists speculated that it was a living area and a ceremonial burial place.

About 300 locals agreed to giving saliva swabs. Two of the cave family had a very rare genetic pattern – and a match was found.

—————————————————————

Telegraph:

The bones of 40 people were shielded from the elements by calcium deposits that formed a protective skin around the skeletons.

All the remains turned out to be from the same family group who had a distinctive – and rare – DNA pattern.

When people in the local area were tested with saliva swabs, two nearby residents turned out to have the same distinctive genetic characteristic.

Manfred Huchthausen, a 58-year-old teacher, and Uwe Lange, a 48-year-old surveyer, now believe they are even more local than either of them thought.

—————————————————————

Inma Pazos at iGENEA Forum provides more specific information.

(translated & abridged)

DNA analysis really found that 15 of 22 skeletons were relatives, constituting several generations of a family clan. In 2007, about 300 DNA samples of today’s indigenous population in Osterode-am-Harz were collected and tested for possible affinity. Susann Hummel, a leading anthropologist, has identified eleven living persons as descendants of the cave burials.

Ten lines of mtDNA haplogroup H, four of haplogroup U, two of the haplogroup J and three of the haplogroup T were identified. A further breakdown in the sub-groups succeeded in identifying U5b, T2 and J1b1. In another case, membership in sub-group U2 was considered very likely.

—————————————————————

mtDNA haplogroups

Horses & rhinos from Chauvet Cave

You can’t read this excellent article by Judith Thurman, biographer of Isak Dineson, on the Paleolithic cave art of Southern France at the New Yorker web-site, but you can read it via Art & Letters Daily. Go figure.

We don’t know the purpose for which the images were made. We don’t understand why Paleolithic artists almost entirely avoided the depiction of human beings. But we marvel at their representational accuracy and their ability to move us emotionally across a separation of tens of thousands of years of time.

During the Old Stone Age, between thirty-seven thousand and eleven thousand years ago, some of the most remarkable art ever conceived was etched or painted on the walls of caves in southern France and northern Spain. After a visit to Lascaux, in the Dordogne, which was discovered in 1940, Picasso reportedly said to his guide, “They’ve invented everything.” …

(The) earliest paintings (at Lascaux) are at least thirty-two thousand years old, yet they are just as sophisticated as much later compositions. What emerged with that revelation was an image of Paleolithic artists transmitting their techniques from generation to generation for twenty-five millennia with almost no innovation or revolt. A profound conservatism in art, (Gregory) Curtis notes, is one of the hallmarks of a “classical civilization.” For the conventions of cave painting to have endured four times as long as recorded history, the culture it served, he concludes, must have been “deeply satisfying”—and stable to a degree it is hard for modern humans to imagine.

Read the whole thing.

Submerged in recent times, there was in the Mesolithic period a land bridge connecting Britain with the continent. Fishermen working the Dogger Banks have pulled up prehistoric human artifacts in their nets, and archaeologists consequently named the sunken landscape once thick with human settlement Doggerland. Efforts at mapping Doggerland are currently underway.

Nature News:

Doggerland is key to understanding the Mesolithic in northern Europe,” says Vince Gaffney, a landscape archaeologist at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Along with his colleagues Simon Fitch and the late Ken Thomson, Gaffney established the mapping project to outline the terrain of Doggerland, named after the sandbank and shipping hazard of the Dogger Bank (see ‘Mesolithic sites around the North Sea’). They managed to borrow seismic survey data, which outline sediment layers below the seabed, from the Norwegian oil company Petroleum Geo-Services. The researchers then put their powerful computers to work to reconstruct Doggerland in three dimensions.

In a pilot project beginning in 2002, the researchers reconstructed 6,000 square metres of the ancient landscape — slightly larger than a football field. There, about 10 metres beneath the modern seabed, they discovered the course of a major ancient river, almost as big as today’s Rhine. They named it the Shotton River, after Birmingham geologist Fred Shotton who, among other things, was dropped behind enemy lines to map the geology of the Normandy beaches before the D-Day landings. Now confident that the reconstruction would work, the researchers expanded the project. The result is a 23,000-square-kilometre map of a part of Doggerland — an area the size of Wales — that they hope eventually to extend northward as well as eastward, towards the Netherlands.

Ferry Farm site

Washington Post:

On a bluff overlooking the Rappahannock River, 50 miles south of the capital city that bears his name, archaeologists have unearthed a site that provides what they call the most detailed view into George Washington’s formative years: his childhood home and, likely, the objects of his youth. ..

Washington’s family moved to the property in 1738, when he was 6, and he is believed to have lived in a clapboard-covered wooden home until his 20s. ..

There are marbles and wig curlers, utensils and dinnerware. A pipe, blackened inside, carries a Masonic crest and dates to when he joined the Fredericksburg Masonic Lodge.

The announcement of the long-sought discovery came yesterday, after seven years of digging and several disappointments.

From a concentration of charred plaster, they can tell that a fire thought to have destroyed the house on Christmas Eve in 1740 was much smaller and less destructive. An expensive tea set dating to the last decade that the Washingtons lived in the house tells them that the family’s financial strain suffered after Augustine Washington’s death probably eased. And from the layout of the house, with the front door overlooking the river, they described a “literal crossroads” in Washington’s life. Ships at that time could traverse the river to the Atlantic Ocean, and the area’s roads were opening up a world to the West, Levy said. …

Part of the difficulty with the dig arose because the land was far from untouched. Within the footprint of the house, 20th-century sewer pipes peek through the dirt, and a large area where the soil changes color reveals where Civil War troops dug a trench. In 1994, Wal-Mart proposed building a store on the property but encountered opposition from Stafford residents.

“It’s sort of a miracle that as much as the building is left, considering all the bad things that happened to it,” Muraca said.

Before finding Washington’s home, the team spent four years unearthing two other structures, only to find that one was too old and the other too new. The last one, which dated to about 1850, a century too late, became nicknamed among the crew as “Daddy’s little disappointment.”

Three years ago, team members homed in on the site where they would discover the house. They found two stone-walled cellars, two root cellars and the remains of two fireplaces. They also unearthed 500,000 artifacts, many domestic in nature and dating to the period Washington’s family would have lived there: sewing scissors, a brass wick trimmer, figurines that might have once sat on a mantel. A carnelian bead, which originated in India and made its way to Africa, was also discovered and is believed to have hung from the necklace of a slave. …

The project, headed by the George Washington Foundation and funded by National Geographic and the Dominion Foundation, will eventually include reconstruction. The archaeologists also are hoping to find structures that accompanied the house, such as barns and slave quarters. They believe they have found a kitchen.

Newsweek

Ferry Farm website

Pipe bowl with Masonic symbol

Israeli scientists have been able to germinate a seed found at Masada, carbon-dated to be 2000 years old, thus dating from the period when Masada was one of King Herod‘s vacation homes.

The resulting tree is a specimen of the Judean date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, commonly mentioned in the Bible, and prized in Antiquity as a source of food and shade, as well as for its beauty and medicinal qualities, is thought to have become extinct around 500 A.D.

The tree’s sex is as yet unknown, and cannot be determined until the tree is mature. It is hoped that another seed of the opposite sex can also be germinated, and the species revived.

The oldest seed previously germinsted was a 1300 year old Chinese lotus.

Haaretz.com

LA Times

The palm is now 5′ tall

BBC:

Divers in France have found the oldest known bust of Roman dictator Julius Caesar at the bottom of the River Rhone, officials have said.

The marble bust was found near Arles, which was founded by Caesar.

France’s culture ministry said the bust was from 46BC, the date of the southern town’s foundation.

The ministry described the bust – which shows a lined face and a balding head – as typical of realist portraits of the Republican era.

It said other items had been found at the same site, including a 1.8m (6ft) marble statue of Neptune from the first decade of the third century AD, and two smaller statues in bronze.

Divers taking part in an archaeological excavation made the discovery between September and October 2007.

Luc Long, the archaeologist who directed the excavations, said all the busts of Caesar in Rome were posthumous.

AP:

Authorities remained on the scene Tuesday of a Chesterfield County neighborhood where munitions exploded and killed a homeowner who sold Civil War relics.

Chesterfield County Police said neighbors reported the explosion Monday afternoon after hearing the blast and then finding the victim fatally injured in his backyard near a detached garage.

Police identified the victim Tuesday as Samuel H. White, 53.

Authorities found other unexploded military ordnance at the house, and evacuated about two dozen homes nearby until authorities could determine the area was safe. Police spokeswoman Ann Reid said the evacuation would remain in effect indefinitely.

Tuesday afternoon, police continued to collect and detonate ordnance.

White ran a Web site called Sam White Relics. The site contains photos of various relics for sale, such as Civil War artillery shells, cannonballs, bullets and other artifacts.

White said on the site he “will disarm, clean, and preserve your Civil War period and earlier military ordinance” for about $35 a piece.

“I’ve done approx. 500 artillery projectiles and still have all my fingers (I must be doing something right, knock on wood)!” the site states.

Neighbor Brian Dunkerly told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that a chunk of the ordnance flew into the air and smashed through the front-porch roof of his home about one-quarter-mile away. The piece of metal — weighing close to 15 pounds — then shattered his glass front door, hit the interior wood floor and bounced to the ceiling before coming to rest in the center of his living room.

Fellow relic dealer Harry Ridgway writes:

An accident occurred while disarming a Civil War projectile, long time collector Sam White, Chesterfield Va was killed in the accident. This is a horrible tragedy, Sam White was one of the good guys in this business, and I am very much saddened by his loss. I offer my prayers and condolence.

Sam had years of experience disarming and restoring Civil War ordnance and was highly respected. I believe that he used good techniques, but obviously something failed with this accident. The complete details are not known at this point, but it appears that he must have been drilling a large shell outside his house and did not use his remote rig. The news media showed pictures of a large fragment, likely from a round ball 8 inches or larger.

Notwithstanding recent accidents, Civil War ordnance is not dangerous to handle or display and is desirable to collect. All shells in a personal collection should be disarmed to ultimately be considered safe, but mere displaying or handling Civil War ordnance is not inherently dangerous. The two events that can cause danger are extreme heat or mechanical stimulus.

The black powder used in Civil War ordnance needs heat in the region of 500 degrees F to ignite, so it takes extreme heat such as a burning building, a fire or some other extreme heat to ignite black powder.

Mechanical stimulus can be hazardous, such as attempting to smash a shell with a sledge hammer or shooting a shell with a high powered modern rifle or something of the like. Drilling a shell to remove or wet the powder is the preferred method to render a shell inert, but the drilling process can create hazard. Ironically, the safest thing to do with a Civil War shell is to simply leave it alone. However ultimately it is good practice to disarm a shell to render it inert. This is done by drilling a hole into the chamber and wetting and removing the powder inside. Once the powder inside the cavity is wet or removed, the shell is inert and represents no continuing danger.

The accident with Sam White apparently occurred while drilling, although this is not fully confirmed yet.

Rome’s Lupercale Cave, the legendary birthplace of Romulus and Remus, is believed to have been found by archaeologists.

Qultures ApS 11/21:

On Tuesday, the Italian government released photographs of a deep cavern found under the ruins of Emperor Augustus’s palace on the Palatine Hill where some archaeologists claim that ancient Romans initiated the festivities of the Lupercalia. Photographs taken of the cave by a camera probe show a domed cavern decorated with extremely well-preserved colored mosaics and seashells. At the center of the vault is a painted white eagle, a symbol of the Roman Empire.

AP story.

Italian Ministry of Culture site with photos, plans, and 1:07 video

Hat tip to Dominique Poirier.