The Cave of Altamira: First Prehistoric Cave Paintings

The Cave of Altamira is located near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. The cave was declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 and it is famous for its Upper Paleolithic cave paintings featuring drawings and poly-chrome rock paintings of wild mammals and human hands.

The site's special relevance comes from the fact that it was the first cave in which prehistoric cave paintings were discovered. When the discovery was first made public in 1880, it led to a bitter public controversy between experts, which continued into the early 20th century, as many of them did not believe prehistoric man had the intellectual capacity to produce any kind of artistic expression. The acknowledgement of the authenticity of the paintings, which finally came in 1902, changed forever the perception of prehistoric human beings.

Marcelino de Sautuola

In 1879, amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola discovered the cave drawings. The cave was excavated by Sautuola and the archaeologist Juan Vilanova y Piera from the University of Madrid, resulting in a much acclaimed publication in 1880 which interpreted the paintings as Paleolithic in origin.

The French specialists, led by Gabriel de Mortillet and Emile Cartailhac, were particularly adamant in rejecting the hypothesis of Sautuola and Piera, causing their findings being loudly ridiculed at the 1880 Prehistorical Congress in Lisbon, due to the supreme artistic quality, and the exceptional state of conservation of the paintings, Sautuola was even accused of forgery and fraud. A fellow countryman maintained that the paintings had been produced by a contemporary artist on Sautuola's orders.

It was not until 1902, when several other findings of prehistoric paintings had served to render the hypothesis of the extreme antiquity of the Altamira paintings less offensive, that the scientific society retracted their opposition to the Spaniards. That year, Emile Cartailhac emphatically admitted his mistake in the famous article, "Mea culpa d'un sceptique", published in the journal L'Anthropologie. Sautuola, having died 14 years earlier, did not live to enjoy his rehabilitation and his triumph against the skeptics.

In 2012, further uranium-thorium dating research was published, supporting an older age for portions of the art, including one claviform image at 35,600 years old.

Further information: http://museodealtamira.mcu.es/

The Antikythera Mechanism: History and Explanation (Ancient Astronomical Clock)

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient analog computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from a shipwreck in the region of Antikythera, Greece, nonetheless its significance and complexity were not understood until a century later.

Jacques Cousteau visited the wreck site in 1978, but although he found new dating evidence, he did not find any additional remains of the Antikythera mechanism, the construction has been dated to the early 1st century BCE.
Technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the 14th century CE, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe.

The Antikythera mechanism is kept at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. It is now displayed at the temporary exhibition about the Antikythera Shipwreck, accompanied by reconstructions made by Ioannis Theofanidis, Derek de Solla Price, Michael Wright, the Thessaloniki University and Dionysios Kriaris. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman - Montana, at the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York and at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

Yonaguni: The Underwater Mysterious Ruins

The Yonaguni Monument is a massive underwater rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan. There is a debate about whether the site is completely natural, is a natural site that has been modified, or is a human-made artifact. For these reasons, the site is also known in Japanese as the Yonaguni (Island) Submarine Ruins.

The flat parallel faces, sharp edges, and mostly right angles of the formation have led many people, including many of the underwater photographers and divers who have visited the site and some scholars, to the opinion that those features are human-made. These people include Gary and Cecilia Hagland and Tom Holden, who went on underwater expeditions to study and photograph the site. These features include a trench that has two internal 90° angles as well as the twin megaliths that appear to have been placed there. These megaliths have straight edges and square corners. However, sea currents have been known to move large rocks on a regular basis. Some of those who see the formations as being largely natural claim that they may have been modified by human hands. The semi-regular terraces of the Monument have been compared to other examples of megalithic architecture, such as the rock-hewn terraces seen at Sacsayhuaman. The formations have also been compared to the Okinawa Tomb, a rock-hewn structure of uncertain age.

3D Animation-reconstruction: The Greek City of Syracuse

Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000 Years Old Unexplained Structure

Göbekli Tepe Turkish: [ɡøbe̞kli te̞pɛ] ("Potbelly Hill") is an early Neolithic sanctuary located at the top of a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa. It includes massive stones carved about 11,000 years ago by people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery.

The "tell" (hill) has a height of 15m (49ft) and is about 300m (984ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760m (2,493ft) above sea level. It was first noted in a survey conducted by Istanbul University and the University of Chicago in 1964. The survey recognized that the rise could not entirely be a natural feature, but postulated that a Byzantine cemetery lay beneath. The survey noted a large number of flints and the presence of limestone slabs thought to be grave markers. The hill had long been under agricultural cultivation and generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles, possibly destroying much archaeological evidence in the process.

Klaus Schmidt, chief archaeologist of Göbekli Tepe, is of the view that religion and the mobilization of labor behind the building of religious centers like Göbekli Tepe were the chief factors driving the development of civilization and the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic ages.

How Shrunken Heads are made

Head shrinking is rumored to have occurred all over the world, but documented only among a few indigenous South American tribes living in Peru and Ecuador. To the Jivaroan people, a head taken from an enemy and shrunk—called a tsantsa—was more than just a battle trophy. Jivaro warriors believed that the ritual of shrinking the head paralyzed the spirit of their foe and prevented it from taking revenge, and also passed the victim’s strength onto the killer.

How do you take a flesh-and-bone head and shrink it? A typical Jivaro head-shrinking ritual, as recorded by European explorers in the 19th century, went something like this.

Step One: Deflesh

After getting a safe distance away from the battlefield with the severed heads of fallen enemies, victorious warriors feast, and then begin the work of making the tsantsa. First, the victim's scalp is removed, starting at an incision made across the back of the neck parallel to the bottoms of the ears. The warrior tugs on a flap of skin created by this cut and pulls toward the top of the head and then again toward the face, peeling the skin away from the skull on the back and top of the head. He then uses a knife or a sharpened piece of wood to work the flesh away from the bone around the facial features and scrape away the cartilage from the nose and ears. The eyelids are sewn shut and the lips held together with three wooden pins. Eyewitness accounts report that an experienced warrior could de-flesh a head this way in as little as 15 minutes.

Now, the stumbling block for me, whenever I thought about shrunken heads before researching them (not that it was something I thought about often, I swear I’m not a weirdo), was how the skull was miniaturized. Turns out, it wasn’t. Once the skin was removed, Jivaro warriors simply tossed the skulls away.

Step Two: Simmer

With the flesh taken from the head, the warrior goes to the nearest river with a ceremonial pot to gather water. The filled pot is set on a fire to heat up, and the flesh from the head is placed in it to simmer for an hour or two. When it’s removed, the head is a little smaller than it was originally, but not much. The head is turned inside out and stripped of any remaining fat, cartilage or muscle, and the incision on the back of the neck is sewn shut.

Step Three: Apply Stones and Sand

The head, now completely sealed except for the hole where the neck used to attach, is further shrunk with sand and stones heated on another fire. The hot stones are dropped into the head through the neck hole and the head is rotated continuously to avoid scorching. When the head shrinks and becomes too small to accommodate the stones, sand is poured in it instead and the head is shaken to drive the sand into the crevices the stones couldn’t reach. Once the head is the right size, the warrior carefully uses hot stones to sear the exterior skin and shape the head and facial features. The finished product is then left to further dry and harden. The entire process takes about a week.

After the head is done, the warriors and the rest of the tribe partake in more victory feasts, the last of which may happen up to a year after the battle it celebrates. Once these rituals are complete, the shrunken head has served its purpose for the warrior. Its significance was in the process of its creation, and not the final product. The tsantsa is usually then discarded in a river or in the jungle, or given to a child in the warrior’s family or village as a toy.

Source: Mentalfloss.com

Biggest Roman find since 1920's (The Hadrian's Arts Centre)

Archaeologists who have completed the excavation of a 900-seat arts centre under one of Rome’s busiest roundabouts are calling it the most important Roman discovery in 80 years. 

 

Archaeologists who have completed the excavation of a 900-seat arts centre under one of Rome’s busiest roundabouts are calling it the most important Roman discovery in 80 years. The centre, built by the emperor Hadrian in 123, offered three massive halls where Roman nobles flocked to hear poetry, speeches and philosophy tracts while reclining on terraced marble seating.

With the dig now completed, the terracing and the hulking brick walls of the complex, as well as stretches of the elegant grey and yellow marble flooring, are newly visible at bottom of a 5.5 metre (18ft) hole in Piazza Venezia, where police officers wearing white gloves direct chaotic traffic like orchestra conductors and where Mussolini harangued thousands of followers from his balcony.

“Hadrian’s auditorium is the biggest find in Rome since the Forum was uncovered in the 1920s” said Rossella Rea, the archaeologist running the dig.

The excavations, which are now due to open to the public, are next to a taxi rank and squeezed between a baroque church and the Vittoriano, an imposing monument to Italy’s defunct monarchy, which is nicknamed the Typewriter by locals.

The complex was only unearthed thanks to excavations to build a new underground railway line which will cross the heart of Rome. “We don’t have funds for these kind of digs so this has come to light thanks to the new line,” said Rea. Archaeologists keeping a careful eye on what gets dug up have proved to be a mixed blessing for railway engineers, who have had to scrap plans for two stations in the heart of the centre of Rome when it was discovered their exits to the surface cut straight through Roman remains.

 

With the discovery of Hadrian’s complex at Piazza Venezia, the line risked losing its last stop in the centre and being forced to run into the heart of Rome from the suburbs and straight out the other side without stopping. But Rea said the station and the ruins could coexist. “I believe we can run one of the exits from the station along the original corridor of the complex where Romans entered the halls,” she said. The site sheds new light on Hadrian’s love of poetry – he wrote his own verse in Latin and Greek – and his taste for bold architecture – an 11-metre-high (36ft) arched ceiling once towered over the poets in the central hall.

Today the performing space is riddled with pits dug for fires, revealing how after three centuries of celebrating the arts, the halls fell into disrepair with the collapse of the Roman empire and were used for smelting ingots.

At the centre of the main hall, like a prop from a disaster movie, is a massive, nine-by-five-metre chunk of the monumental roof which came crashing down during an earthquake in 848 after standing for seven centuries. Following the quake, the halls were gradually covered over until a hospital built on top in the 16th century dug down for cellar space. “We found pots lobbed down a well after the patients using them died” said Rea. “We could date them because the designs on the glaze were the same we see on implements in Caravaggio paintings"

Sources: 

http://www.heritagedaily.com/2012/12/hadrians-hall-archaeologists-finish-excavation-of-roman-arts-centre/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/hadrian-auditorium-ancient-roman-arts-center_n_2370106.html

The Unreachable Secret Tomb of China's 1st Emperor

An army of clay warriors guards the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died in 210 BC. The tomb is still under excavation near Xi'an, China. CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience

Buried deep under a hill in central China, surrounded by an underground moat of poisonous mercury, lies an entombed emperor who's been undisturbed for more than two millennia.

The tomb holds the secrets of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died on Sept. 10, 210 B.C., after conquering six warring states to create the first unified nation of China.

The answers to a number of historical mysteries may lie buried inside that tomb, but whether modern people will ever see inside this mausoleum depends not just on the Chinese government, but on science.

 

"The big hill, where the emperor is buried — nobody's been in there," said archaeologist Kristin Romey, curatorial consultant for the Terracotta Warrior exhibition at New York City’s Discovery Times Square. "Partly it's out of respect for the elders, but they also realize that nobody in the world right now has the technology to properly go in and excavate it.".

The warring states:

Qin Shi Huang (pronounced "chin shuh hwang") was born in 259 B.C., first son to the king of Qin, one of six independent kingdoms inside modern China. These kingdoms had been warring for more than 200 years, but through a combination of military strength, strategy and natural disasters, Qin Shi Huang conquered them all, proclaiming himself not just a king, but also an emperor — the first of China.

Scholars still debate the details of how this occurred, and what unique tactics allowed the Qin emperor to achieve what no one had managed before.

When he died, Qin Shi Huang was buried in the most opulent tomb complex ever constructed in China, a sprawling, city-size collection of underground caverns containing everything the emperor would need for the afterlife. The ancient Chinese, along with many cultures including ancient Egyptians, believed that items and even people buried with a person could be taken with him to the afterlife.

But instead of burying his armies, concubines, administrators and servants with him, the Qin emperor came up with an alternative: clay reproductions.

Shocking discovery:

In 1974, a group of farmers digging wells near Xi'an in China, stumbled upon one of the most shocking archaeological discoveries of all time. The life-size terracotta solider they dug out of the ground turned out to be just one of an army of thousands, each utterly unique, with individual clothing, hair and facial features.

For almost four decades, archaeologists have been excavating the site. So far, they've uncovered about 2,000 clay soldiers, but experts estimate there are more than 8,000 in total.

"They're going to be digging there for centuries," Romey predicted.

Still, scientists have yet to touch the central tomb, which holds a palace containing the body of Qin Shi Huang.

"It's really smart what the Chinese government is doing," said Romey. "When we went into [Egyptian King] Tut's tomb, think about all the information we lost just based on the excavation techniques of the 1930s. There's so much additional that we could have learned, but the techniques back then weren’t what we have now.". "Even though we may think we have great archaeological excavation techniques right now," she said, "who knows, a century down the road if we open this tomb, what they're going to say?"

Even though they number in the thousands, each terracotta soldier has painstakingly detailed armor, facial features, hair and clothing.
CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience

To open the tomb?

The decision whether to explore the tomb anytime soon, or ever, is up to the government of China. That decision will likely be influenced by the pace of technological progress.

"In archaeological conservation, every year you have major new developments," Romey said. "When we began excavating [the soldiers] in the '70s, the minute they were exposed to air and sunlight, the pigment just flaked off. Now they’ve figured out a new technique where they can actually preserve the paint as they excavate."

Perhaps, if science advances enough, that excavation wouldn't cause serious damage to the burial site, and the tomb will finally be opened.

"I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some sort of robotic visual survey going in there at some point," Romey said.

And despite their desire to protect the treasures of antiquity, archaeologists are itching with curiosity to find out what's inside Qin Shi Huang's central tomb.

Rivers of mercury:

Ancient writings say the emperor created an entire underground kingdom and palace, complete with a ceiling mimicking the night sky, set with pearls as stars. Pits full of terracotta concubines have never been discovered, though experts predict they exist somewhere in the complex.

And Qin Shi Huang's tomb is also thought to be encircled with rivers of liquid mercury, which the ancient Chinese believed could bestow immortality.

"It's kind of ironic" Romey said. "This is probably how he died, by ingesting mercury. He was taking all these mercury pills because he wanted to live forever and it killed him by the age of 39."

That moat of mercury also presents another reason why archaeologists are loath to explore the tomb just yet — doing so would likely be very dangerous, according to soil samples around the tomb, which indicate extremely high levels of mercury contamination.

In the end, scientists and historians must always weigh their desire to know more with the damage such inquiry would cause.

"Archaeology, ultimately, is a destructive science" Romey said. "You have to destroy stuff in order to learn about it."

Source:  http://www.livescience.com/22454-ancient-chinese-tomb-terracotta-warriors.html

The truth about the "Swiss/Roman Army Knife"

«Most people have a natural tendency to look at ancient civilizations as primitive and sometimes inferior, but once in a while stories like this one hits us, letting us thinking about.»

The Roman Army Knife...
...Or how the ingenuity of the Swiss was beaten by 1,800 years

The world's first Swiss Army knife' has been revealed - made 1,800 years before its modern counterpart. An intricately designed Roman implement, which dates back to 200AD, it is made from silver but has an iron blade, it features a spoon, fork as well as a retractable spike, spatula and small tooth-pick.

Experts believe the spike may have been used by the Romans to extract meat from snails, it is thought the spatula would have offered a means of poking cooking sauce out of narrow-necked bottles.

The 3in x 6in (8cm x 15cm) knife was excavated from the Mediterranean area more than 20 years ago and was obtained by the museum in 1991. The unique item is among dozens of artifacts exhibited in a newly refurbished Greek and Roman antiquities gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge.

Experts believe it may have been carried by a wealthy traveller, who will have had the item custom made. A spokesman said: "This was probably made between AD 200 and AD 300, when the Roman empire was a great imperial power."

The expansion of Rome (which, before 500 BC, had just been a small central Italian state) made some individuals, perhaps like our knife-owner, personally very wealthy, this could have been directly from the fruits of conquests, or indirectly, from the business opportunities the empire offered.

We know almost nothing about the person who owned this ingenious knife, but perhaps he was one of those who profited from the vast expansion of Rome, he would have been wealthy to have such a real luxury item and perhaps he was a traveller, who required a practical compound utensil like this on his journeys. The spokesman added: "While many less elaborate folding knives survive in bronze, this one's complexity and the fact that it is made of silver suggest it is a luxury item".

Modern Swiss Army knives originated in Ibach Schwyz, Switzerland, in 1897 and were created by Karl Elsener. The knives, which provide soldiers with a battlefield toolkit, have since become standard issue for many modern day fighting forces thanks to their toughness and quality. Nationalist Elsener decided to design the knives after he realized the Swiss army were being issued with blades manufactured in neighboring Germany.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247230/The-Roman-Army-Knife-Or-ingenuity-Swiss-beaten-1-800-years.html

Jason Martell: Ancient Technology

Jason Martell is an alien investigator who is very well known in the paranormal circles, appearing on shows on the Discovery Channel and History Channel, along with the web and radio shows, talking about UFOs, the Sumerian Culture and ancient technology artifacts.

Egypt: Mystery of the temple of Seti

Take a look at the following photographs…

What did you see? An helicopter? An airplane? Some strange vehicle?

• If yes: you will be thinking about Photoshop (as I did), but no, these hieroglyphs are really carved on stone. The explanations for this (the skeptical explanations we must say…) are that these figures came as the result of modern creative people, or that the hieroglyphs were made above old ones and with the passing of time these figures were created (…an amazing coincidence! we must say). Well, simply nobody knows, because no one has published yet, a convincing explanation for it.

• If no: you have no imagination