Microplastics in Ancient Remains

Microplastics have been found in historic soil samples for the first time, according to a new study, potentially upending the way archaeological remains are preserved.

Researchers found microplastics in soil deposits more than seven meters (23 feet) underground, which were deposited in the first or second century CE and excavated in the 1980s, a team led by researchers from the University of York in the United Kingdom said in a statement published Friday.


In total, the study identified 16 different microplastic polymer types in contemporary and archived soil samples, the statement adds.

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that are no larger than five millimeters (0.2 inches)—about the size of a single sesame seed—and form when larger plastics break down, either by chemically degrading or physically wearing down into smaller pieces.      READ MORE...

Pyramid NOT MADE by Humans

Last month, a study published in Archaeological Prospection garnered a lot of media attention (including from IFLScience) for its extraordinary claim that a mountain in Indonesia is actually the world's oldest pyramid built by ancient humans. But reactions from archaeologists since have raised skepticism about its bold conclusions.

According to the paper, the Gunung Padang – which translates to “Mountain of Enlightenment” – was not formed naturally but "meticulously sculpted" into its current shape between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago. If this were true, it would be considerably older than the world's oldest pyramids, with the team writing that it “suggests that advanced construction practices were already present when agriculture had, perhaps, not yet been invented.”

Among other bold claims was that there are "hidden cavities or chambers" at the site, and that the site itself appeared to have been buried several times “possibly to conceal its true identity for preservation purposes”.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and other archaeologists are far from convinced that the team has provided this, especially given how it would rewrite the history of human development. Lutfi Yondri, an archaeologist at BRIN in Bandung, Indonesia, told Nature that his work showed people in the area lived in caves between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago, and left no evidence of having the “remarkable masonry capabilities” supposedly employed by people of the area thousands of years before them to build the "pyramid".  READ MORE...

Before Homo Sapiens Existed

Archaeologists from Europe and Africa have uncovered the oldest wood structure ever discovered, dating back almost half a million years — meaning an unknown species of hominins, predating us homo sapiens, was presumably responsible for its creation.

The researchers laid out their findings in a recent paper in the science journal Nature, where they reported that they had found the wood structure of "two interlocking logs joined transversely by an intentionally cut notch" at a site in Kalambo Falls, Zambia, and dated it to a distant 476,000 years ago. 

At the same location, which the scientists say was likely the foundation for a dwelling or platform, they also found four tools fashioned from wood: a digging stick, a cut log, a wedge, and notched branch, each also dating to before the time of modern humans.

"This find has changed how I think about our early ancestors," said University of Liverpool archaeology professor and the paper's lead author Larry Barham in a statement. "Forget the label ‘Stone Age,’ look at what these people were doing: they made something new, and large, from wood. 

They used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they’d never seen before, something that had never previously existed."

Handy Man
The wood was preserved because Kalambo Falls kept the pieces permanently waterlogged, hence sealing them away from oxygen and oxygen-dependant bacteria that would degrade them. 

The finding is particularly significantbecause wood has rarely been preserved from the Early Stone Age — offering an ultra-rare peek into the lives of our distant ancestors.  READ MORE...

Ancient Human Remains in Spain

Human remains are found in a cave, and unearthed to be analyzed by Tibicena, an archaeology company, in Galdar, on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain March 13, 2023.(photo credit: Tibicena Arqueologia y Patrimonio S.L./Handout via REUTERS)



Ancient human remains that were buried in caves in Spain have been shown to be modified prior to their burial, according to a recent study.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday last week, examines the Cueva de los Marmoles, one of the most important cave contexts from southern Spain.

The significance of this cave is that it "returned a large number of commingled skeletal remains suggesting its funerary use from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age," the study said. However, the reason why these buried remains were modified still remains a mystery to researchers.


Researchers in the study also explored the fragmentation patterns that characterized different skeletal regions and took both macroscopic and microscopic analyses of whatever modifications were made to the human remains.

Radiocarbon data
The study concluded that through radiocarbon data, the remains date back several millennia, and also estimates that the minimum amount of people's remains discovered number up to 12 - seven adults and five children. 

The research does acknowledge that caves have been used as burial sites in the Iberian Peninsula for thousands of years, with its practice being originated in the 4th millennium BCE.  READ MORE...

DNA Rewrites History

The origin of Assateague’s wild horses has remained a mystery for centuries, but new genetic data supports the theory that they descended from Spanish horses marooned on the barrier island. Credit: Florida Museum photo by Jeff Gage

Ancient DNA from an American domesticated horse lends credence to shipwreck folklore.

An abandoned Caribbean colony discovered centuries later and a case of mistaken identity in the archaeological record have colluded to rewrite the history of a barrier island off the shores of Virginia and Maryland.

When Nicolas Delsol, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, set out to analyze ancient DNA recovered from cow bones discovered in archaeological sites, these seemingly unrelated threads were woven together. 

Delsol wanted to know how cattle were domesticated in the Americas, and he discovered the answer in the genetic information preserved in centuries-old teeth. However, they also held a surprise.  READ MORE...

Giant Megalithic Complex

The megalithic site. (José Antonio Linares-Catela et al., Trabajos de Prehistoria, 2022)

A huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones has been discovered in southern Spain which could be one of the largest in Europe, archaeologists told AFP Thursday.

The stones were discovered on a plot of land in Huelva, a province which flanks the southernmost part of Spain's border with Portugal, near the Guadiana River.

Spanning some 600 hectares (1,500 acres), the land had been earmarked for an avocado planation.

But before granting the permit, the regional authorities requested a survey in light of the site's possible archaeological significance – and revealed the presence of the stones.

"This is the biggest and most diverse collection of standing stones grouped together in the Iberian peninsula," said Jose Antonio Linares, a researcher at Huelva University and one of the project's three directors.

It is likely that the oldest standing stones at the La Torre-La Janera site were erected during the second half of the sixth or fifth millennium BCE, he said.

"It is a major megalithic site in Europe," he said.

At the site, they found a large number of various types of megaliths, including standing stones, dolmens, mounds, coffin-like stone boxes called cists, and various enclosures.

"Standing stones were the most common finding, with 526 of them still standing or lying on the ground," said the researchers in an article published in Trabajos de Prehistoria, a prehistoric archaeology journal in the Iberian Peninsula.

The height of the stones was between one and three metres (3-10 feet).  READ MORE...

Giant Heads Found in Tanzania

In 2018, archaeologists made a staggering discovery in Swaga Swaga Game Reserve in central Tanzania: 52 previously undocumented rock shelters, deliberately painted with rock art. Weathering had mostly destroyed all but a handful; but of those that were preserved, one was an absolute enigma.

The site, named Amak'hee 4, was elaborately painted with a frieze of figurative art – including three mysterious, anthropomorphic figures with extremely oversized heads.

These could be, according to archaeologist Maciej Grzelczyk of the Jagiellonian University in Poland, a clue to figuring out what other, similar trios of figures found in other rock art panels might be.

The Amak'hee 4 panel is difficult to date, but in 2021 Grzelczyk was able to gauge that it's at least a few hundred years old. It's painted almost entirely in red pigment, except for five figures in white.

The weathering on this pigment, and the absence of domestic animals, suggests that it's fairly old, dating back to the time of hunter-gatherer societies in the region.  READ MORE...

King Arthur's Tomb

According to popular lore, Arthur’s Stone, a roughly 5,000-year-old tomb in the West Midlands of England, boasts ties to King Arthur, the mythical leader of Camelot. One legend holds that Arthur found a pebble in his shoe while marching to battle and threw it aside, at which point it grew in size out of “pride [at] having been touched by [him],” per Atlas Obscura. Another story suggests that Arthur clashed with a giant whose elbows left massive impressions in the earth when he fell in battle.

Myths aside, the Neolithic tomb has long mystified experts and the public alike. Now, reports James Thomas for the Hereford Times, the first-ever excavation of the site is poised to shed light on its enigmatic history.

Researchers from the University of Manchester and English Heritage, the charity that cares for the monument, are unlikely to unearth the remains of the legendary king. But they do hope to find traces of the actual Neolithic Britons who built and used the chambered tomb. Though archaeologists initially suspected that Arthur’s Stone formed part of a wedge-shaped stone cairn like those found in South Wales and the Cotswolds, recent excavations indicate otherwise.

“I think it has considerable potential,” Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, tells the London Times’ Jack Blackburn. “It’s a monument of an entirely different kind to the one that we’d imagined.”

Per a statement, only the inner chamber of the tomb—made up of nine upright stones topped by a massive capstone weighing more than 25 tons—survives today. A previous dig conducted outside of the monument showed that Arthur’s Stone extended into a field to the south and underwent two distinct phases of construction.  READ MORE...

Ancient Civilizations Unequal

Inequality affected some ancient societies, but not all. Changes in farming – and the animals used in it – might have been a factor which caused it to spiral.

26 November 1922 marks what is arguably the most famous discovery in the history of archaeology. On that day, the British Egyptologist Howard Carter made a small hole through which he could insert a candle in the sealed doorway of Tutankhamun's burial chamber and thus lit the interior. As his eyes slowly adapted to the darkness, he was able to make out a chamber that had not been disturbed for over 3,000 years.

Tutankhamun was just an obscure pharaoh during his lifetime, and there is evidence that he was hastily buried – the second of the three nested coffins seems to have originally belonged to someone else. And yet the inner coffin, in which his mummy was discovered, is made of solid gold, weighing almost 250lbs (113kg). One can barely imagine how impressive the burials of such powerful leaders as Khufu, Thutmose III, or Rameses II must have been. Alas, they were all looted in antiquity.

But contrary to popular belief and cinematic glorification, most archaeologists would say that the search for spectacular treasures isn't their main research objective. They want to understand the daily life of past civilisations. Still, both extremes – the fabulous wealth of kings and the hardscrabble existence of common people – contribute to an understanding of what can be argued is one of the main goals of archaeology: to document and study the evolution of inequality in ancient societies. This also involves the question of how to recognise and quantify it.  READ MORE...

Ancient Technology

We like to think of technological innovation as a gradual, steady, and fairly linear process. However, this is not necessarily the case. Archaeological excavations throughout the world reveal that, once in a while, ancient civilizations developed inventions that were decades if not centuries ahead of their time.

It is sometimes said that these inventions rival or outmatch modern science. This, too, is a misconception. While many ancient super technologies — from Roman concrete to Damascus steel — were once lost, they have since been recreated by present-day researchers. Usually, any difficulty in recreating them stems from the lack of original instruction rather than an inability to comprehend the invention itself.

Equally erroneous is the notion that ancient civilizations stumbled upon these technologies by accident, or that they were designed by idiosyncratic geniuses who were not representative of their day and age. Although many inventors mentioned in this article were indeed considered geniuses, they cannot and should not be separated from their surroundings. Their work is not anachronistic, but a testament to the ingenuity and scientific potential of their respective civilizations.

Greek fire: flames that don’t go out
When the Muslim fleet of the Umayyad Caliphate attempted to lay siege to the Byzantine city of Constantinople in 674, their ships were doused in flames. At first, the Muslims were not alarmed; fire was often used in naval warfare and could be put out easily with cloth, dirt, or water. This, however, was no ordinary fire. Once ignited, it could not be extinguished, and after the entire fleet had burned down, even the sea itself was set ablaze.

The Umayyad Caliphate met its doom at the hands of a new military invention known as Greek fire, Roman fire, liquid fire, or sea fire, among many other names. No recipe survives, but historians speculate it might have involved petroleum, sulfur, or gunpowder. Of the three, petroleum seems the likeliest candidate, as gunpowder didn’t become readily available in Asia Minor until the 14th century, and sulfur lacked the destructive power described by Arab observers.   READ MORE...              

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