The History Blog

Patrick Mahaffy was having some a fish pond installed in his front yard when the landscapers digging heard a clink and found 83+ prehistoric stone tools.

Researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder dated the artifacts to 13,000 years ago when the Clovis people hunter-gatherers roamed the area.

The Clovis culture populated the Americas around the same time as the first people crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia, about 13,000 – 13,500 years ago.

The cache is one of only a handful of Clovis-age artifacts uncovered in North America, said Bamforth.

The tools reveal an unexpected level of sophistication, Bamforth said, describing the design as “unnecessarily complicated,” artistic and utilitarian at the same time. [...]

The cache was buried 18 inches deep and was packed into a hole the size of a large shoe box. The tools were most likely wrapped in a skin that deteriorated over time, Mahaffy said.

“The kind of stone that’s present — the kind that flakes to a good sharp edge — isn’t widely available in this part of Colorado. It looks like they were storing material because they knew they would need it later,” said Bamforth.

Even cooler than that, there are detectable traces of animal blood and protein on the weapons.The Clovis hunters used these tools to kill and/or butcher camels, horses, sheep and bears.

Besides the sheer awesomeness of camels in Colorado, this is noteworthy because it’s the first evidence we have of Clovis people eating anything besides woolly mammoths.

Mahaffy will donate almost all of the tools to a museum, but he plans to rebury a few of them where he found them.

“These tools have been associated with these people and this land for 13,000 years,” he said. “I would like some of these tools to stay where they belong.”

They’re approximately 1.5 million years old and they prove that the ancestral humans to whom they belonged (most likely Homo erectus) walked like we do. Prints Show a Modern Foot in Prehumans.

An international team of scientists, in a report on Friday in the journal Science, said the well-defined prints in an eroding bluff east of Lake Turkana “provided the oldest evidence of an essentially modern humanlike foot anatomy.” They said the find also added to evidence that painted a picture of Homo erectus as the prehumans who took long evolutionary strides — figuratively and, now it seems, also literally. [...]

Studying the more than a dozen prints, scientists determined that the individuals had heels, insteps and toes almost identical to those in humans, and that they walked with a long stride similar to human locomotion.

That means they could walk and run over long distances much like we do today, something scientists have suspected from examining fossilized Homo erectus skeletons. Since those skeletons were incomplete and no foot bones had been found, the question of how they walked and ran was still an open one.

The footprints discovered in Kenya, researchers said, indicated that the erectus foot functioned much as a human foot does: the heel contacts the ground first; weight transfers along the arch to the ball of the foot; and the push-off is applied by the forefoot. In apes and apparently earlier hominids, this force comes from the midfoot.

These are the first prints found that were made by members of our genus Homo. The only earlier set we have are 3.7 million years ago and were left in what is now Tanzania by Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis.

Miguel Leoff, an American dentist, had the largest private collection of pre-Columbian antiquities, mainly collected between 1940 and 1960 when it was still legal for individuals to purchase and own antiquities in Mexcio.

(Since 1972 all antiquities have been declared property of the state, although pre-existing collections were allowed to remain with the owners as long as they were itemized and declared.)

His widow has now donated that collection in its entirety to the Mexican government.

That’s 8100 pieces, from quarter-ton Toltec monoliths of Quetzalcoatl emerging from the jaws of a serpent to tiny clay figurines, donated on the sole condition that they remain together. Needless to say, Mexico had no problem agreeing to the terms.

“It literally took my breath away as I opened case after case to discover these objects in tortoiseshell, jade, serpentine and gold,” Xochicalco archeology director Marco Antonio Santos told a press conference.

Experts say it is the most spectacular private collection ever unveiled in Mexico given the number of artifacts, their variety and their general condition. [...]

Among the most important pieces are a clay flute in the form of a bird, two Inca pottery pieces from Peru, a figure from Ecuador and a pottery figurine from Guatemala.

[Polemic interlude]You wouldn’t know this from reading the AP article because they avoid ugly realities that contradict their “ooh, shiny things!” theme, but this collection is fruit of the poisoned looting tree. One of the stele actually bears the marks of the chainsaw used to sever it from its wall.

Santos lamented this sad fact in the press conference, noting that removed from their original context, they’ve been stripped of much of their archaeological value and are now reduced to lovely but limited pieces of art.[/Polemic interlude]

Anyway, some pieces need restoration — there is evidence of crude repair attempts using dental materials — but overall the collection is in excellent condition.

They’re on display now at the Xochicalco Archaeological Site Museum in Xochicalco, Mexico. Once the collection is fully documented and restored, it is scheduled to go on the road.

It’s hard to wrap my mind around that figure, but it’s apparently not an exaggeration. The Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, England, will debut an X-ray machine this fall that utilizes a beam of synchroton light, an intense form of radiation that will allow antiquities to be scanned without harm at a heretofore unthinkable level of detail.

This will allow researchers to see through solid objects and build images on a micron scale, revealing details less than the width of a human hair. [...]

British Museum scientists will be among the first to use the beamline known as the Joint Engineering, Environmental and Processing or Jeep.

They will use the beam on a group of mysterious half life-sized Egyptian bronze statues to discover how they were created.

The bronzes are joined somehow — various parts have been put together — but the joints are so dense archaeologists have never been able to pinpoint how it was done. Once JEEP is up and running, the synchroton light will answer that question, as well as a host more questions about its manufacture and restoration history.

How it works reads like something Doc Brown would say:

To create the super-bright light beam, electrons are fired into a straight accelerator where they reach a speed close to that of light. The electrons then pass into a booster ring where they gain up to 3 giga electron volts in energy before being pushed into a storage ring.

Here the electrons pass through specially designed magnets that bend the beams, releasing synchroton light, which filters down the beamline.

The whole process works in a fraction of the time taken by existing methods such as CT scans and standard X-rays.

That means the fascinating and detailed CT scan of a mummy I just posted about a few days ago will look like a crayon stick figure drawing in comparison, and it’ll only take a minute to produce details at a micron level.

I cannot wait to see what those statues reveal.

Romans weren’t big on body shame, that much I knew, but I didn’t realize they were quite this sanguine: Ancient Roman Lamp Shows Gynecological Exam.

A group of archaeologists has found in the northern Spanish region of Leon a ceramic lamp dating from the beginning of the 1st century that shows a representation of the gynecological exam performed on a sick woman. [...]

The find is of an oil lamp, “an exceptional piece that illustrates the presence of doctors in the city,” and – specifically – a military hospital, the expert said.

On the lamp’s surface “appears a very slender woman, possibly affected by a serious illness, like cancer, and a doctor who is performing a gynecological exam with a vaginal speculum,” Morillo said.

Although there are representations of Roman speculums (specula?) on the record, this is the first one known on a lamp.

The find is in the hands of unnamed private individuals, for some reason that escapes me, but it’s expected to wind up in the Leon Provincial Museum shortly. There are no pictures either, just an archaeological drawing.

Assuming the drawing is accurate, the speculum is a little weird-looking, to be honest. It looks like a bellows.

After the nightmare of post-invasion looting and with thousands of pieces still missing, Baghdad’s National Museum is scheduled to reopen by the end of February.

They’ve been renovating the space for months, and restoring the 5,000 recovered antiquities out of the 15,000 estimated to have been destroyed or stolen. Most importantly, they’re actively working to prevent anything like this happening again.

The museum and other archaeological sites will be protected by a newly formed Interior Ministry force called the “relics protection force,” Jibouri said in an interview.

The force will aim to prevent a repeat of the devastation of April 2003 when looters robbed the museum of some 15,000 priceless artefacts as part of a wave of theft from public buildings after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell.

Saddam Hussein was no great steward of the Cradle of Civilization. Archaeological sites were plundered all the time under his rule, so this is a major (and very much welcome) shift in attitude to Iraq’s immense cultural patrimony.

Qahtan al-Jibouri, Iraq’s minister for tourism and antiquities quoted above, is also hoping the reopening of the museum will usher in a new era of tourism and associated revenues. The budget is tight, needless to say, so an influx of tourist cash would make a big difference.

For years the main source of Iraqi tourism has been Iranian pilgrims visiting religious sites. Hard to believe, but the enormous wealth of Mesopotamian history never really made it onto the brochure until now.

The mummy has been at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute since 1920, safely ensconced in a beautifully decorated sarcophagus. They couldn’t open it without destroying it, so the mummy has never been seen.

Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, now we can all see it in astonishing detail.

The mummy was discovered in Luxor, Egypt, and sold to the Oriental Institute in 1920.

Teeter said the coffin, painted and carved to look like the figure of a beautiful woman, is an archeological marvel. She said singers who served in Egyptian temples were traditionally young, beautiful women from high-ranking families.

Hieroglyphs on the front of the coffin tell researchers more about the mummy’s life. The woman’s name was Meresamun, which means “Amun Loves Her,” and she was a singer in the temple of the Egyptian god Amun.

CT scans are often used to view mummies, but most of them are not in pristine condition. Researchers, grave robbers and hobbyists have messed with them over the centuries.

This case is remarkable because the casket has been sealed shut for 2800 years, so Meresamun has all kinds of secrets to share.

Her cause of death is not one of them, however. It was most likely some kind of infectious disease, because there is no visible trauma. She was about 30 when she died, and her skeleton suggests she was healthy until right before she died.

Check out this footage of the CT scan with commentary by University of Chicago Medical Center radiologist Dr. Michael Vannier. I can’t embed it ’cause they’re meanies, but believe me it’s well worth a click.

It’s been in the Maidstone Museum for years, but it wasn’t on display and the staff had no idea how rare and valuable it is until a Greek expert from the British Museum came to assess their collection.

The Early Cycladic III Kernos, a vessel that incorporates 6 cups around a globular basin on a fluted base, is an unusual item especially in the complete condition it is in. [...]

The Kernos was used to make offerings to the Gods and each cup would have been filled with a different substance such as milk, honey and oats.

We know from descriptions that the filled vessel would have been held on the head of the devotee until sanctified by the priest.

This type from this period is predominantly found at Phylakopi on Melos, the same home as the most famous sculpture in the world – the Venus de Milo.

There are only 20 of these vessels known in the world, and most of them are in major museums like the Met and the Louvre.

I think it’s a little creepy looking, to be honest.

Ugh. Too many tubules. The one at the Met is even scarier.

Creepy! It’s like the archaic Greek version of a navel orange or some sort of fungal growth.

My hangups aside, it’s a major coup for the little museum. Assuming it wasn’t looted, I’m very happy for them.

The Santa Domitilla catacomb is the oldest and one of the two largest of Rome’s 40 or so secret underground Christian burial networks. There are 15 kilometers of tunnels, cubicles and one suprisingly large basilica carved out of the volcanic tufa rock on what was once the property of Imperial relative and Christian/Jewish convert Flavia Domitilla’s property.

Many of the tunnels have never been explored or excavated because they’re layered on top of each other and in various states of disrepair. Also, there’s a church on top and it’s already sunken.

Thanks to some brilliant Austrian researchers who invented an awesome laser scanning device, there is finally a complete 3D map of all 15 kilometers.

The data produced by the scanner has been combined with existing photographs.

This enables people using the model to not only ”wander” through the virtual tunnels, but also to explore the individual tombs and examine wall paintings that are normally shrouded in darkness. In the next stage of the project, which lasts until 2011, the researchers want to count the exact number of tombs within the catacombs, as well as documenting the funerary paintings that have not yet undergone full scientific studies. Zimmermann said he hoped the votive inscriptions would provide interesting new sociological detail that could later be added to the model, such the age of the individuals buried in each tomb.

It looks cool, too.

Pretty damn sweet, amirite? Imagine the whole 15k. Now if only they’d put it online so we could explore like the vicarious Indiana Joneses we are….

Fun fact about Flavia Domitilla: She’s mentioned as a convert to Judaism in the Talmud. She’s also mentioned by Suetonius and Cassius Dio as having been convicted of atheism by Domitian and banished to the island of Pandateria. Then Eusebius claimed her for Christianity and said she was exiled to another island.

They may have been talking about two different Flavie, though, an aunt and niece. I think it’s cooler if they’re all talking about the same lady, especially the Talmud and Eusebius.

It’s cool enough that a mammoth tusk was found on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Southern California, but when the tusk may have belonged to a pygmy mammoth the size of a pony (!!1), the coolness skyrockets.

Santa Cruz Island is the largest of eight islands that make up California’s Channel Islands. During the Pleistocene epoch, more than 10,000 years ago, the four northern islands — Santa Cruz, San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Anacapa — formed one big island that scientists call Santarosae.

Scientists theorized that mainland Columbian mammoths — ancestors of the present-day elephant — swam across the channel in search of vegetation on Santarosae. Over time, they evolved into a pygmy form to better adapt to scarce resources on the islands.

Judging by the tusk size — about 4 feet long — it might have belonged to a pygmy mammoth, Vermeer said.

Apparently a more complete skeleton of a pygmy mammoth was found on another Channel Island (Santa Rosa) 15 years ago, but this is the first I’ve heard of such a marvelous creature. “Pygmy mammoth” has to be the most adorable oxymoron of all time.

Santa Cruz Island is hilly and not terribly mammoth-friendly, so it’s a big enough deal to find a mammoth there anyway. The only other one that has been found in the island was a full-size Columbian mammoth.

Mind you, it’s not 100% confirmed that the find is a mammoth tusk. They’re hard to identify, and it could be a marine mammal of some variety.

I’m rooting for the pygmy mammoth all the way.