Month: June 2008

Scottish gold in Newfoundland

Renaissance, Treasures

The British colony on the Avalon peninsula in Newfoundland was founded by Lord Baltimore in 1621. Six years later, someone dropped a 22-karat gold Scottish coin. Almost four hundred years later, archaeologists found it in the stone footing of a house.

The “Sword and Sceptre” coin dated 1601 was issued during the reign of King James VI of Scotland, two years before he ascended the throne of England as King James I.

It features the crowned arms of Scotland (rampant lion) on the obverse, surrounded by the Latin inscription, “James VI, by the Grace of God, King of Scots.” The reverse features a crossed sword and sceptre, flanked by two thistles — all below a crown. The reverse Latin legend reads, “The safety of the people is the supreme law.” “It’s probably the most unusual and valuable thing from this early period (ever found). I don’t know of any other (complete) gold coins from any other land archeological sites in eastern North America or Canada,” said Tuck, who has been excavating the site of the colony since the early 1990s. “Those underwater guys are always finding them by the bushel from ships and stuff.”

That’s funneh. :giggle:

Interdisciplinary envy aside, I didn’t realize gold coins were such a rare find in North America. It makes sense, though, considering that Britain colonized the land at least in part to establish a solid launching point for piracy again Spanish treasure ships from Central and South America, and all that gold went to the motherland.

Hawaiian temple restored

Medieval

Hapaialii Heiau is a stone temple, possibly used as a calendar, made in the mid 1400’s on the Big Island of Hawaii. A team of masons and archaeologists has restored it one huge rock at a time.

During the project it was discovered a person could accurately mark the passing of the seasons when standing behind the center stone on the heiau’s top platform and aligning it with various points on the heiau.

Experts found that the sun sets directly over the southwestern corner of the platformlike structure during winter solstice, and they are expecting it to set over the northwestern corner during this month’s summer solstice.

“Our ancestors were well-accomplished developers,” Chun said. “A lot of knowledge was revealed through this work.”

The same team has already begun to restore an adjacent temple which is known as the place where Chief Kamalalawalu of Maui was sacrificed in the 16th century after losing a war to Chief Lonoikamakahiki.

You can see that temple in the background with Hapaialii Heiau in the foreground in this picture:

A date 2000 years in the making

Ancient

I’m absurdly proud of that title, and here’s why: Israeli researchers planted a 2000-year-old date palm seed that archaeologists collected from Masada in the 60’s and it actually grew!

Now it’s a foot and a half tall and the oldest seed to have ever germinated. (A 1300-year-old lotus seed found in a dry lake bed in China is the previous title holder.)

They didn’t just plop the pit into a pot. Elaine Solowey, with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel, bathed three seeds in fertilizer and enzyme-rich solutions before they were planted.

“Two of them came up,” Dr. Sallon says.

She and her colleagues weren’t sure exactly how old the seed was when they planted it. But when the sapling was repotted after a year and a half, they found seed fragments clinging to the roots and sent them to Switzerland to be dated.

Markus Elgi at the University of Zurich’s Radiocarbon Laboratory analyzed the fragments and two other seeds that had been found at the same spot, but hadn’t grown. He found they were 2,000 years old, give or take 50 years.

The Judean date palm died out a few hundred years later — the date palms in Israel today come from Californian stock, sadly — but according to Pliny, there used to be vast forests of Judean date palms in the Jordan river valley, and Judean dates were known to be especially large and delicious.

They became symbols of Judea, playing a featured role on the ancient shekel and on Vespasian’s sore-winnery Iudea Capta sestertius, in which a woman in mourning sits and a bound man with weapons cast on the ground stands under a Judean date palm.

We won’t know for two or three more years if Methuselah is female, and even if she is a ladydate, she might not flower or fruit for her own reasons. I’m hoping it might some day be possible to sample the same dates that were the Masada Sicarii’s last snack.

California falls into the sea: a preview

Modern(ish)

In 1929 a charming “community of bungalows” on the picturesque southern tip of San Pedro began to slide into the sea. Literally.

Sometimes it moved as fast as a foot a day, but nonetheless, the collapse was gradual enough that almost all of the houses were moved in time and nobody was harmed. By 1941 however, the entire area had become so unstable that the city had to fence it off.

Naturally the fence doesn’t stop photographers, urban explorers, shifty teenagers and pretty much everyone else from exploring what is now known as Sunken City. The jagged street that plunges into the ocean across from Catalina Island and the foundations of long-gone houses are irresistible.

“The manhole entrances were all brickwork,” says John Nieto, education director for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy.

“There’s all this ancient 80-year-old stuff – you can see the type of construction of the roads and the type of construction of the electric line. It’s almost like an archaeology exhibit.”

It’s like the end of Planet of the Apes, only with normal everyday life instead of a highly recognizable political and cultural icon.

For more groovy pictures of Sunken City, check out this Flickr account and this one.

Okay, okay, I give.

Ancient

I haven’t posted about the so-called “world’s oldest Christian church” discovered in Rehab, Jordan, because the claim seems to me vastly overblown.


I mean, what they actually found is a cave under a church where early Christians might have hid out. So far all they’ve got to bolster the grandiose title of oldest church evar is a circular area with seating. Even if one part of the cave was used for worship, does that really qualify it as a “Christian church”?

In the immediate post-Jesus area, people were congregating in all sorts of places: private homes, catacombs, olive groves, wherever two or more gathered in his name. Are they all the oldest Christian churches in the world too?

The inscription, the artifacts, the burials they’ve seen so far have all come from the actual church above the cave. The only “clear evidence of early Christian rituals that predate the church” is that apse.

I can’t help but be a little offended for Saint Georgeous Church. It’s beautiful and way old in and of itself. It doesn’t deserve to be upstaged by its own basement, although of course any attention the cave gets will spill over to St. George.

Anyway, Monsters and Critics has some killer pictures of the cave and the remains of the actual church above it, so I figure it’s my duty to share the goods.