Month: January 2009

No, they’re not a race of Star Trek aliens

Ancient, Ex Cathedra, Museums, Treasures

Although you might think so from the name. The Trypilians were a Stone Age people who lived in what is now Ukraine from 5400–2700 B.C. Apparently they created the largest settlements in the world (that we know of), only to burn them down and fade away.

The Royal Ontario Museum is putting on an exhibit of Trypilian artifacts on loan from the Ukrainian government.

Highly sophisticated, the Trypilians were both farmers and hunters. Their ability to adapt to different terrain led to their prosperity, and soon they had the largest population growth of any other Neolithic people. They built the largest settlements in Europe at that time, some with an estimated population of 10-15,000 people. Every 60 to 80 years, they burned some settlements to the ground and moved to settle another location.

In 1896, Ukrainian archaeologist Vikenty Khvoika discovered one of these settlements near the village of Trypillia. The artifacts he uncovered were instrumental in reconstructing the daily lives of this prehistoric civilization.

Many of those artifacts are among the 300 on display in the exhibit. Star Trek-sounding civilizations I’ve never heard of are definitely worth a trip to ROM, imo.

Nanodiamonds are not a mammoth’s best friend

Ancient

Nor a Clovis indian’s, either. Nanodiamonds are teeny tiny invisible-to-the-naked-eye fragments of diamonds created by enormously high pressure and heat.

Researchers have found thin layers of them all over North America right at the 13,000 year old level, which is when a global cooling period called the Younger Dryas began, extinguishing the human and large mammal populations of the continent.

Bones of these animals, and Clovis artifacts, are abundant before this time. Excavations show a dark “mat” of carbon-rich material separates the bones and artifacts from emptier and younger layers.

Writing in the journal Science, Kennett and colleagues report they have evidence of the nanodiamonds from six sites across North America, fitting in with the hypothesis that a giant explosion, or multiple explosions, above the Earth’s surface cause widespread fire and pressure.

There is evidence these minerals can be found in other sediments, too, they said, and help explain the “black mat”.

“These data support the hypothesis that a swarm of comets or carbonaceous chondrites (a type of meteorite) produced multiple air shocks and possible surface impacts at 12,900 (years ago)” they wrote.

The nanodiamonds were only found in Younger Dryas layers, not above or below, so their discovery supports the catastrophic comet theory.

There are no major craters indicating impact, though, so if the comet idea is true, it might have exploded in the atmosphere generating a huge shockwave of heat and pressure that layered the continent in invisible diamonds, killing every beast around and plunging the world into an ice age.

Not everyone buys it.

Nicholas Pinter, a geologist at Southern Illinois University, said he had yet to see classic evidence of an asteroid impact.

The so-called discrete layers of material were not of a uniform age, he said. Microspherules, for example, rain down all the time and are present throughout the geological record.

“My graduate student found some on his mailbox,” said Dr Pinter.

While Dr Kennett proposed that ordinary carbon was forged into diamonds in the intense pressure of an airburst, Dr Pinter said nano-diamonds are now being identified at other locations and times without credible evidence of any impact.

The suggestion that they could have been produced by an airburst event is “untested and highly implausible,” he argued.

Surprisingly late Roman battlefield found in Germany

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi, Treasures

After Rome lost 3 legions to Germanic tribes united under Ariminius, aka Hermann, in the 9 A.D. Battle of Teutoborg forest, Augustus ordered that troops withdraw to the Rhine, and there the border stayed pretty much without exception until the empire crumbled.

Germanicus made some incursions past the Rhine 5 years later, but basically historians thought Teutoborg marked the end of a strong Roman military presence east of the Rhine.

Those assumptions now gang agley because archaeologists have found a massive 3rd century Roman battlefield south of Hannover way east of the Rhine, even east of the Teutoborg site.

So far metal detector enthusiasts and archaeologists have uncovered over 600 artifacts over a mile of forest, including spear points, arrows, axe heads, wagon parts, sandal nails, coins, even hippo-sandals, a kind of rudimentary horse shoe.

At least one arrowhead still contained enough of the original wooden shaft to provide organic material for radiocarbon dating, which place it some time in the 3rd century A.D. Coins and other objects support the idea that the battle may have been fought some time between 200 and 250 A.D. […]

The specialized artillery and hundreds of Roman sandal nails found atop Harzhorn Hill is a good indication the combatants were Romans, not barbarians using Roman weapons. Roman artifacts have been found as far north as the Baltic Sea, but have usually been dismissed as trade goods. “Roman sandals on German feet doesn’t make sense, at least not in that amount,” says Friedrich Lueth, head of the German Archaeological Institute’s Roman German Commission. “At this late stage, it’s quite surprising to see them so far north.”

The artifacts weren’t strewn willy-nilly. The spear points are almost all facing the same direction, so archaeologists have been able to map troop movements during the battle.

Not only did the thousand or so Romans win in something like 30 minutes, but they came from the north, so they were even deeper into Germanic territory before the fight.

Preachable moment: if the metal detectorists hadn’t reported the initial finds but instead just took what they found and kept it or sold it, this battle which reverses conventional historical wisdom on the trajectory of empire would remain unknown.

This is a fine example of why archaeological context matters far beyond the mere value of excavated goods.

2000-year-old brains… BRAAAINS…

Ancient, Treasures

Archaeologists excavating a mud pit in York found a 2000-year-old skull with a hunk of brain still rattling inside.

After the skull was discovered in the muddy circular pit close to an Iron Age ditch, the archaeological trust’s finds officer, Rachel Cubitt, felt something move inside the cranium as she cleaned off soil. Peering through the base of the skull, she spotted an unusual yellow substance. She said: “It jogged my memory of a university lecture on the rare survival of ancient brain tissue. We gave the skull special conservation treatment as a result, and sought expert medical opinion.”

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time ancient brains have been found in ancient skulls — some 8000-year-old skulls with brains in them were found in a peat bog in Florida 24 years ago — but it is the oldest preserved brain tissue ever found in Britain.

Why the brain survived is a mystery. All they found was the single skull and its contents: no skeleton, no other soft tissues, nothing but BRAAAINS. The pit was a mere 3 feet deep, so the skull wasn’t safely ensconced in miles of peat like the Florida ones.

They’ve done a CT scan (hence the piccy), but haven’t carbon dated it or done other chemical or soil analyses yet. We’ll learn more about the mysterious BRAAAINS once they have.

Economic downturn hits King Tut

Ancient, Modern(ish), Museums

Not even the golden wonders of pharaonic Egypt can lure people out of this winter of economic discontent, as the Dallas Museum of Art is finding out.

They weren’t even looking to make huge money off the traveling exhibit, which has raked in the cash in cities around the US since it opened in Los Angeles 3 years ago. Dallas just wanted to break even, but with an expensive show like this, that means 1 million people have to see the exhibit at full price.

Now that discretionary spending is tight for so many, that number is looking increasingly distant.

The Tut exhibit has drawn more than 270,000 visitors during its first three months, Ms. Pitman said, with 90,000 of those being schoolchildren, who, like other large groups, purchased discounted tickets.

With less than five months to go before the show closes May 17, the DMA would have to draw 730,000 to reach the 1 million mark. That would be an average of 146,000 a month, which exceeds its current average of around 90,000 a month.

Bonnie Pitman, the museum director, and Phillip Jones, president and CEO of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, are still optimistic that they’ll reach their goal. The holidays will hopefully bring a spike of visitors.

Any shortfall will hit the museum hard. The terms of the loan are confidential, but Zawi Hawass has been bragging about how much bank the Egyptian government is making from the exhibit.

They get their cut first, you see. Then the promoter. Then the museum, assuming there’s anything left. Egypt is guaranteed at least $6 million from the ticket sale proceeds, after that, they get a percentage of profits.

Up until the financial crisis, these kinds of exhibits were sure to be blockbusters and therefore worth the exhorbitant loan fees. Not so much anymore.

For more about the exhibit and to purchase tickets should you be in the area, see the Dallas Museum of Art site.