The History Blog

Murals found inside a pyramid at the ancient Maya site of Calakmul, Mexico, cast a whole new light on Mayan daily life and language.

Researchers excavated a tunnel into what looked like a burial mound from the outside, but turned out to be a buried pyramid. Inside they found multiple layers of pyramids built on top of each other, with a set of excellently preserved paintings of quotidian Mayan activities.

The images on the mural show people engaged in mundane activities, such as preparing food. Hieroglyphic captions accompany each image, labeling each individual. In each case the term “aj,” meaning “person,” is used and followed by the word for a foodstuff or material. For example, the terms “aj ul” (“maize-gruel person”) shows a man with a large pot, dish and spoon with another man drinking from a bowl, and the term “aj mahy” (tobacco person) depicts two men, one holding a spatula and the other a pot that likely holds a form of the tobacco leaf.

Such scenes have never been seen in surviving Mayan paintings before, though some parts of quotidian Mayan culture have survived through the ages with the remaining Mayan populations) and the hieroglyphs for some words (such as “tobacco” and “maize-gruel”) were already known. Other hieroglyphs, though, were new to researchers — of particular importance were finding the words for maize itself and salt, which were known to be key staples of the Mayan diet.

There are also a woman selling tamales and a man eating one, a woman selling clay pots, a man bearing a heavy pot with a patterned tie around his head. Fortunately for us, these murals were covered with a layer of protective clay which has kept them in excellent condition despite the many subsequent layers built on top of them.

Based on the style of pottery in the paintings, researchers date the paintings to sometime between 620 and 700 A.D.

Decorative painting on Mayan monuments is usually devoted to major political and religious figures and themes, so these murals may be unique. University of Pennsylvania Museum researcher Simon Martin knows of no similar Mayan paintings. Central American jungles do not provide a hospitable environment for the preservation of artifacts. The high humidity has destroyed a great deal of Mayan art and hieroglyphs.

So far only two sides of the pyramid walls have been excavated. Perhaps we’ll learn more new words once the other two are revealed.

A pair of Italian archaeologists investigating the Sahara desert near Siwa in Egypt have uncovered hundreds of bleached bones, Bronze age weapons, arrowheads, jewelry, water pots and other artifacts dating to the 6th century B.C., right around the time when Persian king Cambyses II lost himself an army of 50,000 trying to destroy an oracle denying his right to rule a conquered Egypt.

The earring and a bridle fitting look very much like carved images of Persian soldiers from the period. The bronze dagger fits the era and culture as well. These are unique finds.

Herodutus (484-425 B.C.) wrote about Cambyses and his doomed campaign, felled by a sandstorm on the way to the oracle at the Temple of Amun near the Oasis of Siwa, but no physical evidence of the event has ever been found before. The desert doesn’t really get excavated a lot, for obvious reasons.

“It all started in 1996, during an expedition aimed at investigating the presence of iron meteorites near Bahrin, one small oasis not far from Siwa,” Alfredo Castiglioni, director of the Eastern Desert Research Center (CeRDO) in Varese, told Discovery News.

While working in the area, the researchers noticed a half-buried pot and some human remains. Then the brothers spotted something really intriguing — what could have been a natural shelter.

It was a rock about 35 meters (114.8 feet) long, 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) in height and 3 meters (9.8 feet) deep. Such natural formations occur in the desert, but this large rock was the only one in a large area.

“Its size and shape made it the perfect refuge in a sandstorm,” Castiglioni said.

Right there, the metal detector of Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat of Cairo University located relics of ancient warfare: a bronze dagger and several arrow tips.

“We are talking of small items, but they are extremely important as they are the first Achaemenid objects, thus dating to Cambyses’ time, which have emerged from the desert sands in a location quite close to Siwa,” Castiglioni said.

Cambyses was the son of Cyrus the Great. He took out his daddy issues on Egypt, which Cyrus had planned to invade but died before he got the chance. In 525 B.C., Cambyses defeated Pharaoh Psamtek III, the last king of the 26th Dynasty. Cambyses’ stint as the first pharaoh of Egypt’s 27th Dynasty ended 3 years later when he died on his way home to Persia.

The sources on all this are thin, to say the least. Herodotus being a Greek had a tad of a bias against the Persians, what with the continual wars going on between them from the time of Cyrus the Great to a hundred years later when Herodotus was writing.

Cambyses’ failures may not actually have included his soldiers having to eat their dead comrades to survive in Nubia and losing a 50,000 man army in the desert.

Mohammed al-Saghir of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities is organizing another expedition to the site to investigate it more thoroughly. The desert sand can be a fine preserver of delicate items like textiles and leather. Whether these are the remains of Cambyses’ lost army, the kernel of truth behind the tale, or another thing altogether, any finds could tell us a huge amount about the military and political history of the time.

The East Side Gallery is a 3/4 mile (1.3 km) section of the Berlin Wall painted with over 100 murals on the east side, where prettifying had been strictly verboten before 1989. In 1990 after the rest of the wall came down, artists from all over the world came to Berlin to paint the east side canvas.

It was meant to be a beautiful symbol of human rights and world freedom, but over the years the concrete rotted, the walls cracked and crumbled, the murals were peeling. Long tracts of the wall had to be rebuilt from the rebar up, so some paintings had to be completely redone, this time in water-resistant acrylic.

On Friday, in concert with the city-wide Fall of the Wall celebrations, 90 artists from the original 118 returned to repaint, restore and conserve 106 of the murals.

The artists “have conveyed a second time their genuine euphoria from 1990,” said Kani Alavi, who heads the East Side Gallery Artists’ Association and was a driving force behind the restoration.

“Twenty years after the fall of the wall, the East Side Gallery stands for democracy and human rights,” he said.

“Every (artist) had his own perceptions on the fall of the wall,” Wowereit said. “I think this international nature, these different points of view and this variety are a secret of the success of this great open-air exhibition.”

The event was not without controversy. Some of the artists weren’t thrilled to have to remake images that have become iconic. Earlier this year Dmitri Vrubel, painter of the awesome mural of Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev kissing, expressed dismay that his much-duplicated image was paved over and that he never got a cut of said duplications.

I’m not sure how much of a leg he has to stand on given that his mural is actually an iconic picture taken by French photographer Régis Bossu in 1979.

In 1979, Régis was sent to East Berlin to photograph the festivities of the 30th anniversary of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik — East Germany — featuring its guest of honor, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the most powerful man in the Eastern bloc.

When Brezhnev finished his speech, East German President Erich Honnecker opened his arms to congratulate him with a big kiss, a normal ritual for socialist buddies. A dozen photographers opened a fire of flashes. Régis, standing in the back row, had his camera equipped with a 80-200 mm telephoto lens. He pressed the shutter release of his Nikon camera at the decisive moment and caught the embrace as a close-up on Kodak Tri-X black-and-white film.

Major magazines used it immediately. Paris Match played it prominently on double pages and labeled it like a painting: “The Kiss.”

Eleven years later, Vrubel, saw “The Kiss” in an old Paris Match and used it as a model for his painting on the remains of a section of the Berlin Wall.

The East Side Gallery restoration project invited Bossu to the unveiling of the restored wall Friday. He and Vrubel posed for pictures, spoke unintelligibly to each other, and basked in the light of the new “after a photograph by Régis Bossu” credit under the mural.

In 1925, French archaeologists excavating near the East Gate of Ankor Tom (the final great monument built in the Angkor complex of Cambodia) found a 900-year-old intricately carved bust of a 7-headed Buddha.

It was missing a head on top, its feet and arms, but the bust indicated it had once been a 10-foot statue of Hevajra, a warrior tantric deity often depicted with 8 arms on each side with feet in a dancing posture.

The bust was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where it remains on display to this day. Nobody has found the remaining parts of the colossus, until Dr. Peter Sharrock took a break from a conference to hike the jungles around Ankor.

All he had to make his way was a single old picture of the 1925 exhibition and a strong groin.

“There was no road, only a sort of animal track into the forest,” he said. “It was pretty unpleasant. There were snakes all over the place, and in the back of my mind was the knowledge that the Khmer Rouge had planted land mines all over Angkor.

“We went on and on, and were about to give up, when finally I spotted something through the trees. We strode through the creepers and thorns, and I realised that I’d seen the carved square corner of the statue’s pedestal. And lo and behold, there were the legs lying beside it.” [...]

Hevajra would have been venerated during the reign of Jayavarman VII, emperor of the Khmers at the height of their power, but it is likely the statue was broken up and dumped outside the city walls during a revival of Hinduism in the 14th century. This theory undermines the view that the Khmers followed a compassionate Buddhist philosophy. “It’s something of a tectonic shift in archaeology”, Dr Sharrock said.

The legs are not in supergreat condition, judging from the picture. I’m not seeing much detail in the carving. Perhaps once some conservation is done and the greenery is removed we’ll be able to see more.

The Cambodian government has pledged to excavate the area further in search of the rest of the statue, so keep your 80 fingers crossed.

The bust of Caesar found in the Rhone river has gone on display in the Arles museum along with many other Roman artifacts salvaged from the river.

The new exhibit at the Arles museum covers not just the remarkable contemporary bust of Julius Caesar, carved during his lifetime in 46 B.C. and portraying him as the middle aged guy he was, but also 500 other artifacts, the fruits of 20 years of perilous and frustrating dives in the Rhone.

The murky waters, strong currents and local fauna made these dives hard work. The team were ready to give up, in fact, when they found the bust of Caesar. After that, of course they had renewed purpose. They’ve been salvaging major Roman artifacts as recently as this year.

The “unifying theme” in “Caesar, the Rhone for Memory”, running to September 2010, is “to maintain the feeling of going on a journey with the archaeologist, following every stage of their work from the site of the digs right up to the restoration and exhibition of the artifacts”, says its designer Pierre Berthier.

The collection shows ancient Arles was not only a port and place of passage, but “decorated” and “monumental” says Long, “an ostentatious facade aiming to display Rome’s wealth and power”.

The most stunning finds are together in the last room of the exhibition that Long calls “the saint of saints”.

Alongside Caesar is the 1.8-metre (six-foot) marble statue of the god Neptune dating from the beginning of the third century AD, and a bronze satyr with its hands tied behind its back.

There’s also a bronze Victory, a head of Juno or Venus, piles of metal ingots, tools, amphorae, oil lamps, an assortment of slice-of-life remnants from 15 different shipwrecks.

When the exhibit ends next September, all the artifacts on display will be added to the museum’s permanent collection.

Photos courtesy of the Musée départemental Arles antique © Maby J.-L. & Roux L.

Hernando de Soto, the conquistador who had once made huge piles of gold at the Incas’ expense in Peru with Pizarro, died broke, sick and wearing animal skins for clothes somewhere in Arkansas along the banks of the Mississippi in 1542.

He had left Florida two years earlier, following rumors that there was gold in the northeast, but his exact trail has been the subject of much vigorous debate among historians, and even in Congressional committee. Very few artifacts have been found along de Soto’s route. In fact, the only confirmed physical evidence of de Soto’s expedition have been found in Tallahassee, Florida, where they spent their first winter.

Now a Georgia archaeologist thinks he’s found artifacts left behind by de Soto‘s team on the edge of a swamp.

Dennis Blanton is the curator of Native American Archeology at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. Blanton’s team found beads, metals and a silver necklace in Telfair County, on the edge of a swamp near the Ocmulgee River.

“Outside of Florida, nothing like this has ever been found. And finding the silver piece was almost startling,” Blanton says. “These are the kinds of things, that we know, by comparison with other de Soto sites, especially in Florida, that fit the bill of an area de Soto traveled through.”

The beads were used for trading with the locals and the silver piece was necklace made from a coin of the period.

Historians have long speculated that de Soto crossed the Ocmulgee near Macon, but that’s 80 miles northeast of Blanton’s finds. De Soto’s journals note only that they baptized some native people in the Ocmulgee area, no specifics beyond that.

De Soto’s journal entries are precious records of the Southeastern Native American tribes, in some cases the only written records of their existence, but there’s not enough geographical detail to pin down exactly where they traveled. There are other primary sources from people who were on the expedition and people have come up with a variety of possible routes, including one determined by Congress in 1929 to be the official one.

Finding some new physical evidence of this hotly debated trail is hugely significant.

Bulgarian archaeologists excavating near the south-eastern town of Karanovo have uncovered a lavishly appointed tomb dating to the late first and early second century A.D.

Thrace had been annexed into the Roman Empire by then, but clearly their skill at fine metalwork was still going strong.

For a quick overview of Thracian history and pictures of the amazing Thracian funerary riches found before in Bulgaria, see this site.

So far no human remains have been found in the 12 square meter tomb, but they’ve only just begun digging and have already found a cache of precious offerings.

Placed in the aristocrat’s tomb for use in the afterlife, there were two silver cups with images of the god of love, Eros, and a number of other ornate silver and bronze vessels.

In addition, the archaeologists also discovered a chariot and fragments of a shield.

The archaeological team is building a protective structure around the tomb so excavations can go on even during the harsh winter. The priceless artifacts already uncovered may be only the beginning.

This tomb most likely belonged to an aristocrat, hence the preponderance of precious metals and the warrior accouterments. Here’s hoping they find some inscriptions so we can know who exactly earned himself such a shiny send-off.

The UK metal detector squad strikes again, this time near Stirling, Scotland, with a hoard of 4 exquisitely crafted gold torcs. They date from the 1st to the 3rd century BC, long before the Roman invasion, and are probably of Celtic origin.

One of the necklaces is a ribbon torc, and appears to have been made from twisted Irish or Scottish sheet gold. Another is encrusted with small circles of gold wire and beads of gold that look like pearls, with two fine gold chains acting as fasteners.

A source close to a team that excavated the site in the wake of the find said: “We’ve never seen anything like this before. The workmanship is breathtaking. Some of the gold wire used is the thickness of your finger. No-one here wants to put a price on it. One of the guys said that there were a lot of silly figures flying around.”

The Newark torc, found by a metal detectorist in Newark, Nottinghamshire, was valued at £350,000 ($575,000) in 2005. It’s made of gold and silver while the Stirling torcs are all gold, 3 of the 4 in perfect condition, so the silly figures flying around could easily surpass the £1,000,000 mark.

Its historical value is inestimable. Before now, historians didn’t realize there was gold work of this quality and expense in Iron Age Scotland. There has only been one torc of equivalent craftsmanship and materials found and that was in Southern France. It indicates trade with the continent and a very wealthy wearer.

The torcs are at the Treasure Trove Unit in Edinburgh right now. The Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel will decide their value and reward the finder and property holder its market value.

Stained glass windows in Canterbury Cathedral overlooking the 14th century tomb of Edward, the Black Prince, were destroyed by Cromwell’s puritan hordes in the 1640′s. Over the years clear glass was put in the place of the original stained glass, but that doesn’t filter damaging UV rays the way stained glass does.

The sun is damaging paintwork on the canopy surrounding the Black Prince’s effigy, so much so that conservators have installed a first-of-its-kind system of blinds and humidity control.

Leonie Seliger, the head of stained glass at the cathedral, said: “As far as we know this is the first time in the world that such preventative measures have been adopted.

“The information from the sensors is relayed onto a computer within the cathedral precincts 24 hours a day, and then the results are sent off for analysis.

“Just a few degrees of temperature change can drastically affect the humidity levels so we are constantly on watch so that light levels can be adjusted via the blinds and temperatures controlled.”

Hopefully it’s not too late. The colors are fading rapidly, and the red pigment is turning black.

Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Edward III, was known as the Black Prince because of the characteristic color of his armor, or because of an ornate cuirass he was given after the Battle of Crécy. Or else it’s a phrase of 16th century coinage and he wasn’t known as the Black Prince at all in life.

He died a year before his father, so he never did get to be the Black King.

The multi-year study funded by the Leicestershire County Council and the battlefield Trust has born surprisingly leaden fruit. The Battle of Bosworth was neither on Albion Hill, nor between the villages of Shenton, Stoke Golding and Dadlington, nor miles away in Atherton.

It’s two miles away from the fancy new visitor’s center, near Sutton Cheney. It turned out to be the last place they looked. No srsly. Battlefield archaeologist Glenn Foard picked one last spot, frustrated and defeated, to look for signs of the late 15th century battlefield which saw the demise of the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, and the ascendancy of the Tudor line.

An hour later one of his diggers brought him a lead roundshot and he knew he’d hit proverbial paydirt. Not only is it good evidence that the Platangenets’ last stand, took place there, it’s also majorly new information about late medieval battlefield technology.

Abandoned cannonballs and bullets are a gift to battlefield archaeologists because they decay far less quickly than iron and steel handweapons and because, if they are made of lead like the ones at Bosworth, their condition shows what happened to them, from the pressure they were fired under to what they hit when they landed.

The Bosworth discoveries range in size from musket balls up to a 7.2kg cannonball. They are distributed in two clusters and may have been fired by both sides.

Excavators ended up finding 22 pieces of lead cannon and musket shot, more than the total from every other 15th and 16th century battlefield in Europe combined.

The Battle of Bosworth took place August 22, 1485. Before now, the earliest known evidence of moving artillery on the battlefield was 10 years later, during the French invasion of Italy from 1494-95. Finding such a huge cache of lead shot so early rewrites military history books.

The also found period coins, swords, buckles,

The exact location is being kept secret for now to keep the looters from tearing it up. The next step for the Trust and County Council are to raise the funds for further in situ study.