Mexican archaeologists find 2,500-year-old altar
“An altar and a stela estimated to date from as early as 800 B.C. were found at the Chalcatzingo archaeological site in the central state of Morelos, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said.
The altar is rectangular and covered with engravings representing rain
A few meters (yards) away from the altar was an unfinished stela standing 1.7 meters (5 feet 6 inches) tall.
The pieces are thought to have been made between 800 and 500 B.C., about the same age as another altar and a relief depicting three cats that archaeologists from INAH’s Morelos Center found at Chalcatzingo less than a year ago.
The latest discoveries came during excavations of a residential area that appears to date from the Late Classical period of the Olmec culture, A.D. 700-900, archaeologist Carolina Meza said.
She said the difference in age between the new pieces and their surroundings can be explained by an Olmec practice of repurposing and - in some cases - decommissioning architectonic elements.
The altar and stela from the Preclassical period would have been buried inside buildings to strip them of their original significance in Olmec rites, she said.
The latest finds bring to 44 the number of altars, stelas and reliefs discovered at Chalcatzingo, INAH said. EFE. “
The celebrated Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered in 1948 in the caves adjacent to the ancient site of Khirbet Qumran near the Dead Sea, are known to represent the earliest known texts of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible, except for two — the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah. Now,…
wolfdancer:- Angel Texts ~ I seem to be dealing with a lot of Angel themed things just now
The most realistic and complete virtual rendition of Egypt’s Giza Plateau is now available online, allowing anyone with a computer to wander the necropolis, explore shafts and burial chambers, and enter four of the site’s ancient temples, including Khufu and Menkaure’s pyramids.
Engineered…
Medieval pilgrims journeyed deep into Africa, archaeologists discover.
The Kingdom of Makuria is the quintessential forgotten civilization. Very few people have even heard of it, yet it ruled southern Sudan for hundreds of years and was one of the few kingdoms to defeat the Arabs during their initial expansion in the 7th century AD. Makuria was a Christian kingdom, born out of the collapse of the earlier Christian kingdom of Axum. Makuria survived as a bulwark of Christianity in medieval Africa until it finally collapsed in 1312.
Now excavations of some of its churches at Banganarti and Selib have revealed that this kingdom was a center of pilgrimage, attracting people from as far away as Catalonia, in modern Spain. The 2,300 mile journey from Spain to southern Sudan is a long one even today, but imagine when it had to be done on horseback, walking, and boats powered only by sails and oars. Yet an inscription records that one Catalan named Benesec made the journey almost a thousand years ago, probably to pray for a cure to an illness. “Benesec” was a popular Catalan name in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Another inscription with an accompanying painting shows a Muslim man, Deif Ali, making a pilgrimage to the church to pray for a cure to his blindness. This isn’t as unusual as it might sound. In regions where religions mingle, some people will go to holy places of the other religion. When I covered the Hindu pilgrimage of Kumbh Mela for Reuters back in 2001, I met Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs all coming to be a part of the religious festival.
Makurian artists produced some amazing religious frescoes, like this image of the birth of Jesus, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, and this closeup of St. Anne, also courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Both come from the cathedral of Faras, an important Makurian city.
Many egyptians tried to curl their hair with tongs and even plaited it in hair extensions to lengthen their tresses Photo: REX/BNPS
Egyptians styled their hair like Marilyn Monroe and Rihanna, archaeologists find
Ancient Egyptians used gels to style their hair, according to research on mummies indicating that some had looks similar to Marilyn Monroe and Rihanna.
A study of male and female mummies has revealed the fashion-conscious Egyptians made use of a fat-based product to keep their hair in place.
They used the styling gel on both long and short hair, tried to curl their hair with tongs and even plaited it in hair extensions to lengthen their tresses.
It is thought they used the product in both life and death, with corpses being styled to ensure they looked good in the afterlife.
The incredible discovery was made by archaeological scientists who studied hair samples of 18 male and female mummies, aged from four to 58 years old.
The team, from the KNH Centre of Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, was led by Dr Natalie McCreesh who studied the mummies as part of her PhD.
Using light and electron microscopes, they found that nine of the mummies had coated their hair in the fatty substance, which is thought to be a beauty product.
Some of the mummies, which were artificially preserved, show the gel was used to prepare the body for the afterlife.
But others, which were preserved naturally in dry sand, prove the product must also have been used in everyday life by the vain Egyptians.
Bizarrely, even in the artificially-preserved bodies the hair did not contain resins or embalming materials, suggesting the hair was styled separately to the mummification process.
The preserved bodies are between 3,500 and 2,300 years old, with most being excavated from a Greco-Roman cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert.
Further study of the material, using gas chromatography mass spectrometry found the substance contained palmitic acid and stearic acid.
Dr McCreesh, 29, who is now a visiting scientist at the university, said: “The Ancient Egyptians used this fatty product just like we use gel today.
“The similarities are amazing.
“We knew that paintings in tombs have shown people with ungent cones on top of their heads, which were thought to be made of fats and scented resin.
“So we looked at hair on a selection of mummies to see if there was any trace of it.
“We found there was a fatty substance being used to hold hair in place.
“There was a variety of hair styles and cuts - some of the mummies had really beautiful curled hair.
“Under the microscope we could see the fat was used specifically on the curls, to hold them in place - just like people would now.
“One of the mummies had quite short hair and we joked she looked like Marilyn Monroe. Some others had longer curly hair, a little bit like Rihanna.
“Some of the younger men had their hair parted and slicked down with the product.
“We found the fat on the hair of nine mummies - the rest were very degraded and it wasn’t possible to say for sure whether or not it was there.
“It’s reasonable to think that some people would have styled their hair and others wouldn’t - just like today.
“Because some of them were preserved naturally, we can see that they used it in everyday life as well as when they were being preserved in death.
“It probably wouldn’t have been the very poorest, but it certainly wasn’t restricted to just pharaohs or high nobility - ordinary people used it too.
“It’s absolutely fascinating. You can almost imagine them tending their hair and setting their curls, just like we might today.”
The hair coating was found to contain fatty acids including palmitic acid and stearic acid, but it is hoped further research can help identify the exact recipe.
The research has now been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
A bronze, Viking-era “piggy-bank” containing thousands silver coins dating from the 11th century has been unearthed on the Baltic island of Gotland in what Swedish archaeologists have described as a “fantastic” treasure find.
The silver treasure was found last…
- The temple of Angkor Wat from above—the surrounding ruins hold untouched archaeological treasure. Here in Cambodia, the new archaeology has changed the history of a civilization. The low-key Evans, a director of the University of Sydney’s Greater Angkor Project at just 32 years old, has already mapped northern Angkor, another heavily landmined area, from a computer screen in Australia. He has used radar and satellite images to chart its vast network of canals and reservoirs, proving that Angkor was once the largest city in the world, a metropolis consuming an area about the size of present-day Los Angeles. His work also underpins a radical new explanation of why, in the 15th century, the Angkor civilization died out, a finding that holds grave undertones for the megacities of the 21st century.
The Bay of Cambay was discovered by marine scientists in early 2002. The city is located 120 feet underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India. The city is five miles long and two miles wide, carbon dating estimates the site to be a whopping 9,500 years old, and, more amazingly, architectural and human remains are still intact. The discovery astounded scientists because it predates all other finds in the area by 5,000 years, suggesting a much longer history of the civilization than was first assumed. Marine scientists used sonar images and sum-bottom profiling to locate the lost ruins and it is believed the area was submerged when the ice caps melted in the last Ice Age. The Indian nationals have dubbed the find ‘Dwarka’ (The Golden City) in honor of ancient submerged city said to belong to Hindu god, Krishna.
