Clipmarks | Prehistory Clips

World's oldest wall painting unearthed in Syria

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:47:43 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

A view of a painting uncovered at Djade al-Mughara Neolihic site, northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, in this September 2007 handout photo. The painting was discovered by a team of French archaeologists, who described the painting as the oldest in the world. (Handout/Reuters)

Tags: archaeology, syria, art, rock art, prehistory

Lost land discovered below the North Sea

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:59:17 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Maybe another Atlantis candidate?

Clip Source: www.stonepages.com

Prehistoric landscape found below the North Sea waves

A lost landscape where early humans roamed more than 8,000 years ago has been discovered beneath the British North Sea. A map of the underwater world reveals criss-crossing rivers, giant lakes and gentle hills around which hunter-gatherers made their homes toward the end of the last ice age.

The region was inundated between 18,000 and 6000 BCE, when the warming climate melted the thick glaciers that pressed down from the north. As the water rose, the great plain vanished, and slowly the contours of the British Isles and the north-west European coastline were established. Now the primitive landscape is submerged and preserved, tens of metres beneath one of the busiest seas in the world.

Tags: archaeology, prehistory, undersea, lost land, england

"The most ancient star map ever found"

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:32:41 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Pleiades depiction from prehistoric Italy.

Clip Source: www.stonepages.com

Two groups of man-made cup markings carved on a pair of boulders found in the Italian Alps may represent the Pleiades star cluster, according to the archaeo-astronomer Guido Cossard. The carvings have been found near the Plan des Sorcières - literally 'The witches' plateau' - at Lillianes, in Val d'Aosta (Italy). According to Mr Cossard, who made the discovery, the series of cup markings have the same shape as the famous star cluster, and it may represent 'the most ancient star map ever found'. "Even the archaeo-astronomical orientation of the site is a confirmation, because it's clearly aligned to the rising point of the Pleiades," added Cossard.

Although the Pleiades are popularly termed the Seven Sisters, only six stars are easily visible to the naked eye, and a considerable mythology has grown up to account for the 'missing' Pleiad, since the times of Eratosthenes (276 BCE - 194 BCE). Additional details of the discovery will be presented in Lillianes City Council on January 17th

Tags: archaeology, archaeoastronomy, pleiades, star charts, prehistory, science

14,000 year-old tool kit of an ancient man

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:11:49 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: He did not have screwdrivers, knives, pinchers or drills in his bag of course but the contents of the bag shows he was well equipped for many things in prehistoric life. Interesting discovery.

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Before the end of the last ice age, a hunter-gatherer left a bag of tools near the wall of a roundhouse residence, where archaeologists have now found the collection 14,000 years later.

The tool set -- one of the most complete and well preserved of its kind -- provides an intriguing glimpse of the daily life of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer.

The contents, as described to Discovery News by Phillip Edwards, a senior lecturer in the Archaeology Program at Melbourne's La Trobe University, show the owner of the bag was well equipped for obtaining meat and edible plants in the wild.

"There was a sickle for harvesting wild wheat or barley, a cluster of flint spearheads, a flint core for making more spearheads, some smooth stones (maybe slingshots), a large stone (maybe for striking flint pieces off the flint core), a cluster of gazelle toe bones which were used to make beads, and part of a second bone tool," he said.

Tags: archaeology, prehistory, science

Human footprint may be oldest ever found

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:54:47 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country's western desert, the Arab country's antiquities' chief said on Monday.

"This could go back about two million years," said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. "It could be the most important discovery in Egypt," he told Reuters.

Archaeologists found the footprint, imprinted on mud and then hardened into rock, while exploring a prehistoric site in Siwa, a desert oasis.

Scientists are using carbon tests on plants found in the rock to determine its exact age, Hawass said.

Khaled Saad, the director of prehistory at the council, said that based on the age of the rock where the footprint was found, it could date back even further than the renowned 3-million year-old fossil Lucy, the partial skeleton of an ape-man, found in Ethiopia in 1974.

Tags: science

How Writing Changed the World

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:48:52 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Humans had been speaking for a couple hundred thousand years before they got the inspiration or nerve to mark their ideas down for posterity.

But when a Mesopotamian people called the Sumerians finally did scratch out a few bookkeeping symbols on clay tablets 5,000 years ago, they unknowingly started a whole new era in history we call, well ... history.

The presence of written sources denotes the technical dividing line between what scholars classify as prehistory versus what they call history, which starts at different times depending on what part of the world you're studying.

In most places, writing started about the same time ancient civilizations emerged from hunter-gatherer communities, probably as a way to keep track of the new concept of "property," such as animals, grain supplies or land.

The system developed quickly to incorporate signs that represented sounds, and soon all of Mesopotamia was taking notes, making to-do lists and (presumably) writing love letters.

Tags: writing, history, civilization

Little arrow that rewrites history books

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:25:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.pretorianews.co.za

Two researchers from Wits University believe that what they have discovered is a 60 000-year-old arrow that was fired from the earliest known bow. Their discovery has pushed back the origins of bow-and-arrow technology by 20 000 years.

The bow, probably made of wood and long since decayed, was used at a time when Neanderthals in Europe were using large spears in duels with woolly mammoths and other large prehistoric game.

The bone arrow, just 5cm long, was excavated by Wadley at the Sibudu cave, near the coastal town of Ballito in KwaZulu Natal, two years ago.

It's mystery who the people were who fashioned the arrow.

Also at this time, humankind was leaving an ever-increasing archaeological record of the first inklings of modern human behaviour. They were burying the dead, using coloured pigments and wearing jewellery.

"This at a time a few thousand years before they walked out of Africa, to become the ancestors of all humans," said Backwell.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, south africa, prehistory, arrow, science

Saving the Stone Age Atlantis

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 02:57:12 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A race against time is under way to try to save a Stone Age settlement found buried at the bottom of the sea in the Solent.

Eight thousand years ago the area would have been dry land, a valley and woodland criss-crossed by rivers.

A swamped prehistoric forest was identified off the northern Isle of Wight coast in the 1980s, but Bouldnor Cliff's buried Stone Age village was only found - by chance - a few years ago.

Maritime archaeologists from the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology have carried out a number of underwater excavations at the 8,000-year-old site.

For the first time they are bringing up sections of the Mesolithic village from the seabed and going through the sediments.

But they have to work fast, as the site is literally being washed away by tidal currents, which eat away at the submerged cliff at a rate of 12in (30cm) a year.

Tags: archaeology, prehistory, britain, english channel, solent

Noah's Ark flood spurred European farming

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:34:28 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

"When the Black Sea flooded at end of last ice age some people have suggested it was the origins of the Noah's Ark myth [...] If you lived in that basin it would have seemed like the whole world had flooded."

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

LONDON (Reuters) - An ancient flood some say could be the origin of the story of Noah's Ark may have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300 years ago by scattering the continent's earliest farmers, researchers said on Sunday.

Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by as much as 1.4 meters, displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Europe who carried farming skills to their new homes.

The researchers said in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews their study provides direct evidence linking the flood that breached a ridge keeping the Mediterranean apart from the Black Sea to the rise of farming in Europe.

The researchers created reconstructions of the Mediterranean and Black Sea shoreline before and after the rise in sea levels. They estimated the flood covered some 73,000 square kilometers over a 34-year period, causing mass displacement of people.

Tags: noah, flood, deluge, agriculture, prehistory, europe, black sea, archaeology, science

Out of Africa, Not Once But Twice

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:36:14 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Modern humans are known to have left Africa in a wave of migration around 50,000 years ago, but another, smaller group -- possibly a different subspecies -- left the continent 50,000 years earlier, suggests a new study.

While all humans today are related to the second "out of Africa" group, it's likely that some populations native to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia retain genetic vestiges of the earlier migrants, according to the paper's author, Michael Schillaci.

Schillaci, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto, also found the earlier group of emigrants had some genetic similarity to Neanderthals, a hominid that left Africa much earlier, settling in Europe and parts of western and central Asia.

Tags: anthropology, humans, migration, africa, neanderthal, prehistory, science

Timeline Of Art History

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:05:22 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: Here ya go, a little treat to start off the New Year in good taste.

Clip Source: www.metmuseum.org

Ancient Near Eastern Art

5000-year-old site discovered in Iran

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:33:25 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.tehrantimes.com

TEHRAN -- A broad site dating back to the third millennium BC was discovered during the latest excavations in Bampur region in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, southeastern Iran.

“In the Bampur valley, there is an ancient site covered with sand mounds, which is as large as the Burnt City and may belong to a civilization as great as the civilization of that the city,” Mehdi Mortazavi, an archaeologist of the University of Sistan-Baluchestan, told the Persian service of CHN on Saturday.

According to Mortazavi, the site measures 1x1.5 kilometer.

“I feel sure that there are a large number of sites like this here. Such sites may even exist in nearby regions like Saravan,” he stated.

Twenty sites -- mostly prehistoric -- have been discovered by the archaeologists of the University of Sistan-Baluchestan over the past few years.

Tags: archaeology, iran, prehistory, burnt city

Prehistoric Forest Emerges From Farmer's Pond

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:43:18 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend
clipper's remarks: “We ran into logs, lots of logs. It was like a forest down there,” said Myllyla, who has been farming in the Arnheim area since 1948.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Dennis Myllyla thought he’d struck a fine bargain with the Michigan Department of Transportation. MDOT would get fill for nearby highway construction by dredging a pond on his farm near Arnheim, Mich., and Myllyla would get the pond.

Neither Myllyla nor MDOT expected to find a prehistoric forest too. But that’s exactly what they uncovered, about 15 feet down.

What he saw amazed him. “We find a lot of trees lying on the forest floor, but this was the first time I’ve seen so many trees thousands of years old and so well preserved in the soil,” he said. Dozens were tangled together, some of them 20 feet long and more than 2 feet in diameter.

Schmierer and his colleague, Michael Hyslop, a GIS analyst and instructor of geomorphology and vegetation at Michigan Tech, speculate that the trees were either transported or mowed down by the last glacier to move across the Keweenaw, before Lake Superior covered the peninsula. “That would make them more than 10,000 years old,” he said.

Tags: forest, prehistory

Ancient Seaweed Tells of Earliest Americans

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:12:52 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

May 8, 2008 -- Remains of meals that included seaweed are helping confirm the date of a settlement in southern Chile that may offer the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas.

Researchers date the seaweed found at Monte Verde to more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than the well-studied Clovis culture.

And the report comes just a month after other scientists announced they had found coprolites â€“ fossilized human feces -- dating to about 14,000 years ago in a cave in Oregon.

Taken together, the finds move back evidence of people in the Americas by a millennium or more, with settlements in northern and southern coastal areas.

Tags: archaeology, chile, america, prehistory, science

Turkish site a Neolithic 'supernova'

Fri, 02 May 2008 17:50:55 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: The archaeological discoveries in Gobeklitepe - Turkey, continues to stun the archaeology world. The site is dated to 9,500 BCE.

Clip Source: www.stonepages.com

Klaus Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute, has found in Turkey a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable. "This place is a supernova," said Mr. Schmidt. "Within a minute of first seeing it, I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."

The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are his workplace since 1994.

Dated at about 9500 BCE, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

"Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture," said Ian Hodder, a Stanford University anthropology professor who has directed digs at Catalhoyuk,

"Gobekli changes everything. It's elaborate, it's complex, and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."

Tags: archaeology, prehistory, neolithic, turkey, klaus schmidt, science