This is the Oldest Musical Instrument in the World

BY THE ARCHAEOLOGIST EDITOR GROUP

New Paleolithic musical evidence was discovered during the summer 2008 excavations at the Hohle Fels and Vogelherd sites in the form of one virtually complete bone flute's remains and small, isolated shards from three ivory flutes.

A almost complete bone flute, the most remarkable of these discoveries, was discovered in the basal Aurignacian layers at Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley, 20 kilometers west of Ulm. There were 12 components of the flute. The shards were dispersed over a horizontal region of roughly 10 x 20 cm and a vertical distance of 3 cm. Among all the musical instruments discovered so far in the Swabian caves, this flute is by far the most complete.

The Hohle Fels bone flute's preserved piece is 21.8 cm in length and 8 mm in diameter. Five finger holes remain on the flute. The surfaces of the flute and the bone's structure are in superb shape and provide a wealth of information about how the flute was made. To build what would have been the musician's blowing end of the flute, the creator carved two deep, V-shaped notches into one end of the instrument. This strata has a moderately high find density, including charred bone, a lot of flint knapping waste, worked bone and ivory, bones from horses, reindeer, mammoths, and ibex, as well as bones from other animals. Therefore, we infer that modern humans manufactured the artifacts from the base Aurignacian layers not long after their arrival in the area during a migration up the Danube Corridor. No diagnostic human bones have been recovered in Swabian Aurignacian sediments.

Daniel Maurer/Associated Press

The flute's inventor created the instrument using a griffon vulture's radius (Gyps fulvus). This species produces bones perfect for huge flutes and has wingspan between 230 and 265 cm. The Swabian cave deposits from the Upper Paleolithic period provide evidence of griffon vultures and other vultures.

Two tiny shards of what are almost certainly two ivory flutes from the basal Aurignacian were also discovered during the 2008 excavations at Hohle Fels. The two finds are not from the same instrument, according to the differing diameters of the shards. Another isolated shard of an additional ivory flute was discovered by excavators at Vogelherd in the Lone Valley, 25 km northwest of Ulm.

Making a flute out of bird bone is far simpler technologically than manufacturing one out of ivory. A naturally curved piece of ivory must first be rough shaped along its long axis, split open along one of the bedding plains, carefully hollowed out, and then the holes must be carved. The flute's halves must then be joined together with an airtight seal. It is common to locate single pieces of delicate ivory artifacts given their propensity to break into several pieces.

The 31–40 ka BP range is covered by the ten radiocarbon dates from the basal Aurignacian. The flutes from Hohle Fels precede 35,000 calendar years ago, according to independent controls and available calibrations using various techniques. There is no solid proof that musical instruments existed before 30 ka BP, with the exception of the Swabian Jura caves.

These discoveries show how significant music was to Aurignacian culture in the Ach and Lone valleys in southwest Germany. The majority of these flutes come from archaeological contexts that are rich in lithic and organic objects as well as animal remains that have been hunted and burned. This data implies that people who lived at the locations engaged in a variety of social and cultural musical activities and that flutes were thrown with many other types of occupational waste. In the case of Hohle Fels, the bone flute's placement in a sparse archaeological horizon only 70 cm from a female figurine of a comparable age raises the possibility of a contextual connection between these two discoveries.

The flutes from Hohle Fels, Vogelherd, and earlier discoveries from nearby Geißenklösterle Cave show that the Aurignacian had a musical tradition at the time that modern humans first colonized the Upper Danube region. When early figurative art and other innovations, such as a vast variety of new types of personal adornment and new lithic and organic technology, emerged throughout the Aurignacian, a musical tradition also emerged. However, music appears to have contributed to improved social cohesion and new forms of communication, which indirectly contributed to the demographic expansion of modern humans relative to the culturally more conservative Neanderthal populations. Although the presence of music in the lives of Upper Paleolithic peoples did not directly produce a more effective subsistence economy and greater reproductive success, it does seem to have contributed to these factors.

A huge Rune-stone discovered in Denmark beneath a kitchen floor

The old linoleum kitchen floors of a couple's home in the Danish village of Mosekaer, just outside the city of Randers, were being removed when they stumbled upon a huge rune stone, weighing about 900 kg.

One of the earliest rune stones in Denmark may have been unintentionally discovered by Lene Brandt and her husband, Anders Nielsen, and measured two meters in length and 80 cm in width.

It has been designated a danefæ, or treasure, by the national museum, Nationalmuseet, which is currently putting much effort into figuring out its precise age. The five runes carved on the stone's surface either start or terminate the inscription, depending on the stone's age. The stone's age is important since it determines whether the five runes carved on it begin or end the inscription.

The five runes, which are pronounced "aft bi," mean "after B" in English. Rune stones were frequently created to commemorate notable people, and in this case, the inscription may be referring to a person by the names of Bjrn, Bjarne, or Birk.

The stone most certainly belongs to Denmark's first set of rune stones, making it a very uncommon discovery if the runes indicate the beginning of the text.

Anybody interested in runes should pay special attention to the area near Randers because up to 44 runestones have been found there. Rune, which means "hidden knowledge and wisdom," is an Old Norse word.

Lisbeth Imer, a senior researcher and runologist at the National Museum, estimates that just 10 to 20 rune stones from the 700s–800s have been discovered in Denmark. These early stones are especially interesting because there are only about 200 known Viking Age rune stones dispersed over the country, with the earliest dating to the 700s and the most recent to the 900s. The renowned Jelling Stones, for instance, were built around 965.

The Jelling stones are entire, in their original site, and referenced in historical documents; the Randers rune stone may be older than these, but they cannot be directly compared. In contrast, just a little section of the inscription is still visible on the Randers stone, which is a fragment.

The rune stone is being kept at Museum Stjylland as it waits for additional analysis to establish its age and perhaps shed more light on the history of the Vikings.

Amazing Discovery: A sizable cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds was discovered near Stonehenge

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BY THE ARCHAEOLOGIST EDITOR GROUP

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A large cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds, estimated to be up to 4,400 years old, has been found by archaeologists in advance of a building project less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Stonehenge.

The cemetery is home to more than 20 barrows, or round mounds, that were erected on a chalk slope at Harnham, southwest of Salisbury, England, between 2400 and 1500 B.C.

There is no proof that the cemetery was associated with Stonehenge other than the location's closeness to the well-known structure. Yet the barrows were constructed around the same period as some of the main portions of Stonehenge, claims Cotswold Archaeology, the private company in charge of the excavations.

Stonehenge may have served as a community gathering spot, a calendar, or possibly a burial ground, according to several researchers today.

The size of the newly discovered barrows varies, with the smallest being roughly 33 feet (10 meters) broad and the largest being 165 feet (50 meters). Nonetheless, the majority of the barrows are between 20 and 30 meters (65 and 100 feet) across.

According to Alistair Barclay, an archaeologist with Cotswold Archaeology and the site's post-excavation manager, the barrows at the cemetery are arranged in "pairs or small clusters of six or so."

The archaeologists arrived at the location in 2022, and they have now completely excavated five barrows in two locations. The location of the fifth barrow, which may have been obscured by loose material that washed down from an upland area, was unknown. Four of the barrows had previously been identified.

An oval-shaped ditch that surrounded one of the barrows was later replaced by a virtually circular ditch throughout prehistory. Because a mass grave near its center contained the skeletal remains of adults and children, the barrow may have been constructed before the others during the Neolithic period, which ended around 2400 B.C.

The Neolithic highly valued red deer (Cervus elaphus) antlers, which were used to make tools, ceremonial artifacts, and little things like pins and combs, and the oval ditch also cut through the pits of these antlers.

The antlers will now be examined for indications of intentional damage or wear that would suggest they were originally used to produce tools, according to the statement.

In graves among the barrows, the archaeologists have uncovered the bones of nine additional burials as well as three items. Grave goods like clay "beakers," which are recognizable round drinking vessels, were found in certain graves, showing that the deceased belonged to the Bronze Age "Bell Beaker culture," which expanded throughout Britain after about 2450 B.C.

The site may have had signs of an Iron Age agriculture area, according to the Cotswold Archaeology team, which has also discovered indications of later occupants. There are more than 240 pits and postholes in it. The majority of the pits were used to dispose of trash, which was helpful for archaeologists researching how people lived and farmed the area at that period. Some of the holes may have been used to store grain.

The crew also discovered signs of a Saxon building at the location, along with other Anglo-Saxon era items (fifth to 11th centuries A.D.)

Really Unusual Find: Archaeologists Discovered a well-preserved Bronze Sword In Germany

by the Archaeologist Editor Group

During digs in the German city of Nördlingen, a bronze sword that is over 3,000 years old was found by archaeologists. The discovery was made public by the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in a press release. The sword was discovered among the ruins of burials, weapons, and the bodies of a kid, mother, and man. What kind of connections these individuals may have had to one another are yet unknown.

The sword is entirely constructed of bronze and has an octagonal blade and hilt. Due to the hilt being cast on top of the blade, making octagonal swords requires complicated technology (called applied casting).

Photos by Dr. Woidich

During the Bronze Era, decorative artifacts were made using the applied bronze casting method. It entailed layering premium bronze over a less expensive metal or clay core. This made it possible for artisans to produce intricately detailed artifacts without having to use a lot of costly bronze.

A core with the desired shape had to be made, and that core had to be covered in clay. The required pattern was then carved out of this clay, producing a negative mold. The cut-out pattern was filled with molten bronze as it was poured into the mold, creating a thin coating on top of the core. The bronze piece was taken out of the mold after cooling and hardening, and the clay core was also taken out.

Photos by Dr. Woidich

A vast range of items, including jewelry, weaponry, and everyday items, were made using applied bronze casting. The Mycenaean culture made extensive use of this method, which was particularly well-liked in the eastern Mediterranean. Applied bronze items from this era are represented in museums all around the world.

We can certainly presume that this was a real weapon despite the meticulous craftsmanship and lack of impact marks. A balance that leans more toward stabbing is indicated by the center of gravity at the front of the blade.

Investigative work is being done to determine whether the sword was produced in Bavaria or imported. In the Bronze Age, there are three major distribution hubs for this sort of octagonal sword: one in southern Germany, two in northern Germany, and one in Denmark.

In the north, certain octagonal swords may be genuine imports or the creation of "itinerant craftsmen," while others may be imitations of southern German designs, according to a comparison of casting techniques and embellishment.

The director of the Bavarian State Monument Protection Office, Matthias Pfeil, stated: "In order for our archaeologists to classify this find more properly, the sword and the burial remains must be investigated. Yet we can already state that the situation is extraordinary! Such a find is really rare!"

Etruscans: Italian Civilization Before Ancient Rome

The Etruscans were a fascinating and enigmatic civilization that flourished in central Italy prior to the rise of Rome, from the 8th century BCE until their culture was subsumed into the Roman Empire. They inhabited the region known as Etruria, roughly equivalent to modern Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio. The origins of the Etruscans have been a subject of much scholarly debate, with theories ranging from autochthonous development to migrations from the Near East or the Aegean region.

Etruscan society was complex and highly developed. They were known for their rich mineral resources, particularly iron, which contributed to their wealth and influence in the Mediterranean. Their trade networks were extensive, exchanging goods with Greek and Phoenician civilizations, from whom they also absorbed cultural and artistic influences. This is evident in the similarities between Etruscan and Greek pottery and the adoption of a Greek-styled alphabet that they adapted to their own Etruscan language—a language that remains only partially understood today due to the lack of substantial textual evidence.

Politically, the Etruscans were organized into city-states, much like the Greeks. These cities, such as Tarquinia, Veii, and Cerveteri, were ruled by powerful, hereditary elites. The Etruscan political system is noted for its influence on Rome, particularly the establishment of a republic and the concept of the division of powers. Moreover, several of the Roman kings during the monarchy period were of Etruscan origin, which further embedded Etruscan customs and practices into the foundation of Roman culture.

In terms of religion, the Etruscans were deeply spiritual and had a rich pantheon of gods, with which they again shared some similarities with the Greeks and Romans. They practiced divination and believed in the interpretation of omens. One of their most lasting legacies is the discipline of haruspicy, the reading of entrails, which was adopted by the Romans.

Archaeologically, the Etruscans are best known for their funerary practices, which included elaborate tombs rich in grave goods, wall paintings, and sarcophagi. The tombs provide a wealth of information about Etruscan life, beliefs, and art. They celebrated death as a transition to a different form of life, which is reflected in their joyful and colorful tomb paintings, contrasting with the more somber Greek depictions of the afterlife.

The decline of the Etruscan civilization is attributed to a combination of factors, including internal strife among city-states, resource depletion, and pressure from external forces, particularly the Romans and the Greeks in southern Italy. By the 4th century BCE, many Etruscan cities had fallen to Rome, and by the 1st century BCE, Etruscan cultural identity had largely merged with that of the Roman Empire.

In conclusion, the Etruscans were integral to the tapestry of ancient Italian history. Their legacy is seen in the cultural and political foundations of Rome and in the archaeological remnants that continue to captivate historians and archaeologists. The Etruscans serve as a testament to the cultural dynamism of ancient Italy and remind us of the complex interplay of societies in the Mediterranean basin. Their civilization provides an invaluable perspective on the ancient world, one that challenges the traditional Greco-Roman narrative and enriches our understanding of pre-Roman Italy.

What happened when the Vikings met indigenous Americans?

"In this video, we explore the story of Leif Erikson and his journey to North America. As the son of the famous Norse explorer Erik the Red, Leif inherited a love of adventure and a desire to discover new lands. In the year 1000, he set out with a group of fellow Vikings on a journey that would lead them across the Atlantic and into the unknown.

Early traces of the world-famous foie gras in the land of ancient Egypt

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by Giorgio Pintzas Monzani

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Criticized by many for its production processes, hated by many for its peculiar flavor, and considered by many to be the most prized and delicious food there is: foie gras, it always brings with it ranks of supporters and opponents to every banquet it comes to.

Associated with French cuisine, and historically linked (mistakenly) to Gallic origins and the opulent eras of kings and palaces, foie gras actually traverses human history back millennia, and finds its origins in the Nile swamps, a land of legends, myths, and fascinating stories.

The reality is that the error in attributing the birth of this dish is made by even the most passionate foodies, as it is a paternity that Egypt has never pushed so hard to claim.

Thus, it remains a common mistake, but one that for the most curious must be analyzed historically.

Why does it originate specifically in Egypt?

How and who subsequently imports it into Europe?

How did it come to be famous within "cuisine francaise"?

The civilization of ancient Egypt, throughout its millennia of history, has always been a nucleus of innovation in every sphere, laying the foundation for the great European and African civilizations that flourished later.

Even from the point of view of food preparation and storage, some of the inventions that occurred on the banks of the Nile are still considered innovative and in our case even progenitors of the world of gourmet cuisine.

As introduced earlier, the process of foie gras preparation was first used by the farmers of ancient Egypt, and more specifically by those in the marshy areas of the Nile delta.

Birth unrelated to the world of food

Why this process was started on the animal in order to obtain a fatter liver still divides some historians today.

In addition to the goal of producing a food that was pleasing to the taste, in fact, the Egyptians used the liver of geese, ducks and other animals to produce the first candles known to man as early as around 3,000 b.c.e. by coating dried reed reeds with animal fat.

As for the food, on the other hand, there is evidence of its preparation dating to around 2,500 b.c.e., this thanks to frescoes found in the necropolis at Memphis.

Of course, there are no dates and certainties related to which practice was first implemented, although it is believed that the use of the candle originated first: thus assuming that after using a fatty liver as fuel to illuminate the dark desert nights, man tasted this extraordinary and original product for the palates of the time.

Pharaonic banquets

We have seen how foie gras originated in Egypt, thanks to the numerous presence of these animals in the paludal areas of the Nile and the craftsmanship of Egyptian artisans, despite which it cannot be described as a food on the tables of all inhabitants.

The labor commitment and cost of preparing foie gras was high from the very beginning, causing it to be presented as a niche product from the very beginning.

So if we could go back in time and conduct a documentary on the food of ancient Egypt, we would not find goose or duck liver pâté in the tables of peasants or merchants, but in the majestic banquets held in the imposing palaces of the pharaohs.

We might, in fact, enjoy ancient foie gras in the company of the priests and nobles of this splendid society.

The journey of foie gras to Europe

After analyzing the birth, the question arises.

How did the food arrive on European soil?

The answer lies behind the journey of the first Greek pharaoh in Egypt's history: Alexander the Great.

As we all know, the Macedonian king arrived on the shores of Egypt during his journey to conquer the then known world.

Alexander's army conquered the land almost peacefully, as the Persian empire (which had ruled the Egyptian lands since 525 b.c.e.) surrendered to the Greek forces, and Philip II's son was welcomed as a liberator, so much so that he was crowned pharaoh in 332 b.c.e.

The globalization brought by the Macedonian empire made cultural exchanges between all the conquered territories even more possible: thus the various culinary customs of the various cultures also came into contact, without collision but leading to the birth and discovery of many ingredients and preparations, including even Egyptian foie gras.

In fact, this increase in food exchange made possible the discovery of the product in the Greek peninsula as well.

The arrival of foie gras in Rome

The fall of the Macedonian empire by the hands of the Roman army, first with its defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 B.C. and later with its annexation to the Roman republic in 148 B.C., indelibly marked the history of Europe.

Although Roman policy toward the Greek territories was filled with contempt and exploitation, the empire's intellectuals and wealthy looked upon Hellenic culture with great admiration and respect, which fostered the "Greekization" of many cultural aspects of the then capital of the world.

The Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus in one of his epistles wrote, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit," meaning that the crude and fierce conqueror, subdued the Greeks with arms, but the Greeks with letters and art civilized Rome and the whole of the then empire.

The increase then economic and mercantile exchanges between the two territories, now under the same reign, were fortified and increased exponentially.

It can therefore be assumed that the product whose history we are tracing came into close contact with the Roman empire at this time.

Certainly even earlier Rome was aware of the Greek culinary culture, but as mentioned above, goose fatty liver never represented an everyday food, but rather a whim and glitz of the rich in the palace.

And it is precisely during this period that it may have arrived in the empire's market.

A detail that reinforces this theory of ours, lies behind the figure of Marcus Gavius Apicius, the most important gastronome, cook, and writer that antiquity has ever seen.

An almost mythological figure in fact, given the paucity of information about his personal life, according to many a figure to whom cookbooks written by many different authors are credited, a kind of gastronomic deity.

Apicius' foie gras

Marcus Gavius Apicius, at the turn of the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., created real guidelines on feeding birds in order to obtain the best possible foie gras.

Within the collection "De re coquinaria," a bible of gastronomy considered by many to be the greatest gastronomic work in history, Apicius recounts how to sweeten the wild taste of the liver of these birds, it was necessary to feed the animal with figs.

This technique was so revolutionary that it also left an etymological trail behind it; enough to think that the word "ficatum", which means liver in Latin, takes its root from the very fruit that Marcus Gavio used to create his foie gras, the "ficum."

The arrival of the dish in France

As everyone knows, the Roman Empire extended to a great many territories in central Europe, including present-day France, called Gaul at the time.

Thanks to this rule we finally have the arrival of our protagonist in Gallic, French territory.

It was precisely the magnificent technique of the gastronome Apicius that made foie gras the protagonist at all imperial banquets, in every corner of Roman territory.

But how did it become famous in French cuisine in later years?

The reality is that the dish had a dark period after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the use of goose fat was carried on only by European Jewish families.

Until, during the reign of Louis XIV, cooks throughout the kingdom, seeking to impress the king's overweening and vitiated palate resorted to forgotten recipes that would charm royal banquets.

It was at one of the banquets, probably in the palace of Versailles, that a cook decided to prepare foie gras and have the king taste it: delighted by the delicacy and deliciousness of the dish, he declared it the "food of kings," giving it a second life and making it famous throughout the French palaces.

To mention only that in 1778, the governor of Alsace, had his best foie gras tasted by King Louis XVI, who immediately appreciated it, making a gift of 20 gold coins to the court cook: from there, every cook in the French kingdom studied new recipes to astound their sovereigns, making foie gras the most requested dish by the European aristocracy.

Even today the dish is still associated with wealth, power, and splendor; for as we know, history rarely changes.

Why?

Because after all, we are...what we used to eat.

Baby cradled in mother’s arm is oldest infant burial in the Netherlands

Dutch archaeologists have discovered a 6,000-year-old Stone Age burial of a woman with a baby cradled in her arm in the central Netherlands city of Nieuwegein. It is the oldest infant burial ever found in the Netherlands.

Nieuwegein is rich with archaeological material from the Swifterbant culture, a Neolithic-era culture who transitioned from hunter-gathering to cattle farming in settlements along the riverbanks and wetlands of what are today the Netherlands between 5300 and 3400 B.C.

An abundance of Swifterbant artifacts and remains, about 136,000 of them (far more than were discovered at the type site in Swifterbant, Flevoland province), have been found under six and a half feet of clay and peat at Nieuwegein’s Het Klooster business park. Artifacts include hundreds of pieces of flint, a grindstone worn to a smooth surface by the second grinding stone used the mill grains and cereals, a striking jet pendant, animal bone chisels and earthenware pottery. The clay and peat have kept the objects and remains in an unusually good state of preservation for thousands of years. One of the pottery vessels still had a layer of food in it.

They also discovered four skeletons which they cut out of the clay en bloc and transported to the Leiden laboratory of RAAP Archaeological Consultancy for careful excavation. One of them was the skeleton of a young adult woman who was 20-30 years old at time of death. When the remains were first unearthed, archaeologists didn’t realize they’d just found the oldest infant burial in the Netherlands. They didn’t realize it was an infant burial period. There was no osteological material immediately visible pointing to the presence of a baby buried with the young woman. It was the woman’s right arm bent at a 90 degree angle with her elbow out that suggested to archaeologists there was something anomalous in that spot. The Swifterbant culture buried their dead with their legs outstretched and arms straight by their sides.

When the remains were excavated in the lab, archaeologists discovered small bone fragments in the crook of the woman’s right arm: pieces of the clavicles, skull, a leg bone, a mandible complete with milk teeth. The teeth were so small they could have belonged to a newborn (there are teethlets in their wee jaws, they just haven’t erupted yet) or a baby up to six months old.

“It really makes an impression when you find little baby teeth buried in clay for 6,000 years and see how similar they are to all those milk teeth that are kept in matchboxes by parents everywhere!” [Dutch broadcaster] NOS quotes [project leader Helle] Molthof as saying.

This is an exceptionally rare discovery. Infants have such soft bones that they disintegrate within months of burial. The waterlogged conditions of this burial, the thick alluvial clay deposits and the peat, preserved these fragile remains for 6,000 years.

The archaeological team hopes to determine whether the adult woman and the baby she was laid to rest cradling are, as one would suspect, mother and child, using DNA analysis.

DNA testing will have to determine whether the woman is the baby’s mother, although there seems to be little doubt that she is, and the sex of the baby. The archaeologists hope the find will tell them more about the burial ceremonies of the Swifterbant people. “We know how they lived, what sort of food they ate, what their houses were like but we don’t know very much yet about how they buried their dead and what happened to the children,” Molthof told the broadcaster.

Isotope analysis will have to show if the woman was born in the area or whether she travelled there at a later date.

The Evolution of Human Nutrition in Prehistory

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By Giorgio Pintzas Monzani

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By now we always think of food as creation, art, a mix of new ingredients, yet losing the primordial essence of it: surviving.

Man has been able to evolve, travel and discover, having mainly only one motive, nutrition, food.

Of course, the fact that man has not always been interested in gourmet preparations does not mean that they should be of little importance today, at all.

However, there are nuances of prehistoric and ancient nutrition that are still little known to most people today, despite the infinite number of commonalities with our tables today.

Let us start initially by looking at what exactly prehistory is, a detail that often eludes many.

With the Latin term prae-historia, we define all that long period of human existence where the discovery of writing had not yet been made.

The exact subdivision of prehistory is as follows:

●       Paleolithic, which lasted nearly 2 million years and ended about 12,000 years ago

●       Mesolithic, a period between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago

●       Neolithic, the last period of the Stone Age that ended about 4,000 years ago with the invention of writing

The thing that stands out is precisely the long periods of these eras: it may seem obvious but it's not at all, that humans spent more time in prehistory than in history, we were mostly illiterate, which gives a very good idea of how young our race is.

So we will see how starting in the Paleolithic period, man began over the millennia, to develop a more varied and complex diet than his ancestors, albeit at a much slower pace than we might think.

We will certainly not develop the topic solely in the classical scholastic manner, but will also look at dishes from the prehistoric diet that have a direct connection to our tables today.

The Paleolithic, the longest period of prehistory

Speaking of the Paleolithic we mean the longest historical period of prehistory, as well as of human existence.

From the first appearance of homo habilis until the end of the Paleolithic, human nutrition is very limited and characterized by few developments and changes:

Hunting, although considered to be the foundation of his diet, was a very often exhausting and disappointing practice, often dealing with very large prey, thus ending up feeding on carrion and insects, making the human an excellent opportunist rather than a skilled hunter.

In addition, gathering berries and wild fruits was the basis of one's diet, a practice, however, borne by women; in fact, it is thought that it was they who later led to the birth of agriculture: through the seeds that fell on the way back to the villages.

Fishing was also of great importance, but often left on the back burner, dealing with prey that could rarely feed entire groups and families.

The Mesolithic, the first glimmers of true food evolution

With the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, we see the transition from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic.

Major climate changes have disruptive effects on the planet's flora and fauna, making it impossible for humans to survive with pre-glaciation habits.

The scarcity of game and large prey prompts humans to embrace a sedentary lifestyle, and to a very different societal organization and their villages.

In fact, the first signs of prey-breeding practices begin, which are no longer killed, but caught and brought back to the villages, creating a kind of prolonged supply over time.

Not unimportant will be the invention of a weapon that will make herd hunting much easier: the bow.

Probably occurring around 6,000 B.C., it helped both in the search for livelihood and in the protection of villages.

The most significant discovery of the Mesolithic was the cultivation of cereals, in the area of the fertile crescent, Mesopotamia, some assume it was the production of wheat that eliminated the primordial need of the nomadic being.

We certainly cannot assume that the type of the first cereals grown had much in common with those consumed today, since over the centuries man modified the nature of cereals in order to make them more digestible to his organism.

Thanks to his own discoveries, the result of centuries of evolution, human beings went from being hunters and an "opportunistic animal" to a true breeder and farmer.

Neolithic, the pinnacle of development of the prehistoric period

Humans of the period by now have little or nothing in common with their Paleolithic ancestors: they created villages with more complex societal structures and more pronounced hierarchies than before; they also made family organization a priority by dividing even their members' possessions differently.

Inventions such as the wheel and the raft are the greatest technological developments of the period, and among the most significant of our existence.

During these millennia, sheep and cattle raising, and agriculture became the most important and widely used form of livelihood, thus decreasing dangerous practices such as hunting, while drastically increasing one's mortality rate.

In addition, man began to realize that having many children was not just a problem of mouths to feed, but a huge resource at the labor level.

Thus, a population increase never before took place, and thus the birth of large villages and much more populated establishments, the ancestors of cities.

But are there types of foods, whether simple nutritional habits or actual processed foods, that we still have, almost, directly in common with prehistoric humans today?

Yes.

So let us look at 3 examples of handed-down, and obviously modified, foods that have come down to us directly from remote periods in our history.

The consumption of insects, a lost custom

In today's Western culture, the consumption of insects, or derivatives of them, is a taboo.

A practice associated with poor quality food and poor hygienic conditions.

However, we forget to consider that this food was the basis of the prehistoric diet, especially of humans in the Paleolithic period: as mentioned earlier, the opportunistic instinct of humans, led them to eat larvae, grasshoppers and any other available and digestible insect.

It is therefore inferred how entomophagy (feeding on insects), is not a practice characteristic of peoples far from us, but present in the DNA of us all.

Obviously this practice was lost when diet and cuisine evolved?

Wrong, we do in fact have written evidence, including Aristotle's work "historia animalium," where the Greek philosopher spends time explaining to the reader the best methods of tasting various kinds of insects.

One example?

Aristotle declares that female larvae after copulation, are delicious, due to the sublime taste given by the eggs contained in it.

Polenta, an age-old dish, imprinted in our DNA

One may think that the oldest grain-based food is bread: however, we forget that in various Indo-European cultures, since ancient times, another cooked grain-based preparation, in the form of porridge, made its appearance.

Whether it was cooking on heated stones, or boiling in pouches from animal remains, human beings soon began eating doughs made from coarse flours and water.

In the case of cooking on hot stones, the first ancestors of bread were born, more specifically products similar to tortillas and Indian naan.

In the case of boiling, on the other hand, centuries before the appearance of terracotta, humans immersed red-hot stones inside containers of water in order to succeed in bringing products to a boil: in this case they added cereal flour to the water, which they cooked for a not-too-long time, until they obtained the first examples of polenta.

The Sumerians were among the first to prepare this dish, where, with flour made from grains such as millet and rye, they obtained a nutrient-rich mush with a huge energy intake.

It was certainly not the latter who extended it to other territories: the ease of its preparation and the need for only two ingredients meant that polenta played an important role for many peoples in different areas.

Nevertheless, it is important to note how it was the Greeks, in the centuries to come, who in turn made it a true substitute for bread and enriched the flavors through spices and savory sauces.

The name polenta came much later, with the Latin peoples: in fact, polenta comes from the word "puls," literally mush.

Jerky beef, not a modern invention

We all have a clear image of those huge shelves in supermarkets, with packages of jerky of all kinds and with all kinds of flavorings.

Well, what if I told you that this is not a product that is a child of modern drying techniques?

The need to obtain meat at times when hunting was difficult, for climatic reasons mainly, led many peoples of the earth to treat meat in a way that increased its durability.

Various archaeologists have found evidence of dried meat in various tombs in the area of ancient Egypt, dating as far back as 3,500 BCE.

Certainly the primordial methods did not always have the effectiveness of today's drying, in fact often the process to which meat was subjected was salting, despite this we see how a food on our shelves today, has roots far back.

Author:

Giorgio Pintzas Monzani is a Greek-Italian chef, writer and consultant who lives in Milan. His Instagram page can be found here.

Menorca, Spain: An Inconspicuous Island in the Mediterranean - Cradle of the Prehistoric Talaiotic culture

This island, that forms part of the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands, has an exceptional heritage, reflected in its 1,574 archaeological sites inventoried on its 700m2 of surface area.

There is no other place in the Mediterranean Sea with more archaeological finds per square kilometer than in Menorca. This island has been classified as an open-air museum by many over the centuries, and it is true that there are no many places in the world where prehistory is experienced with such intensity as here. From the first ancestral people, through the Naviform people, the Talayotic ones, the Carthaginian, Roman, Vandals, and many others, Menorca has many stories to tell, and they all begin with this prehistoric settlements.

Menorca or Minorca (from Latin: Insula Minor, lit. 'smaller island', later Minorica) is one of the Balearic Islands located in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to Spain. Its name derives from its size, contrasting it with nearby Mallorca. Its capital is Mahón (Catalan: Maó), situated on the island's eastern end, although Menorca is not a province and forms a political union with the other islands in the archipelago.

 

The island is known for its collection of megalithic stone monuments: navetes, taules and talaiots, which indicate very early prehistoric human activity. Some of the earliest culture on Menorca was influenced by other Mediterranean cultures, including the Greek Minoans of ancient Crete (see also Gymnesian Islands). For example, the use of inverted plastered timber columns at Knossos is thought to have influenced early peoples of Menorca in imitating this practice.

The thousand years of human presence on Menorca have come to be called the pre-Talayotic period. This term encompasses a culture that spans from the Neolithic until the Early Bronze Age, with an economy based on livestock and incipient agriculture. The most visible remains of this period are the megaliths (megalithic gravesites and naveta homes) and hypogea.

The denomination of "Talayotic" is related to one of the most typical elements of this culture, namely buil dings in the form of a tower and known by the island's inhabitants as "TALAYOT". From the 19th century to today, scientific bibliography has used this designation as a generic title for a wide area of insular prehistory. This does not exclude, as will be seen in the next sec tion, that under the heading CTMe (Talayotic Culture of Minorca) different phases or historical periods are presented.

What is the Talayotic Culture?

The Talaiotic Culture or Talaiotic Period is the name used to describe the society that existed on the Gymnesian Islands (the easternmost Balearic Islands) during the Iron Age. Its origins date from the end of the second millennium BC, when the inaccurately named Pre-Talaiotic Culture underwent a crisis and evolved into the Talaiotic Culture.

Up until the end of the 20th century, it was theorized that the Talaiotic Culture arose out of interaction between new peoples from the eastern Mediterranean and local island culture, in the form of an aggressive invasion, or perhaps as a peaceful assimilation. The Talaiotic Culture arose at the same time that the crisis caused by the Sea Peoples was occurring, which had revolutionized societies in this part of the Mediterranean until the 13th century BC. These theories were based mainly on architectonic remains that exist in abundance on Majorca and Menorca. The Talaiotic people were considered a warlike race due to the abundance of talaiots or defensive towers and the existence of walled towns. In addition, the talaiots were similar in many respects to the nuraghes of Sardinia, which lends credence to the theory that the Talaiotic people were of Sardinian origin.

However, archaeological excavations conducted at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries have established that the talaiots were built much later –at the beginning of the first millennium BC, which means that they were not built during the time of the Sea Peoples and the Sardinian nuraghes. In addition, there is more and more proof that what was considered a sudden transition from a Pre-Talaiotic Culture during the Bronze Age to the Talaiotic Culture was actually a slow evolution lasting several centuries, and actually caused by a localized crisis on the Balearic Islands. However, external influences on the Talaiotic Culture cannot be completely discounted, since the existence of bronze alloys on the island (which requires tin, not available on the Balearic Islands) indicates that frequent contacts with the outside world existed.

The very factors that gave rise to the Talaiotic Period spelled its doom. Construction of talaiots ceased, and many of them were destroyed or converted for different uses. The nearby Punic center of Ebusus, present-day Ibiza, increased its commercial influence to include the Gymnesian Islands; this economic extension in effect transformed itself into an actual Punic colonization of the Gymnesian Islands. The Mediterranean subsequently became dominated by the Roman and Carthaginian Empires. The Punic Wars would erupt between these two powers, and the islands of Mallorca and Menorca would be forcibly dragged into what is called the Post-Talaiotic Period (also known as the Balearic Culture or Post-Talaiotic Culture).

List of Archaeological sites in Menorca

It should be pointed out too that Minorca was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1993. The Prehistory of Minorca includes a long chronological period that starts with the arrival of man and ends with the Roman conquest that occurred in 123 B.C. The discovery of the Lithic industry of Binimel. Ià signals a pre-neolithic occupation up to 6000 B.C.. However, scientific data that corroborate the presence of permanent human communities, must be situated between 2500 and 2100 B.C., thanks to radiocarbon dating carried out on the remains from the tombs of Biniai Nou. These were communities between the Chalcolithic and the Initial Bronze, who established themselves in the main ecological niches and the most fertile areas of the island.

This Serial Property, representative of the CTMe, is made up of 25 archaeological sites. These were chosen for a series of reasons, such as their good state of conservation and the carrying out of archaeological research on them, etc. The main reason they were chosen though is because amongst all of the buildings chosen, each one of the architectural elements typical and serialized of the Talayotic Culture were represented, including the precedents.

It should also be highlighted that the idiosyncrasy of each one of them makes them a Serial Property of Outstanding Universal Value. Their characteristics, both in the construction technique used, the cyclopean in dry-stone, without mortar and the resulting form of each one of the Real Estate Assets, give them this characteristic of being megaliths of great Singularity and Uniqueness within World Heritage.

The Serial Property listed, firstly in chronological order and secondly according to their geographic proximity, are the following:

1. Tomb of Ses Roques Llises and the enclosure of Sa Comerma de se Garita

The tomb is a construction with a central chamber de limited by some large orthostats. Access is indicated by an "oradada" stone in its centre. The Sa Comerma enclosure is a monumental building with a patio in front of its façade. It is made up of numerous "Mediterranean" type columns that supported the stone slab roof. Three access doors with lintels have been identified.

2. Naviform settlement of Son Mercer de Baix

A settlement made up of a series of dwelling buil dings known also as "dwelling navetas" because of their floor plan shape. One stands out because of the conservation of its roof, supported by polylythical columns.

3. Hypogeum of Torre del Ram

A funereal hypogeum of an extended ground plan excavated in the rock. Within the interior there are continuous Stone benches around the walls and an access corridor.

4. Necropolis and Coastal Establishment of Cala Morell

A necropolis of artificial caves cut into the cliff walls. One stands out for its façade decorated with classic architectural motifs. On the upper part of the sea cliff there is a settlement of Naviforms, identified as a Coastal Establishment.

5. Navetas of Biniac-l'Argentina

Two funereal buildings of a circular ground plan. These types of buildings were always located away from the settlements. A large number of dead from the community were buried there, together with their belongings.

6. Naveta of Es Tudons

A funereal building with an extended ground plan in the shape of an upturned boat, with two interior cham bers that are accessed via a small door and a narrow corridor.

07. Navetas of Rafal Rubi

Two funeral buildings of an extended ground plan in the shape of upturned boats. They are situated at only 65m. apart, similar to those of Es Tudons.

8. Cave of s'Aigua

A prehistoric cave with an interior lake in which archaeological material has been found, such as cera mics and human remains.

9. Necropolis of Calescoves

This is the most extensive on the island. It is made up of a large quantity of natural caves and funeral hypogeums of different morphologies, all excavated in the walls of the cliffs that make up his cove. It was a necropolis from the 9th century B.C. to the 3rd century B.C. In this same enclosure, a sanctuary was identified that was in use from the 3rd century B.C. Also identified was a coastal establishment made up of walls that close off the promontory. This gave access to the cove, forming a quadrangular enclosure in which interior one finds a well with access steps. This small natural harbor of Calescoves was used for anchorage from the 5th century B.C.

10. Hypostyle Hall of Galliner de Madona

An enclosure covered by five polylythical columns whose function must be associated with storage use.

11. Talayot of Trebalyger

One of the larger talayots of the island. It has an ellip tical ground plan, built on and taking advantage of the height of a rocky promontory.

12. Talayots of Binicodrell

Two talayots, one with a ramp that gives access to a platform that is to be found in the upper part of the talayot.

13. Settlement of Torralba d'en Salort and the Well of Na Patarrá

A talayotic settlement that has an outstanding mo numental talayot as well as a Taula Enclosure with a central pilaster. This is the most monumental "Taula" of the island. Close to the enclosure and within the settlement itself there is a spectacular well known as Na Patarrá. This has a depth of 47 metres and has stairs that reach the aquifer.

14. Settlement of CorniaNou

A talayotic settlement in which a monumental talayot stands out with steps that give access to a platform located at the Crown of this tower and to a collection of semi-detached romos. At some 150 metres from the former, another talayotic type building has been identified. This is really the access point of the sett lement. There is a reinforced door that makes up a spectacular passageway in the interior.

15. Settlement and Naveta of sa Torreta de Tramun tana

This is a settlement made up of a Talayot, houses known as dwelling circles and a taula enclosure. It is one of the few settlements in the northern part of the island in which peaty soil predominates as opposed to calcareous stone. Close to the settlement there is a Naveta, a funeral building, of which only the floor remains.

16. Settlement of Talatí de Dalt

A Talayotic settlement with different structures, such as a monumental Talayot and a Taula Enclosure with an inclined column that is supported on the capital of the central piece. Outstanding is the entrance door to the settlement that is in a part of the face of the walls that can be seen. One can also see the series of hypostyle halls and covered enclosures. Parts of them were excavated and form an almost labyrinthine building complex.

17. Settlement of Torelló

A settlement in which a large Talayot stands out, on whose upper platform is conserved an entrance with lintels and a corridor. Just a few metres from this Talayot is another smaller one. Parts of the settle ments houses were excavated decades ago. They are typical in structure with a central patio and rooms around it, forming an almost circular building.

18. Settlement of Trepucó

A large Talayotic settlement that houses two Tala yots, the smaller of which has a covered chamber in the form of a false dome made roughly by courses. Various dwellings have been investigated, all of them circular. Its spectacular Taula Enclosure stands out, as well as the series of buildings that are close to it.

19. Settlement of Torre d'en Galmés

A large settlement that exceeds 6 hectares, made up of three Talayots located in the central part of the settlement, on the highest point with a great visual command over the coast, a Taula Enclosure and plen ty of dwellings with a circular ground plan, all of which are notably large. They have a central patio, storage silos, covered enclosures (also known as Hypostyle Halls) attached to them and, in certain cases, such as the dwelling known as "Circulo Cartailhac", they have a large open-air area in front of their façades. Here an oven has been indentified, as well as other areas of handicraft activity. In the southern part of the settle ment and at a lower height than that of the central part, a sophisticated water-collection system has been identified, with decanting pans and cisterns excavated into the rock-like wells.

20. Sanctuary of So na Caçana

A settlement made up of 10 buildings that include Ta layots and Taula Enclosures. Three of the latter have been identified and this confers on the archaeological site the status of more than a mere settlement-rather, it is a sacred place, a sanctuary.

21. Settlement of Montefí

A Talayotic settlement with three Talayots, under ground burial caves and an area of silos, stores and channels.

22. Settlement of Son Catlar

A large Talayotic settlement that has outstanding mo numental walls whose perimeter reaches 900 metres in length. Above the walls sentry boxes and square towers have been identified that are semi-detached to the walls. Its Taula Enclosure, Talayots and Dwellings etc., have all been conserved.

23. Settlement of Torre trencada

A Talayotic Settlement that stands out for having wi thin its Taula Enclosure, a Taula with a pilaster leaning on its rear part.

24. Settlement of Torrellafuda

A Talayotic Settlement with a large Talayot, a Taula Enclosure with a monumental central piece and with other such pieces within the same enclosure. Part of the face of the walls are identified and its natural surroundings are especially outstanding.

25. Settlement of Binisafullet

A Talayotic Settlement in which one can see a Talayot and a small Taula Enclosure as well as other dwelling buildings.

A family, in the backyard discovered a Viking sword

A Viking sword was found in the backyard of the Grønningsæters family home in Møre og Romsdal, one of Norway’s nineteen states.

Heidi Vike Grønningsaeters father-in-law had been digging in their garden’s potato field. Two rusted fragments of something were discovered in the soil.

He’s wife said “It was my husband who found it. He came into the kitchen and said ‘I think this is a part of an old Viking sword. I didn’t think so, I thought it just looked like an old rusty part of a plow”

Grønningsaeter lives in Møre og Romsdal, a county in Western Norway’s far north. The family couldn’t agree on what the rusty bits were, so they kept them in their garage. They stayed there for approximately two years until it came up in discussion one day.

Grønningsaeter was discussing the Viking era with a friend when she suddenly recalled the artifacts in the garage. She posted a picture to the Facebook page for “Archaeology in Møre and Romsdal” to answer the query.

Bjørn Ringstad, the page’s administrator, saw the photo and realized immediately that Grønningsaeter’s spouse was correct. This was unmistakably a Viking sword. “You can see it on the hilt,” Ringstad says.

The sword has since been transported to NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, for conservation and additional study after Ringstad promptly got in touch with Grønningsaeter.

And there may be more to come, as there may be a Viking grave where there is a Viking sword. “We believe that when there is a sword, then there is a grave nearby. It’s highly likely that we may find more items,” Ringstad says.

All of it, even the idea of an archeological dig in her garden, excite Heidi Grønningsaeter. “I’m really excited about what’s next, if they find anything else. I can hardly believe it myself, this is all very special, fun, and exciting.” she says.

According to the shape of the remaining portion of the hilt, the sword appears to date from the early Viking Age, Vegard Vike says. Vike is Head Engineer of Archaeological Conservation at the Museum of cultural history in Oslo. Vike, a specialist in Viking Age weapons, attempts to date the item. He thinks the sword may have been made between 775 and 925 according to the fragments of the hilt. Vike thinks the sword’s missing pieces could still be in the backyard.

According to the news of Science Norway, a typology of Viking swords by Jan Petersen, published in 1919, is still considered the go-to place for knowledge about these weapons. “To date, around 3000 Viking swords have been found in Norway – this is a doubling of Viking swords since Petersens dissertation was published,” Vike writes. “so around 10-15 such swords found each year.”

County conservator Bjørn Ringstad together with Heidi Vike Grønningsæter and the Viking sword which was found in Grønningsæter’s backyard.

Norway is the only nation that can claim to have as many Viking swords still in tact. The majority of them, including those that are accidental finds like the most recent garden find, come from Viking burials.

The sword most likely came from a grave, according to Kjetil Loftsgarden, Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oslo. Loftsgarden is also the editor of the scientific journal Viking. “You don’t just lose a sword”, he writed.

Other weapons and equipment, such as a knife, spear, axe, and shield, may be discovered in a grave alongside a sword.

According to Loftsgarden, there was a lot of variance in burial traditions throughout the Viking Age. Some were buried in flat graves, while others were in mounds.

“These are traces of complex rituals, and it is difficult to find the reason for why some dead were cremated and others not. We find these variations within the same region, and even within the same burial field” he writes.

“Many of the remains of these graves have been damaged or destroyed by agricultural activities and modern construction during the past 200 years. And this is most likely what happened at some time in the potato field in Grønningsæter’s garden.”

So, who could have owned the sword?

Although several swords and traces of swords have been discovered across Norway, Loftsgarden believes that only the upper echelons of each region owned a sword.

The nicer the sword, the greater the owner’s social standing. Loftsgarden further points out that only a small portion of the populace was interred with artifacts like jewelry, weapons, or tools.

“Most people who lived during the Viking Age left no traces. As is so often the case, the poor of society are missing in our sources,” he comments.

Archaeologists in Prague uncover ancient 7000-year-old Neolithic structure

Archaeologists in Prague are currently uncovering a monumental building from the Stone Age. The so-called roundel, built around 7,000 years ago, is located in the district of Vinoř on the outskirts of the city. Experts are hoping that the research will reveal more information about these mysterious ancient structures.

Roundels are large circular structures from the Neolithic period, that were constructed between 4600–4900 BC. That makes them the oldest monumental buildings in Europe, far older than the Egyptian pyramids or England’s Stonehenge.

One such roundel is currently being examined in Prague’s district of Vinoř. So far, research has shown that the structure is exceptionally well-preserved. Archaeologists were surprised to discover intact remains of the palisade troughs into which the central wooden structure was originally embedded.

Despite these findings, it is still unclear what purpose these structures have served, says Miroslav Kraus, who is in charge of the research:

“One of such theory is that it could have been used as an economic centre, a centre of trade. It could also have been a centre of some religious cult, where rites of passage or rituals connected to the time of year were performed.

“Roundels were built during the Stone Age, when people had not yet discovered iron. The only tools they could use were made of stone and animal bones.”

To date, around 200 roundels have been found all over central Europe, with 35 of them located on the territory of the Czech Republic. The roundel in Vinoř, which measures 55 metres in diameter, has an unusual floor plan with three separate entrances.

What makes its research unique is that archaeologists have uncovered the structure almost in its entirety, says Mr. Kraus:

“We have the opportunity to uncover nearly the whole structure, or rather what remained of it.  At the same time I should note that part of the structure was revealed back in the 1980s, during the laying of gas and water pipelines.”

The so-called roundel, built around 7,000 years ago, is located in the district of Vinoř on the outskirts of Prague|Photo: Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences

Thanks to the extent of the research, archaeologists will be able to take samples for dating and analyses from various parts of the original structure, says Mr. Kraus:

“It would be great to discover something that would indicate the actual function of the building. However, it is very unlikely, since none of the previously researched roundels had revealed such information.

“It would also be great to find something that would suggest its real age. So far, radiocarbon dating of samples collected from roundels has put their age somewhere between 4900 years to 4600 BC. That is a pretty wide time span.”

The research of the Vinoř roundel is due to carry on until the end of September. Archaeologists have previously discovered a Neolithic settlement northeast of the roundel that had been used for 300 to 400 years.

The so-called roundel, built around 7,000 years ago, is located in the district of Vinoř on the outskirts of Prague|Photo: Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences

Archaeologists hopeful after two possible Viking boat burial sites found on UK island

Archaeologists will be digging up two possible Viking burial sites in the UK to settle their true identity after previously finding a number of artefacts at the same location

Archaeologists will soon begin a dig to investigate two possible Viking boat burial sites, say reports.

A group of volunteers and professionals plan to excavate two elongated mounds at Lephin on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides this month after artefacts were found at the site three years earlier.

The team on Lephin Dig 2022 will be working to establish whether the mounds are naturally occurring or a result of a medieval burial.

High-ranking Vikings who died between the ninth and eleventh centuries were customarily buried along with a ship and various assorted 'grave goods'.

These often included small items like clothes and weapons as well as kitchen goods and furniture.

Fragments were previously found on digs at Lephin, Isle of Mull in 2018 and 2019 ( Image: Argyll Archaeology)

The dig, organised by Mull Museum and Argyll Archaeology project andled by archaeologist Dr Clare Ellis, will also be hoping to unearth artefacts from long-goneNorse settlements.

Norse and Viking finds were made at the same site in previous digs in 2018 and 2019, according to BBC News, with evidence of a turf and timber structure being among the most significant.

Other discoveries included a Norse antler comb and cover which bore striking similarities to those previously found back in their Scandinavian homeland, while various fragments of pottery, metal objects and rubbish were also found.

A dig in Ardnamurchan, Scotland back in 2011 found a Viking chief buried along with a boat, sword and axe ( Image: Getty Images)

Back in 2011, archaeologists unearthed a Viking chief buried along with a boat, axe, sword and spear on the remote peninsula of Ardnamurchan.

The discovery of the grave, which was found to be 16 feet long, was the first time an intact find of its kind had ever been made on the mainland United Kingdom.

Archaeologists also dug up a shield boss, a thick round piece of metal placed in the middle of a shield, and a bronze ring-pin buried.

Pieces of pottery, a knife, and a whetstone also turned up elsewhere on the Ardnamurchan site.

Study uncovered intriguing new insights into the diet of people living in Neolithic Britain

The consumption of domesticated plants and animals first emerged in Britain and Ireland around 4000 BC. It accompanies other novel traditions, practices, and technology, including the use of pottery and new settlement and funerary practices. However, despite archaeobotanical evidence for domesticated plants (such as cereals), organic residue evidence has been near-absent.

Using chemical analysis of ancient and incredibly well-preserved pottery found in the waters surrounding small artificial islands called crannogs in Scotland, a team of scientists led by the University of Bristol has uncovered intriguing new insights into the diet of people living in Neolithic Britain. Their study showed that cereals were cooked in pots and mixed with dairy products and occasionally meat, probably to create early forms of gruel and stew. They also found that the people visiting these crannogs used smaller pots to cook cereals with milk and larger pots for meat-based dishes.

An earlier study of Roman pottery at Vindolanda (Hadrian’s Wall) showed that a high-sensitivity method could detect specific lipid markers for cereals that can survive absorbed in archeological pottery that has been maintained in waterlogged conditions. However, importantly this was ‘only’ 2,000 years old and from contexts where cereals were well-known to have been present.

According to this new study, cereal biomarkers can be preserved for thousands of years under favorable conditions.

Another fascinating fact of the study: the pots that scientists used were intact and decorated, suggesting they may have had some ceremonial purpose. Since the actual function of the crannogs themselves is not fully understood yet (with some being far too small for permanent occupation), the research provides new insights into possible ways these constructions were used.

Photo reconstruction of one of the pots from Loch Langabhat cRedit: Mike Copper

The investigation revealed that a large percentage of the pots contained cereal biomarkers, the earliest biomolecular proof of cereals in absorbed pottery residues in this area. It was also found that wheat was being cooked in pots, even though the limited evidence from charred plant parts in this region of Atlantic Scotland points mainly to barley.

This may be due to the underrepresentation of wheat in charred plant remains due to its versatility in cooking methods (such as boiling it as a component of stews), which makes it less frequently charred, or it may be the result of more unique cooking techniques.

Drs Simon Hammann from the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology said, “It’s very exciting to see that cereal biomarkers in pots can survive under favorable conditions in samples from the time when cereals (and pottery) were introduced in Britain. Our lipid-based molecular method can complement archaeobotanical methods to investigate the introduction and spread of cereal agriculture.”

Lucy Cramp from the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology said, “This research gives us a window into the culinary traditions of early farmers living at the northwestern edge of Europe, whose lifeways are little understood. It gives us the first glimpse of the sorts of practices that were associated with these enigmatic islet locations.”

Duncan Garrow from the University of Reading and Fraser Sturt from the University of Southampton said, “This research, undertaken by our colleagues at the University of Bristol, has hugely improved our knowledge of these sites in many exciting ways. We very much look forward to developing this collaborative research going forwards.”

Gold coin hoard worth $300K found beneath kitchen floor in England

Homeowners in the United Kingdom discovered a stash of gold coins hidden beneath the wood floorboards of their kitchen during a renovation.

The cache includes more than 260 gold coins dating to between 1610 and 1727. (Image credit: Courtesy Spink & Son)

The cache, which is estimated to be valued at around $290,000 (250,000 pounds) at auction, is believed to be one of the largest hoards of 17th- and 18th-century English gold coins ever found in Britain and includes more than 260 gold coins dating to between 1610 and 1727, according to CNN(opens in new tab).

The discovery occurred in 2019, when contractors unearthed a salt-glazed earthenware cup, similar in size to a soda can, as they pried up the floorboards during the renovation project at the 18th-century home, located in Ellerby, a village in North Yorkshire. 

Upon further inspection, the workers found some of the coins rattling inside the cup, which consisted mainly of 50- and 100-pound coins "that were used at the time," as well as a Brazilian coin that circulated in England during the 1720s, according to a statement from Spink & Son, a London-based auction house.

"It is a wonderful and truly unexpected discovery from so unassuming a find location," Gregory Edmund, an auctioneer with Spink & Son, told CNN.

The coins likely belonged to Joseph and Sarah Fernley-Maisters, members of an influential mercantile family that included several members of Parliament who lived in the area during the late 1600s and early 1700s, according to the statement.

"Joseph and Sarah clearly distrusted the newly formed Bank of England, the 'banknote' and even the gold coinage of their day because they [chose] to hold onto so many coins dating to the English Civil War and beforehand," Edmund said in the statement. "Why they never recovered the coins when they were really easy to find just beneath original 18th-century floorboards is an even bigger mystery, but it is one hell of a piggy bank."

Next month, the treasure trove will go up for auction through Spink & Son and is expected to fetch nearly $300,000.

Archeologists discovered a 17th-century Polish 'vampire' with a sickle across its neck meant to prevent a return from the dead

The skeletal remains of a female "vampire" were found in a 17th-century Polish graveyard — with a sickle across its neck to prevent the woman from rising from the dead.

Professor Dariusz Poliński from Nicolaus Copernicus University headed up the archaeological dig that led to the discovery of the skeleton, which was found wearing a silk cap and with a protruding front tooth, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

The skeleton had a protruding tooth and a sickle across its neck.  Mirosław Blicharski

"The sickle was not laid flat but placed on the neck in such a way that if the deceased had tried to get up most likely the head would have been cut off or injured," Poliński told the Daily Mail.

In the 11th century, citizens of Eastern Europe reported fears of vampires and began treating their dead with anti-vampire rituals, according to Smithsonian Magazine, believing that "some people who died would claw their way out of the grave as blood-sucking monsters that terrorized the living."

By the 17th century, such burial practices "became common across Poland in response to a reported outbreak of vampires," ScienceAlert reported.

"Other ways to protect against the return of the dead include cutting off the head or legs, placing the deceased face down to bite into the ground, burning them, and smashing them with a stone," Poliński told the New York Post.

Though other common anti-vampire burial methods included a metal rod hammered through the skeleton, the remains in Poland were found with the sickle across the neck and a padlocked toe to restrain them. 

The padlocked big toe attached to the skeleton's left foot, Poliński told the Daily Mail, likely symbolized "the closing of a stage and the impossibility of returning."

Treasure Trove of Perfect Votive Offerings Found at Etruscan Thermal Baths

It’s amazing what treasures people will throw away in the hope of winning the favor of the gods. Rare items used as votive offerings found in an “exceptional state of preservation” have been discovered at the celebrated San Casciano dei Bagni Etruscan baths in Tuscany, Italy. Archaeologists working at this thermal spring complex which developed in the 4th century BC, have discovered a treasure trove of votive offerings, coins, and stone carvings.

Votive Offerings, Coins, and Symbols of Fertility

In addition to the rare ancient votive offerings found at the Tuscany site, 3,000 ancient coins, of which a fourth are freshly minted and still shiny, have also been found, reports CNN. These coins, made of gold, silver, orichalcum, and bronze, have been dated to the reigns of Augustus, the Flavian emperors, Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. Orichalcum coins, a valuable yellow alloy of gold and copper prized by the ancient Greeks and Romans, were found in the biggest bath.

Coins, made of gold, silver, orichalcum, and bronze, have been dated to the reigns of Augustus, the Flavian emperors, Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. (Emanuele Mariotti / SABAP-SI)

The Tuscany find is the largest ancient currency haul found at any of the thermal springs in the Mediterranean. And nearly everything discovered was found in a near-perfect state of preservation, including original colors. This excellent state of preservation was the result of the water’s chemical properties and the lack of oxygen in the mud layers at bottom of the pools.

"They're still shiny brown and shiny yellow -- such bright colors have never been found in any excavation site," said archaeologist Jacopo Tabolli, scientific director of the excavation project and professor of Etruscan studies at Siena's University for Foreigners. He further described it as “a miracle.”

Three ear-shaped votive offerings unearthed at the San Casciano dei Bagni thermal dig site, Tuscany, Italy. (Emanuele Mariotti / SABAP-SI)

A marble relief of a bull’s head, a bronze putto, five bronze votive offerings, miniature lamps, a bronze foil belt, and other religious offerings were also found. And these finds really added a sense of triumph for the archaeologists that have worked at the site for six dig seasons over the past three years.

"What makes this site unique in the entire Mediterranean is the exceptional state of preservation, and the [evidence] it provides for how medical hot water practices were considered curative under divine protection . . . The amount and quality of the objects recovered are also astonishing -- we knew something was down there but weren't expecting such a surprise,” stated Tabolli.

A womb made of bronze called a unicum, another reference to fertility, was one of the highlights of the finds made over the last two weeks. It has been dated to the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.

This fertility worship and gifting of votive offerings at thermal baths was still practiced in Italy as recently as 50 years ago! Village women who had trouble conceiving would come to the thermal springs hoping that the therapeutic powers of the water would help their womb relax.

The other highlight discovery were “footprints” found on the surface of a holy basin, etched with traces of lead and silver. These footprints, of different sizes, were made with sandals worn by children, teenagers, and adults. Bull hooves and human ears, associated with Isis and Serapis, were also found here. Archaeologists speculate the votive offering process included devotees walking around the perimeter of the pools to ask for good health and wellbeing from these gods.

The other highlight discovery were “footprints” found on the surface of a holy basin, etched with traces of lead and silver. These footprints, of different sizes, were made with sandals worn by children, teenagers, and adults. Bull hooves and human ears, associated with Isis and Serapis, were also found here. Archaeologists speculate the votive offering process included devotees walking around the perimeter of the pools to ask for good health and wellbeing from these gods.

Why do Experts Advocate Revising the Indo-European Linguistic Theory?

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By Dimosthenis Vasiloudis

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Recent decades have seen a significant reorientation of scientific inquiry and discourse surrounding the theory of Indo-European linguistics.

The Indo-European Linguistic Theory has long been the foundation for understanding the history, development, and relationships between the many languages spoken across Europe and parts of Asia. Based on the idea that a single ancestral language, known as Proto-Indo-European, gave rise to the vast linguistic diversity we see today, this theory has provided valuable insights for historical linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology. However, recent findings have prompted some experts to propose a rethink of this influential theory, which could have wide-ranging implications for our understanding of language development and human history.

New evidence calls for a rethink.

Several factors have led scholars to reconsider the traditional Indo-European linguistic theory:

The Gravettian (30,000 to 20,000 years) is drawn in black and white; the subsequent Magdalenian (17,000 to 10,000 years) and Hamburgian (13,000-11,750 years) are in light blue and red. It is not known whether the spread of the Gravettian was a result of diffusion of people or cultures.

Source: Eugene E. Harris, Demic and cultural diffusion in prehistoric Europe in the age of ancient genomes

• New data from archaeology, genetics, and linguistics: With advances in technology and scientific methods, researchers have been able to uncover new evidence that challenges the conventional narrative of the Indo-European linguistic family. The discovery of previously unknown languages, DNA analyses, and the study of ancient texts have provided fresh insights into the possible origins and development of these languages, leading some experts to argue that the current theory is outdated.

  The foundation of the ideas up until this point—a number of linguistic presumptions—is severely questioned.

  The investigated historical languages' content is a very recent creation, and the so-called "protolanguage" reconstruction is destroyed by the temporally incongruous data (James Clackson).

  N.S. Trubetskoy believes that a group with such a protolanguage located in space (Urheimat) and time likely never existed because of their material culture, worldview, and social institutions.

• Inadequate explanation of linguistic diversity: Critics of the current theory argue that it fails to adequately explain the immense linguistic diversity found within the Indo-European language family. While the traditional theory posits a single ancestral language, it does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the complex linguistic differences between various Indo-European languages, which appear to have evolved independently of one another.

  The renowned archaeologist Herbert Kühn asserts that evidence of cultural fragmentation dates back to the Neolithic Era. The viewpoint of M. Alinei, who contends that the distinctive and extensive vocabulary of each IE language shows that this fragmentation had already occurred long before the development of Neolithic society, is on the same page.

  According to some linguistic theories, language's primary quality is preservation. Language, which is a social product rather than a living thing, occasionally changes, usually as a result of unusual and unique social processes. The idea of "linguistic waves" is a persistently popular one from the past (Wellentheorie, wave theory).

  A new perspective on the place of the IE protolanguage as part of the "wide-spread Proto-Indo-European linguistic continuum" is presented by findings like the network of cognate European hydronyms (confuting the one and only IE heartland).

  The findings of linguistic paleontology are also significant because they suggest that terms and names for fundamental components of the natural world, everyday items and tools, or human life and communication in general should likely be traced back to the origins of the "Speaking Man" (Homo Loquens), rather than to a period just before the Agricultural Revolution.

Map of Early Neolithic Europe, by Eupedia

Distribution of the Indo-European languages seen in terms of the wave theory (after Schmidt and Lehmann).

Old European hydronymic map for the root *Sal-, *Salm-

Old European hydronymic map for the root *al-, *alm-

• Alternative hypotheses: As scholars delve deeper into the linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence, they have put forth alternative hypotheses that challenge the traditional theory. For instance, some researchers propose that instead of a single Proto-Indo-European language, there may have been multiple ancestral languages that gave rise to the various branches of the Indo-European family. This would require a significant reevaluation of the current theory and its underlying assumptions.

  The IE problem's time frame has now dramatically expanded. Regarding the Paleolithic Age's language environment, there are many highly intriguing ideas and observations, both from an archaeological (and other) perspective. It is significant to consider that a first linguistic and cultural unification in Europe may have occurred during the Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian hypothesis), when the constant movement of hunter-gatherers may have forced linguistic stability and convergence (though probably not Nostratic), without this view amounting to an out-of-date immigration theory like those that predominated in the 20th century.

Implications for Language Study and Human History

A reconsideration of the Indo-European Linguistic Theory has the potential to reshape our understanding of language development and human history. If the current theory is revised, it could:

• Change the way we study languages: A new understanding of the origins and development of the Indo-European languages would require scholars to reassess their approach to studying these languages, from historical linguistics to comparative grammar and beyond.

• Impact theories of human migration: A revised theory could also have implications for our understanding of human migration and the spread of cultures across Europe and Asia. It may provide new insights into how ancient populations interacted and exchanged ideas, fostering a more nuanced understanding of human history.

• Encourage interdisciplinary research: As experts from various fields continue to challenge and refine the Indo-European Linguistic Theory, it may encourage more interdisciplinary research, bringing together linguists, archaeologists, geneticists, and other scholars to collaborate and share their knowledge.

The Indo-European Linguistic Theory has been a cornerstone of language and historical studies for many years, but new evidence and alternative hypotheses have prompted a growing number of experts to call for a reevaluation of its central tenets. As scholars continue to explore the complex web of linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence, it is essential to remain open to new ideas and to embrace the potential for a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the Indo-European language family and its place in human history.

The History of Writing; Tracing the Development of expressing Language by Systems of Markings

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by dimosthenis vasiloudis

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Protowriting, ideographic systems, or early mnemonic symbols came before more advanced writing systems in the evolution of writing in human societies (symbols or letters that make remembering them easier).

A subsequent development is true writing, in which the content of a spoken language is encoded so that another reader may reasonably reconstruct the identical utterance written down. It differs from proto-writing, which frequently forgoes recording grammatical words and affixes, making it harder or even impossible to reassemble the precise meaning intended by the writer unless a substantial amount of context is already known in advance.

Writing innovations

The idea that writing originated in a single civilization and was called "monogenesis" persisted for a long time. According to academics, all writing originated in Mesopotamia's ancient Sumer and spread around the world as a result of cultural diffusion. This argument holds that traders or merchants traveling between geographical locations passed on the idea of representing language by written signs, though perhaps not necessarily the specifics of how such a system operated.

The finding of ancient Mesoamerican scripts, far from Middle Eastern sources, demonstrated, however, that writing had been created more than once. In at least four ancient civilizations, including Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (about 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland portions of southern Mexico and Guatemala, writing may have independently originated (by 500 BCE).

Some academics have suggested that ancient Egypt "The earliest authentic examples of Egyptian writing differ from Mesopotamian writing in both structure and style, indicating that they must have emerged independently. Although there is still a chance that Mesopotamian "stimulus dispersion" occurred, the influence could not have extended beyond the dissemination of an idea."

Because there is no evidence of communication between ancient China and the Near Eastern literate civilizations, as well as because Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to phonetic representation differ, it is thought that ancient Chinese characters are independent creations.

The Vinča symbols.

The Rongorongo script of Easter Island, the Vina symbols from about 5500 BCE, and the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization are all controversial. Since none have been translated, it is unclear if they all represent real writing, protowriting, or something entirely different.

The earliest coherent texts date from around 2600 BCE, and Sumerian archaic (pre-cuneiform) writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs are usually regarded as the earliest authentic writing systems. Both developed out of their ancestors' proto-literate symbol systems between 3400 and 3100 BCE. The Proto-Elamite script belongs to roughly the same time frame.

writing methods

Writing systems are distinct from symbolic communication systems. For most writing systems, reading a text requires some knowledge of the spoken language that goes along with it. In contrast, it's not always necessary to have a prior understanding of a spoken language to use symbolic systems like information signs, paintings, maps, and mathematics. Every human group has its own language, which is thought by many to be a natural and essential aspect of mankind.

Writing system development has been intermittent, uneven, and delayed, and old oral communication systems have only been partially replaced. Writing systems generally develop more slowly after they are formed than their spoken counterparts and frequently preserve traits and idioms that have been lost to the spoken language.

Three writing standards are thought to apply to all writing systems. First, writing must be comprehensive; it must have a meaning or purpose, and it must make a point or be able to convey that message. Second, whether they are physical or digital, all writing systems must include some kind of symbol that can be created on a surface. In order to facilitate communication, the writing system's symbols must resemble spoken words or speech.

The greatest advantage of writing is that it gives society a way to regularly and thoroughly preserve information—something that the spoken word could not previously do as successfully. Writing enables communities to communicate knowledge, transmit information, and

stages of development

Sumer

An ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia, is believed to be the place where written language was first invented around 3200 BCE.

Beginning with the Neolithic pottery phase, when clay tokens were used to keep track of particular quantities of animals or other goods, writing first appeared. These tokens were initially imprinted on the exterior of spherical clay envelopes, which were later used to keep them. Afterwards, flat tablets were gradually introduced in place of the tokens, and signs were recorded using a stylus. Towards the end of the fourth millennium BCE, Uruk was where actual writing was first discovered. Other areas of the Near East quickly followed.

The earliest recorded account of the development of writing is found in a poem from ancient Mesopotamia:

The Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote on it like a tablet because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat the message. It has never been possible to write on clay before.

Enmerkar and the King of Aratta, a Sumerian epic written around 1800 BCE

Although there is agreement among scholars as to the difference between prehistory and the history of early writing, there is disagreement as to when proto-writing became "real writing." The criteria are somewhat arbitrary. In the broadest sense, writing is a way of keeping track of information. It is made up of graphemes, which in turn can be made up of glyphs.

Many centuries of shattered inscriptions typically follow the advent of writing in a particular region. The presence of coherent texts in a culture's writing system is how historians determine a culture's "historicity".

Standard reconstruction of the development of writing. There is a possibility that the Egyptian script was invented independently from the Mesopotamian script.

A conventional "proto-writing to true writing" system follows a general series of developmental stages:

Picture writing system: glyphs (simplified pictures) directly represent objects and concepts. In connection with this, the following substages may be distinguished:

• Mnemonic: glyphs primarily as a reminder.

• Pictographic: glyphs directly represent an object or a concept such as (A) chronological, (B) notices, (C) communications, (D) totems, titles, and names, (E) religious, (F) customs, (G) historical, and (H) biographical.

• Ideographic: graphemes are abstract symbols that directly represent an idea or concept.

Pre-cuneiform tags, with drawing of goat or sheep and number (probably "10"): "Ten goats", Al-Hasakah, 3300–3100 BCE, Uruk culture.

Transitional system: graphemes refer not only to the object or idea that it represents but to its name as well.

• Phonetic system: graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages:

• Verbal: grapheme (logogram) represents a whole word.

• Syllabic: grapheme represents a syllable.

• Alphabetic: grapheme represents an elementary sound.

Designs on some of the labels or token from Abydos, carbon-dated to circa 3400–3200 BC and among the earliest form of writing in Egypt. They are remarkably similar to contemporary clay tags from Uruk, Mesopotamia.

The best known picture writing system of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols are:

• Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, c. 6600 BCE

• Vinča symbols (Tărtăria tablets), c. 5300 BCE[24]

• Early Indus script, c. 3100 BCE

In the Old World, true writing systems developed from neolithic writing in the Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC).

Locations and timeframes

Comparative evolution

from pictograms to abstract shapes, in Mesopotamian cuneiforms, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters

Proto-writing

The first writing systems of the Early Bronze Age were not a sudden invention. Rather, they were a development based on earlier traditions of symbol systems that cannot be classified as proper writing, but have many of the characteristics of writing. These systems may be described as "proto-writing". They used ideographic or early mnemonic symbols to convey information, but it probably directly contained no natural language. These systems emerged in the early Neolithic period, as early as the 7th millennium BC, and include:

• The Jiahu symbols found carved in tortoise shells in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the 7th millennium BCE. Most archaeologists consider these not directly linked to the earliest true writing.

• Vinča symbols, sometimes called the "Danube script", are a set of symbols found on Neolithic era (6th to 5th millennia BCE) artifacts from the Vinča culture of Central Europe and Southeast Europe.

• The Dispilio Tablet of the late 6th millennium may also be an example of proto-writing.

• The Indus script, which from 3500 BCE to 1900 BCE was used for extremely short inscriptions.

The Dispilio Tablet

The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed markings, unearthed during George Hourmouziadis's excavations of Dispilio in Greece, and carbon 14-dated to 5202 (± 123) BC.

It was discovered in 1993 in a Neolithic lakeshore settlement that occupied an artificial island near the modern village of Dispilio on Lake Kastoria in Kastoria, Western Macedonia, Greece.

Even after the Neolithic, a number of societies used proto-writing as a transitional form before adopting formal writing. Such a mechanism might have existed in the quipu of the Incas (15th century CE), often known as "talking knots". Another example is the pictographs created by Uyaquk before the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language developed the Yugtun syllabary around 1900.

Ancient writing

The Bronze Age saw the development of writing in a wide range of cultures. Indus script, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, Sumerian cuneiform writing, and the Olmec script of Mesoamerica are a few examples. Around 1600 BCE, the Chinese script most likely evolved apart from the Middle Eastern scripts. It is also generally accepted that the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems, which include the Olmec and Maya scripts, had separate origins. In 2000 BCE, it is believed that the first real alphabetic writing was created for Hebrew laborers in the Sinai by assigning Semitic values to mostly Egyptian hieratic characters (see History of the alphabet and Proto-Sinaitic alphabet).

Ethiopia's Geez writing system is regarded as Semitic. With roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system, it is most likely of semi-independent origin. The majority of alphabets used today are either direct descendants of this one invention, many through the Phoenician alphabet, or were designed in direct response to it. The early Old Italic alphabet and Plautus (c. 750–250 BCE) were separated by around 500 years in Italy, while the Elder Futhark inscriptions and early works like the Abrogans (c. 200–750 CE) are separated by a similar amount of time in the case of the Germanic peoples.

Cuneiform writing

The first Sumerian script was derived from a system of clay tokens used to denote different types of goods. This had developed into a system of keeping accounts by the end of the fourth millennium BC, utilizing a stylus with a circular form that was impressed into soft clay at various angles to record numbers. A pointed stylus was used to gradually add pictographic lettering on this to show what was being counted. Writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the name "cuneiform") began to include phonetic features by the 29th century BCE and gradually replaced writing with a round stylus and a sharp stylus by about 2700–2500 BCE.

Cuneiform first started to represent Sumerian syllables around 2600 BCE. Ultimately, cuneiform writing evolved into a general-purpose system for writing numerals, syllables, and logograms. This alphabet was adapted to the Akkadian language starting in the 26th century BCE, and from there to others like Hurrian and Hittite. This writing system resembles Old Persian and Ugaritic scripts in appearance.

Hieroglyphics from Egypt

Literacy was concentrated among a well-educated elite of scribes, who played a crucial role in upholding the Egyptian empire through writing. To become scribes in the employ of temple, royal (pharaonic), and military authority, one had to come from a certain background.

According to Geoffrey Sampson, the general concept of expressing words from a language in writing was likely transmitted to Egypt via Sumerian Mesopotamia. Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into being a little after Sumerian script, and, possibly [were], invented under the influence of the latter." Despite the significance of early Egypt-Mesopotamia links, "no definitive judgment has been established as to the genesis of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt" due to the lack of direct evidence. However, it is stated and agreed upon that "a very compelling argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt" and that "the evidence for such direct influence remains fragile."

Egyptian writing does suddenly appear at that time, but Mesopotamia has an evolutionary history of sign usage in tokens dating back to around 8000 BCE. Since the 1990s, discoveries of glyphs at Abydos, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, may challenge the conventional idea that the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one. These glyphs were discovered in tomb U-J at Abydos; they were written on ivory and most likely served as labels for other items discovered there.

Even though he acknowledged that Egypt's geographic location made it a receptacle for many influences, Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar maintained that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols originated from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and that in regards to writing, "we have seen that a purely Nilotic, therefore African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality."

Elamite writing

The unintelligible Proto-Elamite writing first appears around 3100 BCE. Around the latter third millennium, it is thought to have evolved into Linear Elamite, which was later supplanted by Elamite Cuneiform, which was adapted from Akkadian.

Indus script

Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not these symbols constituted a writing system used to record the as yet unidentified language(s) of the Indus Valley civilisation.

The Indus script has been assigned to markings and symbols discovered at numerous Indus Valley civilization sites due to the hypothesis that they were used to transcribe the Harappan language. It is disputed whether the script, which was in use from roughly 3500 to 1900 BCE, is a Bronze Age writing script (logographic-syllabic) or merely proto-writing symbols. According to analysis, it was written in boustrophedon or from right to left.

early SEMITIC ALPHABETS

Around 1800 BCE in Ancient Egypt, the first "abjads," which mapped individual symbols to individual phonemes but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol, appeared as a representation of the language created there by Semitic workers. However, by that time, alphabetic principles had only a remote chance of being ingrained into Egyptian hieroglyphs for upwards of a millennium.

Did the Proto-Canaanite alphabet take its symbols independently of the hieroglyphs?

It is only until the end of the Bronze Age that the Proto-Sinaitic script separates into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (c. 1400 BCE), Byblos syllabary, and the South Arabian alphabet (c. 1200 BCE). These early abjads remained of minor significance for several decades. The untranslated Byblos syllabary most likely had some influence on the Proto-Canaanite, which in turn provided inspiration for the Ugaritic alphabet (c. 1300 BCE).

Anatolian hieroglyphs

The Hieroglyphic Luwian language was written down using Anatolian hieroglyphs, a native hieroglyphic script found in western Anatolia. Around the fourteenth century BCE, it initially appeared on royal seals of the Luwians.

Chinese characters

The corpus of inscriptions on oracle bones and brass from the late Shang dynasty is the earliest authenticated example of the Chinese script that has been found so far. The oldest of these is believed to date from about 1200 BCE.

There have been recent finds of tortoise-shell carvings from around 6000 BCE, such as Jiahu Script and Banpo Script, but it is debatable whether or not the carvings are complex enough to be considered writing. 3,172 cliff carvings from the period between 6000 and 5000 BCE have been found near Damaidi in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. They contain 8,453 different characters, including images of the sun, moon, stars, gods, and scenes of grazing or hunting.

Replica

of ancient Chinese script on an oracle turtle shell

These pictographs are thought to resemble the first Chinese characters that have been confirmed to be written. Writing in China would predate Mesopotamian cuneiform, traditionally recognized as the first manifestation of writing, by about 2,000 years if it were to be considered a written language. However, it is more likely that the inscriptions represent a type of proto-writing, comparable to the modern European Vinca script.

Early Greek and Cretan scripts

Cretan relics include hieroglyphic writing (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BCE, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). The Mycenaean Greek writing system, Linear B, has been decoded, but Linear A has not yet been. The three overlapping, but distinct, writing systems can be categorized according to their chronological order and geographic distribution as follows:

• Cretan Hieroglyphic / Crete (eastward from the Knossos-Phaistos axis) / c. 2100−1700 BCE

• Linear A / Crete (except extreme southwest), Aegean Islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera), Greek mainland (Laconia) and west Minor Asia (Miletus and maybe Troy) / c. 1800−1450 BCE

• Linear B / Crete (Knossos), and mainland (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns) / c. 1450−1200 BCE

The archaeological finds with signs of pre-alphabetic scripts in the Aegean

(Up) The finds with signs of Linear B script reach about 6,000 and constitute the majority of the pre-alphabetic written monuments of the Aegean.

(Middle) About 1,400 are the finds which imprint Linear A and make up a 11% of all pre-alphabetic inscriptions.

(Down) Cretan hieroglyphics occupies 2% of the available finds with only 400 finds.

Illustration: Dimosthenis Vasiloudis

Mesoamerica

The Cascajal Block, a stone slab with 3,000-year-old writing that predates the first Zapotec writing from around 500 BCE, was found in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is an example of the oldest script in the Western Hemisphere.

Stela 12 and 13

from the southern end of Building L, in the Zapotec city of Monte Albán, Outside of Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Maya script is one of numerous pre-Columbian scripts found in Mesoamerica, and it appears to have been the most well-developed and extensively deciphered. The earliest clearly identifiable Maya inscriptions date to the third century BCE, and writing continued to be used until just before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century BCE. A combination of logograms and syllabic symbols, utilized in Maya writing, is somewhat reminiscent of current Japanese writing.

IRON AGE WRITING

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which was used into the Iron Age, is all that the Phoenician alphabet is (conventionally taken from a cut-off date of 1050 BCE). The Greek and Aramaic alphabets were derived from this alphabet. They eventually gave rise to the writing systems that are currently used everywhere from Western Asia to Africa and Europe. The Greek alphabet, on the other hand, was the first to use specific symbols to represent vowel sounds.

By Matt Baker

In the first centuries of the Common Era, the Greek and Latin alphabets gave rise to a number of European scripts, including the Runes, Gothic, and Cyrillic alphabets, while the Aramaic alphabet developed into the Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac abjads, the latter of which spread as far as Mongolian script. The Ge'ez abugida originated from the South Arabian alphabet. According to some academics, the Indian Brahmic family also descended from the Aramaic alphabet.

GRAKLIANI HILL WRITING

At Georgia's Grakliani Hill, behind a fallen altar from a temple dedicated to a fertility goddess from the seventh century BCE, an obscure script was uncovered in 2015. Grakliani's other temples' inscriptions, which depict animals, people, or decorative features, are different from these ones. Although its letters are rumored to be connected to ancient Greek and Aramaic, the script has no similarities to any known alphabet. In contrast, the earliest Armenian and Georgian letters come from the fifth century CE, right after the respective nations converted to Christianity. The inscription looks to be the oldest local alphabet ever uncovered in the entire Caucasus region. An portion of the inscription measuring 31 by 3 inches had been unearthed by September 2015.

Grakliani script on the basement of altar of goddess of fertility (XI-X c. BC)

Vakhtang Licheli, director of the State University's Institute of Archaeology, claims that "The writings on the temple's two altars have been kept in remarkably good condition. While the pedestal of the second altar is entirely covered with writings, the first altar has few clay letters carved into it." Unpaid students made the discovery. Inscriptions from Grakliani Hill were sent to Miami Laboratory in 2016 for beta analytic radiocarbon dating, which revealed that they were created between c. 1005 and c. 950 BCE.

WRITING IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD

When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician script for use with their own language in the early eighth century BCE, the history of the Greek alphabet officially began. The Greek and Phoenician alphabets share a lot of similarities in terms of their characters, and both alphabets nowadays are written in the same order. The Phoenician system's adapter(s) added three letters to the conclusion of the series, known as the "supplementals." The Greek alphabet evolved into a number of different forms.

Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens

One was utilized in southern Italy and west of Athens and is known as Western Greek or Chalcidian. The other variant, known as Eastern Greek, was spoken by the Athenians and in modern-day Turkey before spreading over the rest of the Greek-speaking world. The Greeks initially elected to write like the Phoenicians, from right to left, but subsequently switched to left to right. The lines would then alternately read from left to right, then from right to left, and so on. On occasion, though, the writer would begin the next line where the preceding one ended. Up until the sixth century, this style of writing, called "boustrophedon," mirrored the course of an ox-drawn plough.

Italic scripts and Latin

Cippus Perusinus

Etruscan writing near Perugia, Italy, the precursor of the Latin alphabet

All of the contemporary European scripts have their roots in Greek. The Latin alphabet, named after the Latins, a central Italian people who came to rule Europe with the emergence of Rome, is the most widely used descendant of the Greek script. Around the fifth century BCE, the Etruscan civilization, which employed a multitude of Italic scripts descended from the western Greeks, taught the Romans how to write. The other Old Italic scripts have not survived in very large quantities due to the cultural hegemony of the Roman state, and the Etruscan language is largely extinct.

WRITING DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

Roman rule in Western Europe fell apart, and the Persian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire became the main centers of literary development. Latin, which was never a major literary language, lost prominence quickly (except within the Roman Catholic Church). Greek and Persian were the two main literary languages, but Syriac and Coptic were also significant.

Arabic quickly became a significant literary language in the area as a result of the development of Islam in the 7th century. Greek's status as a scholarly language soon lost ground to Arabic and Persian. The Turkish and Persian languages now use Arabic script as their principal writing system. The development of the cursive scripts for Greek, the Slavic languages, Latin, and other languages was also greatly inspired by this script.

The Hindu-Arabic numeral system was also extended throughout Europe thanks to the Arabic language. The modern Spanish city of Cordoba had emerged as one of the world's leading intellectual hubs by the start of the second millennium and was home to the largest library at the time. Its location at the meeting point of the Islamic and Western Christian worlds encouraged intellectual growth and written exchange between the two cultures.

THE MODERN ERA AND THE RENAISSANCE

By the 14th century, Western Europe had experienced a renaissance, which had temporarily increased the significance of Greek while slowly restoring Latin's status as an important literary language. In Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, a comparable but smaller emergence took place. As the Islamic Golden Era came to an end, Arabic and Persian also started to slowly lose ground. In order to codify the phonologies of the various languages, the Latin alphabet underwent several alterations as a result of the rebirth of literary development in Western Europe.

Writing has undergone steady change throughout history, in large part because of the emergence of new technologies. Technology advancements such as the printing press, computer, mobile phone, and pen have all changed how and what is written as well as the medium in which it is generated. Characters can now be generated with a button press rather than a hand motion, especially with the development of digital technology like the computer and the smartphone.

How did the Vikings navigate?

Long before a compass or naval maps were used in Europe, the Vikings set about sailing the high seas from modern-day Canada to Constantinople. 

Vikings were skilled sailors and navigators. Source: vlastas / Shutterstock

Their famous longships ferried them across meandering rivers, stormy seas, and expansive oceans, making them skilled sailors. Yet, without the aid of sophisticated naval technology, how did the Vikings navigate across such vast distances?

Water, water everywhere…

Deep love and knowledge of sailing are embedded into the fabric of modern Scandinavian societies. In Norway, for example, a nation of just over 5 million people, there is estimated to be over 1 million boats. So, where did this passion arise? One look at Scandinavia today, and you'll notice it is indeed girt by vast sums of water.

All the Nordic (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and Greenland) countries – where Viking societies were present during the early medieval period – are located in the northeast quadrant of the Atlantic Ocean. Zooming in further, there are a plethora of seas. These countries have the waters of the Baltic, the Barents, the Greenland, the Kattegat, the North, the Norwegian, and the Skagerrak seas wash up on their shores whilst having the frosty Arctic Ocean as a northern border.

The Vikings' skillful exploitation of nautical technology enabled them to raid, trade, and colonize throughout the Western Hemisphere and into North Africa and West Asia. Being surrounded by vast oceans and seas, it should be no surprise that the most iconic symbol of the Vikings is, after all, a ship.

Vikings possessed a wealth of rudimentary maritime navigation skills and knowledge

In an era before the compass had arrived in Europe, before maps were widespread and satellite navigation was a millennium away, the Vikings sailed vast distances between Northern and Southern Europe, throughout the Mediterranean Sea, through the vast and numerous river systems of Eastern Europe and the Russian steppe and across the North Atlantic Ocean. 

They did, however, have some rudimentary navigational knowledge. Their knowledge of direction – North, South, East, and West – came from the daily cycle of the sun. Yet the principle underpinning much of their navigational skills was the exact location on the horizon where the sun rose and how high it reached during the day.

Sailors from Viking societies also used other natural landmarks when taking to the high seas. The sun, the moon, and the stars also provided an understanding of the direction to travel. However, the often-inclement weather found in the North Atlantic Ocean hampered this. 

Hugging coastal areas and looking for specific landmarks – rocks, bays, or a hilltop – could aid navigation. This sort of coastal hugging and landmark spotting is best described in the discovery of 'Vinland' in Grælendinga saga (Saga of the Greenlanders). Here, Leif Eriksson followed the past directions of a previous lost voyage to Greenland that ended up in 'Vinland' – what is now believed to be Newfoundland, Canada. Eriksson hugged the shore until he found a bay that was accessible in which the Norse explorers went ashore to explore this strange new world.

Sun crystals - kooky pseudo-science or a historical fact?

A new and emerging theory in Norse studies – first proposed in 1967 by Danish archaeologist Thorkild Ramskou – was that Viking sailors used chunks of crystal, called sunstones, to track the sun on a cloudy day. However, there is some actual science – and not pseudo-science – behind the proposed use of crystals for navigation.

The use of a crystal to find the sun on a cloudy day relies on the 'polarization' of the sun. This means that the light had a specific orientation. When then sunlight travels through the atmosphere, it forms polarized rings. These rings are only visible for animals and fish as the human eye is unable to detect them. However, with the use of crystals, like calcite, the direction of polarization, even on a cloudy day, can be revealed. When the sunstone is at its brightest, the crystal will point at the sun, allowing some form of rudimentary navigation, even on a grey, wet, and miserable foggy day in the North Sea.

These sun crystals were often mentioned in stories and sagas. One such instance was the reference to a sólarsteinn (a solar stone, a sunstone) in The Saga of King Olav. Yet the only archaeological evidence of the use of solar stones was from almost half a millennium later. In 2013 a British team discovered a ship that had been sunk in 1592 – 500 years after the end of the 'Viking Age.' Amongst the items were shards of a crystal, an Iceland spar (calcite), that was believed to have been used as a sunstone.

The answer is right in front of your nose - and animal friends

Vikings also used their other senses to navigate the oceans, seas, and rivers across much of the Western hemisphere and beyond. Listening for birds and the crashing of waves on the shore was one way to figure out how close they were to land on a foggy day. The direction of a sea breeze could also be used to navigate as well as to determine whether any fresh water, from the land, had flowed around them. Finally, an experienced sailor can smell signs of land life – fires, trees, and even some plants – given suitable conditions.

Animals were also helpful friends when it came to maritime navigation. Spotting certain birds meant land was near as particular breeds only flew close to the shore. Whales usually stayed close to currents where plentiful fish could be found. The Vikings knew of the migratory habits of many whales and could use this to help find particular areas of oceans or seas.

Viking sailors masterfully employed all this knowledge, skill, and expertise, whether they were raiding, trading, or exploring the oceans around the Scandinavian peninsula and beyond. Surely they rate as some of the medieval era's best maritime navigators… after all, they "discovered" America half a millennium before Columbus…

The Royal Society published a study in 2018 looking at the Viking's use of solar stones and polarization. You can find it here.