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Mon, 10 May 2021
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US: Archaeologists Driven to Solve Mystery of Abandoned City Beneath East St. Louis

© unknown
The site of the current archaeological dig is in the vicinity of Monk’s Mound, the largest of the Cahokia Mounds in southwest Illinois. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Archaeologists who have uncovered the remains of a prehistoric city beneath what is now East St. Louis are trying to unravel why that ancient city was abandoned while another one just to the east managed to survive two more centuries.

Archaeologists believe Native Americans abandoned the city of roughly 3,000 or more people around the year 1200, some 200 years before a bigger settlement at nearby Cahokia Mounds ended inexplicably.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Tuesday that the East St. Louis settlement appeared to have been ravaged by fire in the late 1100s, although the cause of that blaze isn't clear. Joe Galloy, coordinator at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey's American Bottom Field Station in Wood River, said an attack from outside, rioting or a ritual burning are among theories for the fire's origin, though archaeologists hope to pinpoint during the dig.

Archaeologists have been working the site since 2008, in advance of construction of an Interstate 70 bridge across the Mississippi River.

Galloy called the archaeological dig near the site of the old St. Louis National Stockyards "an unprecedented look at a Mississippian city" and perhaps the most significant archaeology of any kind under way in the country. About 50 people are working full-time on the effort.


US: Climate, culture linked in prehistoric Northeast

Though climate change seems a particularly modern predicament - one that generates alarm about the fate of the planet and how people and businesses will adapt - scientists are finding evidence that climate fluctuations influenced cultural changes among inhabitants of prehistoric New England.

Research is revealing the interconnected relationship between environmental shifts and changes in prehistoric people's tools and settlement patterns. At the end of a cold period came the end of a particular type of chipped stone point used in hunting; when surface water temperatures cooled, burial traditions shifted.

"It's a reminder that climate has changed in the past, but it's also a reminder that cultures either have to change or get changed, whether they like it or not, when the climate changes,'' said Arthur Spiess, senior archeologist at the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.

Archeologists have long debated how environmental changes shaped the lives of people. Today, big sets of data are allowing them to look more closely at possible correlations between human and ecological changes in prehistory. Research published this month found that every time the climatic needle jumped in the Northeast, so did human culture. That work builds on a 2005 study that looked closely at a 1,300-year mini ice age followed by rapid warming, and the simultaneous abrupt change in both the landscape and hunting tools.


Polish archaeologists score another success

Rock engravings, ancient burial sites and several dozen terracotta figurines were discovered by a group of Polish archaeologists in the north-eastern part of Sudan by the Red Sea, Rzeczpospolita reports. The research was carried out by scientists from the Archaeology and Ethnology Institute of the Polish Academy of Science, Poznan branch.

Prehistoric settlement has never been researched in north-western Sudan, Rzeczpospolita notes. The first rock engravings were accidentally discovered by Krzysztof Pluskota in 1999. An expedition led by Doctor Przemysław Bobrowski has been researching the area. "During the December expedition we discovered lots of rock engravings. Most of them depict cattle but there are also portraits of people and African animals" says Prof. Michal Kobusiewicz, member of the team. "The engravings were concentrated around a solitary phallus-shaped mountain, which suggests that they were connected with fertility rites" Kobusiewicz adds.

According to archaeologists, the mountain was a symbol of fertility cult, which is supposedly proved by its miniature copies made in sandstone found near the engravings. The theory about the cult character of the site may be proved by the discovery of several dozen terracotta figurines of people and the miniature sandstone phallus-shaped mountains. Numerous traces of prehistoric settlement were also discovered near the engravings.


Mysteries of Cumbria's ancient stones unlocked

© Unknown
Marks on the stones at Long Meg could have formed a map






Ancient Denisovans and the Human Family Tree

© MPI-EVA, Leipzig
Ancient molar tooth from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Scientists obtained the genetic information of the tooth, as well as of a finger bone found in the caves, revealing a connection to people living today.
Last month scientists revealed remarkable evidence of a new group of ancient humans called Denisovans that interbred with our species and left behind a genetic trace in people living in south east Asia today.

An international team, including scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, carried out a genetic study of a finger bone and a large molar tooth uncovered in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, Siberia. They sequenced the genome and found that this ancient human shared 4-6% of its genetic material with some present-day Melanesians.

In March, the team obtained a complete mitrochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence for the same finger bone, dated to about 40,000 years ago, showing that it was from neither a modern human nor Neanderthal.

Professor Chris Stringer, human origins expert at the Natural History Museum, comments on this research, 'The recovery of mtDNA from Denisova Cave was an exciting enough development, but this latest work by many of the same team is nothing short of sensational.

'This new work showed that the fossil finger bone female was actually slightly closer genetically to Neanderthals than to modern humans, but something else even more remarkable was revealed: the Denisovan is also related to one group of living humans - Melanesians, who live on some of the islands of south east Asia.'


Oldest Known Winery of 6,000 Years Unearthed in Armenian Cave

Oldest Winery
© Huliq
A cave excavation in the mountains of Armenia has yielded what researchers believe to be the oldest known winery in existence.

The ancient winery, estimated to be approximately 6,000 years old, was unearthed by a collaborate group of international researchers working on the excavation of a cave in an area known as Areni-1, according to the findings published online Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Artifacts discovered in the oldest known winery include a wide basin connected to a large vat, which is thought to have once been used to press wine grapes, fermentation jars and other cup and bowl artifacts used for drinking wine.

Areni, a southeastern village located in the Vayots Dzor province of the Fertile Crescent region of Armenia, is known for its exceptional wine growing and wine making areas and has a rich winemaking history. The co-director of the excavation, UCLA's Gregory Areshian, indicated that the recent discovery is perhaps the earliest known example of a full wine making operation.


Archaeological Site, Dating Back to Iraq's Ancient Sumerian Era, Discovered in Nassiriya

An ancient archaeological site, dating back to Ancient Iraq's Sumerian Era, was discovered in southern Iraq's Nassiriya city, the center of Thi-Qar Province, the Director General of the High Commission for Archaeology &Heritage, Qais Rashid Hussein said on Sunday.

"Our excavation teams have discovered an important site in a Sumerian position, dating back to the Dawn of the Ancient Strains - Third Century BC, south of Nassiriya city," Hussein told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, adding that "the site, carrying the name 'Umm al-Aqarib (Mother of Scorpions) consists of a worshipping position, housing units and about 600 archaeological antiques, that were handed over to the Iraqi Museum."

The archaeological sites in Thi-Qar Province, comprising amazing ancient archaeological sites, date back to the ancient historic eras of Misopotamia (Ancient Iraq), some of them dating back to the Somerian era and others to the Acadian, Babylonian, Firthian, Akhmenian, Sasanian or Islamic eras, whilst it comprises the world's most ancient archaeological hill, called "Al-Obali Hill", dating back to 6,000 BC.


'Mysterious, hidden literary references' found in the Mona Lisa

© Unknown
A professor from the Queen's University has stumbled upon literary references in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

He believes that the work of art incorporates images inspired by the literary works of Roman poet Horace and Florentine poet Petrarch, a technique called 'invention'.


According to Kilpatrick, the painting alludes to Horace's Ode 1. 22 and two sonnets by Petrarch, all of which celebrate a devotion to a smiling young woman, with vows to love and follow the woman anywhere in the world, from damp mountains to arid deserts - the regions portrayed in the background of Mona Lisa.


Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction!

© S. Deiries/ESO
Often, some of the most important news comes from local papers, stories that don't make it up the feeding chain and onto the news wires or major newspapers or nightly network news. It can be news that at first glance wouldn't appear to have a national or international impact. Second glance, and a good memory, can reveal that the impact may well be quite significant.

The other day a reader sent us an article link that he found on another alt.news website: Bad news - we are way past our 'extinct by' date

Since we had run the same story back when it first came out, we thought "yeah! Flashback!" After all, with all the talk about Global Warming, it served to remind readers that human caused CO2 levels are not all there is to what is going on here on the BBM today.

Comment: We posted an article yesterday from Ivan Eland where he said:
Spending all that money to combat a threat that is as rare as a catastrophic comet hitting the United States makes little sense. If NASA were able to use the same scare tactics as DHS, perhaps the space agency could persuade a reluctant Congress to give it the paltry $1 billion (by comparison) for its equally absurd Spaceguard Survey program, which tracks asteroids and comets that have an equal probability of killing Americans as terrorists do.
As you can see from the article above, Mr Eland knows not of what he speaks. But how many people on the planet do? How many of your fellow citizens have any idea that the human species has passed its due date? Think about that the next time you see a shooting star or read about a fireball in the newspaper...


6000-year-old ancient civilization discovered in Jiangxi

Chinese archaeologists have discovered the Terracotta and Painted Pottery Culture, which flourished around 4000 B.C., during excavations of the Laohudun Site in Gaohu, Jing'an of Jiangxi Province. An important collection of late Neolithic remains and cultural relics were discovered in the dig.

Xu Changqing, the excavation team leader, stated that in the bottom of the site where the Terracotta Pottery Culture relics sit they excavated some stoneware, including hatchets, adze, stone ploughs and stone walls as well as some pottery ware. The items have been preliminarily estimated to be 6,000 years old.