Tag: archeology

Posted on by

50,000 Years Ago, Australians Ate Giant Thunderbird Eggs

Protein Evidence of Enormous Flightless Bird Found

By: Fred Lewsey

Proteins extracted from fragments of prehistoric eggshell found in the Australian sands confirm that the continent’s earliest humans consumed the eggs of a two-meter tall bird that disappeared into extinction over 47,000 years ago. 

Burn marks discovered on scraps of ancient shell several years ago suggested the first Australians cooked and ate large eggs from a long-extinct bird – leading to fierce debate over the species that laid them. 
Now, an international team led by scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Turin have placed the animal on the evolutionary tree by comparing the protein sequences from powdered egg fossils to those encoded in the genomes of living avian species.  


According to findings published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the ancient eggs came from Genyornis: a huge flightless “mihirung” – or ‘Thunder Bird’ – with tiny wings and massive legs that roamed prehistoric Australia, possibly in flocks.  


Fossil records show that Genyornis stood over two meters tall, weighed between 220-240 kilograms, and laid melon-sized eggs of around 1.5 kg. It was among the Australian “mega-fauna” to vanish a few thousand years after humans arrived, suggesting people played a role in its extinction.  


The earliest “robust” date for the arrival of humans to Australia is some 65,000 years ago. Burnt eggshells from the previously unconfirmed species all date to around 50 to 55 thousand years ago – not long before Genyornis is thought to have gone extinct – by which time humans had spread across most of the continent.  


“There is no evidence of Genyornis butchery in the archaeological record. However, eggshell fragments with unique burn patterns consistent with human activity have been found at different places across the continent,” said senior co-author Prof Gifford Miller from the University of Colorado.


“This implies that the first humans did not necessarily hunt these enormous birds, but did routinely raid nests and steal their giant eggs for food,” he said. “Over-exploitation of the eggs by humans may well have contributed to Genyornis extinction.”


While Genyornis was always a contender for the mystery egg-layer, some scientists argued that – due to shell shape and thickness – a more likely candidate was the Progura or ‘giant malleefowl’: another extinct bird, much smaller, weighing around 5-7 kg and akin to a large turkey. 


The initial ambition was to put the debate to bed by pulling ancient DNA from pieces of shell, but genetic material had not sufficiently survived the hot Australian climate.


The 50,000-year-old eggshell tested for the study came from the archaeological site of Wood Point in South Australia, but Prof Miller has previously shown that similar burnt shells can be found at hundreds of sites on the far western Ningaloo coast. 


The researchers point out that the Genyornis egg exploitation behavior of the first Australians likely mirrors that of early humans with ostrich eggs, the shells of which have been unearthed at archaeological sites across Africa dating back at least 100,000 years. 

 

AR #106

“Ancient Wanderers—“How Science
Has Lost Track of the Story”
by William B. Stoecker

Posted on by

The Asteroid Shoving Mission

For those who think that Atlantis was brought down by a rock from space, the prospect of history repeating itself has long been a cause for worry, if not deep dread. Ever since comet Shoemaker-Levy crashed into Jupiter in 1994 with a force, that would, if directed at Earth, have destroyed our planet, many serious people, not just Hollywood heroes, have been awakened to the threat. And given the presence of thousands of such potentially deadly bolides in our solar neighborhood, it is clear that a real threat to continued life on Earth exists. The big question is what do we do about it? And now, we are happy to report, a new effort has been launched by NASA to push back against the threat from space.

Just in case some day, a threatening asteroid were to be found heading this way, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, launched in November, 2021, will deploy a technology that, it is hoped, could save the planet, by preventing a hazardous asteroid from ever making it to Earth. DART is the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space—in other words, ‘shoving’ the asteroid into a non threatening trajectory by crashing into it. In September 2022, the probe is intended to crash into the minor-planet moon Dimorphos of the double asteroid Didymos.

Dimorphos is NOT a threat to Earth, but the asteroid belt is believed to be a perfect testing ground to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future. While, according to NASA, no ‘known’ asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, as of October 2021, only about 40 percent of such asteroids have been found.

Ironically, while some seek to shove asteroids around to protect Earth, others have different ideas. One scheme under consideration involves nudging a football-field-sized asteroid into orbit around earth where it would be easier to exploit. Asteroids, it is thought, could prove virtual gold mines. Certainly plenty of platinum is to be found (all platinum on earth comes from space rocks), to say nothing of water, which could be turned into hydrogen fuel and oxygen for future interplanetary missions. Many asteroids are as much a 20% water.

Posted on by

Has Planet 9 Already Been Spotted?

In 2016, astronomers, Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown published a prediction—not yet a discovery—of a possible new planet lurking at the far periphery of the solar system, in an elongated path far beyond Pluto. Ever since, the hunt has been on for the missing planet. But, could the search for planet nine have already succeeded? Has a mysterious undiscovered planet, long envisioned somewhere beyond the orbit of Neptune by astronomers and alternative researchers alike have already made an appearance to probes from Earth, but gone unnoticed? A respected British Astronomer thinks so.

So far, no one has actually seen the theoretical planet. But, then again, maybe they have. Astronomer Michael Rowan-Robinson of Imperial College London has been combing through the data from a 1983 mission, in which he participated, and he now says he has located the illusive planet, or at least the part of the sky where it could be found. The data is taken from Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) readings.

Rowan-Robinson has published the findings of his research in arXiv, an open-access archive for articles on physics, mathematics, and computer science (https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.03831).

Observations of the planet Neptune have long led astronomers to believe another planet must be out there and interfering with its orbit. Pluto was found in 1930 by looking at objects on photographic plates, but it wasn’t large enough to account for the movement of Neptune. That anomalous movement is what arouses speculation about ‘planet 9’ (‘planet 10’, if you count Pluto)–aka, ‘Planet X.’ Arguments over the possibility of another planet beyond the orbit of Neptune have raged for over a century. As early as 1906, when he established The Lowell observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, famed astronomer Percival Lowell was looking for his own version of Planet X, which he believed was indicated by the observed perturbations in the orbit of Neptune.

Studies of the sort have come from all parts of the world. In December 2015 the Journal of Astronomy of Astrophysics, published two Swedish papers claiming a new, relatively large, body out in the neighborhood of Pluto. Astronomer Wouter Vlemmings, co-author of both studies, reported observation of an object moving against the background stars which was then dubbed Gna, after a swift Nordic deity who delivers messages for Frigg, the goddess of wisdom. In 2018, Brazilian astronomer Rodney Gomes reported that his calculations showed the presence of a planet four times the size of Earth lying beyond the orbit of Pluto. Later, Carlos and Raul de la Fuente of Spain re-examined the data and concluded that, not only, must there be a planet such as proposed by Gomes, but that there must be an even bigger planet still further out which is influencing the first one. That such objects could have remained undiscovered for so long, we were told, is quite understandable.

Late in 2021 a team of space scientists published a paper in The Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics suggesting that there may be an Earth- or Mars-sized planet orbiting beyond Neptune. They further suggest that simulations of the creation of the solar system show that such a planet may have been pushed from the outer regions of the solar system by Neptune and Uranus. Over the years, there have been several reports of large objects in the Kuiper belt (ie., Pluto and Eris), but until the Batygin and Brown discovery, none have been heavy enough to contend for the title of ‘Planet X’.

Posted on by

Water in the Valles Marineris

As everyone knows, SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk plans to make humanity a multi-planetary species. In December, his celebrated ambition to colonize Mars got a big boost.

Until now, the conventional view of most Mars researchers on the availability of water for colonists from Earth, has been focussed on the poles, where massive deposits of water ice have been located. Unfortunately, the polar regions are also the coldest and most inhospitable that visitors from Earth might face, dropping to as low as 221 degrees below zero F. By contrast, areas near the equator, which bask in relatively temperate conditions–as high as 70 degrees F on a summer day–were thought to be lacking in much water. Picking the best site for a human landing on Mars, presented mission planners with a very difficult dilemma: should they go for the best weather, or the most water?

Now, thanks to a new discovery by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Orbiter, we have learned that an enormous canyon near the Martian equator, the Valles Marineris, likely contains vast quantities of water ice just below the surface, similar to permafrost on Earth —in fact, according to scientists, covering an estimated forty percent of over fifteen thousand square miles. Suddenly, the prospect of actually colonizing the red planet, looks a lot more realistic.

According to ESA data from the Trace Gas Orbiter’s (TGO) Fine-Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, unexpectedly high levels of hydrogen were found. Combined with oxygen, hydrogen makes water, which is the essential component for life on Earth, and, perhaps, as it may yet exist on Mars. The TGO survey focussed on a large region known as Candor Chaos, in the virtual center of the Valles Marineris on the Martian equator. More than 2,500 miles long, 10 times longer and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon of Arizona, the Valles Marineris is the largest canyon in the solar system. If it were on Earth, it could reach from New York to California.

Unlike the barren deserts previously explored by robotic probes from Earth, the scenery of Candor Chaos, could present visitors not only with some spectacular scenery, but maybe, some other, previously little-considered mysteries as well. Not only is it closer than previously considered sites to the Cydonia plain, made famous for the purported ‘Face on Mars,’ the area has at least one anomalous structure that has drawn some serious attention.

In a paper published in 2017 by the Journal of Space Exploration, researchers  George J. Haas, et al, studied a large three-sided pyramidal shape photographed by ‪Mars Global Surveyor (image E06-00269) and other spacecraft, in the Western Region of Candor Chasma. According to the paper’s abstract, in the 1970s the structure caught the attention of world renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, who was so intrigued by the 3-sided pyramidal structure, that he presented the image at the Royal Institution in London during his Christmas Lecture in 1977. Sagan also featured the image in his 1980 book and television series Cosmos in which he commented; ‪“The largest Mars pyramids… are much larger than the pyramids of Sumer, Egypt and Mexico. With the ancient eroded shape, they could be small hills, sandblasted for centuries, but they need ‪to be viewed from nearby.” Perhaps now they will be (https://www.tsijournals.com/articles/threesided-pyramidal-formation-in-the-western-region-of-candor-chasma-13507.html).

Given the right circumstances, water on Mars, we now know, could hold more oxygen than previously believed, theoretically enough to support aerobic respiration. A team led by scientists at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has calculated that if liquid water exists on Mars, it could—under specific conditions—contain more oxygen than previously thought possible. According to the model, the levels could even theoretically exceed the threshold needed to support simple aerobic life.

“Oxygen is a key ingredient when determining the habitability of an environment, but it is relatively scarce on Mars,” said Woody Fischer, professor of geobiology at Caltech and a co-author of a Nature Geoscience paper on the findings, which was published in October 2019.  Their paper was entitled “O2 solubility in Martian near-surface environments and implications for aerobic life.” (https://authors.library.caltech.edu/88984/)

Scientists have speculated that the flowing surface water, in an environment where the temperatures are far below freezing, indicates that there might very well be large aquifers—pools of liquid water—beneath, but close to, the surface.

Clearly, many mind-blowing discoveries lie ahead.

Posted on by

Drowned Civilization in Ancient China

‘Win some, lose some, and some get rained out,’ goes the old saying, and, it turns out, the same may be true of civilization. The great Liangzhu Civilization of China flourished over 5000 years ago, but then mysteriously collapsed, and, until recently, scholars could not understand why. Now new archaeological research suggests the problem was probably too much rain.

Distinguished by sophisticated architecture and brilliant hydraulic engineering demonstrating great mastery over water, inspiring dams, water reservoirs and canals in Liangzhu City on the banks of the Yangtze in Eastern China, the city earned a reputation as the “Venice of the East.” Now a new study led by geologist Christoph Spötl from the University of Innsbruck in Austria has looked at ancient mud deposits in the caves of the region and found that catastrophic flood conditions seemed to have overwhelmed the civilization. The culprit apparently was El Nino, a climate factor still operating in our own time, and blamed for numerous disasters (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi9275).

Though some might argue that the evidence shows the continuing presence of familiar patterns, others see it a sign of ‘climate change’, and reason for alarm. Many meteorologists, indeed, link such patterns to a ‘climate crisis’ which they say exacerbates the frequency and severity of climatic extremes and variations.

In the fall of 2021, Chinese media reported unusual rains in Shanxi province with torrential downpours that lasted for days. Indeed, 59 observatories across Shanxi province all recorded historic levels of rain and that extreme weather has become the norm in northern China.

Will archaeologists of the future, wondering what happened to us, conclude that we were all wet.

Posted on by

Seekers of the Lost Ark

By J. Douglas Kenyon

Raiders of the Lost Ark, filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s 1981 Indiana-Jones blockbuster, was not just fictional entertainment. Indeed, seventy two years earlier, a group of rogue archaeologists had set out—taboos notwithstanding—to excavate Jerusalem’s holy Temple Mount in search of the lost Ark of the Covenant and other treasures of King Solomon. In October of 2021, according to the Smithsonian Magazine and its web site, a new book by journalist Andrew Lawler, Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City, detailed how an illicit 1909 project failed in its clandestine intentions, but still managed to trigger a mideast crisis, involving Jerusalem, Palestine, the Ottoman empire, and  the British Army. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-secret-excavation-of-jerusalem-180978888/?)

Valter Juvelius, an obscure Scandinavian scholar, Lawler explained, claimed to have unraveled a mysterious biblical code placing the treasure in an ancient tunnel beneath Jerusalem, and he persuaded Captain Montagu Brownlow Parker, veteran of the Boer war and brother of an English earl, to support the plan. With the substantial money raised, they secretly launched a project to carry out their quest. For the rest of their story you will need to read Lawler’s account, but be aware that the Juvelius mission was neither the first, nor the last, serious effort to recover the lost Ark.

After centuries of prominence in Hebrew history the relic first went missing with the beginning of the Israelite captivity by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Almost eighteen centuries later,  the Knights Templars, it is believed by some, actually excavated the Temple Mount, in search of the Ark. More recently, scholars like Tudor Parfitt have suggested that over 2,000 years ago the Ark was taken to Africa by a group of fugitive Israelites now known as the Lemba tribe. In The Sign and the Seal best-selling author Graham Hancock argued that the Ark might be found in Ethiopia where it was brought by the Queen of Sheba.

In 2015 a Canadian-Israeli researcher, Harry Moskoff, attempted to resurrect the Jerusalem narrative. In Atlantis Rising Magazine, #111, we reported that Moskoff, who called himself a Jewish Indiana Jones, had been investigating the missing Ark for 25 years. Everyone, he said, had been looking in the wrong place, but the Ark, he said, may yet be found, and not far from where it was last seen. Citing extensive scriptural and historical evidence, Moskoff believed the Ark was originally secreted and protected in a special chamber built beneath the Holy of Holies by Solomon himself—who foresaw the Temple’s eventual destruction by invading armies. The conventional belief that the first temple was located on the Dome of the Rock, Moskoff thought, was wrong. Solomon’s Temple, he said, was elsewhere on the Temple Mountain. The true location, though, could be approached, Moskoff believed, by following a tunnel used for the cleansing of ritually impure priests, and which is mentioned in the Jewish Talmud. The tunnel, he said, was still intact, but, in an effort to honor the apparent wishes of its builders, had been blocked for a century and a half. The tunnel, he declared, could lead us to the original Holy of Holies, and, potentially, the original Ark of the Covenant. Details of  Moskoff’s theory are available in his book The A.R.K. Report—Secret for the Century (https://www.amazon.com/ARK-Report-Covenant-Tunnels-Israel/dp/1501024647).

Alternatively, could the lost Ark of the Covenant, or what’s left of it, actually be sitting on a dusty museum shelf in Harare Zimbabwe? That is the claim of University of London professor, and another Indiana Jones wannabe, Tudor Parfitt. But unlike the cavernous warehouse at the end of the Spielberg epic—where the Ark is seemingly lost once again—the professor said he knows precisely where the real thing is actually located.

It’s called the ‘Ngoma Lungundu’ by its present day guardians, the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe, who claim to be descendants of the ancient priestly tribe of Levites who guarded the old testament Ark. The Ngoma, they say, came from the “great temple in Jerusalem.”

Parfitt conducted DNA studies of the Lemba priests which he says confirm their claim of Hebrew lineage from the time of the original Ark. Moreover, he has carbon-14 dated the wooden drum in the museum, which he believes is all that remains of the original ark, and he says everything checks out. The original gold covering, it is suggested, was stolen by the Babylonians when the Israelites were taken into captivity. Parfitt’s theory contradicts the better known notion, promoted by Graham Hancock, that the Ark was taken to Ethiopia. Parfitt has told his story in The Lost Ark of the Covenant, a book from HarperCollins (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Ark-Covenant-500-Year-Old-Biblical-ebook/dp/B0014H32AI/ref=sr_1_1?).

Many other hypotheses have also been advanced for the fate of what is arguably the most important religious artifact in history. The last time we checked, though, the Ark is still lost.