Tag: history

Posted on by

Steel Making Almost Three Millennia Ago?

Evidence Found for Bronze Steel in Europe

A new archaeological study has revealed that steel tools were already being used in Europe around 2900 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. The study was conducted on stone stelae on the Iberian Peninsula that date back to the Final Bronze Age, which featured complex engravings that could only have been done using tempered steel. Metallographic analyses of an iron chisel from the same period and region confirmed the necessary carbon content to be proper steel. The result was also experimentally confirmed, with only the chisel made of tempered steel being capable of engraving the stone. Until recently, it was assumed that suitable quality steel was not possible to produce in the Early Iron Age or the Final Bronze Age, and that it only came to be widespread in Europe under the Roman Empire. The study’s findings suggest that iron metallurgy, including the production and tempering of steel, were probably indigenous developments of decentralized small communities in Iberia, and not due to the influence of later colonization processes. The findings have consequences for the archaeological assessment of iron metallurgy and quartzite sculptures in other regions of the world. The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000201

The archaeological record of Late Bronze Age Iberia (c. 1300-800 BCE) is fragmentary in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula, with sparse remains of settlement and nearly no detectable burials. The western Iberian stelae with their depictions of anthropomorphic figures, animals, and selected objects are therefore of unique importance for the investigation of this era. The study analyzed the geological composition of the stelae in depth, revealing that a significant number of stelae were not made of quartzite, as had been assumed, but of silicated quartz sandstone, which can only be worked with tempered steel.

A few years ago, metallurgists in India produced a new kind of corrosion-resistant iron suitable for the space age. To do so, they borrowed alloy ideas from the ancient Iron pillar of Delhi, which has been standing corrosion-free for over 1,600 years. The new kind of iron has applications in many modern construction projects and could have prevented the kind of bridge collapse that occurred fifteen years ago in Minnesota, according to the scientists. The secret of the Iron pillar of Delhi’s creation had eluded metallurgists for centuries until now. The trick involves the use of phosphorus, unlike the manganese of most modern steel, and a traditional one-step process for creating iron.

AR #67

Indian Engineers Deploy Ancient Secrets in Achieving Miraculous New Iron

Posted on by

Could the ‘Final Frontier’ of Space Exploration, be Underground?

At least 3,545 potential caves on 11 different moons and planets throughout the solar system, including the Moon, Mars and moons of Jupiter and Saturn, have been identified by astronomers. Cave formation processes have even been recognized on comets and asteroids. The discoveries in such caves could be massive. And now an international collaboration of space scientists wants to know if there life in those caves. 

Northern Arizona University (NAU) researcher Jut Wynne, assistant research professor of cave ecology, is the lead author of two new related studies, both published in a special collection of papers on planetary caves by the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets. The first, “Fundamental Science and Engineering Questions in Planetary Cave Research,” was done by an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers and astronauts who produced a list of what they think are the 53 most important questions we should be asking about extra-terrestrrial caves (The second, “Planetary Caves: A Solar System View of Products and Processes,” was born from the first study). The team hopes their work will inform what will ultimately be needed to support robotic and human missions to a planetary cave—namely on the Moon and/or Mars.  

“Caves on many planetary surfaces represent one of the best environments to search for evidence of extinct or perhaps extant lifeforms,” Wynne said. “For example, as Martian caves are sheltered from deadly surface radiation and violent windstorms, they are more likely to exhibit a more constant temperature regime compared to the surface, and some may even contain water ice. This makes caves on Mars one of the most important exploration targets in the search for life.”  And not just for finding life—caves on the Moon and Mars could make good locations for astronaut shelters for both solar and galactic radiation.  

Indeed, the search for life may lead explorers in many surprising directions. U.S. and Indian astronomers, for example, have discovered that large amounts of water exist in the moon’s topsoil, which, they theorize, was formed by the reaction of hydrogen ions in the solar wind with oxygen containing compounds in the soil, or delivered by crashing comets. Acording to science writer William B. Stoecker (Atlantis Rising Magazine #79) some think the Moon’s ‘sinuous rilles;’ save for the lack of tributaries, may have been carved by water. Other astronomers argue they are collapsed lava tubes, but there are problems with such theories. Lava tubes tend to be on the surface; the rilles are canyons cut or eroded somehow below the surface. Many go uphill (neither water nor lava can flow uphill), like Schroeder’s Valley, which is 160 kilometers long, up to 1300 meters deep, and ten kilometers wide. Lava could not flow anywhere near 160 kilometers before cooling and solidifying; and even in the lower lunar gravity, a tube would collapse under its own weight even if far narrower. The rilles do not look in any way artificial, but they are clearly evidence of natural forces which we do not understand. Some have even theorized that they were gouged out by interplanetary lightning.
Using the existing infrastructure of a planet’s surface and subsurface, such as caves, may help humans get to other planets sooner than if we had to bring everything needed to survive with us. 

Here on Earth humans have been living in caves for hundreds of thousands of years. When none were available, we built our own. “As such,” said Wynne “it is only natural to assume that caves will offer similar utility as humanity expands to other worlds. While planet-wide terraforming may be an end goal, the use of large, pre-existing structures such as caves and lava tubes may be a more practical way to bootstrap the technology to the maturity needed to tackle the surface of an entire planet.”

https://news.nau.edu/space-exploration-goes-underground/

AR #70

Life in the Solar System, Then and Now

by William B. Stoecker

Posted on by

Hidden passage discovered in Great Pyramid of Giza

Egyptian and international scientists have been scanning the famous edifice using 3D-imaging technique since 2015

During an unveiling ceremony held at the Giza plateau on March 2, Egypt’s tourism minister announced the discovery of a passageway inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.

This previously unknown corridor, measuring nine meters in length and 2.1 meters wide, was uncovered by the ‘ScanPyramids’ project, a team of heritage experts from Cairo University and the French Heritage Innovation. The project, which began its work on the Great Pyramid in 2015, utilizes muon tomography to produce accurate 3D imaging. In 2016, the team announced the discovery of a void inside the pyramid, followed by the ScanPyramids “Big Void” in 2017. The Big Void was discussed in depth by geologist Dr. Robert Schoch in an article for Atlantis Rising Magazine (#128) and republished in 2018 in the AR Special issue, The Quest for Lost Ancient Secrets. 

The passageway was most likely constructed to relieve the weight of the pyramid on the main entrance hall or a yet-to-be-discovered chamber, according to Dr. Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. Attending the ceremony was the notorious Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Ahmed Eissa, and a delegation of scientists from the mission. The ScanPyramids project plans to continue exploring the Great Pyramid.

Picture and caption:https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/2023/03/02/hidden-passage-discovered-in-great-pyramid-of-giza/

An imaging robot used in the unearthing of a corridor inside the Great Pyramid. Photo: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
An imaging robot used in the unearthing of a corridor inside the Great Pyramid. Photo: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

AR #128

THE BIG VOID

Posted on by

Ancient Siberian DNA and the Bering Sea

The movement of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America is a well-known phenomenon in early human history. Nevertheless, the genetic makeup of the people who lived in North Asia during this time has remained mysterious due to a limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from this region. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology describe genomes from ten individuals up to 7,500 years old that help to fill the gap and show geneflow from people moving in the opposite direction from North America to North Asia.

Their analysis reveals a previously undescribed group of early Holocene Siberian people that lived in the Neolithic Altai-Sayan region, near to where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan come together. The genetic data show they were descendants of both paleo-Siberian and Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) people.

“We describe a previously unknown hunter-gatherer population in the Altai as early as 7,500 years old, which is a mixture between two distinct groups that lived in Siberia during the last Ice Age,” says Cosimo Posth at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and senior author of the study. “The Altai hunter-gatherer group contributed to many contemporaneous and subsequent populations across North Asia, showing how great the mobility of those foraging communities was.”

Posth notes that the Altai region is known in the media as the location where a new archaic hominin group, the Denisovans, was discovered. But the region also has importance in human history as a crossroad for population movements between northern Siberia, Central Asia, and East Asia over millennia.

The findings reveal the spread of ANA ancestry about 1,500 kilometers farther to the west than previously observed. In the Russian Far East, they also identified 7,000-year-old individuals with Jomon-associated ancestry, indicating links with hunter-gatherer groups from the Japanese Archipelago.

The data also are consistent with multiple phases of gene flow from North America to northeastern Asia over the last 5,000 years, reaching the Kamchatka Peninsula and central Siberia. The researchers note that the findings highlight a largely interconnected population throughout North Asia from the early Holocene onwards.

“The finding that surprised me the most is from an individual dated to a similar period as the other Altai hunter-gatherers but with a completely different genetic profile, showing genetic affinities to populations located in the Russian Far East,” says Ke Wang at Fudan University, China, and lead author of the study. “Interestingly, the Nizhnetytkesken individual was found in a cave containing rich burial goods with a religious costume and objects interpreted as possible representation of shamanism.”

Wang says the finding implies that individuals with very different profiles and backgrounds were living in the same region around the same time.

https://www.science.org/content/article/native-americans-and-their-genes-traveled-back-siberia-new-genomes-reveal

AR #135

Artificial Intelligence Identifies
Unknown Human Ancestor

Posted on by

Treasure Map Ignites Hunt for Nazi Gold

As the Nazis fled occupied Europe in the final days of the second world war, four German soldiers buried a hoard of gold coins and jewels in the middle of nowhere in the Dutch countryside. Nearly 80 years later, hopes of finding the buried loot have been raised after the National Archives of the Netherlands released a trove of documents – and a map to the treasure where X marks the spot.

The treasure – four ammunition cases laden with coins, watches, jewellery, diamonds and other gemstones – is thought to have been worth at least 2m or 3m Dutch guilder in 1945, the equivalent of around £15.85m in today’s money.

“A lot of researchers, journalists and amateur archaeologists are really interested and excited,” said Annet Waalkens, an adviser at the National Archives, which released more than 1,300 historical documents. Whether any would-be treasure hunter will be able to find the cases is another matter. Among the cache of second world war papers was a 7cm-thick file that recounted the fruitless efforts of the Dutch state to find the looted Nazi treasure after the war.

Researchers believe the treasure was buried in April 1945, when the Allies were on the brink of liberating Arnhem in the eastern Netherlands. German soldiers were fleeing. “They decide to bury the treasure, because it’s just getting a bit too hot under their feet and they’re getting scared,” Waalkens told the Observer.

The precious cargo was buried in the roots of a poplar tree, 70-80cm deep, just outside the village of Ommeren, around 25 miles from Arnhem. The riches might have vanished from the historical record for ever were it not for a chatty German soldier, Helmut S, who was not one of the original looters but took part in the burial.

The National Archives are withholding his full name, as Helmut S, born in 1925, may still be alive, although no one has been able to trace him. Of the three other soldiers, two did not survive the war and the other simply vanished.

Helmut S, however, stayed on the radar. “He was a bit loose-lipped back in Berlin,” said Waalkens, and he soon came to the attention of Dutch authorities in the occupied German city. They passed the information on to the Beheersinstituut, the Dutch Institute of Asset and Property Management, a body responsible for managing the wealth of people who had disappeared in the second world war, including deported Jews, Dutch spies and German citizens who lived in the Netherlands.

The first search failed because the ground was frozen. The second, aided by primitive metal detectors, yielded nothing. According to Helmut S, the hoard was discovered when an Arnhem branch of the Rotterdamsche bank was bombed in August 1944. A safe was smashed, leaving jewels, coins and other riches scattered in the street. His comrades pocketed what they could see, later hiding the loot in zinc ammunition boxes.
In 1946-47 the Beheersinstitut carried out three searches. The first failed because the ground was frozen. The second, aided by primitive metal detectors of the time, yielded nothing. For the third attempt they summoned Helmut S back from Germany to help, but despite his eyewitness knowledge and the map he had provided, the dig was fruitless.

Archivists are not certain who made the map but believe it was done by one of the German soldiers. After Helmut S handed it over, the map went into the file of the Beheersinstituut, with the proviso it would not be released for many years to protect the financial interests of the property owners.

Original article, pictures and captions:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/07/treasure-map-hunt-15million-nazi-hoard

AR #59

Nazis and the Occult

by Mark Stavish

Posted on by

Making Migrating Birds Get Lost?

Bad weather can sometimes cause birds to become disoriented during their annual fall migrations — causing them to wind up in territory they’re unaccustomed to. But why, even when weather is not a major factor, do birds travel far away from their usual routes?

A new paper by UCLA ecologists explores one reason: disturbances to Earth’s magnetic field can lead birds astray — a phenomenon scientists call “vagrancy” — even in perfect weather, and especially during fall migration. The research is published in Scientific Reports (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-26586-0)

With North America’s bird populations steadily declining, assessing the causes of vagrancy could help scientists better understand the threats birds face and the ways they adapt to those threats. For example, birds that wind up in unfamiliar territory are likely to face challenges finding food and habitats that suit them, and may die as a result. But it also could be beneficial for birds whose traditional homes are becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, by “accidentally” introducing the animals into geographic regions that are now better suited for them.

Earth’s magnetic field, which runs between the North and South Poles, is generated by several factors, both above and below the planet’s surface. Decades’ worth of lab research suggests that birds can sense magnetic fields using magnetoreceptors in their eyes. The new UCLA study lends support to those findings from an ecological perspective.
“There’s increasing evidence that birds can actually see geomagnetic fields,” said Morgan Tingley, the paper’s corresponding author and a UCLA associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “In familiar areas, birds may navigate by geography, but in some situations it’s easier to use geomagnetism.”

But birds’ ability to navigate using geomagnetic fields can be impaired when those magnetic fields are disturbed. Such disturbances can come from the sun’s magnetic field, for example, particularly during periods of heightened solar activity, such as sunspots and solar flares, but also from other sources.

“If the geomagnetic field experiences disturbance, it’s like using a distorted map that sends the birds off course,” Tingley said.

Lead researcher Benjamin Tonelli, a UCLA doctoral student, worked with Tingley and postdoctoral researcher Casey Youngflesh to compare data from 2.2 million birds, representing 152 species, that had been captured and released between 1960 and 2019 — part of a United States Geological Survey tracking program — against historic records of geomagnetic disturbances and solar activity.

While other factors such as weather likely play bigger roles in causing vagrancy, the researchers found a strong correlation between birds that were captured far outside of their expected range and the geomagnetic disturbances that occurred during both fall and spring migrations. But the relationship was particularly pronounced during the fall migration, the authors noted.

Pictures and captions:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-26586-0

AR #115

Dawn of the Dolphins

by Patrick Marsolek

Posted on by

Smallpox: Curse Since Ancient Egypt?

Smallpox was once one of humanity’s most devastating diseases, but its origin is shrouded in mystery. For years, scientific estimates of when the smallpox virus first emerged have been at odds with historical records. Now, a new study reveals that the virus dates back 2,000 years further than scientists have previously shown, verifying historical sources and confirming for the first time that the disease has plagued human societies since ancient times.

The paper appears in the journal Microbial Genomics, published by the Microbiology Society.
Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, is perhaps best known for being the only infectious human disease to be eradicated worldwide. But the disease was a major cause of death until relatively recently, killing at least 300 million people in the 20th century. This is roughly the equivalent of the population of the United States.
Until relatively recently, the earliest genetic evidence for smallpox was only from the 1600s. Then in 2020, a study that sampled skeletal and dental remains of Viking-age skeletons recovered multiple strains of variola and confirmed the virus’ existence at least another 1,000 years earlier.

However, some historians believe that smallpox has been around since long before the Vikings. Suspicious scarring on ancient Egyptian mummies (including the Pharoah Ramses V who died in 1157 BC) leads some to believe that the history of smallpox stretches back at least 3,000 years. So far, the missing piece of scientific evidence to support this theory has remained hidden.

By comparing the genomes of modern and historic strains of variola virus, researchers at the Scientific Institute Eugenio Medea and University of Milan in Italy have traced the evolution of the virus back in time. They found that different strains of smallpox all descended from a single common ancestor and that a small fraction of the genetic components found in Viking-age genomes had persisted until the 18th century.

They also worked out an estimate for when the virus originated. In their estimate, the researchers accounted for something called the ‘time-dependent rate phenomenon’. This means that the speed of evolution depends on the length of time over which it is being measured, so viruses appear to change more quickly over a short timeframe and more slowly over a longer timeframe. The phenomenon has been well-documented in DNA viruses like variola.
Using a mathematical equation, scientists can account for the time-dependent rate phenomenon to give more accurate dates for evolutionary events, such as the appearance of a new virus. This gave the team a new estimate for the first emergence of smallpox: more than 3,800 years ago. Just as historians have long suspected.

The researchers hope these findings will settle a longstanding controversy and provide new insight into the history of one of humanity’s deadliest diseases.

Picture and caption:
https://microbiologysociety.org/news/press-releases/smallpox-has-plagued-humans-since-ancient-egyptian-times-new-evidence-confirms.html
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/mgen/10.1099/mgen.0.000932

AR #86

Mystery of the Montauk Monster

by Steven Sora

Posted on by

Ancient Sanskrit Breakthrough

A grammatical problem that has defeated Sanskrit scholars since the 5th century BC has finally been solved by an Indian PhD student at St John’s College. Rishi Rajpopa made the breakthrough by decoding a rule taught by ‘the father of linguistics’, Pāṇini.

The discovery makes it possible to ‘derive’ any Sanskrit word – to construct millions of grammatically correct words including ‘mantra’ and ‘guru’ – using Pāṇini’s revered ‘language machine’ which is widely considered to be one of the great intellectual achievements in history.

Leading Sanskrit experts have described Rajpopat’s discovery as ‘revolutionary’ and it could now mean that Pāṇini’s grammar can be taught to computers for the first time.

While researching his Ph.D., Dr Rajpopat decoded a 2,500-year-old algorithm which makes it possible, for the first time, to accurately use Pāṇini’s ‘language machine’ (https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/332654).

Pāṇini’s system – 4,000 rules detailed in his greatest work, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, which is thought to have been written around 500 BC – is meant to work like a machine. Feed in the base and suffix of a word and it should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences through a step-by-step process.

Until now, however, there has been a big problem. Often, two or more of Pāṇini’s rules are simultaneously applicable at the same step leaving scholars to agonize over which one to choose.

Solving so-called ‘rule conflicts’, which affect millions of Sanskrit words including certain forms of ‘mantra’ and ‘guru’, requires an algorithm. Pāṇini taught a metarule to help us decide which rule should be applied in the event of ‘rule conflict’ but for the last 2,500 years, scholars have misinterpreted this metarule meaning that they often ended up with a grammatically incorrect result.

https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/ancient-grammatical-puzzle-solved-after-2500-years

AR #106

Ancient Wanderers

by William B. Stoecker

Posted on by

Olmec Temples Set Up for 260-day Calendar

Mesoamerican structures built thousands of years ago along Mexico’s gulf coast were aligned with a 260-day calendar, archaeologists have found. According to a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Ivan Šprajc, Takeshi Inomata and Anthony Aveni tell how aircraft-based LIDAR allowed them to see the alignment of the ancient structures. They also discuss how these structures could have been used by ancient cultures. (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq7675)

Prior research has shown that ancient people living in Mesoamerica had developed and used a 260-day calendar as far back as 300 to 200 B.C. The written evidence was found on plaster mural fragments. But since that discovery, researchers have suspected that such a calendar had been developed long before the people using it developed a means of writing it down. In the new research evidence was found of such a calendar made thousands of years earlier using large structures.

The work involved pointing LIDAR equipment at the ground from an airplane flying above Mexico’s gulf coast. The researchers observed the remains of 415 ceremonial complexes built by Olmec or Mayan people. Analysis of the structures showed that they were aligned in ways that noted the rising and setting of celestial bodies on certain days represented in a 260-day calendar. They noted that most of the angles of the complexes were aligned east to west, which would have corresponded to the rising and setting of celestial objects such as the sun. The structures have been dated to between 1100 B.C. and 250 A.D.

Ancient peoples belonging to the Olmec society lived in parts of Mesoamerica as far back as 3,500 years ago. Prior research has found that after the decline of the Olmec society, the Mayan culture developed. Inscriptions and documents made by the Mayans described a 260-day calendar.

Having such a calendar, the researchers say, would have allowed ancient people to plan rituals as well as to coordinate farming activities. They note also that some modern Maya communities still use the 260-day calendar.

AR #65

Who Were the Olmecs?

by David H. Childress

Posted on by

Bering Land Bridge Came Late to Ice Age

A new study that reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait shows that the Bering Land Bridge connecting Asia to North America did not emerge until around 35,700 years ago, less than 10,000 years before the height of the last ice age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum).

The new findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the growth of the ice sheets—and the resulting drop in sea level—occurred surprisingly quickly and much later in the glacial cycle than previous studies had suggested (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2206742119).

“It means that more than 50 percent of the global ice volume at the Last Glacial Maximum grew after 46,000 years ago,” said Tamara Pico, assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and a corresponding author of the paper. “This is important for understanding the feedbacks between climate and ice sheets, because it implies that there was a substantial delay in the development of ice sheets after global temperatures dropped.”

Global sea levels drop during ice ages as more and more of Earth’s water gets locked up in massive ice sheets, but the timing of these processes has been hard to pin down. During the Last Glacial Maximum, which lasted from about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago, ice sheets covered large areas of North America. Dramatically lower sea levels uncovered a vast land area known as Beringia that extended from Siberia to Alaska and supported herds of horses, mammoths, and other Pleistocene fauna. As the ice sheets melted, the Bering Strait became flooded again around 13,000 to 11,000 years ago.

The new findings are interesting in relation to human migration because they shorten the time between the opening of the land bridge and the arrival of humans in the Americas. The timing of human migration into North America remains unresolved, but some studies suggest people may have lived in Beringia throughout the height of the ice age.
“People may have started going across as soon as the land bridge formed,” Pico said.

The new study used an analysis of nitrogen isotopes in seafloor sediments to determine when the Bering Strait was flooded during the past 46,000 years, allowing Pacific Ocean water to flow into the Arctic Ocean. First author Jesse Farmer at Princeton University led the isotope analysis, measuring nitrogen isotope ratios in the remains of marine plankton preserved in sediment cores collected from the seafloor at three locations in the western Arctic Ocean. Because of differences in the nitrogen composition of Pacific and Arctic waters, Farmer was able to identify a nitrogen isotope signature indicating when Pacific water flowed into the Arctic.

The findings imply a complicated relationship between climate and global ice volume and suggest new avenues for investigating the mechanisms underlying glacial cycles.

Pictures and Captions
https://news.ucsc.edu/2022/12/bering-strait.html

AR #104

The Beasts of Beringia

by William B. Stoecker