The Kuwait National Museum is still trying to trace 487 priceless artefacts looted after Saddam Hussein’s invasion. Photograph: Lonely Planet Images/Alamy 
The amputation is evidence of medical knowledge in the Stone Age 
Click image for 'China Daily' report New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves. Related photos / videos
A bunch of meadowsweet blossoms were discovered in a Bronze Age grave at Forteviot, south of Perth.
The find is reported in the journal "British Archaeology", out this week.
Pollen found in earlier digs had been thought to have come from honey, or the alcoholic drink mead but the latest find may rule that theory out. Dr Kenneth Brophy, from the University of Glasgow, said the flowers "don't look very much. Just about three or four millimetres across." "But these are the first proof that people in the Bronze Age were actually placing flowers in with burials."
The dark brown heads were found, along with a clump of organic material which archaeologists now say is the stems of the flowers. The bunch had been placed by the head of the high-status individual known to have been buried in the grave.
Diggers also found pieces from a birch bark coffin in the grave, and a bronze dagger with a gold hilt band. "In burials we're used to finding metalwork", said Dr Brophy.
"But to find these very human touches is something very rare, if not unique. It brings it home to you that what you're looking at is not just a series of abstract remains, but actually these are people that you're dealing with."
The finds all come from a bronze age grave - or cist - excavated by the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow. The site was marked by an avenue of oak posts, and large earthworks.
More digs are planned in the area next year, when archaeologists will try to confirm if a sandstone slab found nearby was part of a stone circle. The excavations are all part of the Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot Project (Serf).
They were carved out of stone and squeezed out of clay 9,000 years ago, at the very dawn of civilisation. Now archaeologists say these astonishing Stone Age statues could have been the world's first educational toys.
Rare find: The 9000-year-old figurines dug up in Turkey are thought to have been used as educational toys
Grave robbing is often considered a high-risk, high-return business. However, the robbers may be disappointed this time, according to experts.
Agencies: 2009.07.27.
A gruesome discovery in the Dorset countryside has shed fresh light on the brutal invasion of the Roman legions nearly 2,000 years ago. Maiden Castle in Dorset: The mass grave was found near the site of this hill fort - where Celtic tribesmen are said to have staged their last stand against Roman general Vespasian.
Amazed archaeologists have discovered up to 50 headless corpses nearby
General Vespasian is believed to have attacked Maiden Castle as he marched through the south-western counties of Britain.
A skull recovered from the site at Ridgeway Hill . Ancient find: Hand bones recovered from the site together with an ancient piece of pottery.
An artist's impression of the 'King of Stonehange' who was buried at Bush Barrow 4,000 years ago
A 4,000-year-old gold ornament found at the burial site in Wiltshire
Anglo-Saxon gold hoard discovered 
2009.09.24.
A 55-year-old metal detectorist has unearthed the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, archaeologists said. The staggering discovery, on private farmland in Staffordshire, will redefine perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England, experts predict.
Terry Herbert, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, came across the hoard as he searched a field near his home with his trusty 14-year-old detector. Experts said the collection of more than 1,500 pieces - which will be officially classified by a coroner as treasure - is unparalleled in size and may have belonged to Saxon royalty.
The hoard, believed to date back to the seventh century, contains around 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, far bigger than previous finds - including the Sutton Hoo burial site. Many of the items in the hoard are warfare paraphernalia, including sword pommel caps and hilt plates, often inlaid with precious stones. The exact location of the discovery has not been disclosed but it is understood to be near the Lichfield border in South Staffordshire.
Mr Herbert, who has been metal detecting for 18 years, came across the buried hoard in July after asking a farmer friend if he could search on his land. He said: "I have this phrase that I say sometimes; 'spirits of yesteryear take me where the coins appear', but on that day I changed coins to gold. I don't know why I said it that day, but I think somebody was listening and directed me to it.
"Maybe it was meant to be, maybe the gold had my name on it all along, I don't know. My mates at the (metal detecting) club always say if there is a gold coin in a field I will be the one to find it. I dread to think what they'll say when they hear about this." He added: "This is what metal detectorists dream of, finding stuff like this. But the vast amount there is is just unbelievable."
Dr Kevin Leahy, National Finds Adviser from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, catalogued the hoard. He said: "The quantity of gold is amazing but, more importantly, the craftsmanship is consummate. This was the very best that the Anglo-Saxon metalworkers could do, and they were very good."
Ancient figurines were toys not mother goddess statues, say experts as 9,000-year-old artefacts are discovered By David Derbyshire 2009.09.10.They were carved out of stone and squeezed out of clay 9,000 years ago, at the very dawn of civilisation. Now archaeologists say these astonishing Stone Age statues could have been the world's first educational toys.
Nearly 2,000 figures have been unearthed at Catalhoyuk in Turkey - the world's oldest known town - over the last few decades. The most recent were found just last week.
Rare find: The 9000-year-old figurines dug up in Turkey are thought to have been used as educational toys Made by Neolithic farmers thousands of years before the creation of the pyramids or Stonehenge, they depict tiny cattle, crude sheep and flabby people.
In the 1960s, some researchers claimed the more rotund figures were of a mysterious large breasted and big bellied "mother goddess", prompting a feminist tourism industry that thrives today. But modern day experts disagree. They say the "mother goddess" figures - which were buried among the rubbish of the Stone Age town - are unlikely to be have been religious icons.
Many of the figures thought to have been women in the 1960s, are just as likely to be men.
Viking silver treasure hoard worth £1m unearthed after 1,000 years By Daily Mail Reporter 2009.08.27.
The find, which is the 'largest and most important' Viking hoard of jewellery since 1840, was found in a field in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in January 2007. It had been buried there for more than 1,000 years.
Enlarge 
A king's ransom: Silver jewellery buried more than a millennium ago will now go on display in London and Yorkshire
Valued at £1,082,000, the hoard was purchased by the British Museum and the York Museum Trust after two years of fundraising.
The highlight of the collection is an intricately carved silver cup, estimated to be worth more than £200,000. It contains 617coins and various silver fragments, ingots and rings. Some of the pieces were from as far away as Afghanistan.
The treasure is believed to have belonged to a rich Viking who buried it during the unrest following the conquest of the Viking kingdom of Northumbria in 927 by the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan. It is believed he was unable to go back to the hoard, possibly as a result of turbulence during the period.
The silver cup is worth around £200,000. Many of the coins were preserved as they were kept inside the vessel
Conservation work on the find began about a month ago and experts hope the process will reveal crucial details about the Viking era.Initial examinations suggest the treasure dates back to AD927 or 928.
Experts have spent over a month cleaning the hoard, often with a porcupine spine, to protect the delicate collection.
Enlarge 
Silver coins from the Vale of York Viking hoard. They will go on display in Yorkshire and London
The process, performed under microscope, has already revealed intricate designs which were invisible when the hoard was first discovered.
Detail on the silver jewellery fragments and in the designs and inscriptions on some of the coins is now apparent. Close examination revealed small incisions made in the metal - evidence that the makers tested the silver before they began work.
Gareth Williams, curator of early medieval coins and Viking expert at the British Museum, said: 'There's been nothing like it for over 150 years. 'The size and range of material gives us an insight into the political history, the cultural diversity of the Viking world and the range of cultural and economic contact at that time.'
He said some parts of the hoard came from as far as Afghanistan as well as from Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe. Most items were preserved because they were hidden in the cup.
Finders David Whelan, 53, and Andrew, 37, from Leeds, said: 'Being keen metal detectorists, we always dreamed of finding a hoard but to find one from such a fantastic period of history is just unbelievable. 'The contents of the hoard we found went far beyond our wildest dreams and hopefully people will love seeing the objects on display in York and London for many years to come.'
The pair will share the £1,082,000 with the owners of the field, who wished to remain anonymous.
Mary Kershaw, director of collections at York Museum, said: 'The Vale of York Viking hoard is a once in a lifetime find. It will greatly add to the understanding of the early 900s in Yorkshire and its connections with the wider world.'
The treasure will go on display at the Yorkshire Museum in York from September 17 until November 1. It will then travel to the British Museum.
According to historians, Yorkshire is one of the areas which shows the strongest Viking influence.
100 Ancient Tombs Robbed 2009.08.30. SHANGHAI: Local authorities are fighting a centuries-old business - tomb robbing, which recently has been brought back to life around Nanjing, the ancient capital city of six dynasties in China.
Viking silver treasure hoard worth £1m unearthed after 1,000 years By Daily Mail Reporter 2009.08.27.
The find, which is the 'largest and most important' Viking hoard of jewellery since 1840, was found in a field in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in January 2007. It had been buried there for more than 1,000 years.
Enlarge
A king's ransom: Silver jewellery buried more than a millennium ago will now go on display in London and Yorkshire
Valued at £1,082,000, the hoard was purchased by the British Museum and the York Museum Trust after two years of fundraising.
The highlight of the collection is an intricately carved silver cup, estimated to be worth more than £200,000. It contains 617coins and various silver fragments, ingots and rings. Some of the pieces were from as far away as Afghanistan.
The treasure is believed to have belonged to a rich Viking who buried it during the unrest following the conquest of the Viking kingdom of Northumbria in 927 by the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan. It is believed he was unable to go back to the hoard, possibly as a result of turbulence during the period.
The silver cup is worth around £200,000. Many of the coins were preserved as they were kept inside the vessel
Conservation work on the find began about a month ago and experts hope the process will reveal crucial details about the Viking era.Initial examinations suggest the treasure dates back to AD927 or 928.
Experts have spent over a month cleaning the hoard, often with a porcupine spine, to protect the delicate collection.
Enlarge
Silver coins from the Vale of York Viking hoard. They will go on display in Yorkshire and London
The process, performed under microscope, has already revealed intricate designs which were invisible when the hoard was first discovered.
Detail on the silver jewellery fragments and in the designs and inscriptions on some of the coins is now apparent. Close examination revealed small incisions made in the metal - evidence that the makers tested the silver before they began work.
Gareth Williams, curator of early medieval coins and Viking expert at the British Museum, said: 'There's been nothing like it for over 150 years. 'The size and range of material gives us an insight into the political history, the cultural diversity of the Viking world and the range of cultural and economic contact at that time.'
He said some parts of the hoard came from as far as Afghanistan as well as from Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe. Most items were preserved because they were hidden in the cup.
Finders David Whelan, 53, and Andrew, 37, from Leeds, said: 'Being keen metal detectorists, we always dreamed of finding a hoard but to find one from such a fantastic period of history is just unbelievable. 'The contents of the hoard we found went far beyond our wildest dreams and hopefully people will love seeing the objects on display in York and London for many years to come.'
The pair will share the £1,082,000 with the owners of the field, who wished to remain anonymous.
Mary Kershaw, director of collections at York Museum, said: 'The Vale of York Viking hoard is a once in a lifetime find. It will greatly add to the understanding of the early 900s in Yorkshire and its connections with the wider world.'
The treasure will go on display at the Yorkshire Museum in York from September 17 until November 1. It will then travel to the British Museum.
According to historians, Yorkshire is one of the areas which shows the strongest Viking influence.
100 Ancient Tombs Robbed 2009.08.30. SHANGHAI: Local authorities are fighting a centuries-old business - tomb robbing, which recently has been brought back to life around Nanjing, the ancient capital city of six dynasties in China.
100 Ancient Tombs Robbed 2009.08.30. SHANGHAI: Local authorities are fighting a centuries-old business - tomb robbing, which recently has been brought back to life around Nanjing, the ancient capital city of six dynasties in China.
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Police and cultural relics protection department staffers are trying to catch the tomb raiders, who dream of becoming rich overnight. About 100 ancient tombs within an area of 20 hectares in Lishui county of Nanjing were illegally excavated recently, the Nanjing-based Yangtze Evening Post reported.
"Such sites are mostly located in mountainous regions where police forces are short-handed. Local police have a difficult time providing effective protection," Cao Zhijun, director of culture heritage protection department of Nanjing Cultural Heritage Administration Bureau, told China Daily on Friday.
The exact number of affected tombs is still under investigation, Cao said. "We have sent staffs to the affected site to check how serious the problem is. The losses cannot be predicted at this stage," added Cao.
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"The value of a piece of pottery in the black market is no more than 1,000 yuan ($147)," said Cao. The crypt is not very large so the tombs must be for ordinary people. Therefore, the will not contain particularly valuable objects, Cao said.
Four robbers have been arrested and one is on the run, the Yangtze Evening Post reported.
Strict laws have been imposed by the Chinese government to stop grave robbing. However, the lure of making an overnight fortune has led some robbers to risk the danger, especially in this rural area where the police force is short-handed.
Some precious cultural relics have been sold overseas through the black market, resulting in the loss of historical finds. "We do need a long-term effective management system to keep our cultural relics protected, " said Cao
Climate change helped the Incas build civilisation. Agencies: 2009.07.27.
Their warfare, building and agricultural skills may have been impressive but, according to scientists in Peru, the Incas would have been nothing without good weather induced by climate change.
Machu Picchu: Scientists believe climate change was critical in allowing the Incas to build their civilisation. Photo: GETTY
New research has revealed that a prolonged period of warm weather between AD1100 and 1533 cleared large areas of mountain land to be used for farming, helping the Incas to spread their influence from Colombia to the central plains of Chile.
With the tree line moving steadily higher up the mountains, the Incas carved terraces into the mountainside to grow potatoes and maize, and developed a system of canals to irrigate the land.
The men freed up from agricultural duties were then able to focus on other activities, among them constructing roads and buildings such as the Incas' 3,250-mile Royal Road through the highlands, the 2,520-mile Coastal Road and Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas.
Dr Alex Chepstow Lusty, a British palaeoecologist working for the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru, said the clement weather also freed up men to fight in the Inca's ambition and expansionist Army. "It was the perfect incubator for the expansion of a civilisation." he told The Times.
Dr Chepstow Lusty and his team made their discovery by analysing sediment on the floor of a small lake called Marcacocha, 11,000 feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes near Cuzco, the cradle of the Incan civilisation. The layers of sediment at different heights represent different periods of time, like rings in the trunk of a tree. The scientists found suggestions of trees and crops at the critical time, suggesting the tree cover had moved upwards.
Dr Chepstow Lusty believes modern civilisations have much to learn from the pre-Columbians when it comes to the environment. He wants to see controlled deforestation and the increased growing of crops on terraces using glacier melt as irrigation. "Such methods increase crop yields. In fact, they are beginning to be reintroduced by the local populations,” he told the French scientific publication CNRS.
China starts rescue excavation of 'Peking Man' site
By (Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-06-24 15:41
BEIJING: China Wednesday began a rescue excavation in Zhoukoudian Caves in a suburb of Beijing, where the skulls of "Peking Man," or Homo erectus, were found in the 1920s and 1930s.
Paleoanthropologists will excavate 20 square meters along the western wall of Locality 1, said Gao Xing, deputy director and research fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Palaeoanthropology (IVPP), at a press conference here Wednesday.
Locality 1, where the first complete skull of "Peking Man" was found, used to be a 20-meter-wide, 140-meter-deep cave but the ceiling has collapsed.
The four-month excavation aims to protect the western wall from threats of collapse, he said. "We found a wide longitudinal crack from the top and rocks in the wall are loose. It could collapse in any moment. Once it collapses, it will cause serious damage to the relic deposit in the cave."
This section remained the most complete sequence of stratum settlement with rich relic deposits of great significance, he added.
Scientists will first work on the crack areas over the next month and on the whole section between August and October.
In addition to the excavation, paleoanthropologists will try to reinforce the cave wall and install more detailed introductions for visitors.
Paleoanthropologists began preparing for the evacuation in May. They have mapped the section with laser 3-dimension scanning technology, which offered reliable data for the excavation, Gao said.
"Peking Man," the tool-making "erect man," was previously believed to have lived in Zhoukoudian Caves about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago. But in March Chinese scientists revealed that using a new radioactive dating method, they found they were actually 200,000 years older.
Chinese Archaeologist Pei Wenzhong found the first complete skull in December 1929, together with a large number of stone tools and evidence of fire used by humans.
In 1936, technician Jia Lanpo, who later became an archaeologist, unearthed three skulls.
Fossils unearthed in the caves were found to belong to 40 individuals, with more than 100,000 stone tools. Large scale excavation ceased in 1937 when the Japanese army invaded China.
Paleoanthropologists carried out several small-scale excavations over the past 72 years but never a project of this scale, Gao said.
Zhoukoudian Caves was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in December 1987.
China had reinforced the other 13 caves in Zhoukoudian between 2004 and 2006 at a cost of 5.5 million yuan (US$797,000), but not including Locality 1.
China starts rescue excavation of 'Peking Man' site
By (Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-06-24 15:41
Updated: 2009-06-24 15:41
BEIJING: China Wednesday began a rescue excavation in Zhoukoudian Caves in a suburb of Beijing, where the skulls of "Peking Man," or Homo erectus, were found in the 1920s and 1930s.
Paleoanthropologists will excavate 20 square meters along the western wall of Locality 1, said Gao Xing, deputy director and research fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Palaeoanthropology (IVPP), at a press conference here Wednesday.
The four-month excavation aims to protect the western wall from threats of collapse, he said. "We found a wide longitudinal crack from the top and rocks in the wall are loose. It could collapse in any moment. Once it collapses, it will cause serious damage to the relic deposit in the cave."
This section remained the most complete sequence of stratum settlement with rich relic deposits of great significance, he added.
Scientists will first work on the crack areas over the next month and on the whole section between August and October.
In addition to the excavation, paleoanthropologists will try to reinforce the cave wall and install more detailed introductions for visitors.
Paleoanthropologists began preparing for the evacuation in May. They have mapped the section with laser 3-dimension scanning technology, which offered reliable data for the excavation, Gao said.
"Peking Man," the tool-making "erect man," was previously believed to have lived in Zhoukoudian Caves about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago. But in March Chinese scientists revealed that using a new radioactive dating method, they found they were actually 200,000 years older.
Chinese Archaeologist Pei Wenzhong found the first complete skull in December 1929, together with a large number of stone tools and evidence of fire used by humans.
In 1936, technician Jia Lanpo, who later became an archaeologist, unearthed three skulls.
Fossils unearthed in the caves were found to belong to 40 individuals, with more than 100,000 stone tools. Large scale excavation ceased in 1937 when the Japanese army invaded China.
Paleoanthropologists carried out several small-scale excavations over the past 72 years but never a project of this scale, Gao said.
Zhoukoudian Caves was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in December 1987.
China had reinforced the other 13 caves in Zhoukoudian between 2004 and 2006 at a cost of 5.5 million yuan (US$797,000), but not including Locality 1.
Dozens of decapitated bodies found in mass Roman war grave unearthed on the route of Olympic Highway. Agencies. 2009.06.11.
A 2,000-year-old war grave crammed with up to 50 headless bodies has been uncovered by workers digging a new road for the Olympics. The Iron Age victims found in the ancient burial site are thought to have been slaughtered by the invading Romans in about AD43. All of them had been decapitated and some had their limbs hacked off. It has been discovered in the heart of Thomas Hardy country, on Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth, Dorset.
The site is being dug up to make way for a so-called Olympic Highway, an £87million relief road in time for the 2012 games.
A gruesome discovery in the Dorset countryside has shed fresh light on the brutal invasion of the Roman legions nearly 2,000 years ago. Maiden Castle in Dorset: The mass grave was found near the site of this hill fort - where Celtic tribesmen are said to have staged their last stand against Roman general Vespasian.The burial site is close to Maiden Castle - Europe's largest Iron Age hill fort where the local Celtic tribe are said to have staged their last stand against General Vespasian and his Roman legion after the invasion.
Vespasian led a force south-westwards for Emperor Claudius. His aim was to secure coastal ports and harbours, as well as tin and silver mines in Cornwall and Somerset. Along the way, he captured 20 hill forts - including Maiden Castle, according to archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler. The archaeological record shows he got as far as Exeter and probably reached Bodmin.
Mr Wheeler created a vivid story about the fall of Maiden Castle to Roman forces, based on a so-called 'war cemetery' he discovered close to the fort.
He believed a legion wreaked destruction on the site, butchering men, women, and children, before setting fire to the castle.
While there was little archaeological evidence to support this version of events or even that the hill fort was attacked by the Romans, the discovery of the mass grave could change the historical assessment.
Archaeologists are waiting to carry out radio-carbon testing on the newly discovered butchered remains but believe the skeletons could be young local men killed by Roman soldiers.
Amazed archaeologists have discovered up to 50 headless corpses nearby It is clear some kind of catastrophic event such as a major conflict or mass execution has taken place and this is a war grave of some kind. 'The heads have been removed and other body parts have been chopped up. We don't yet know if this was before or after death or was some kind of ritual.
'The pit is very close to Maiden Castle, which was a major Iron Age fort. If the victims were Roman we would have expected to find Roman artefacts in the pit, like hobnails from shoes. 'Our gut feeling is that this is the result of a conflict between Iron Age local people and Roman soldiers.'
General Vespasian is believed to have attacked Maiden Castle as he marched through the south-western counties of Britain.'There are lots of different types of burial where skeletons may be aligned along a compass axis or in a crouched position, but to find something like this is just incredible.
After being used for growing crops in about 1,800BC, in the Bronze Age, the hill top was abandoned.
Maiden Castle was built in around 600BC. This early phase was a simple and unremarkable site, covering 16 acres and was similar to many other hill forts.
However, in around 450BC, it underwent major expansion. The enclosed area was nearly tripled in size to 47 acres, making it the largest hill fort in Britain. At the same time, with the addition of further ramparts and ditches, its defences were made more complex.
Towards the end of the 1st millennium BC, the hill fort shrank and settlement became focused at the eastern end of Maiden Castle.
A skull recovered from the site at Ridgeway Hill . Ancient find: Hand bones recovered from the site together with an ancient piece of pottery.
The fort was occupied until at least the Roman period. However after the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century AD, the site appears to have been abandoned.
Before this, the Romans may have had a military presence on the site. In the late 4th century AD, a temple and ancillary buildings were built. In the 6th century AD the hill top was abandoned and was used for agriculture in the medieval period.
Although there is a layer of charcoal, it is associated with the iron works, and the main evidence for slighting of defences comes from the collapse of an entranceway to the fort.
A total of 14 bodies in the cemetery exhibited signs of a violent death, but there is no evidence that they died at Maiden Castle.
The eastern part of the hill fort remained in use for at least the first few decades of the Roman occupation, although the duration and nature of habitation is uncertain. Many 1st-century Roman artefacts have been discovered near the east entrance and in the centre of the hill fort.
Remains of a Roman temple discovered at Maiden Castle, Europe's biggest earthwork fort
At the same time that the castle was abandoned, Durnovaria (Dorchester) rose to prominence as the civitas, or regional capital, of the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe.
Today, the site is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is maintained by English Heritage.
Hunt begins for leader of Terracotta army.
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai - 2009.06.10.
Chinese archaeologists have begun a new excavation at the site of the Terracotta warriors in Xi'an to find the "leader" of the vast army.
GETTY
The dig will uncover more of the enormous pit that surrounds the tomb of Qin Shihuang, China's first emperor. The first excavation of the site lasted six years betweeen 1978 and 1984, during which 1,087 clay soldiers were discovered. A second excavation started in 1985 but was cut short after a year.
Altogether, archaeologists believe there may be as many as 8,000 life-size clay figures in the pits, as well as chariots and hundreds of horses. No two figures are alike, and craftsmen are believed to have modelled them after a real army.
Liu Zhancheng, the head of the archaeological team at the museum in Xi'an, said the new dig will search for someone who appears "in command" of the force. "We're hoping to find a clay figure that represented a high-ranking army officer, for example," he told Chinese state media.
The dig will focus on a 2,153 sq ft patch inside the first of four pits around the emperor's tomb. Pit one has eleven corridors and contains the main body of the Terracotta army.
Mr Liu said the team, which will work on the site for a year, will also examine the colouring of the figures. The warriors exposed to the air in the 1970s have lost their delicately painted details.
Qin, who died in 210 BC at the age of 50, created China's first unified state by conquering rival kingdoms. He built an extensive system of roads and canals along with an early incarnation of the Great Wall of China. He introduced standard measurements, a single written language, currency and law.
Hunt begins for leader of Terracotta army.
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai - 2009.06.10.
Chinese archaeologists have begun a new excavation at the site of the Terracotta warriors in Xi'an to find the "leader" of the vast army.
GETTYThe dig will uncover more of the enormous pit that surrounds the tomb of Qin Shihuang, China's first emperor. The first excavation of the site lasted six years betweeen 1978 and 1984, during which 1,087 clay soldiers were discovered. A second excavation started in 1985 but was cut short after a year.
Altogether, archaeologists believe there may be as many as 8,000 life-size clay figures in the pits, as well as chariots and hundreds of horses. No two figures are alike, and craftsmen are believed to have modelled them after a real army.
Liu Zhancheng, the head of the archaeological team at the museum in Xi'an, said the new dig will search for someone who appears "in command" of the force. "We're hoping to find a clay figure that represented a high-ranking army officer, for example," he told Chinese state media.
The dig will focus on a 2,153 sq ft patch inside the first of four pits around the emperor's tomb. Pit one has eleven corridors and contains the main body of the Terracotta army.
Mr Liu said the team, which will work on the site for a year, will also examine the colouring of the figures. The warriors exposed to the air in the 1970s have lost their delicately painted details.
Qin, who died in 210 BC at the age of 50, created China's first unified state by conquering rival kingdoms. He built an extensive system of roads and canals along with an early incarnation of the Great Wall of China. He introduced standard measurements, a single written language, currency and law.
The king of Stonehenge: Were artefacts at ancient chief's burial site Britain's first Crown Jewels?
By Paul Harris. 009.05.11. The hoard of jewellery was recovered from Salisbury Plain near Stonehenge (pictured)
An artist's impression of the 'King of Stonehange' who was buried at Bush Barrow 4,000 years agoHe was a giant of a man, a chieftain who ruled with a royal sceptre and a warrior's axe. When they laid him to rest they dressed him in his finest regalia and placed his weapons at his side. Then they turned his face towards the setting sun and sealed him in a burial mound that would keep him safe for the next 4,000 years.
In his grave were some of the most exquisitely fashioned artefacts of the Bronze Age, intricately crafted to honour the status of a figure who bore them in life in death. For this may have been the last resting place of the King of Stonehenge - and the treasures that are effectively Britain's first Crown Jewels.
Now the entire hoard, recovered from the richest and most important Bronze Age grave on Salisbury Plain, is set to go on permanent display. But 21st-century Britain has thrown up a problem that never troubled ancient man. The artefacts are so rare that they have been kept in a bank vault for the past three decades because they are too precious to put on show without extensive security.
The remains of 'Tall Stout Man' were uncovered two centuries ago by archaeologists trying to unravel the ancient stone circle's enduring secrets. In 1808 their attention turned to Bush Barrow, a huge burial mound that boasts the most commanding view of Stonehenge from nearby Normanton Down.
Clearly whoever lay here was important. Only when the chamber was excavated, however, did it become apparent just how important. Measurements taken from the skeleton showed that the man would have towered above contemporaries at over 6ft tall. Most of the articles buried with him in the 130ft-diameter, 10ft-high barrow were so fabulously rare that only someone of royal, military or religious power might possess them.
A 4,000-year-old gold ornament found at the burial site in WiltshireSome believe Tall Stout Man was all three - a monarch, a general and a spiritual leader. The highlight of the collection is a bronze dagger that had been 'richly and most singularly ornamented' with more than 140,000 minute gold rivets, arranged to form a zig-zag pattern in the hilt.
Each rivet - as fine as a human hair and no more than a millimetre long - had been meticulously placed in tiny, individually drilled holes, then glued into place to form a brilliant lustre. Bronze daggers were very rare in those days, with probably only 50 in the country. This one was unique - and certainly fit for a king.
Other treasures include what appears to be a sceptre of office, sleeved with jagged-toothed, interlocking bone rings; an oval mace head, laboriously shaped, drilled and polished from a fossil sponge; two more bronze daggers and an axe head; a gold belt buckle; a lozenge- shaped insignia or piece of gold jewellery; and a gold breast-plate, enhanced by symmetrically carved patterns.
Archaeologists have long believed these to have been among the most valuable possessions of the age, taking teams of craftsmen and women up to five years to make. They used materials sourced from all over the country, possibly from Europe as well. But it is recent research that underlines the status of Tall Stout Man, whose remains still lie sealed inside Bush Barrow.
It is one of the most prominent burial mounds around Stonehenge and is thought to have been directly linked with the stone circle by a processional walkway lined with stone pillars, the so-called heel stone.
Museum director David Dawson said: 'It's a leap of faith, but it's not impossible that Bush Barrow was the burial place of the person who had Stonehenge built. 'It appears to be a family vault, in which Tall Stout Man was placed about 400 years later. It is therefore almost certain he was part of that elite dynasty. There is no doubt he was an important figure. 'He clearly had the power to command the considerable collaboration it would take to fashion the kind of treasures which, in a culture which knew no diamonds or precious stones, were essentially Britain's first Crown Jewels.
'Four thousand years later, we want to allow the public to see them as part of the experience of visiting Stonehenge and discovering Britain's past.'
Mummies unveiled in Egypt see link for full info and video 2009.05.10. Agencies
A wooden coffin containing linen-wrapped mummy was found near the Illahun Pyramid in Faiyum south-west of Cairo. An Egyptian worker brushes dust off the 4000-year-old coffins. The necropolis was discovered along with charred remains of a number of coffins that were probably burned. PHOTOS: EPA
Egyptian archaeologists have unveiled mummies, brightly painted sarcophagi and dozens of ancient tombs carved into a rocky hill in a desert oasis south of Cairo. 2009.04.27.
The 53 tombs - some as old as 4,000 years - were discovered recently on a sandy plateau overlooking farming fields in the village Illahun, located in the Fayoum oasis about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of the Egyptian capital.
Abdel-Rahman el-Ayedi, the deputy secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities who oversaw the dig said, "It will help us to follow the development of funeral architecture, beliefs and customs of ancient Egyptians,"
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi - the Iceman
Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman survived a fight a few days before an arrow attack by tribal rivals in which he was injured and later bled to death, it has been disclosed. By Nick Squires in Rome. 30th January, 2009.
Frozen for 5,300 years. Photo: GETTY.
The Stone Age tribesman sustained a hand injury possibly a tribal fight but then died when he was attacked in a mountain pass on what is now the border between Italy and Austria, Italian and German scientists believe. The latest examination of Otzi's preserved body has revealed a nasty gash to his hand that "may have been the result of a brawl", according to the researchers at the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano, northern Italy, and Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.
A few days later the prehistoric hunter is believed to have embarked on a trek into the mountains, where he was killed by unknown attackers.
He was shot in the back with an arrow and finished off with a blow from a blunt object, most likely a club or a rock.
A fresh analysis of the arrows he was carrying has shown that they were not sharpened properly, suggesting that he may have had to leave his Neolithic village in a hurry, the research team said.
After being frozen in ice for 5,300 years, Otzi's remains were found remarkably well-preserved by hikers in 1991, entombed in an Alpine glacier, and have since been subjected to rigorous analysis in one of the world's most intriguing anthropological detective stories.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," said Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. It is now clear that Otzi endured at least two events resulting in injury in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
Close scrutiny of the Iceman's clothes and weapons has given an extraordinary insight into life in Europe more than five millennia ago. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in the Neolithic age than was previously thought.
Estimated to be 46 years old and to have lived 53 centuries ago in 3300BC, he was named after the Otz Valley in which he was found, still wearing goatskin leggings and a cape made from woven grass.
Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons. Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons when they gassed Roman soldiers with toxic fumes 2,000 years ago, researchers have discovered.
Archeologista have found evidence of the use of early chemical weapons. Photo: AP
Archeologists have found the oldest evidence of chemical warfare yet after studying the bodies of 20 Roman soldiers' found underground in Syria 70 years ago. Clues left at the scene revealed the Persians were lying in wait as the Romans dug a tunnel during a siege – then pumped in toxic gas – produced by sulphur crystals and bitumen – to kill all the Romans in minutes.
Dr Simon James, who solved the mystery, said: "It's very exciting and also quite gruesome. These people died a horrible death. "The mixture would have produced toxic gases including sulphur dioxide and complex heavy petrochemicals. The victims would have choked, passed out and then died.
They had been part of a large Roman garrison defending the empire outpost city of Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates river in modern day Syria, against a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sassanian Persian empire in around AD 256. There are no historical texts describing the siege but archaeologists have pieced the action together after excavations in the 1920s and 1930s, which have been renewed in recent years.
Evidence shows the Persians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to dig under and breach the city walls. Roman defenders responded with 'countermines' to thwart the attackers.
He said: "Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it and allowing the Persians to resume sapping the walls.
Finds from the tunnel revealed that the Persians used bitumen and sulphur crystals to get the fire burning – and this was to prove the vital clue. Dr James believes the Persians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, they added the chemicals to the fire and pumped choking clouds of dense, poisonous gas into the Roman tunnel.
Lost city in Peruvian jungle
A team of archaeologists on Tuesday announced they had discovered a fortified citadel in the remote Amazonian rainforest of northeast Peru that appears to be from the pre-Inca era.
The main encampment comprises circular stone houses overgrown by lush jungle over an area of five hectares (12 acres), said archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez, quoted by the official Andina news agency.
The citadel sits atop a chasm that the former inhabitants may have used as a lookout to spy on approaching enemies, said Goicochea Perez.
Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications, and next to the dwellings are large platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and wild plants for food and medicine, he said.
The citadel is tucked away in the remote Jamalca district of Utcubamba province, part of the northern Amazonas department, said Jamalca Mayor Ricardo Cabrera Bravo, who had joined the expedition.
The area, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) northeast of Lima, is famed for its vast, isolated natural beauty, surrounded by verdant foliage and soaring waterfalls, said Cabrera Bravo. It is likely the citadel belonged to the Chachapoyas civilization -- an ancient people whose glory days over a thousand years ago pre-date the hegemony of the powerful Incas.
The Chachapoyas culture (known as the Cloud Forest people) also built the imposing Kuelap fortress atop a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Inca's Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later.
Ancient city discovered deep in Amazonian rainforest linked to the legendary white-skinned Cloud People of Peru
By Daily Mail Reporter 04th December 2008
A lost city discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest could unlock the secrets of a legendary tribe.
Little is known about the Cloud People of Peru, an ancient, white-skinned civilisation wiped out by disease and war in the 16th century.
But now archaeologists have uncovered a fortified citadel in a remote mountainous area of Peru known for its isolated natural beauty.
An ancient Chachapoyas village located close to the area where the lost city was found. The area where the lost city was discovered by a team of archaeologists. Secret civilisation: a map of the region where the settlement was found.
It is thought this settlement may finally help historians unlock the secrets of the 'white warriors of the clouds'. The tribe had white skin and blonde hair - features which intrigue historians, as there is no known European ancestry in the region, where most inhabitants are darker skinned.
The citadel is tucked away in one of the most far-flung areas of the Amazon. It sits at the edge of a chasm which the tribe may have used as a lookout to spy on enemies.
A mummy of a baby from the Chachapoyas culture
The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonian region of present-day Peru
The main encampment is made up of circular stone houses overgrown by jungle over 12 acres, according to archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez.
Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications and next to the dwellings are platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and plants for food and medicine. The Cloud People once commanded a vast kingdom stretching across the Andes to the fringes of Peru's northern Amazon jungle, before it was conquered by the Incas.
The city was found in Amazonian rainforest in northern Peru
Named because they lived in rainforests filled with cloud-like mist, the tribe later sided with the Spanish-colonialists to defeat the Incas.
But they were killed by epidemics of European diseases, such as measles and smallpox. Much of their way of life, dating back to the ninth century, was also destroyed by pillaging, leaving little for archaeologists to examine.
Remains have been found before but scientists have high hopes of the latest find, made by an expedition to the Jamalca district in Peru's Utcubamba province, about 500 miles north-east of the capital, Lima. Until recently, much of what was known about the lost civilisation was from Inca legends.
Even the name they called themselves is unknown. The term Chachapoyas, or 'Cloud People', was given to them by the Incas. Their culture is best known for the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Incas' Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later.
Two years ago, archaeologists found an underground burial vault inside a cave with five mummies, two intact with skin and hair. Chachapoyas chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote of the tribe: 'They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.
'The women and their husbands always dressed in woollen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos [a woollen turban], which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.'
The Chachapoyas' territory was located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. It encompassed the triangular region formed by the confluence of the Maranon and Utcubamba rivers, in the zone of Bagua, up to the basin of the Abiseo river. The Maranon's size and the mountainous terrain meant the region was relatively isolated.
Archaeologists unearth ancient tribe members sacrificed 1,300 years ago By Daily Mail Reporter 27th August 2008
Piercing blue eyes undimmed by the passing of 1,300 years, this is the Lady of the Mask – a mummy whose discovery could reveal the secrets of a lost culture. She was found by archaeologists excavating a pyramid in Peru’s capital city Lima, alongside two other adult mummies and the sacrificial remains of a child.
It is the first time a tomb from the region’s Wari culture has been discovered intact and gives historians the chance to pin down exactly how the pre-Incas buried their dead.
Researchers gently lift the well-preserved mummy from the tomb. Archaeologists have uncovered this mummy and three others belonging to the ancient Wari culture in Peru. The mummy is believed to be more than 1,300 years old.
The mummy - assumed to be a noblewoman because of the ornate mask - was found in a crouching position surrounded by ceramics and textiles associated with female weavers. “Her face startled me at first,” said 19-year-old Miguel Angel, one of the workers who carried her body out of the tomb. “I wasn’t expecting to find anything like that.” Earlier in the week, workers at the Huaca Pucllana site removed two adult mummies found lying near the lady of the mask.
Archaeologists have been excavating the area for three years and while they found plenty of artefacts, the 30 other tombs uncovered had been looted.
The Wari, who came from Peru’s southern highlands and ruled a vast area of the country from 500 to 1000 AD, conducted multiple burials and sent their loved ones
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi - the Iceman
Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman survived a fight a few days before an arrow attack by tribal rivals in which he was injured and later bled to death, it has been disclosed. By Nick Squires in Rome. 30th January, 2009.
Frozen for 5,300 years. Photo: GETTY.
The Stone Age tribesman sustained a hand injury possibly a tribal fight but then died when he was attacked in a mountain pass on what is now the border between Italy and Austria, Italian and German scientists believe. The latest examination of Otzi's preserved body has revealed a nasty gash to his hand that "may have been the result of a brawl", according to the researchers at the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano, northern Italy, and Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.
A few days later the prehistoric hunter is believed to have embarked on a trek into the mountains, where he was killed by unknown attackers.
He was shot in the back with an arrow and finished off with a blow from a blunt object, most likely a club or a rock.
A fresh analysis of the arrows he was carrying has shown that they were not sharpened properly, suggesting that he may have had to leave his Neolithic village in a hurry, the research team said.
After being frozen in ice for 5,300 years, Otzi's remains were found remarkably well-preserved by hikers in 1991, entombed in an Alpine glacier, and have since been subjected to rigorous analysis in one of the world's most intriguing anthropological detective stories.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," said Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. It is now clear that Otzi endured at least two events resulting in injury in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
Close scrutiny of the Iceman's clothes and weapons has given an extraordinary insight into life in Europe more than five millennia ago. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in the Neolithic age than was previously thought.
Estimated to be 46 years old and to have lived 53 centuries ago in 3300BC, he was named after the Otz Valley in which he was found, still wearing goatskin leggings and a cape made from woven grass.
Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons. Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons when they gassed Roman soldiers with toxic fumes 2,000 years ago, researchers have discovered.
Archeologista have found evidence of the use of early chemical weapons. Photo: AP
Archeologists have found the oldest evidence of chemical warfare yet after studying the bodies of 20 Roman soldiers' found underground in Syria 70 years ago. Clues left at the scene revealed the Persians were lying in wait as the Romans dug a tunnel during a siege – then pumped in toxic gas – produced by sulphur crystals and bitumen – to kill all the Romans in minutes.
Dr Simon James, who solved the mystery, said: "It's very exciting and also quite gruesome. These people died a horrible death. "The mixture would have produced toxic gases including sulphur dioxide and complex heavy petrochemicals. The victims would have choked, passed out and then died.
They had been part of a large Roman garrison defending the empire outpost city of Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates river in modern day Syria, against a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sassanian Persian empire in around AD 256. There are no historical texts describing the siege but archaeologists have pieced the action together after excavations in the 1920s and 1930s, which have been renewed in recent years.
Evidence shows the Persians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to dig under and breach the city walls. Roman defenders responded with 'countermines' to thwart the attackers.
He said: "Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it and allowing the Persians to resume sapping the walls.
Finds from the tunnel revealed that the Persians used bitumen and sulphur crystals to get the fire burning – and this was to prove the vital clue. Dr James believes the Persians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, they added the chemicals to the fire and pumped choking clouds of dense, poisonous gas into the Roman tunnel.
Lost city in Peruvian jungle
A team of archaeologists on Tuesday announced they had discovered a fortified citadel in the remote Amazonian rainforest of northeast Peru that appears to be from the pre-Inca era.
The main encampment comprises circular stone houses overgrown by lush jungle over an area of five hectares (12 acres), said archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez, quoted by the official Andina news agency.
The citadel sits atop a chasm that the former inhabitants may have used as a lookout to spy on approaching enemies, said Goicochea Perez.
Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications, and next to the dwellings are large platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and wild plants for food and medicine, he said.
The citadel is tucked away in the remote Jamalca district of Utcubamba province, part of the northern Amazonas department, said Jamalca Mayor Ricardo Cabrera Bravo, who had joined the expedition.
The area, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) northeast of Lima, is famed for its vast, isolated natural beauty, surrounded by verdant foliage and soaring waterfalls, said Cabrera Bravo. It is likely the citadel belonged to the Chachapoyas civilization -- an ancient people whose glory days over a thousand years ago pre-date the hegemony of the powerful Incas.
The Chachapoyas culture (known as the Cloud Forest people) also built the imposing Kuelap fortress atop a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Inca's Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later.
Ancient city discovered deep in Amazonian rainforest linked to the legendary white-skinned Cloud People of Peru
By Daily Mail Reporter 04th December 2008
A lost city discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest could unlock the secrets of a legendary tribe.
Little is known about the Cloud People of Peru, an ancient, white-skinned civilisation wiped out by disease and war in the 16th century.
But now archaeologists have uncovered a fortified citadel in a remote mountainous area of Peru known for its isolated natural beauty.
An ancient Chachapoyas village located close to the area where the lost city was found. The area where the lost city was discovered by a team of archaeologists. Secret civilisation: a map of the region where the settlement was found.
It is thought this settlement may finally help historians unlock the secrets of the 'white warriors of the clouds'. The tribe had white skin and blonde hair - features which intrigue historians, as there is no known European ancestry in the region, where most inhabitants are darker skinned.
The citadel is tucked away in one of the most far-flung areas of the Amazon. It sits at the edge of a chasm which the tribe may have used as a lookout to spy on enemies.
A mummy of a baby from the Chachapoyas culture
The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonian region of present-day Peru
The main encampment is made up of circular stone houses overgrown by jungle over 12 acres, according to archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez.
Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications and next to the dwellings are platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and plants for food and medicine. The Cloud People once commanded a vast kingdom stretching across the Andes to the fringes of Peru's northern Amazon jungle, before it was conquered by the Incas.
The city was found in Amazonian rainforest in northern Peru
Named because they lived in rainforests filled with cloud-like mist, the tribe later sided with the Spanish-colonialists to defeat the Incas.
But they were killed by epidemics of European diseases, such as measles and smallpox. Much of their way of life, dating back to the ninth century, was also destroyed by pillaging, leaving little for archaeologists to examine.
Remains have been found before but scientists have high hopes of the latest find, made by an expedition to the Jamalca district in Peru's Utcubamba province, about 500 miles north-east of the capital, Lima. Until recently, much of what was known about the lost civilisation was from Inca legends.
Even the name they called themselves is unknown. The term Chachapoyas, or 'Cloud People', was given to them by the Incas. Their culture is best known for the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Incas' Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later.
Two years ago, archaeologists found an underground burial vault inside a cave with five mummies, two intact with skin and hair. Chachapoyas chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote of the tribe: 'They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.
'The women and their husbands always dressed in woollen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos [a woollen turban], which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.'
The Chachapoyas' territory was located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. It encompassed the triangular region formed by the confluence of the Maranon and Utcubamba rivers, in the zone of Bagua, up to the basin of the Abiseo river. The Maranon's size and the mountainous terrain meant the region was relatively isolated.
Archaeologists unearth ancient tribe members sacrificed 1,300 years ago By Daily Mail Reporter 27th August 2008
Piercing blue eyes undimmed by the passing of 1,300 years, this is the Lady of the Mask – a mummy whose discovery could reveal the secrets of a lost culture. She was found by archaeologists excavating a pyramid in Peru’s capital city Lima, alongside two other adult mummies and the sacrificial remains of a child.
It is the first time a tomb from the region’s Wari culture has been discovered intact and gives historians the chance to pin down exactly how the pre-Incas buried their dead.
Researchers gently lift the well-preserved mummy from the tomb. Archaeologists have uncovered this mummy and three others belonging to the ancient Wari culture in Peru. The mummy is believed to be more than 1,300 years old.
The mummy - assumed to be a noblewoman because of the ornate mask - was found in a crouching position surrounded by ceramics and textiles associated with female weavers. “Her face startled me at first,” said 19-year-old Miguel Angel, one of the workers who carried her body out of the tomb. “I wasn’t expecting to find anything like that.” Earlier in the week, workers at the Huaca Pucllana site removed two adult mummies found lying near the lady of the mask.
Archaeologists have been excavating the area for three years and while they found plenty of artefacts, the 30 other tombs uncovered had been looted.
The Wari, who came from Peru’s southern highlands and ruled a vast area of the country from 500 to 1000 AD, conducted multiple burials and sent their loved ones
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi - the Iceman
Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman survived a fight a few days before an arrow attack by tribal rivals in which he was injured and later bled to death, it has been disclosed. By Nick Squires in Rome. 30th January, 2009.
Frozen for 5,300 years. Photo: GETTY.
The Stone Age tribesman sustained a hand injury possibly a tribal fight but then died when he was attacked in a mountain pass on what is now the border between Italy and Austria, Italian and German scientists believe. The latest examination of Otzi's preserved body has revealed a nasty gash to his hand that "may have been the result of a brawl", according to the researchers at the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano, northern Italy, and Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.
A few days later the prehistoric hunter is believed to have embarked on a trek into the mountains, where he was killed by unknown attackers.
He was shot in the back with an arrow and finished off with a blow from a blunt object, most likely a club or a rock.
A fresh analysis of the arrows he was carrying has shown that they were not sharpened properly, suggesting that he may have had to leave his Neolithic village in a hurry, the research team said.
After being frozen in ice for 5,300 years, Otzi's remains were found remarkably well-preserved by hikers in 1991, entombed in an Alpine glacier, and have since been subjected to rigorous analysis in one of the world's most intriguing anthropological detective stories.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," said Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. It is now clear that Otzi endured at least two events resulting in injury in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
Close scrutiny of the Iceman's clothes and weapons has given an extraordinary insight into life in Europe more than five millennia ago. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in the Neolithic age than was previously thought.
Estimated to be 46 years old and to have lived 53 centuries ago in 3300BC, he was named after the Otz Valley in which he was found, still wearing goatskin leggings and a cape made from woven grass.
Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons. Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons when they gassed Roman soldiers with toxic fumes 2,000 years ago, researchers have discovered.
Archeologista have found evidence of the use of early chemical weapons. Photo: AP
Archeologists have found the oldest evidence of chemical warfare yet after studying the bodies of 20 Roman soldiers' found underground in Syria 70 years ago. Clues left at the scene revealed the Persians were lying in wait as the Romans dug a tunnel during a siege – then pumped in toxic gas – produced by sulphur crystals and bitumen – to kill all the Romans in minutes.
Dr Simon James, who solved the mystery, said: "It's very exciting and also quite gruesome. These people died a horrible death. "The mixture would have produced toxic gases including sulphur dioxide and complex heavy petrochemicals. The victims would have choked, passed out and then died.
They had been part of a large Roman garrison defending the empire outpost city of Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates river in modern day Syria, against a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sassanian Persian empire in around AD 256. There are no historical texts describing the siege but archaeologists have pieced the action together after excavations in the 1920s and 1930s, which have been renewed in recent years.
Evidence shows the Persians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to dig under and breach the city walls. Roman defenders responded with 'countermines' to thwart the attackers.
He said: "Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it and allowing the Persians to resume sapping the walls.
Finds from the tunnel revealed that the Persians used bitumen and sulphur crystals to get the fire burning – and this was to prove the vital clue. Dr James believes the Persians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, they added the chemicals to the fire and pumped choking clouds of dense, poisonous gas into the Roman tunnel.
Lost city in Peruvian jungle
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi - the Iceman
Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman survived a fight a few days before an arrow attack by tribal rivals in which he was injured and later bled to death, it has been disclosed. By Nick Squires in Rome. 30th January, 2009.
Frozen for 5,300 years. Photo: GETTY.
The Stone Age tribesman sustained a hand injury possibly a tribal fight but then died when he was attacked in a mountain pass on what is now the border between Italy and Austria, Italian and German scientists believe. The latest examination of Otzi's preserved body has revealed a nasty gash to his hand that "may have been the result of a brawl", according to the researchers at the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano, northern Italy, and Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.
A few days later the prehistoric hunter is believed to have embarked on a trek into the mountains, where he was killed by unknown attackers.
He was shot in the back with an arrow and finished off with a blow from a blunt object, most likely a club or a rock.
A fresh analysis of the arrows he was carrying has shown that they were not sharpened properly, suggesting that he may have had to leave his Neolithic village in a hurry, the research team said.
After being frozen in ice for 5,300 years, Otzi's remains were found remarkably well-preserved by hikers in 1991, entombed in an Alpine glacier, and have since been subjected to rigorous analysis in one of the world's most intriguing anthropological detective stories.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," said Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. It is now clear that Otzi endured at least two events resulting in injury in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
Close scrutiny of the Iceman's clothes and weapons has given an extraordinary insight into life in Europe more than five millennia ago. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in the Neolithic age than was previously thought.
Estimated to be 46 years old and to have lived 53 centuries ago in 3300BC, he was named after the Otz Valley in which he was found, still wearing goatskin leggings and a cape made from woven grass.
Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons. Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons when they gassed Roman soldiers with toxic fumes 2,000 years ago, researchers have discovered.
Archeologista have found evidence of the use of early chemical weapons. Photo: AP
Archeologists have found the oldest evidence of chemical warfare yet after studying the bodies of 20 Roman soldiers' found underground in Syria 70 years ago. Clues left at the scene revealed the Persians were lying in wait as the Romans dug a tunnel during a siege – then pumped in toxic gas – produced by sulphur crystals and bitumen – to kill all the Romans in minutes.
Dr Simon James, who solved the mystery, said: "It's very exciting and also quite gruesome. These people died a horrible death. "The mixture would have produced toxic gases including sulphur dioxide and complex heavy petrochemicals. The victims would have choked, passed out and then died.
They had been part of a large Roman garrison defending the empire outpost city of Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates river in modern day Syria, against a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sassanian Persian empire in around AD 256. There are no historical texts describing the siege but archaeologists have pieced the action together after excavations in the 1920s and 1930s, which have been renewed in recent years.
Evidence shows the Persians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to dig under and breach the city walls. Roman defenders responded with 'countermines' to thwart the attackers.
He said: "Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it and allowing the Persians to resume sapping the walls.
Finds from the tunnel revealed that the Persians used bitumen and sulphur crystals to get the fire burning – and this was to prove the vital clue. Dr James believes the Persians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, they added the chemicals to the fire and pumped choking clouds of dense, poisonous gas into the Roman tunnel.
Lost city in Peruvian jungle
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi - the Iceman
Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman survived a fight a few days before an arrow attack by tribal rivals in which he was injured and later bled to death, it has been disclosed. By Nick Squires in Rome. 30th January, 2009.
Frozen for 5,300 years. Photo: GETTY.
The Stone Age tribesman sustained a hand injury possibly a tribal fight but then died when he was attacked in a mountain pass on what is now the border between Italy and Austria, Italian and German scientists believe. The latest examination of Otzi's preserved body has revealed a nasty gash to his hand that "may have been the result of a brawl", according to the researchers at the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano, northern Italy, and Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.
A few days later the prehistoric hunter is believed to have embarked on a trek into the mountains, where he was killed by unknown attackers.
He was shot in the back with an arrow and finished off with a blow from a blunt object, most likely a club or a rock.
A fresh analysis of the arrows he was carrying has shown that they were not sharpened properly, suggesting that he may have had to leave his Neolithic village in a hurry, the research team said.
After being frozen in ice for 5,300 years, Otzi's remains were found remarkably well-preserved by hikers in 1991, entombed in an Alpine glacier, and have since been subjected to rigorous analysis in one of the world's most intriguing anthropological detective stories.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," said Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. It is now clear that Otzi endured at least two events resulting in injury in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
Close scrutiny of the Iceman's clothes and weapons has given an extraordinary insight into life in Europe more than five millennia ago. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in the Neolithic age than was previously thought.
Estimated to be 46 years old and to have lived 53 centuries ago in 3300BC, he was named after the Otz Valley in which he was found, still wearing goatskin leggings and a cape made from woven grass.
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi - the Iceman
Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman survived a fight a few days before an arrow attack by tribal rivals in which he was injured and later bled to death, it has been disclosed. By Nick Squires in Rome. 30th January, 2009.
Frozen for 5,300 years. Photo: GETTY.
The Stone Age tribesman sustained a hand injury possibly a tribal fight but then died when he was attacked in a mountain pass on what is now the border between Italy and Austria, Italian and German scientists believe. The latest examination of Otzi's preserved body has revealed a nasty gash to his hand that "may have been the result of a brawl", according to the researchers at the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano, northern Italy, and Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.
A few days later the prehistoric hunter is believed to have embarked on a trek into the mountains, where he was killed by unknown attackers.
He was shot in the back with an arrow and finished off with a blow from a blunt object, most likely a club or a rock.
A fresh analysis of the arrows he was carrying has shown that they were not sharpened properly, suggesting that he may have had to leave his Neolithic village in a hurry, the research team said.
After being frozen in ice for 5,300 years, Otzi's remains were found remarkably well-preserved by hikers in 1991, entombed in an Alpine glacier, and have since been subjected to rigorous analysis in one of the world's most intriguing anthropological detective stories.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," said Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. It is now clear that Otzi endured at least two events resulting in injury in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
Close scrutiny of the Iceman's clothes and weapons has given an extraordinary insight into life in Europe more than five millennia ago. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in the Neolithic age than was previously thought.
Estimated to be 46 years old and to have lived 53 centuries ago in 3300BC, he was named after the Otz Valley in which he was found, still wearing goatskin leggings and a cape made from woven grass.
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi - the Iceman
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
Great Wall stretches far longer. 2009.04.20. by Lin Shujuan & Wang Hauzhona (China Daily) and Malcolm Moore (Daily Telegraph). Images: GETTY and Xinhua News Agency.
That the Great wall extends 10,000 li (5,000km or 3,100+ miles) is the popular belief, but researchers released the latest evidence that the length of the wall, mostly constructed or restored during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) stretches more than 8,800km (5,488 miles) from east to west.
Based on figures conducted in a 2 year mappng and investigation carriesd out jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Hritage (SACH), and the State Bureau of Surveying & Mapping (SBSM), the survey has shown at 6,256km, about 70%, is constructed of stone blocks, with 359km and 2,232km are trenches and natural defenses including rivers and mountains, respectively.
The Ming Dynasty section of the wall begins in Hushan, Lianing Province and ends at the Jiayu Pass in Gu
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
Global Positioning Systems, infra-red and other mapping techniques were used in the first systematic mapping of the Wall over a two year period. The Great Wall, originaly built by China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC), was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The sections built by the Ming Emperors is the most visually striking and well preserved.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Found: Skeleton of the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered 2009.03.15
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
nshu Province, passing through 10 provinces, municipalities or administrative areas; Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai.
However, Shan Jixiang, Direstor of SACH said that The Great Wall was under threat from climate change and China's massive infrastructure building plans. Historian, Zhu Zhewen explained that the monument consisted of more than the well known features of websites and travelogues. It also included trenches and natural barriers such as rivers and mountains.
In the western sections, lying mainly in desert areas, the Wall was built using sand and mud, making it vulnerable to extreme weater conditions. Human activity has also damaged some sections of The Wall
Archeologists and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Princess Arsinöe, the younger sister Cleopatra had murdered. The remains of Princess Arsinöe, who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified. The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, also suggests the Egyptian queen was part-African. Traditional thinking has always been that the monarch was Greek Caucasian.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey
Princess Arsinoe's remains were found in a tomb in Ephesus, Turkey. There was no love lost between her and her powerful sister - it is believed that Cleopatra ordered Mark Antony to murder her.
Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Scientific papers on the remains will be presented by Dr Fabian Kanz from The Medical University of Vienna at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago, Illinois on March 31, 2009.
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra
Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
Cleopatra (left) ordered the murder of her younger sister, Princess Arsinöe. Her skeleton was discovered in Turkey Dr Hilke Thuer, from the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the discovery, told the Sunday Times: 'It is unique in the life of an archaeologist to find the tomb and the skeleton of a member of Ptolemaic dynasty. 'The results of the forensic examination and the fact that the facial reconstruction shows that Arsinoe had an African mother is a real sensation which leads to a new insight on Cleopatra's family and the relationship of the sisters Cleopatra and Arsinoe.'
Footnote: Archaeologists say ancient Egyptian temple could house tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. 2009.04.16.
Archaeologists are to begin searching three historic sites at a temple in Egypt for the tombs of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Several spots near the Mediterranean Sea will be excavated in a hunt to find the last resting place of the celebrated queen of Egypt and her lover, a Roman general. They committed suicide after being defeated in the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starring in the 1963 film Cleopatra Ever since, questions have lingered over where the lovers' bodies are buried. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today that the three sites were identified last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna. It is located on Lake Abusir, once known as Lake Mariut, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria and was built during the reign of King Ptolemy II from 282 to 246 BC.
Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple for the last three years. They have already discovered a number of deep shafts inside the holy site, three of which were possibly used for burials. The leaders of the excavation believe it's possible Cleopatra and Mark Anthony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already found.
Last year, archaeologists at the site unearthed a bronze statue of the goddess Aphrodite, the alabaster head of a Queen Cleopatra statue, a mask believed to belong to Mark Anthony and a headless statue from the Ptolemaic era at the excavation site. The expedition also found 22 coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the statue and coins - which show an attractive face - debunk a recent theory that the queen was 'quite ugly'. 'The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive,' he said in a statement.
Academics at the University of Newcastle concluded in 2007 that the fabled queen was not especially attractive. Their conclusion was based on Cleopatra's depiction on a Roman denarius coin which shows her as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.
The oldest archaeological discovery By Tom Cox 28th February 2009
For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.
They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones. They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations. As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge. Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe. To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food. The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site. This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. The Garden of Eden story, in the Bible (Genesis), tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.
This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause. 'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering. 'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'
The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.
The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths
But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always like this. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.
There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it. Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
- The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox is published by Harper Collins on March 9, priced £6.99. To order a copy (P&P free), call 0845 155 0720 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0845 155 0720 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Iceman survived a fight a few days before an arrow attack by tribal rivals in which he was injured and later bled to death, it has been disclosed. By Nick Squires in Rome. 30th January, 2009.
Frozen for 5,300 years. Photo: GETTY.The Stone Age tribesman sustained a hand injury possibly a tribal fight but then died when he was attacked in a mountain pass on what is now the border between Italy and Austria, Italian and German scientists believe. The latest examination of Otzi's preserved body has revealed a nasty gash to his hand that "may have been the result of a brawl", according to the researchers at the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano, northern Italy, and Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University.
A few days later the prehistoric hunter is believed to have embarked on a trek into the mountains, where he was killed by unknown attackers.
He was shot in the back with an arrow and finished off with a blow from a blunt object, most likely a club or a rock.
A fresh analysis of the arrows he was carrying has shown that they were not sharpened properly, suggesting that he may have had to leave his Neolithic village in a hurry, the research team said.
After being frozen in ice for 5,300 years, Otzi's remains were found remarkably well-preserved by hikers in 1991, entombed in an Alpine glacier, and have since been subjected to rigorous analysis in one of the world's most intriguing anthropological detective stories.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," said Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. It is now clear that Otzi endured at least two events resulting in injury in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
Close scrutiny of the Iceman's clothes and weapons has given an extraordinary insight into life in Europe more than five millennia ago. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in the Neolithic age than was previously thought.
Estimated to be 46 years old and to have lived 53 centuries ago in 3300BC, he was named after the Otz Valley in which he was found, still wearing goatskin leggings and a cape made from woven grass.
Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons. Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical weapons when they gassed Roman soldiers with toxic fumes 2,000 years ago, researchers have discovered.
Archeologista have found evidence of the use of early chemical weapons. Photo: APArcheologists have found the oldest evidence of chemical warfare yet after studying the bodies of 20 Roman soldiers' found underground in Syria 70 years ago. Clues left at the scene revealed the Persians were lying in wait as the Romans dug a tunnel during a siege – then pumped in toxic gas – produced by sulphur crystals and bitumen – to kill all the Romans in minutes.
Dr Simon James, who solved the mystery, said: "It's very exciting and also quite gruesome. These people died a horrible death. "The mixture would have produced toxic gases including sulphur dioxide and complex heavy petrochemicals. The victims would have choked, passed out and then died.
They had been part of a large Roman garrison defending the empire outpost city of Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates river in modern day Syria, against a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sassanian Persian empire in around AD 256. There are no historical texts describing the siege but archaeologists have pieced the action together after excavations in the 1920s and 1930s, which have been renewed in recent years.
Evidence shows the Persians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to dig under and breach the city walls. Roman defenders responded with 'countermines' to thwart the attackers.
He said: "Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it and allowing the Persians to resume sapping the walls.
Finds from the tunnel revealed that the Persians used bitumen and sulphur crystals to get the fire burning – and this was to prove the vital clue. Dr James believes the Persians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, they added the chemicals to the fire and pumped choking clouds of dense, poisonous gas into the Roman tunnel.
Lost city in Peruvian jungle
A team of archaeologists on Tuesday announced they had discovered a fortified citadel in the remote Amazonian rainforest of northeast Peru that appears to be from the pre-Inca era.
The main encampment comprises circular stone houses overgrown by lush jungle over an area of five hectares (12 acres), said archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez, quoted by the official Andina news agency.
The citadel sits atop a chasm that the former inhabitants may have used as a lookout to spy on approaching enemies, said Goicochea Perez.
Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications, and next to the dwellings are large platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and wild plants for food and medicine, he said.
The citadel is tucked away in the remote Jamalca district of Utcubamba province, part of the northern Amazonas department, said Jamalca Mayor Ricardo Cabrera Bravo, who had joined the expedition.
The area, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) northeast of Lima, is famed for its vast, isolated natural beauty, surrounded by verdant foliage and soaring waterfalls, said Cabrera Bravo. It is likely the citadel belonged to the Chachapoyas civilization -- an ancient people whose glory days over a thousand years ago pre-date the hegemony of the powerful Incas.
The Chachapoyas culture (known as the Cloud Forest people) also built the imposing Kuelap fortress atop a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Inca's Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later.
Ancient city discovered deep in Amazonian rainforest linked to the legendary white-skinned Cloud People of Peru
By Daily Mail Reporter 04th December 2008
A lost city discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest could unlock the secrets of a legendary tribe.
Little is known about the Cloud People of Peru, an ancient, white-skinned civilisation wiped out by disease and war in the 16th century.
But now archaeologists have uncovered a fortified citadel in a remote mountainous area of Peru known for its isolated natural beauty.
An ancient Chachapoyas village located close to the area where the lost city was found. The area where the lost city was discovered by a team of archaeologists. Secret civilisation: a map of the region where the settlement was found.
It is thought this settlement may finally help historians unlock the secrets of the 'white warriors of the clouds'. The tribe had white skin and blonde hair - features which intrigue historians, as there is no known European ancestry in the region, where most inhabitants are darker skinned.
The citadel is tucked away in one of the most far-flung areas of the Amazon. It sits at the edge of a chasm which the tribe may have used as a lookout to spy on enemies.
A mummy of a baby from the Chachapoyas culture
The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonian region of present-day Peru
The main encampment is made up of circular stone houses overgrown by jungle over 12 acres, according to archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez.
Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications and next to the dwellings are platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and plants for food and medicine. The Cloud People once commanded a vast kingdom stretching across the Andes to the fringes of Peru's northern Amazon jungle, before it was conquered by the Incas.
The city was found in Amazonian rainforest in northern Peru
Named because they lived in rainforests filled with cloud-like mist, the tribe later sided with the Spanish-colonialists to defeat the Incas.
But they were killed by epidemics of European diseases, such as measles and smallpox. Much of their way of life, dating back to the ninth century, was also destroyed by pillaging, leaving little for archaeologists to examine.
Remains have been found before but scientists have high hopes of the latest find, made by an expedition to the Jamalca district in Peru's Utcubamba province, about 500 miles north-east of the capital, Lima. Until recently, much of what was known about the lost civilisation was from Inca legends.
Even the name they called themselves is unknown. The term Chachapoyas, or 'Cloud People', was given to them by the Incas. Their culture is best known for the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Incas' Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later.
Two years ago, archaeologists found an underground burial vault inside a cave with five mummies, two intact with skin and hair. Chachapoyas chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote of the tribe: 'They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.
'The women and their husbands always dressed in woollen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos [a woollen turban], which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.'
The Chachapoyas' territory was located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. It encompassed the triangular region formed by the confluence of the Maranon and Utcubamba rivers, in the zone of Bagua, up to the basin of the Abiseo river. The Maranon's size and the mountainous terrain meant the region was relatively isolated.
A team of archaeologists on Tuesday announced they had discovered a fortified citadel in the remote Amazonian rainforest of northeast Peru that appears to be from the pre-Inca era.
The main encampment comprises circular stone houses overgrown by lush jungle over an area of five hectares (12 acres), said archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez, quoted by the official Andina news agency.
Ancient city discovered deep in Amazonian rainforest linked to the legendary white-skinned Cloud People of Peru
By Daily Mail Reporter 04th December 2008
A lost city discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest could unlock the secrets of a legendary tribe.
Little is known about the Cloud People of Peru, an ancient, white-skinned civilisation wiped out by disease and war in the 16th century.
But now archaeologists have uncovered a fortified citadel in a remote mountainous area of Peru known for its isolated natural beauty.
An ancient Chachapoyas village located close to the area where the lost city was found. The area where the lost city was discovered by a team of archaeologists. Secret civilisation: a map of the region where the settlement was found. The citadel is tucked away in one of the most far-flung areas of the Amazon. It sits at the edge of a chasm which the tribe may have used as a lookout to spy on enemies. A mummy of a baby from the Chachapoyas culture
The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonian region of present-day Peru The main encampment is made up of circular stone houses overgrown by jungle over 12 acres, according to archaeologist Benedict Goicochea Perez.
Rock paintings cover some of the fortifications and next to the dwellings are platforms believed to have been used to grind seeds and plants for food and medicine. The Cloud People once commanded a vast kingdom stretching across the Andes to the fringes of Peru's northern Amazon jungle, before it was conquered by the Incas.
The city was found in Amazonian rainforest in northern Peru
Named because they lived in rainforests filled with cloud-like mist, the tribe later sided with the Spanish-colonialists to defeat the Incas.
But they were killed by epidemics of European diseases, such as measles and smallpox. Much of their way of life, dating back to the ninth century, was also destroyed by pillaging, leaving little for archaeologists to examine.
Remains have been found before but scientists have high hopes of the latest find, made by an expedition to the Jamalca district in Peru's Utcubamba province, about 500 miles north-east of the capital, Lima. Until recently, much of what was known about the lost civilisation was from Inca legends.
Even the name they called themselves is unknown. The term Chachapoyas, or 'Cloud People', was given to them by the Incas. Their culture is best known for the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Incas' Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later.
Two years ago, archaeologists found an underground burial vault inside a cave with five mummies, two intact with skin and hair. Chachapoyas chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote of the tribe: 'They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.
'The women and their husbands always dressed in woollen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos [a woollen turban], which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.'
The Chachapoyas' territory was located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. It encompassed the triangular region formed by the confluence of the Maranon and Utcubamba rivers, in the zone of Bagua, up to the basin of the Abiseo river. The Maranon's size and the mountainous terrain meant the region was relatively isolated. |
Archaeologists unearth ancient tribe members sacrificed 1,300 years ago By Daily Mail Reporter 27th August 2008
Piercing blue eyes undimmed by the passing of 1,300 years, this is the Lady of the Mask – a mummy whose discovery could reveal the secrets of a lost culture. She was found by archaeologists excavating a pyramid in Peru’s capital city Lima, alongside two other adult mummies and the sacrificial remains of a child.
It is the first time a tomb from the region’s Wari culture has been discovered intact and gives historians the chance to pin down exactly how the pre-Incas buried their dead.
Researchers gently lift the well-preserved mummy from the tomb. Archaeologists have uncovered this mummy and three others belonging to the ancient Wari culture in Peru. The mummy is believed to be more than 1,300 years old.The mummy - assumed to be a noblewoman because of the ornate mask - was found in a crouching position surrounded by ceramics and textiles associated with female weavers. “Her face startled me at first,” said 19-year-old Miguel Angel, one of the workers who carried her body out of the tomb. “I wasn’t expecting to find anything like that.” Earlier in the week, workers at the Huaca Pucllana site removed two adult mummies found lying near the lady of the mask.
Archaeologists have been excavating the area for three years and while they found plenty of artefacts, the 30 other tombs uncovered had been looted.
The Wari, who came from Peru’s southern highlands and ruled a vast area of the country from 500 to 1000 AD, conducted multiple burials and sent their loved ones