Missing link? African bones predate earliest-known humans by 400,000yrs

Screenshot from vimeo user Arizona State University

RT | Mar 5, 2015

A newly discovered fossil has shaken up science’s view of human evolution and could be the missing link between apes and humans: 400,000 years older than the oldest human bone found, the discovery could entirely rewrite our story.

For decades scientists have been stumped on the gap between humans that walked bent over and those that walked upright. Who was the mysterious ancestor that joined the ape-like Australopithecus with the human-like Homo? We could be looking at an answer. It now appears the timeline for earliest upright humans goes back not to 2.3 – but to 2.8 million years.


Institute of Human Origins Discovery from Arizona State University on Vimeo.

An Ethiopian student at Arizona State University and an accompanying research team discovered the lower jawbone and five teeth in Ethiopia in 2013. Now, for the first time, the findings have been published in two papers simultaneously, while a third supprorted the notion that this could indeed be a unique species, and not a Homo habilis.

The fragments definitely belong to the Homo lineage (of which we are the only remainder), but scientists are puzzled about what the species exactly is. In fact, it could turn out to be a completely new one.

Found 250 miles from Addis Ababa, the fragments are believed to belong to our ancestor from when the current dry land was still wetlands, interspersed with trees providing shade and rivers nourishing them. It was discovered not too far from another famous find – Lucy, the ape-like Austrolapithecus afarensis, known to be the earliest potential ancestor of the human family.

That transition between the two types is the first time in our history we switched from bashing things with rocks to actually using our brains to solve puzzles, although there was another transitional type – the crude and less brainy Paranthropus – thought to have appeared just before the transition to Homo.

Chalachew Seyoum of ASU, screenshot
from video, Arizona State University

"There is a big gap in the fossil record between about 2.5 million and 3 million years ago — there's virtually nothing relating to the ancestors of Homo from that time period, in spite of a lot of people looking," study co-author and one of the leaders of the team, Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada, told Live Science.

Now, for the first time, the 700,000-year hole between Lucy-like and Homo-type humans is beginning to fill up with information.

“This is a little piece of the puzzle that opens the door to new types of questions and field investigations that we can go after to try to find additional evidence to fill in this poorly known time period,” ASU Institute of Human Origins director William H. Kimbel said in the press release.

“It’s an excellent case of a transitional fossil in a critical time period in human evolution,” he added.
The nature of the new find is not without its naysayers: some scientists have posited that the fossil actually belongs to the well-known species of Homo habilis –the earliest known member of the Homo lineage. But careful digital processing has shown that these are not Homo habilis fragments and they in fact belong to a creature that came shortly before it.

It took years for scientists to get to where they are now. The research started in 2002 with painstaking surveying. The scientists were careful not to disturb anything unnecessarily. “So it took us basically 13 years to find this [human ancestor]. It doesn’t mean that the work that we did was wasted up until that time. But when we did find this [jaw], we were pretty excited that after all this time it actually worked out,” assistant professor and co-author Chris Campisano said.

Screenshot from vimeo user Arizona State University

The expectation was that if they were to dig around the area, they would find Lucy’s contemporaries – not what looked like the missing link.

“We first started collecting fossils in the area around where the jaw was eventually found in 2012,” Campisano went on. “When we realized how old the sediments were, we thought we might be able to find more specimens of Lucy’s species and figure out what happened to that lineage. Instead, we were rewarded with a much more exciting discovery.”

“Honestly, it was an exciting moment…I had good experience in field surveying and knew where potential sediments are. I climbed up a little plateau and found this specimen right on the edge of the hill,” said Chalachew Seyoum, the student behind the find.

What we know for sure, according to Professor Kaye Reed of ASU, is that the creature walked on two legs and lived in eastern Africa. Diet and tool use are very important logical next steps to understanding just how clever this ancestor was.

The research continues at ASU for other fossils around the same area to find answers to those questions.

Screenshot from vimeo user Arizona State University

Maya Mural Reveals Ancient 'Photobomb'

A man with the title "junior obsidian" kneels before the king
in a Maya mural researchers uncovered in Guatemala in 2010.
Credit: Illustration by Heather Hurst, copyright 2014

Live Science | Feb 20, 2015 | Laura Geggel

An ancient Maya mural found in the Guatemalan rainforest may depict a group portrait of advisers to the Maya royalty, a new study finds.

Most Maya murals depict life within the royal sphere, but the newfound mural, uncovered in the Guatemalan rainforest in 2010, shows a vibrant scene of intellectuals consulting with the royal governor, who is dressed as the Maya wind god.

Behind him, an attendant, almost hidden behind the king's massive headdress, adds a unique photobomb to the mural, said Bill Saturno, the study's lead researcher and an assistant professor of archaeology at Boston University. [See Photos of the Ancient Maya Mural]

The murals also provide information about a man buried beneath them. During an excavation, the archaeologists found the skeleton of a man dressed like the sages in the mural. It's possible the man once lived in the room, which later became his final resting place, Saturno said.

Archaeologists discovered the approximately 1,250-year-old mural in the ancient city of Xultun, located in the northeastern part of present-day Guatemala. During an archaeological study of Xultun, an undergraduate student inspecting an old looters' trail noticed traces of paint on an ancient wall covered by dirt.

"My assumption was that there would be very little to see," Saturno said. "Not because the Maya didn't paint murals — they did — but they don't preserve well in a tropical environment."

However, the elements had been kind to the building and its treasures. The excavation uncovered a rectangular room covered with murals and a Maya calendar, the oldest known Maya dating system on record.

Mysterious obsidians

The mural is one of only two known murals in the eastern Maya lowlands that have lasted throughout the ages, the researchers said. The Xultun paintings, illustrated in vibrant red, blue, green and black pigments, cover three of the room's four walls. The fourth wall, damaged by looters, contains the door.

Saturno and his colleagues excavated past the point where the looters tunneled, and came face-to-face with "the polychrome face of a king seated with his blue-feathered headdress," Saturno said. A man kneeling before the king, labeled itz'in taaj, or "junior obsidian," faces the king in profile.

ch'ok, or "youth," and another is called sakun taaj, or "senior obsidian."

This illustration shows a view of the northern
and western walls in the Xultun mural chamber.
Credit: Illustration by Heather Hurst, copyright 2014

Behind the junior obsidian, on the west wall, are three men dressed in black and sitting cross-legged. One of the men is labeled

It's unclear what "obsidian" means, the researchers said.

"Are they religious? Are they scholars? Is there a line between those things?" Saturno said. "They seem to be making books and painting tables on the walls."

All three men wear the same headdress with a medallion and feathery plume, a white loincloth and a medallion on their chests.

"You see these three guys dressed identically and lining up on one wall," Saturno said. "That's strange. They're clearly being represented as a unit."

The fact that they're all wearing the same uniform suggests the obsidians shared similar duties, Saturno said. Moreover, the people who filled the obsidian order probably lived in the room for a period of time, as there are dozens of texts painted on the walls. [Maya Murals: Stunning Images of King & Calendar]

Water and tree roots largely damaged the east wall, but the archaeologists still managed to find the painted remains of three individuals.

All the king's men

The mural may depict a consultation between the king and the obsidian, the researchers said. The king is dressed as a version of the wind god, holding a staff with wind symbols on it.

"Maya kings often dress up as deities in performance," Saturno said. "Essentially re-enacting events from the mythic past."

The timing of the performance was important, and the obsidian may have been advising the king about its correct date, he said. To remember meetings such as these, obsidians or artists may have painted the mural, he said.

"The mural establishes a direct relationship between a particular order, or guild, of Xultun artists and scribal-priests and their lord, and it celebrates its members’ achievement in consulting and producing work for their sovereign's reign," the researchers wrote in the study.

The king sports blue, green and orange accessories, whereas the obsidians are painted in reddish and black colors. The pigments from the king's portrait "are not common to that part of the region where it's from," Saturno said. "These are materials that are being traded in."

The painting also shows an attendant behind the king, possibly to hold up his headdress, Saturno said. "It's like a photobomb," he joked. "He's almost like, 'Do you see me here?'"

In contrast, the orange and red colors are made from local pigments, which likely helped differentiate between royal and non-royal subjects in the mural, the researchers said.

The study is "a brilliant gem of scholarship," said David Freidel, a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved with the study.

"This room celebrates a special group of members of the royal court of Xultun that are called obsidian, [or] taaj," Freidel said. "The obsidian people appear to be present at other sites, but we don't know much about them."

It's remarkable that the intricate mural wasn't painted at the royal residence, said Takeshi Inomata, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, who wasn't involved in the study.

"This comes from the residence of a courtier, a court official," Inomata said. "This tells us about how those political organizations of Maya society were run, and then we can really get to the people who are really doing all of those things."

The study was published in the February issue of the journal Antiquity. The coauthors are Heather Hurst at Skidmore College in New York, Franco Rossi at Boston University and David Stuart at the University of Texas at Austin.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Ancient Amulet Discovered with Curious Palindrome Inscription

Live Science | Jan 1, 2015 | Owen Jarus

An ancient, two-sided amulet uncovered in Cyprus contains a 59-letter inscription that reads the same backwards as it does forwards.

Archaeologists discovered the amulet, which is roughly 1,500 years old, at the ancient city of Nea Paphos in southwest Cyprus.

The amulet contains a Greek inscription, 59 letters
long, which reads the same backwards as it
does forwards, a feature known as a palindrome.
The three letters at the very bottom, ΕΑΙ, were
squeezed in and are hard to read. The amulet
is about 1.4 inches by 1.6 inches (34.9 millimeters
by 41.2 millimeters) in size. The inscription
translates as “Iahweh is the bearer of the
secret name, the lion of Re secure in his
shrine.” Although the translation doesn’t
read as a palindrome, the original
ancient Greek text does.
Credit: Photo by Marcin Iwan, artifact
from the excavations of Jagiellonian
University in Krakow at Paphos Agora

One side of the amulet has several images, including a bandaged mummy (likely representing the Egyptian god Osiris) lying on a boat and an image of Harpocrates, the god of silence, who is shown sitting on a stool while holding his right hand up to his lips. Strangely, the amulet also displays a mythical dog-headed creature called a cynocephalus, which is shown holding a paw up to its lips, as if mimicking Harpocrates' gesture. [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

On the other side of the amulet is an inscription, written in Greek, that reads the same backwards as it does forwards, making it a palindrome. It reads:

ΙΑΕW

ΒΑΦΡΕΝΕΜ

ΟΥΝΟΘΙΛΑΡΙ

ΚΝΙΦΙΑΕΥΕ

ΑΙΦΙΝΚΙΡΑΛ

ΙΘΟΝΥΟΜΕ

ΝΕΡΦΑΒW

ΕΑΙ

This translates to "Iahweh (a god) is the bearer of the secret name, the lion of Re secure in his shrine."

Researchers have found similar palindromes elsewhere in the ancient world writes Joachim Śliwa, a professor at the Institute of Archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, in an article recently published in the journal Studies in Ancient Art and Civilization.

Śliwa notes that the scribe made two small mistakes when writing this palindrome, in two instances writing a "ρ" instead of "v."

The amulet was discovered in the summer of 2011 by archaeologists with the Paphos Agora Project. Led by Jagiellonian University professor Ewdoksia Papuci-Wladyka, this team is excavating an ancient agora at Nea Paphos, and uncovered this amulet during their work. Agoras served as gathering places in the ancient world.

Amulets like the one found at Nea Paphos were made to protect their owners from danger and harm, Papuci-Wladyka told Live Science in an email.

Christians and pagans

During the 5th and 6th centuries, Cyprus was part of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had split in two during the 4th century, with Cyprus falling under control of the east. When the Western Roman Empire fell during the 5th century, the Eastern Roman Empire continued to flourish and became what is sometimes called the Byzantine Empire.

The amulet has several images. At the bottom,
there is a mummy (likely the Egyptian god Osiris)
wrapped in bandages, lying on a boat. Above
the mummy, there is an image of Harpocrates,
a god of silence, shown sitting on a stool.
Harpocrates’ right hand is raised up to his
lips and there is a scepter in his left hand.
To the right of Harpocrates there is a
dog-headed creature called a cynocephalus
that has a paw beside its lips, mimicking
Harpocrates gesture. There is a snake
between the cynocephalus and Harpocrates,
the snake’s head facing Harpocrates. There
are also depictions of a crocodile,
bird (likely a rooster), half moon and a star.
Credit: Photo by Marcin Iwan, artifact from
the excavations of Jagiellonian University
in Krakow at Paphos Agora

By the 5th century, Christianity was the official religion of the Eastern Roman Empire, and as time went on, traditional polytheistic (also called pagan) practices came under tighter restrictions and bans. Nevertheless, some people continued to practice the old beliefs, worshipping the traditional gods.

This amulet adds to evidence that people practiced traditional, polytheistic beliefs on Cyprus for an extended time, Papuci-Wladyka said. She notes that a structure called the Villa of Theseus has a mosaic with pagan elements that was likely repaired as late as the 7th century A.D.

It "rather seems that Christian and pagan religions coexisted in Paphos in times of [the] amulet being in use," Papuci-Wladyka told Live Science in an email.

Strange iconography

Despite that coexistence, the amulet has several unusual features that suggest its creator didn't fully understand the mythological characters depicted.

"It must be stated that the depiction is fairly unskilled and schematic. It is iconographically based on Egyptian sources, but these sources were not fully understood by the creator of the amulet," Śliwa wrote in the journal article.

For instance, rather than sitting on a stool, Harpocrates should be sitting on a lotus flower, with legs drawn up, Śliwa said. Additionally, the dog-headed cynocephalus should not be mimicking Harpocrates. In "the classic version, the cynocephalus faces Harpocrates with paws raised in adoration," Śliwa wrote."We can find no justification for the cynocephalus's gesture of raising its right paw to its lips in a manner similar to Harpocrates."

Even stranger is the fact that Harpocrates and the cynocephalus have crisscrossing lines on their bodies, which suggest the ancient artist thought these figures should be mummified along with Osiris. While the cynocephalus can be shown with mummy bandages, Harpocrates is not supposed to have them. Mummy bandages have "no justification in the case of Harpocrates," Śliwa wrote.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Medieval City's Underground Ruins Discovered in England

Archaeologists have uncovered the layout
of a medieval city near Salisbury, England.
Credit: English Heritage

Live Science | Dec 16, 2014 | Kelly Dickerson

Archaeologists have uncovered the network of a medieval city in England that dates back to the late 11th century.

The settlement, which includes a cathedral and a castle, is located at the historic site of Old Sarum, near Salisbury. In its heyday, the city thrived for about 300 years, but eventually declined in the 13th century, with the Roman conquest and the rise of New Sarum, the researchers said. Archaeologists have long known that the medieval city existed in Old Sarum, but this is the first detailed layout of the city ever created.

"Our survey shows where individual buildings are located and from this we can piece together a detailed picture of the urban plan within the city walls," Kristian Strutt, an archaeologist from the University of Southampton who is working on the site, said in a statement.

Strutt and the team discovered a series of huge structures that line the southern edge of the city's outer wall. The archaeologists think the structures are remnants of large defensive buildings that were designed to protect the city.

The team also found evidence of residential homes clustered in the southeastern and southwestern corners, between the outer and inner city walls. Old mineral deposits scattered throughout the site may be remnants of kilns or furnaces. Some evidence suggests the city may have been lived in again for a brief period after the 1300s.

The Old Sarum site belongs to English Heritage, an organization that advises the English government on historical sites. Because English Heritage wants to preserve the site, Strutt and the team of researchers didn't rely on traditional, Indiana Jones-style excavation tools. Instead, the researchers scanned the site using a series of noninvasive, high-tech survey techniques.

Archaeology tools have grown increasingly more sophisticated, and archaeologists are even using 3D-printed drones to explore sites now. For the Old Sarum survey, the team started by using magnetometry, a method that measures patterns in magnetic field strength. Magnetometry can create a map of features lying just below the Earth's surface, since every material has a unique magnetic property that leaves its own distinct signature on a magnet reader. The researchers also used ground-penetrating radar (GPR), which fires Earth-penetrating microwaves at the ground and measures signals that reflect off structures lying below the surface.

The team also used a method called electrical resistivity tomography (ERT). ERT is a noninvasive way to get a picture of structures that might be buried deeper than magnetometers or GPR can detect. The method involves strands of electrodes lowered into deep boreholes. The electrodes can pick up the electrical resistance of currents that pass through materials buried below the surface.

Follow Kelly Dickerson on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Laser from a plane discovers Roman goldmines in Spain

© J. Fernández Lozano, et al.
Ancient goldmines in the Eria river valley, with
channels and reservoirs for exploitation. The model
generated with LiDAR data (left) allows these
structures to be located on aerial photos (right).

SOTT | Nov 19, 2014

Hidden under the vegetation and crops of the Eria Valley, in León (Spain), there is a gold mining network created by the Romans two thousand years ago, as well as complex hydraulic works, such as river diversions, to divert water to the mines of the precious metal. Researchers from the University of Salamanca made the discovery from the air with an airborne laser tele-detection system.

 Las Médulas in León is considered to be the largest opencast goldmine of the Roman Empire, but the search for this metal extended many kilometres further south-east to the Erica river valley. Thanks to a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) laser system attached to an aircraft, the ancient mining works of the area and the complex hydraulics system used by the Romans in the 1st century BC to extract gold (including channels, reservoirs and a double river diversion) have been discovered.

"The volume of earth exploited is much greater than previously thought and the works performed are impressive, having achieved actual river captures, which makes this valley extremely important in the context of Roman mining in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula," as Javier Fernández Lozano, geologist at the University of Salamanca and co-author of this study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, tells SINC.

The specialists consider that the systems for the transport and storage of water were copied from those already existing in North Africa, where the Egyptians had been employing them for centuries. Some details of the methodology used appear in texts such as those of the Pliny the Elder, the Roman procurator in charge of overseeing mining in Hispania.

"We have established that the labour that went into extracting the resource until its exhaustion was so intensive that after removing the gold from surface sediments, operations continued until reaching the rocks with the auriferous quartz veins underneath," explains Fernández Lozano.

The researcher stresses that the real discoverer was the LiDAR technology: "Unlike traditional aerial photography, this airborne laser detection system allows the visualisation of archaeological remains under vegetation cover or intensely ploughed areas".

From aircraft or drones

LiDAR comprises a laser sensor which scans the ground from an aircraft or drone with geographical references provided by GPS ground stations. The data obtained is represented by point clouds, which are processed with a piece of software to construct a cartographic model where the forms are identified, such as old reservoirs or channels.

This technology was developed by NASA in the sixties to analyse the retreating sea ice in the Arctic and composition of the oceans. Since then their use has been extended to topography, cadastral mapping, geology and archaeology. According to the authors, the study of Roman mining in the Eria valley is the first piece of 'geo-archaeology' performed with LiDAR in Spain.

"Our intention is to continue working with this technique to learn more about mineral mining in the Roman Empire and clear up any mysteries such as why Rome abandoned such a precious resource as gold from one day to the next," concludes the researcher.

References:

Javier Fernández-Lozano, Gabriel Gutiérrez-Alonso, Miguel Fernández-Morán. "Using airborne LiDAR sensing technology and aerial orthoimages to unravel roman water supply systems and gold works in NW Spain (Eria valley, León)". Journal of Archaeological Science, 12 November 2014 (online).

Source: La Ciencia es Noticia

Massive 5000 Year Old Stone Monument Discovered

Collective Evolution | Sep 26, 2014 | Arjun Walia

Imagine missing something this big for so long. It makes one wonder, what else has archaeology missed? Has all that’s been discovered so far been revealed to the public? What else remains undiscovered? One who has peered into the world of secrecy would be inclined to think, ‘probably not.’ After all, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the United States alone spends trillions of dollars on ‘black budget’ programs that go beyond government, have no oversight from congress and involve projects that the human race knows nothing about. You can read more about that here.

A lunar crescent shaped stone monument has recently been discovered in Israel. It dates back approximately 5000 years, between 3050 B.C. and 2650 B.C., which means it is most likely older than the pyramids of Egypt, and built before the Stonehenge was constructed.

It’s located approximately 8 miles northwest of the Sea of Galilee, and is massive. It measures approximately 14,000 meters, which is about 500,000 cubic feet.

Ido Wachtel, a Doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said:

“The proposed interpretation for the site is that it constituted a prominent landmark in its natural landscape, serving to mark possession and to assert authority and rights over natural resources  by a local rural or pastoral population.” (source)

Again ,the structure is about 150 meters (492 feet) long and 20 m (66 feet) wide at its base. According to Wachtel:

“The estimation of working days invested in the construction [of] the site is between 35,000 days in the lower estimate [and] 50,000 in the higher.” (source)

It’s remarkable how much time was put into constructing various magnificent structures that even to this day, have construction methods that cannot be explained. Theories have ranged from advanced extraterrestrial races to massive amounts of man and brain power.

For example, most Egyptologists estimate between 2.3 and 2.6 million blocks of stone were used to build the great pyramid. What power could have moved these stones? Each stone has been estimated to weigh approximately between 2 and 20 tonnes each. Think about that, that’s 2.5 million blocks of stone that weigh between 2 and 20 tonnes each. How did they cut the blocks with laser like precision and fit them perfectly in place? How did they lift and transport the rocks from their original position? How did they move across the terrain, dessert, water and sand and then lift them on top of each other in order to build the pyramid?

Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries is the fact that the Great Pyramid is positioned exactly at the latitude and longitude lines that contain more land and less sea than any other place on Earth. It’s right in the ‘geographical’ center of the Earth. This fact alone (out of many) suggests that the builders also knew a great deal about the geography of our planet. It’s hard to imagine they could complete all of this without some sort of aerial view. Don’t forget about the Orion mystery. How this knowledge was obtained remains a mystery. Think about it, how is this possible?

You can read more about the many mysteries regarding the great pyramids in Egypt HERE.

Although this monument in Israel is not as complex (low estimates are a team of 200 ancient workers would have needed more than five months to construct the monument) it’s still a task that would be difficult for people who depended on crops for their livelihood.

According to Live Science:

“Other large rock structures have been found not far from the crescent-shaped monument. One structure, called Rujum el-Hiri, isin the Golan Heights (an area to the east of the Sea of Galilee) and has four circles with a cairn at its center. The date of this structure is a matter of debate; recent research by Mike Freikman, an archaeologist with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, suggests it may predate the crescent-shaped structure by several centuries.

Another stone monument, a giant cairn that weighs more than 60,000 tons, was discovered recently beneath the waters of the Sea of Galilee. Its date is unknown, but like the crescent-shaped structure, it is located close to Bet Yerah.”

I found this to be pretty cool:

The moon god Sin (also called Nanna and Suen) may be the key to understanding the monument. A lunar crescent served as his symbol and the name of Bet Yerah suggests that he may have been revered there. This image shows an ancient seal (from another site) mentioning him with the lunar crescent engraved on it.

Our ancient worlds continue to be a mystery, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that they were far more advanced than we were, and that they might have had some help.

Sources:

http://www.livescience.com/47835-massive-5-000-year-old-stone-monument-revealed-in-israel.html

Home owner discovers ancient underground city beneath his house in Anatolia

Ancient Origins | Aug 25, 2014 | April Holloway

A home owner living in the Melikgazi district of Kayseri province in Anatolia made a surprising discovery while clearing out an area under his house – a subterranean city, of which 4,000 square metres have been excavated so far, according to a report in Hurriyet Daily News. The region of Anatolia in Turkey is famous for its underground cities, particularly in the region of Cappadocia where more than 40 complete underground cities and 200 underground villages and tunnel towns complete with hidden passages, secret rooms, and ancient temples have been found.

Mustafa Bozdemir, 50, was bequeathed a house in Melikgazi five years ago and decided to carry out restoration work. He explained that what he thought was a single-storey house, turned out to have multiple levels of ancient rooms beneath it. “We also found some remains during the cleaning works such as human bones. They were examined by a team from Erciyes University,” said Bozdemir.

Nuvit Bayar, the Project Director of Guntas, the company responsible for the restoration, described the discovery to Zaman Online:

"We thought that there might be storage space for food or a stable beneath the house. But had no idea that it was part of an underground city. The underground city that we found by accident during restoration begins a few meters under the ground and has two levels. There are parts resembling underground remains of settlements in Cappadocia. Wonderful structures emerged everywhere, like an iron workshop and a loft.

The newly-discovered underground structure in Melikgazi has been compared to Cappadocia (pictured) where hundreds of subterranean structures have been found. Photo credit: Wikimedia.

Bozdemir immediately notified the Kayseri Governor’s Office and the Culture and Tourism Directorate, who examined the site and gave permission to continue excavations to completely unearth the underground city. They have also contributed the equivalent of $420,000 towards the restoration.

“We think that the underground city was active in the Roman, Byzantine and Seljuk eras and other stone buildings there were built in the Ottoman and Republican periods," the local mayor Mehmet Osmanbasoglu told Zaman Online.

So far more than a hundred truck-loads of soil have been removed from the underground structure, revealing multiple rooms across several levels. It is believed that around eighty percent of the subterranean city has been uncovered so far. Osmanbasoglu said he hopes excavations will find the underground city is linked with the neighbouring towns of Turan, Gesi and Zincidere.

The region of Anatolia in Turkey is known to have the most spectacular underground networks in the world. One of the most magnificent subterranean cities is Derinkuyu, which is eleven levels deep, has 600 entrances, consists of many miles of tunnels connecting it to other underground cities, and can accommodate thousands of people. It is truly an underground city, with areas for sleeping, stables for livestock, wells, water tanks, pits for cooking, ventilation shafts, communal rooms, bathrooms, and tombs.

A visual depiction of Derinkuyu in Anatolia, Turkey. Photo credit: Wikimedia

While the latest discovery in Melikgazi is unlikely to be as spectacular as Derinkuyu, it is nevertheless an extremely significant finding, demonstrating that the underground world of Anatolia has not yet given up all its secrets.

Featured image: A section of the underground city found under a home in Melikgazi district, Anatolia. Credit: DHA photo

Göbeklitepe: The world's oldest sculpture workshop

© hurriyetdailynews.com
Göbeklitepe has also the oldest known
sculpture workshop, new excavations have shown.

Sott.net | Aug 28, 2014

The world's oldest discovered temple, Göbeklitepe, is also the oldest known sculpture workshop, according to excavation findings at the site, which have been ongoing for 20 years.

The excavations at Göbeklitepe, which is located in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa and is described as the "zero point in history," are being carried out by the German Archaeology Institute and the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry. German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, who died a few months ago, had been the head of the excavations.

Associate Professor Cihat Kürkçüoğlu from the nearby Harran University's (HRU) Arts and History Department, said works in Göbeklitepe had revealed human sculptures from the Neolithic age, wild boar, fox and bird limestone fossils, as well as many arrow heads made of tinderbox.

Kürkçüoğlu said these findings revealed that the art of sculpture and stone relief dated back to 12,000 years ago. "These are the oldest monumental sculptures in the world," he added.

He said they had found small sculptures from between 10,000 and 20,000 B.C., called the "Venus sculptures," but the stone reliefs on T-shaped stelas in Göbeklitepe and in the Nevali desert are "the oldest sculptures in the world."

A 1.80 meter-high limestone sculpture, known as "Balıklıgöl Man" or "Urfa Man," which was found during the excavations close to the Balıklıgöl lake in 1995, dated back to 10,000 B.C.

"This shows us that Göbeklitepe is the birthplace of plastic arts. It is a temple but at the same time it's the world's oldest sculpture workshop. You expect primitive examples of stone sculptures but you find very improved, aesthetic and artistic sculptures. This surprised us greatly. Some compositions in Göbeklitepe are even good enough to make today's graphics jealous. As the archaeological excavations progress, I believe we will find older prototypes," he said.

Kürkçüoğlu added that he had asked university groups visiting the ancient site to teach their students that the history of sculpture started at Göbeklitepe. "Just like the alphabet starts with A, the history of plastic arts starts with Göbeklitepe," he said.

History Secrets: The Sphinx, Gobekli Tepe, Ancient Catastrophes - Dr. Robert Schoch

Suspicious0bservers | Aug 17, 2014

www.robertschoch.com
www.Suspicious0bservers.org
www.ObservatoryProject.com
Help Support the Educational Information: http://tiny.cc/f195ww
[...]

Ancient Synagogue Mosaic Depicts Bloody Jewish Legend

The new mosaic discovered in an ancient
synagogue in Israel depicts a story from
Jewish legend. Alexander is one of the
characters from the legend. Credit: UNC

Live Science | Jul 11, 2014 | Kelly Dickerson

A gruesome and bloody battle scene once decorated the floors of a 5th century synagogue in a Jewish village in northern Israel.

The mosaic is divided into three horizontal panels and measures about 10 feet (3 meters) by 6.5 feet (2 meters). The lowest section shows a dying soldier carrying a shield, and a bull stuck by several spears, with blood oozing out of the wounds. The gory scene found glittering on the synagogue's tiles surprised the dig team.

"This is the first time that a non-biblical story has been found decorating an ancient synagogue," Jodi Magness, excavation leader from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told Live Science in an email. [In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World]

The middle panel of the mosaic depicts a seated old man holding a scroll, surrounded by younger men. Arches frame the whole scene, each one crowned with glowing oil lamps. The top panel shows a man leading a bull by its horns, and a group of soldiers and elephants clad in armor. The elephants were the first clue that the story depicted in the mosaic was not a biblical one, the researchers said.

"Battle elephants were associated with Greek armies beginning with Alexander the Great, so this might be a depiction of a Jewish legend about the meeting between Alexander and the Jewish high priest," Magness said in a statement. "Different versions of this story appear in the writings of Flavius Josephus and in rabbinic literature."

The first excavation of the site, in 2012, unearthed a mosaic depicting the biblical character Samson, shown with foxes. The scene reflects the Bible story in the book Judges, where Samson ties torches to the tails of foxes to burn the Philistine's crops.

During the next summer, Magness discovered a second mosaic that depicts another story about Samson. The scene comes from a story (also in the book of Judges) in which the biblical hero pulls the gate of Gaza out of the wall, shoulders it and carries it up a hill.

Magness and the team said they hope the excavation of the synagogue will reveal more about the relationship between ancient Christians and Jews. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the Roman rulers in Israel were pagans, and likely would have allowed Jews to build large synagogues. But in the 5th century, when Christians seized power, Jews likely did not enjoy the same level of tolerance, historians and archaeologists believe.

However, Magness thinks the synagogue she discovered dates back to this oppressive era. If it's confirmed, the discovery could change what some scientists believe about the relationship between ancient Christians and Jews.

The dig team removed all three mosaics from the site for preservation. Excavation of the synagogue will continue next summer.

Follow Kelly Dickerson on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Graham Hancock Breaks the Set on TED Censorship, Lost Civilizations & War on Consciousness

BreakingtheSet | Jun 27, 2014 | CHANNEL

Abby Martin interviews author and philosopher, Graham Hancock, about the mysteries of ancient civilization, hidden societies from the past, censorship by TED Talks and the difficulty in getting these ideas accepted by mainstream archaeologists and historians.

Volcanic Evidence Opens New Maya Mystery

Temple in the Kingdom of Tikal, one of the
most prominent of the Classic Period.
Credit: © Science/AAAS

Live Science | May 30, 2014 | Becky Osken

Tough and tiny zircon crystals have helped researchers rule out an enormous volcanic blast as the source of ash used to make Maya pottery, deepening this long-running archaeological mystery.

"While we're a little sad not to have solved the mystery, we're really confident we can say the most likely source quite conclusively isn't a match," said lead author Kevin Coffey, a geology master's student at the University of California, Los Angeles.

However, the results did a reveal a tantalizing new pottery puzzle for scientists to solve — whether the Maya's ash came from one volcano or many spewing cones.

Read more..

World’s oldest pyramid found in Crimea

Crimean News Agency | Aug 31, 2012

SIMFEROPIL/ AQMESCIT (QHA) - A Ukrainian scientist discovered the oldest pyramid in the world. Most interestingly, it was found in the most beautiful corner of the country, in Crimea.

As the ICTV channel reported, the finding was revealed by accident, when during his test alternative methods of finding water Ukrainian scientist Vitalii Goh discovered underground unknown object, which proved to be a giant pyramid of 45 meters in height and a length of about 72 meters. Goh said that the pyramid was built during the time of the dinosaurs.

“Crimean pyramid” has a truncated top, like a Mayan pyramid, but its appearance is more like an Egyptian. It is hollow inside, and a mummy of unknown creature is buried under the foundation.

“Under the foundation is a small body in the form of a mummy long 1.3-1.4 meters with a crown on his head.”

“There is a resonance chamber of so-called Sphinx. The pyramids were built in the era of the dinosaurs,” says the scientist in an interview with ICTV.

It remains unknown who build the pyramid.

The unique building is the oldest on the planet, says Vitalii Goh.

Aliye Bekir

QHA

Middle Earth Revelation?: Gaia Contains Giant, Secret Reservoir of Water, Scientists Say

The sea under the Earth’s surface
as illustrated by Edouard Riou in
Jules Verne’s Journey to the
Centre of the Earth.

Golden Age of Gaia | Mar 13, 2014 | Richard Ingham, AFP

http://tinyurl.com/mfl8pcl

One hundred and fifty years ago, in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, French science-fiction forerunner Jules Verne pictured a vast sea that lay deep under our planet’s surface.

Today, that strange and haunting image has found an unexpected echo in a scientific paper. That particular zone in the Earth, the transition zone, might have as much water as all the world’s oceans put together.

Writing in the journal Nature, scientists said they had found an elusive mineral pointing to the existence of a vast reservoir deep in Earth’s mantle, 400 to 600 kilometres beneath our feet.

It may hold as much water as all the planet’s oceans combined, they believe.

The evidence comes from a water-loving mineral called ringwoodite that came from the so-called transition zone sandwiched between the upper and lower layers of Earth’s mantle, they said.

“It was a bit of a piece of luck”: Graham Pearson
with the first terrestrial sample of ringwoodite
ever found. Photo: Richard
Siemens/University of Alberta

Analysis shows a whopping 1.5 per cent of the rock comprises molecules of water.

The find backs once-contested theories that the transition zone, or at least significant parts of it, is water-rich, the investigators said.

“This sample really provides extremely strong confirmation that there are local wet spots deep in the Earth in this area,” said Graham Pearson of Canada’s University of Alberta, who led the research.

“That particular zone in the Earth, the transition zone, might have as much water as all the world’s oceans put together.”

Ringwoodite is named after Australian geologist Ted Ringwood, who theorised that a special mineral was bound to be created in the transition zone because of the ultra-high pressures and temperatures there.

A piece of this mineral has been a long-sought goal. It would resolve a long-running debate about whether the poorly-understood transition zone is bone-dry or water-rich.

But until now, ringwoodite has only ever been found in meteorites. Geologists had simply been unable to delve deep enough to find any sample on Earth.

Good fortune, though, changed all this.

In 2008, amateur gem-hunters digging in shallow river gravel in the Juina area of Mato Grasso, Brazil, came across a tiny, grubby stone called a brown diamond.

Measuring just three millimetres across and commercially worthless, the stone was acquired by the scientists when they were on a quest for other minerals.

But the accidental acquisition turned out to be a bonanza.

The brown diamond that yielded the
ringwoodite sample. Photo: Richard
Siemens/University of Alberta

In its interior, they found a microscopic trace of ringwoodite – the very first terrestrial evidence of the ultra-rare rock.

“It’s so small, this inclusion, it’s extremely difficult to find, never mind work on,” Pearson said, paying tribute to the diligent work of grad student John McNeill.

“It was a bit of a piece of luck, this discovery, as are many scientific discoveries.”

The team theorise the brown diamond rocketed to the surface during a volcanic eruption, hitchhiking in a stream of kimberlite, the deepest of all volcanic rocks.
Years of analysis, using spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, were needed in specialised labs to confirm the find officially as ringwoodite.

Scientists have debated for decades about whether the transition zone has water, and if so, how much there might be.

None, though, has embraced Verne’s fancy of a subterranean sea with a rocky coastline dotted with forests of giant mushrooms and petrified trees.

Hans Keppler, a geologist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, cautioned against extrapolating the size of the subterranean water find from a single sample of ringwoodite.

He also said the water was likely to be locked up in specific rocks, in a molecular form called hydroxyl.

“In some ways it is an ocean in Earth’s interior, as visualised by Jules Verne … although not in the form of liquid water,” Keppler said in a commentary also published by Nature.

The implications of the discovery are profound, Pearson suggested.

If water exists in huge volumes beneath Earth’s crust, it is bound to have a big impact on the mechanics of volcanoes and the movement of tectonic plates.

“One of the reasons the Earth is such a dynamic planet is the presence of some water in its interior,” Pearson said. “Water changes everything about the way a planet works.”

Newly Found Megalithic Ruins In Russia Contain The Largest Blocks Of Stone Ever Discovered

The Truth | Mar 10, 2014 | Michael Snyder

An incredible discovery that was recently made in Russia threatens to shatter conventional theories about the history of the planet.  On Mount Shoria in southern Siberia, researchers have found an absolutely massive wall of granite stones.  Some of these gigantic granite stones are estimated to weigh more than 3,000 tons, and as you will see below, many of them were cut “with flat surfaces, right angles, and sharp corners”.  Nothing of this magnitude has ever been discovered before.  The largest stone found at the megalithic ruins at Baalbek, Lebanon is less than 1,500 tons.  So how in the world did someone cut 3,000 ton granite stones with extreme precision, transport them up the side of a mountain and stack them 40 meters high?  According to the commonly accepted version of history, it would be impossible for ancient humans with very limited technology to accomplish such a thing.  Could it be possible that there is much more to the history of this planet than we are being taught?

For years, historians and archaeologists have absolutely marveled at the incredibly huge stones found at Baalbek.  But some of these stones in Russia are reportedly more than twice the size.  Needless to say, a lot of people are getting very excited about this discovery.  The following comes from a Mysterious Universe article…

Alternate history buffs are about to be whipped into a frenzy!  OK, maybe not, but they will find this interesting.

An ancient “super-megalithic” site has been found in the Siberian Mountains.  Found recently in Gornaya Shoria (Mount Shoria) in southern Siberia, this site consists of huge blocks of stone, which appear to be granite, with flat surfaces, right angles, and sharp corners.  The blocks appear to be stacked, almost in the manner of cyclopean masonry, and well…they’re enormous!

Russia is no stranger to ancient megalithic sites, like Arkaim or Russia’s Stonehenge, and the Manpupuner formation, just to name two, but the site at Shoria is unique in that, if it’s man-made, the blocks used are undoubtedly the largest ever worked by human hands.

When I say that this is a new discovery, I am not kidding.  In fact, the very first expedition to study these stones happened just a few months ago.  Prior to this expedition, there were no known photographs of these megalithic stones.  Archaeologist John Jensen is mystified by these ancient ruins, and the following is an excerpt from a post on his personal blog…

The super megaliths were found and photographed for the first time by Georgy Sidorov on a recent expedition to the Southern Siberian mountains. The following images are from Valery Uvarov’s Russian website.

There are no measurements given, but from the scale depicted by the human figures, these megaliths are much larger (as much as 2 to 3 times larger) than the largest known megaliths in the world. (Example: The Pregnant Woman Stone of Baalbek, Lebanon weighs in at approximately 1,260 ton). Some of these megaliths could easily weigh upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 tons.

Below, I have posted some of the images that he was referring to.  As you can see, they are absolutely stunning…

Another very unusual thing about these stones is that they caused the compasses of the researchers to start behaving very strangely.

The following is an excerpt from a story on a Russian news source…

Some events that were happening during the autumn expedition could probably be called mystical. The compasses of the geologists behaved very strangely, for some unknown reason their arrows were deviating from the megaliths. What could this mean? All that was clear was that they came across an inexplicable phenomenon of the negative geomagnetic field. Could this be a remnant of ancient antigravity technologies?

Of course much more research needs to be done on this site.

Nobody knows who cut these stones or how old they are.

Jensen believes that they come from a time “well back into the mists of pre-history”…

These megaliths reach well back into the mists of pre-history, so far in fact, that conjecture about their ‘builders’, methods, purpose and meaning is pure speculation, and as such, I would hesitate to offer any observation at all, other than to say our pre-historical past is richer than we ever dreamed.

These stones are likely to remain an unsolved mystery for a very long time.

But what is abundantly clear is that according to the commonly accepted version of history they should not be there.

And of course this is far from the only site around the world that contains massive megalithic ruins.  Perhaps the most famous are the megalithic ruins at Baalbek, Lebanon…