Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Archaeologists discover ‘astonishing’ huge circular neolithic monument next to Stonehenge

Yellow dots represent locations of the shafts, and the red circle marks Durrington Walls 
(University of St Andrews)

Site ‘offers us new insights into the lives and beliefs of our Neolithic ancestors’, expert says

Dr Richard Bates, of St Andrews’ School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said: “Yet again, the use of a multidisciplinary effort with remote sensing and careful sampling is giving us an insight to the past that shows an even more complex society than we could ever imagine.

“Clearly sophisticated practices demonstrate that the people were so in tune with natural events to an extent that we can barely conceive in the modern world we live in today.”

Tim Kinnaird, of the same school, said: “The sedimentary infills contain a rich and fascinating archive of previously unknown environmental information.

“With optically stimulated luminescence profiling and dating, we can write detailed narratives of the Stonehenge landscape for the last 4,000 years.”

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Gigantic Circular Structure Found Near Stonehenge

The circular structure (indicated by the black line) and 20 pits located along its boundary (in red).
Image: University of St. Andrews

A surprisingly large pit structure has been discovered around Durrington Walls Henge, which is less than 2 miles away from Stonehenge. Dated at 4,500 years old, it’s the biggest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain.

Located on Salisbury Plain in the United Kingdom, the circular structure consists of at least 20 carefully positioned pits. Now buried, these pits were huge, at more than 16.5 feet deep (5 meters) and 32 to 66 feet wide (10 to 20 meters). Together, these pits formed a circle measuring more than 1.2 miles in diameter (2 km). At the center of this circle is Durrington Walls Henge, one of Britain’s largest henge monuments. The pits are, on average, around 2,835 feet (864 meters) from the center point. Details of this incredible discovery were published today in the scientific journal Internet Archaeology.

“The numbers and the layout of these features is unique as far as I am aware, and they constitute the largest prehistoric structure in Britain,” Vincent Gaffney, a co-author of the new study and an archaeologist at the University of Bradford, wrote in an email to Gizmodo. The entire structure encloses an area measuring 740 acres, he said.

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Scrap Stonehenge road tunnel plans, say archaeologists after neolithic discovery

 A giant structure created 4,500 years ago has been uncovered 1.9 miles north-east of Stonehenge. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty

Exclusive: Discovery of prehistoric structure is another reason to give up ‘disastrous white elephant’ scheme

Leading archaeologists say a £1.6bn scheme to build a road tunnel through the historic Stonehenge landscape should be scrapped altogether after the sensational discovery nearby of the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain.

Mike Parker Pearson, professor of British later prehistory at University College London, said: “This is just another reason to give up this disastrous white elephant of a scheme.”

A giant neolithic structure, created 4,500 years ago, has been uncovered 1.9 miles (3 km) north-east of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain near Amesbury, Wiltshire. To the astonishment of archaeologists, a series of vast shafts – each more than five metres deep and up to 20 metres across – were found to have been aligned to form a circle 1.2 miles in diameter.

The discovery was made possible by new technology that is yet to play a significant role in our understanding of this extraordinary ancient landscape.

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Third Neanderthal Genome Sequenced

(© Dr. Bence Viola, Dept. of Anthropology, U. of Toronto)

According to a statement released by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a third Neanderthal genome has been sequenced by a team of researchers led by Fabrizio Mafessoni. The first sequenced genome belonged to a Neanderthal whose 40,000-year-old remains were found in Croatia’s Vindija Cave, while the second came from a Neanderthal individual whose remains were found in Siberia’s Denisova Cave and dated to about 120,000 years ago. This DNA sample came from female Neanderthal remains dated to between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago that were recovered from Chagyrskaya Cave, which is located in Russia’s Altai Mountains, just 65 miles away from Denisova Cave. 

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Sunday, June 21, 2020

French cave reveals secrets of life and death from the ancient past

Grotte de Cussac cave in Dordogne, France 
[Credit: University of Wollongong]

Grotte de Cussac cave in Dordogne, France, is the site of stunning cave art, containing more than 800 figurative engravings of animals and humans that are between 25,000 and 30,000 years old.

It also contains the remains of at least six humans, dated to the same period. With one possible exception, it is the only known example of human remains interred so deep within a cave that also contains artworks.

For the past 10 years, a research team has been studying these human remains in situ to discover what they reveal about the lives, customs and beliefs of the people of that time.

Dr. Eline Schotsmans, a Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong and the University of Bordeaux, is part of an international team, led by the University of Bordeaux's Professor Jacques Jaubert, working inside the cave to uncover its secrets.

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Iron Age funeral site discovered on Solihull HS2 site

Wessex Archaeology have been studying the site at Coleshill, Solihull
WESSEX ARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeologists have uncovered an Iron Age funeral site along the HS2 route.

The graves, at least 2,000 years old, show a settlement existed on the river bank site at Coleshill, near Solihull.

The cluster of several dozen sites, placed on funeral pyres, should shed a light on what people did with their dead, experts said.

It is one of a number of discoveries made by archaeologists ahead of construction work for the 225mph rail line.

Emma Carter, from Wessex Archaeology, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service experts were uncovering "tantalising" evidence from the past and an in-depth investigation of the graves would follow.

"[It] should offer some interesting ideas of what they do with their dead," she said.

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Thursday, June 18, 2020

Startling secrets within Irish tombs: Neolithic man buried within Newgrange was inbred as part of ‘ruling elite’

Newgrange, Co Meath (PA)

Ireland’s earliest Neolithic society had an elite ruling social class similar to Inca god-kings and Egyptian Pharaohs, and they were allowed to interbreed.

A team of archaeologists and geneticists, led by Trinity College Dublin, have shed startling new light on the earliest periods of Ireland’s human history.

The findings were based on genetic analysis of the remains of an adult male found buried deep in the 5,000-year-old passage tomb at Newgrange, Co Meath.

Older than the pyramids, Newgrange is world-famous for its annual solar alignment where the winter solstice sunrise illuminates the sacred inner chamber in a golden blast of light.

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Incest uncovered at the elite prehistoric Newgrange monument in Ireland

A misty morning view of the passage tomb of Newgrange overlooking the Boyne Valley, County Meath, Ireland.
Figure 1 | Newgrange passage tomb, Ireland. Cassidy et al.1 report that the analysis of DNA from a man buried in this 5,000-year-old monument reveals evidence of incest.Credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com

A study of the DNA of Ireland’s Stone Age inhabitants has produced spectacular results, with far-reaching consequences for our understanding of prehistoric population movement and the structure of that ancient society. Writing in Nature, Cassidy et al.1 report their striking discoveries from this project.

The authors looked at the period, around 4000 BC, when farming appeared as a new, Neolithic way of life, supplanting the older and more mobile Mesolithic lifestyle based on fishing, hunting and foraging for wild foods. Cassidy et al. examined the social structures of these farming communities over the following 1,500 years, focusing on the people buried in passage tombs — a type of monument featuring a chamber, covered by a mound, that is entered along a passage. The most famous Irish passage tomb is the enormous monument at Newgrange (Fig. 1), which is part of a World Heritage site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. This huge circular mound is one of three major tombs built in the Brú na Bóinne cemetery complex in County Meath, north of Dublin, in eastern Ireland.

Read the paper: 
A dynastic elite in monumental Neolithic society
Newgrange was constructed between around 3200 and 3000 BC. It was built using sophisticated engineering to ensure that, at the end of a long, stone-lined passage, a burial chamber is lit up for a few minutes every year by the rays of the rising Sun, on and around the shortest day of the year. The monument pre-dates, by around 500 years, the huge trilithon stones at Stonehenge, which align to the winter and summer solstices. Marking the winter solstice was crucial for early farmers, who needed to know when the days would start to get longer. It took a massive effort to build Newgrange, and archaeologists think it was constructed as a burial place for a wealthy and powerful elite. People probably journeyed there from far and wide to participate in major solstice-marking ceremonies. Perhaps this elite claimed to have divine power by ‘controlling’ the Sun’s movement2.

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Saturday, June 13, 2020

Schoolboy Cathal gets a hands-on history lesson with 4,000-year-old boat

Ancient treasure: Cathal McDonagh (12) and his family help to retrieve the ancient longboat 
he found in the inland lake

A bored schoolboy who abandoned his homework to go paddling in a lake uncovered an ancient boat that could be more than 4,000 years old.

The 17ft longboat was lodged in the mud in the lake at the back of 12-year-old Cathal McDonagh's home in Lisacul, Castlerea, Co Roscommon.

Archaeologists have told the family the ancient vessel could date back as far as 2000 BC.

A team will travel down from Dublin this week to examine the amazing find, which Cathal tripped over as he paddled in shallow water.

While a river may have flowed through the area thousands of years ago, the lake is inland, and is home to at least one crannóg - an ancient artificial island usually built for defensive reasons. They are the oldest dwelling places in prehistoric Ireland.

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