Posted by admin on Mar 16, 2010 in
SCIENCE 7,000 years BEFORE the Great Pyramid! Wow, double triple wow. We’ll be hearing much more about this in the coming years.
“a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built”
A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world
History in the Remaking
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.
By Patrick Symmes | NEWSWEEK | Published Feb 19, 2010, From the magazine issue dated Mar 1, 2010
They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.
Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.
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Tags: Archaeology
Posted by on Jul 17, 2009 in
FORTEANA Please note not all the “cracks” in this ancient piece of ivory are there because of age.
The Venus of Hohle Fells is the oldest known example of figurative female art (Image: H.Jensen/University of Tubingen/Nature)
Further views of the Venus (Image: H.Jensen/University of Tubingen/Nature)
Further views of the Venus (Image: H.Jensen/University of Tubingen/Nature)
Ivory ‘Venus’ is first depiction of a woman
www.newscientist.com | May 2009 by Andy Coghlan
With its outsize bulbous breasts and hugely exaggerated genitalia, a statuette of a woman has pushed back the history of female figurative art by 5000 years, to at least 35,000 years ago.
Anthropologists are staggered by the find, which also shows that even this long ago, our brains and their ability to think in abstract ways were probably as sophisticated as they are now.
Discovered in the Hohle Fels Caves of south-western Germany, the “Venus” figurine carved from mammoth ivory is remarkably well-preserved, with only the left arm and shoulder missing. “It’s perhaps the earliest example of figurative art worldwide,” says Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen in Germany.
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Tags: Archaeology, art
Posted by on Jun 20, 2009 in
FORTEANA Creationists may also be interested in this information.
One of the San people of South Africa.
World’s most ancient race traced in DNA study
www.independent.co.uk | By Steve Connor, Science Editor | Friday, 1 May 2009
The San people of southern Africa, who have lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, are likely to be the oldest population of humans on Earth, according to the biggest and most detailed analysis of African DNA. The San, also known as bushmen, are directly descended from the original population of early human ancestors who gave rise to all other groups of Africans and, eventually, to the people who left the continent to populate other parts of the world.
A study of 121 distinct populations of modern-day Africans has found that they are all descended from 14 ancestral populations and that the differences and similarities of their genes closely follows the differences and similarities of their spoken languages.
The scientists analysed the genetic variation within the DNA of more than 3,000 Africans and found that the San were among the most genetically diverse group, indicating that they are probably the oldest continuous population of humans on the continent – and on Earth.
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Tags: Archaeology
Posted by on May 31, 2009 in
FORTEANA I really do like Neanderthals.
AP Photo. A Neanderthal skull is shown in the foreground of a modern human skeleton. A survey of modern humans suggests that ancient Neanderthals may have left their genetic mark in humans of European descent.
Three Subgroups of Neanderthals Identified
By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer | 14 April 2009 08:17 pm ET | www.livescience.com
We tend to think of Neanderthals as one species of cavemen-like creatures, but now scientists say there were actually at least three different subgroups of Neanderthals.
Using computer simulations to analyze DNA sequence fragments from 12 Neanderthal fossils, researchers found that the species can be separated into three, or maybe four, distinct genetic groups.
The evidence points to a subgroup of Neanderthals in Western Europe, another in Southern Europe near the Mediterranean, a third in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and possibly a fourth in Western Asia. These groups have been postulated before, but this is the first study analyzing DNA data to look for genetic variations differentiating the subgroups.
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Tags: Archaeology
Posted by on Jan 24, 2009 in
FORTEANA Archaeology is always interesting. One of the saddest things about the current war in Iraq and cultural conditions in Iran is that they have some of the BEST ancient ruins and sites there.
Photo: Archaeologist Mansur Sajjadi holds the 4800-year-old artificial eye, which was discovered at the Burnt City in 2006, in an undated photo.
Bulletin published on 4800-year-old artificial eye of Burnt City
www.tehrantimes.com | Sunday, January 4, 2009 | Tehran Times Culture Desk
TEHRAN — All studies on the 4800-year-old artificial eye from the Burnt City were published in an English-Persian bulletin early last week.
“The bulletin contains all comprehensive studies and analysis of the experiments carried out on the artificial eyeball,” an expert on the Burnt City, Mansur Sajjadi, told the Persian service of CHN on Friday.
The Governor’s Office of the Sistan-Baluchestan Province has financed the bulletin’s publication, which has been prepared by the Burnt City Cultural Heritage Center.
The eyeball was discovered by an archaeological team led by Sajjadi in late 2006 at the 5200-year-old Burnt City located 57 kilometers from the city of Zabol in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan Province.
It belonged to a large woman who died when she was 25 to 30 year old.
Studies show traces of an abscess in the upper arch of the eye, and tracks made by the eyelid are visible on the lower part of the artificial eye.
It has been made of natural tar mixed with animal fat.
The thinnest capillaries on the eyeball have been made with golden wires with a thickness of less than one millimeter for aesthetic reasons.
The pupil of the eye has been placed in the center of the eyeball and some parallel lines forming an almond pattern are visible around the pupil.
The eyeball has two holes in its two sides, which were used for fixing the eye in the eye socket.
A joint Italian-Iranian archaeological team led by Sajjadi has begun the 12th season of studies at the city since last week.
They plan to classify the information gathered during the previous seasons of excavation at the Burnt City.
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Tags: Archaeology
