ISIS Militants Destroy Mosul Museum Artifacts and Burns Mosul Library
These people have to be stopped!
[There will be continued disruption to news updates over the next few weeks as we migrate to new servers. We apologise for the inconvenience and hope to get back to normal as soon as possible – Ed.]
“When the invaders came, Cappadocians knew where to hide: underground, in one of the 250 subterranean safe havens they had carved from pliable volcanic ash rock called tuff.
Now a housing construction project may have unearthed the biggest hiding place ever found in Cappadocia, a region of central Turkey famous for the otherworldly chimney houses, cave churches, and underground cities its residents carved for millennia.
Discovered beneath a Byzantine-era hilltop castle in Nevsehir, the provincial capital, the site dates back at least to early Byzantine times.
It is still largely unexplored, but initial studies suggest its size and features may rival those of Derinkuyu, the largest excavated underground city in Cappadocia, which could house 20,000 people.”
“Archaeologists working at a site in Israel have found stone tools made hundreds of thousands of years ago alongside the remains of an ancient species of elephant and other game.
The researchers tested the stone tools scientifically and found residue of fat and bone on them. They speculate Homo erectus people used the tools to butcher elephants and other animals for eating.
The authors, in their article in the journal PLOS One, say the site is just one of many Paleolithic sites showing evidence that people in the distant past butchered and ate elephants and mammoths.
The site examined in this study was of Acheulian culture and dates between 300,000 and 500,000 years before the present.
Homo erectus was a pre-Homo sapiens species that is considered not to have been as advanced as modern humans, but recent studies have shown they were more advanced than initially believed.”
“Archeological studies in the western province of Denizli’s Honaz district have unearthed tools from the Paleolithic age.
The tools were found in the same area where a 1.2 million-year-old skull fossil, called ‘Denizli man’, was found in 2002.
The head of the study, Ankara University academic Kadriye Ceylan said the skull was found in a travertine source and they had started further examinations at the site.
Ceylan said the goal was to determine the places where the man had lived and find archaeological proof.”
“The second season of fieldwork of the Polish archaeological project in Gebelein in southern Egypt has begun. The place was a very important centre in the history of ancient Egypt, but researchers still know little about it.
During last year’s work, many monuments were discovered that allow scientists to fill blank spots in the history of the pharaohs. These include inscriptions, tombs of dignitaries and places of worship carved in the rocks.
A characteristic feature of the landscape in Gebelein are two limestone rocks that tower over the Nile and the surrounding desert.
‘At the dawn of the history of ancient Egypt this was an administrative centre, very well positioned strategically and in terms of natural resources.’
‘There are signs that we are studying the capital of one of the proto-states, of which the Egyptian state emerged at the turn of the fourth and third millennia BC’- told PAP the project leader, Wojciech Ejsmond from the University of Warsaw.”
[These Polish archaeologists are doing excellent and urgently needed work on this early period of Egyptian history. The whole Gebelein area is under threat from agricultural and urban development. Well worth reading the whole story – Ed.]
“The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group began bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq on Thursday, the government said, in the jihadists’ latest attack on the country’s historical heritage.
ISIS ‘assaulted the historic city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy vehicles’, the tourism and antiquities ministry said on an official Facebook page.
An Iraqi antiquities official confirmed the news, saying the destruction began after noon prayers on Thursday and that trucks that may have been used to haul away artefacts had also been spotted at the site.
Nimrud, which was founded in the 13th century BC, lies on the Tigris around 30 kilometres (18 miles) southeast of Mosul, Iraq’s second city and the main hub of IS in the country.
The destruction at Nimrud, one of the jewels of the Assyrian era, came a week after the jihadist group released a video showing militants armed with sledgehammersand jackhammers smashing priceless ancient artefacts at the Mosul museum.”
[Information we have suggests that the bulldozing of Nimrud was done to cover up the sytematic theft of portable antiquities that were looted to be sold on the black market by the so-called Islamic State to raise funds for their organisation – Ed.]
“An expedition to Honduras has emerged from the jungle with dramatic news of the discovery of a mysterious culture’s lost city, never before explored.
The team was led to the remote, uninhabited region by long-standing rumors that it was the site of a storied ‘White City’, also referred to in legend as the ‘City of the Monkey God’.
Archaeologists surveyed and mapped extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds, and an earthen pyramid belonging to a culture that thrived a thousand years ago, and then vanished.
The team, which returned from the site last Wednesday, also discovered a remarkable cache of stone sculptures that had lain untouched since the city was abandoned.
In contrast to the nearby Maya, this vanished culture has been scarcely studied and it remains virtually unknown. Archaeologists don’t even have a name for it.
Christopher Fisher, a Mesoamerican archaeologist on the team from Colorado State University, said the pristine, unlooted condition of the site was ‘incredibly rare.'”
[This is yet another great exclusive story from National Geographic – but you wouldn’t expect anything less from them. There are some really great photos of the expedition and the unique discoveries that are a “MUST SEE”. You’ll be very disappointed if you don’t visit their website – Ed.]
[In October 1900, Captain Dimitrious Kondos was leading a team of sponge divers near the the island of Antikythera off the coast of Greece. They noticed a shipwreck about 180 feet below the surface and began to investigate. Amongst the artifacts that they brought up was a coral-encrusted piece of metal that later archaeologists found was some sort of gear wheel.
The rest of the artifacts, along with the shape of the boat, suggested a date around 2000 years ago, which made the find one of the most anomalous that had ever been recovered from the Greek seas. It became known as The Antikythera Mechanism.
In 2006 the journal “Nature” published a letter, and another paper about the mechanism was published in 2008, detailing the findings of Prof. Mike G. Edmunds of Cardiff University. Using high-resolution X-ray tomography to study the fragments of the anomalous Antikythera Mechanism, they found that it was in fact a bronze mechanical analog computer that could be used to calculate the astronomical positions and various cycles of the Moon – as seen from the Earth: – Ed]
Part of the Antikythera Mechanism
Antikythera Mechanism Research Project
2000-year-old analog computer recreated
More Antikythera Mechanism Information & Commentary:
