Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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caltrek
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Researchers Identify Oldest Known Hybrid Animal Bred by Humans
by Nate MacKay
January 14, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/research ... by-humans/

Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — Scientists announced Friday they have used genome sequencing to uncover the earliest known evidence of humans breeding hybrid animals.

According to research published in the journal Science Advances, researchers determined that 4,500-year-old skeletons from the horse family found buried in modern-day northern Syria are most likely domesticated hybrid animals called kungas that can be traced to the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia.

The research indicates the people were breeding kungas more than 500 years before the first domestic horses were introduced to the area. Crosses between domesticated female donkeys and male Syrian wild asses, kungas have long been at the center of debate among specialists.

“We have a pretty good answer to a debate that lasted for decades,” said Eva-Maria Geigl, one of the paper’s authors from the Institut Jacques Monod in France. “These are the most ancient human-made hybrids that we know.”

Geigl said kungas are documented as a distinct animal on ancient tablets and seals dating back to 2500 BC, often with four of them pulling warriors to war in wagons. Researchers knew the animals depicted were not horses because the domestic horses were not yet in the area and the drawings showed tails like that of a donkey.
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Archeologists discover 2 giant sphinxes
Archeologists discover 2 giant sphinxes at the lost 'Temple of a Million Years' built by a great pharaoh in Egypt 3,300 years ago


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ar ... ar-AAT1Var?
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caltrek
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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A Cosmic Airburst May Have Devastated a Vast Native American Culture 1,500 Years Ago
by David Nield
February 3, 2022

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-near-ear ... -years-ago

Introduction:
(Science Alert) More than 1500 years ago, a vast culture known as the Hopewell tradition (or Hopewell culture) stretched across what is today the eastern United States.

The cause of the culture's decline has long been debated, with war and climate change two of the possibilities, but now a new avenue of inquiry has opened up: debris from a near-Earth comet.

Researchers working across 11 different Hopewell archaeological sites covering three states have found unusual concentrations of iridium and platinum in their digging – telltale signs of meteorite fragments. Meanwhile, a charcoal layer in the sediment suggests an intense period of high heat.

The hypothesis is that debris from a passing comet may have struck close to the Ohio Hopewell communities, causing an airburst that would have profound and potentially devastating effects on the local environment.

Signs that the people collected meteorite fragments and incorporated them into their jewelry and instruments, along with hints of a calamity in local folklore, suggest there was certainly some significant event – one that the researchers suggest may have contributed to a significant upheaval in the social sphere.
The research results were published in Scientific Reports: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05758-y
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caltrek
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This May be One of the Oldest Buddhist Temples Ever Discovered
by Tom Metcalfe
February 2, 2022

https://www.livescience.com/early-buddi ... e-pakistan

Introduction:
(Live Science) An ancient temple dating from the early centuries of Buddhism has been unearthed in the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan – part of the ancient Gandhara region that was conquered by Alexander the Great and gave rise to a mixing of Buddhist belief and Greek art.

Archaeologists think that the temple dates from about the middle of the second century BCE, at a time when Gandhara was ruled by the Indo-Greek kingdom of northern India, and that it was built above an earlier Buddhist temple that may have dated from as early as the third century BCE.

That means people would have built the older temple within a few hundred years of the death of the founder of Buddhism, Siddhārtha Gautama, who lived in what is now northern India and Nepal between about 563 BCE and 483 BCE.

The excavated remains of the temple found so far, near the center of the modern town of Barikot, are over 10 feet (3 meters) tall and consist of a ceremonial platform topped by a cylindrical structure that housed a conical or dome-shaped Buddhist monument called a stupa.

The temple complex, which was built and reconstructed several times, also included a smaller stupa, a cell or room for monks, a staircase, the podium of a monumental pillar or column, vestibule rooms, and a public courtyard that looked out onto an ancient road.
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Roman mosaic floor found at Southwark Street development site

Tuesday 22 February 2022

Archaeologists working on a site in Southwark Street have uncovered the largest area of Roman mosaic to be discovered in London for half a century.

The mosaic floor is thought to date from AD 175-225 and archaeologists believe it formed part of a dining room.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime find in London," said site supervisor Antonietta Lerz from Museum of London Archaeology.

"It has been a privilege to work on such a large site where the Roman archaeology is largely undisturbed by later activity – when the first flashes of colour started to emerge through the soil everyone on site was very excited!"

The discovery was made last month on the plot of Transport for London-owned land at the junction of Southwark Street and Redcross Way, previously known as Landmark Court and now being redeveloped by U+I under the 'Liberty of Southwark' name.

https://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/ ... zSCfLRdaJw


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Credit: Museum of London Archaeology
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Excavation unearths a 1,500-year-old mystery at a Roman site in rural Britain
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-excavatio ... roman.html
by Newcastle University
An abandoned mausoleum and silver extraction taking place on an industrial scale at a Roman site in rural Kent have left archaeologists with a 1500-year-old mystery.

Silver extraction on an industrial scale

Archaeologists working on an excavation at Grange Farm, near Gillingham, discovered 15 kilograms of litharge—a material associated with the extraction of silver from other metals. This is the largest amount ever found on a British Roman site and greatly exceeds the amount that archaeologists would normally expect to find on a rural settlement such as that at Grange Farm, suggesting that the refining of silver was taking place on an industrial scale.

However, the excavation team did not unearth any signs of the infrastructure that could have supported the size of operation required to produce this amount of material.

The excavation and subsequent research, which was led by Pre-Construct Archaeology (PCA) and involved archaeologists from Newcastle University, revealed a rectangular building which would have been built from timber and divided internally by three aisles. This type of multi-function "aisled" building was fairly common in Roman Britain and would have been used both as a house and place for crafts. However, although the archaeologists found evidence of small-scale metalworking at one end of the building, it was not at a level that would have produced the amount of litharge discovered.
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Two DNA defense systems behind resilience of 7th cholera pandemic
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-dna-defen ... olera.html
by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, a waterborne pathogen that infects the gut of humans through contaminated water and food. When ingested, V. cholerae colonizes the gut's inner surface, causing a watery diarrhea, that if left untreated, can lead to severe dehydration and death.

Cholera is still a problem, especially in less-developed or crisis-hit regions. The WHO reports that the ongoing seventh cholera pandemic is still responsible for up to four million infections, and up to 143,000 deaths each year.

Horizontal gene transfer

Only a few strains of V. cholerae can cause pandemic disease, with most being harmless aquatic organisms. This is because the pandemic strains have acquired specialized "toolboxes" of genes and other genetic elements called "pathogenicity islands", which can turn the bacterium into a pathogen.
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Hermas - Commands was written some-time in the 150 years following the Birth of Christ. It is considered by some as one of the "lost" books of the Bible, meaning it is considered of doubtful origins and therefore not a part of church canon. I recently came across a passage which is positively mind blowing. It starts off as a kind of run-of-the-mill lecture in morality, with a surprise twist. Hermas Command V reads, in part, as follows:
Be patient, says he, and long-suffering, so shalt thou have dominion over all wicked things, and shall fulfil all righteousness.

For if thou shalt be patient, the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in thee shall be pure, and not darkened by any evil spirit; but being full of joy shall be enlarged, and feast in the body in which it dwells, and serve the lord with joy, and in great peace.

But if any anger shall overtake thee, presently the Holy Spirit which is in thee will be straightened and seek to depart from thee. For he is choked by the evil spirit, and has not the liberty of serving the Lord as he would; for he is grieved in anger. When, therefore, both these spirits dwell together, it is destructive to man.

As if one should take a little wormwood, and put it into a vessel of honey, the whole honey would be spoiled; and great quantity of honey is corrupted by a very little wormwood, and loses the sweetness of honey, and is no longer acceptable to its Lord because the honey is made bitter, and loses its use.

Now, nothing particularly mind blowing about that, right?

Ok, here is the weird part: the translation of "wormwood" into Russian/Ukrainian is "chernobyl." :o
The city's name is the same as one of the Ukrainian names for Artemisia vulgaris, mugwort or common wormwood, which is Ukrainian: чорнобиль, romanized: chornóbyl' (or more commonly полин звичайний polýn zvycháynyy, 'common artemisia').[3] The name is inherited from Proto-Slavic *čьrnobylъ or Proto-Slavic *čьrnobyl, a compound of Proto-Slavic *čьrnъ 'black' + Proto-Slavic *bylь 'grass', the parts related to Ukrainian: чорний, romanized: chórnyy, lit. 'black' and било byló, 'stalk', so named in distinction to the lighter-stemmed wormwood A. absinthium.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl
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