Future Timeline

3 days ago

Herodotus, the famed ancient Greek historian, lied about a pivotal battle between the Greeks and the Carthaginians, a new study finds.

In his magnum opus "The Histories," Herodotus detailed the First Battle of Himera on Sicily in 480 B.C. He wrote that when the "barbarian" Carthaginians attacked the Greek colony of Himera, a coalition of Greek allies from other Sicilian cities joined the fray, leading to a Greek victory.

But now, a chemical analysis of the bones of the soldiers who fought at the First Battle of Himera reveals that those Greek "allies" were actually foreign mercenaries, likely hired by the Greeks to help vanquish their foes.

rchaeologists working in the district of Tübingen in southwest Germany have discovered the region's earliest gold object to date. It is a spiral ring of gold wire unearthed in autumn 2020 from the grave of an Early Bronze Age woman. It is about 3,800 years old, according to analyses. Precious metal finds from this period are very rare in southwestern Germany. The gold probably originates from Cornwall in southwest Britain. The archaeologists say it is unusually early proof of the far-reaching trade in luxury objects of the people of that time. The excavation was led by Professor Raiko Krauss from the Institute of Prehistory and Medieval Archaeology at the University of Tübingen and Dr. Jörg Bofinger from the Baden-Württemberg State Office for Cultural Heritage Management, based in Esslingen.

June 7, 2021

Over the last 200 years, Antarctic narratives have been of those carried out by predominantly European male explorers. However, a research project led by Manaaki Whenua—Landcare Research and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu researchers looked into the connection of Māori with Antarctica to better document and understand the contributions and perspectives of under-represented groups who are missing from current narratives.

In the project, researchers scanned literature and integrated this with oral histories to provide a compiled record of Māori presence in, and perspectives of, Antarctic narratives and exploration. Māori (and Polynesian) journeys to the deep south have been occurring for a long time, perhaps as far back as the seventh century, and this work highlights the tradition of Māori Antarctic exploration and contribution to New Zealand's work in the Ross Sea continues into the future.

"We found connection to Antarctica and its waters have been occurring since the earliest traditional voyaging, and later through participation in European-led voyaging and exploration, contemporary scientific research, fishing, and more for centuries," says project lead Dr. Priscilla Wehi.

June 19, 2021

Archaeologists and historians have long debated the cause of the “Bronze Age Collapse,” or the period when multiple, distinct ancient civilizations all collapsed one after the other around 3,200 years ago.

New research published in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that a 300-year-long drought may be the cause of the collapse of multiple cultures of the Bronze Age, including those of ancient Greece.

During the time preceding the period, vast civilizations of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, Levant, and North Africa — including the Hittites in Anatolia and the Mycenaeans in Greece — were either destroyed or weakened significantly.

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has shared the discovery of the wreck of a warship from the Ptolemaic era and the remains of a Greek funerary area dating back to the beginning of the fourth century BC, in the sunken city of Heracleion in Alexandria's Abu Qir Bay.

Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt Mustafa Waziri said in a July 19 statement, “The ship was moored in the canal that flowed along the upper side of the Temple of Amun. It sank after being hit by huge blocks falling from the temple of Amun, which collapsed due to a cataclysmic earthquake that occurred in the second century BC. The falling stone blocks pinned the ship down under the deep channel.”

Ehab Fahmy, head of the underwater archaeology department at the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, told Al-Monitor the Egyptian-French archaeological mission of the European Institute for Underwater Archeology (IEASM) has been working in the city of Heracleion for a long time. “A few days ago, the mission found the warship wreck under around five meters of mud at the seabed.”

Wed 28 Jul 2021



The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been awarded Unesco world heritage status and dubbed “a masterpiece of human creative genius”.

The 2,300-year-old archaeological ruin Chankillo which lies in a desert valley in northern Peru was one of 13 new global sites added to the list of cultural monuments.

Thirteen towers that align on a ridge are the best-known feature of the ancient site which dates between 250 and 200 BCE. The towers functioned as a calendar using the rising and setting arcs of the sun to mark not only equinoxes and solstices but even to define the precise time of year to within one or two days. The site also includes an imposing triple-walled hilltop complex, known as the Fortified Temple set in the barren landscape of the Casma river valley.

Iván Ghezzi, the Chankillo programme director, told the Guardian that while he was “truly overwhelmed” by the recognition he was not surprised that the UN agency found Chankillo worthy of inclusion in the list.

“It is the only observatory from the ancient world that we know of that is a complete annual solar calendar,” said Ghezzi, an archeologist who has studied and worked on the site for two decades.

(Science Alert) An ancient fragment of clay tablet dating back to 3,700 years ago, during the Old Babylonian period, contains what is now the oldest known example of applied geometry, a mathematician has discovered. That's more than a millennium prior to the birth of Pythagoras.

And this history-altering artifact, known as Si.427, had just been sitting in a museum in Istanbul for more than 100 years.

"Si.427 dates from the Old Babylonian (OB) period - 1900 to 1600 BCE," said mathematician Daniel Mansfield of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.

"It's the only known example of a cadastral document from the OB period, which is a plan used by surveyors to define land boundaries. In this case, it tells us legal and geometric details about a field that's split after some of it was sold off."

That plan uses sets of numbers known as Pythagorean triples to derive accurate right angles, or sets of numbers that fit trigonometric models for calculating the sides of a right-angled triangle. This makes the timing of the artifact particularly interesting, with important implications for the history of mathematics, Mansfield noted.

wjfox wrote: ↑Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:28 pm