Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2022 7:20 am
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Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968872(EurekAlert) Research at the University of Gothenburg has shown that the Skaftö wreck had probably taken on cargo in Gdańsk in Poland and was heading towards Belgium when it foundered in the Lysekil archipelago around 1440. Modern methods of analysis of the cargo are now providing completely new answers about the way trade was conducted in the Middle Ages.
“The analyses we have carried out give us a very detailed picture of the ship’s last journey and also tell us about the geographical origins of its cargo. Much of this is completely new knowledge for us,” says Staffan von Arbin, a maritime archaeologist.
For example, it was not previously known that calcium oxide (CaO), commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, was exported from Gotland in the 15th century.
In 2003, the Skaftö wreck was found at the bottom of the sea off Lysekil, north of Gothenburg. But it is only now that researchers have been able to carry out analyses of its cargo using new, modern methods.
An international research team, headed by maritime archaeologist Staffan von Arbin at the University of Gothenburg, has succeeded in mapping the origins of its cargo and the probable route of the ship. The study contributes new knowledge about the goods traded in the Middle Ages and the trade routes in that period.
On December 21, 2021, Pawel Bednarski made the discovery of a lifetime using a metal detector. It was actually a bit of a coincidence that he ventured out on this particular day. The weather had been uncooperative for a while, but the forecast was for a couple of days of better weather. Bednarski decided to take the chance and do a search on a plot of land at the Kongshaug plateau in Stjørdal.
"The first item I found was a small ring that didn't look particularly interesting at first glance. Then another ring appeared—and then a piece of a bangle," Bednarski says.
Eventually he had unearthed a whole trove of small silver objects, including pieces of coins, jewelry and silver wire—all a mere two to seven centimeters below the ground.
"The objects were covered in clay, so it wasn't easy to see what they looked like. It was only when I got home and rinsed off one of the bangle pieces that I realized this was an exciting find," says Bednarski.
Bednarski submitted the artifacts to the county municipality archaeologists, who confirmed that the find was of interest and presumably from the Viking Age.
It was only when researcher and archaeologist Birgit Maixner at the NTNU University Museum was contacted that Pawel found out just how exciting the find was.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/969295(EurekAlert) The island of Madagascar—one of the last large land masses colonized by humans—sits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) off the coast of East Africa. While it’s still regarded as a place of unique biodiversity, Madagascar long ago lost all its large-bodied vertebrates, including giant lemurs, elephant birds, turtles, and hippopotami. A human genetic study reported in the journal Current Biology on November 4 links these losses in time with the first major expansion of humans on the island, around 1,000 years ago.
“This human demographic expansion was simultaneous with a cultural and ecological transition on the island,” says Denis Pierron, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) researcher in Toulouse, France. “Around the same period, cities appeared in Madagascar and all the vertebrates of more than 10 kilograms disappeared.”
The origins of humans in Madagascar has long been an enigma, Pierron explained. Madagascar is home to 25 million people who speak an Asian language despite the island’s proximity to East Africa. Other groups who speak similar languages live more than 4,000 miles away. The people that live on Madagascar are known to trace their roots back to two small populations: one Bantu-speaking from Africa and another Austronesian-speaking from Asia. But, beyond that, the history remained rather murky.
To retrace the history and understand more about the origin of Malagasy people, a multi-disciplinary consortium launched in 2007 a project known as Madagascar Genetic and Ethnolinguistic (MAGE). Over a 10-year period, Malagasy and international researchers visited more than 250 villages across the country to sample the cultural and genetic human diversity.
In the new study, Pierron and his colleagues took a close look at the human genetic evidence. More specifically, they closely studied how various segments of human chromosomes were shared together with local ancestry information and computer-simulated genetic data. Together, they’ve inferred that the Malagasy ancestral Asian population was isolated on the island for more than 1,000 years with an effective population size of just a few hundred individuals.
Read more here: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ ... ddle-ages(The Drive) Joint land-sea operations were fairly uncommon in the Middle Ages. Rarer still was it for medieval generals to coordinate such actions across hundreds of miles and several months in advance. Almost unheard of was it to plan such complex offensives down to the week, in an attack that depended on speed, surprise, and timing. Yet this is exactly what Saladin did with his remarkable siege of Beirut in 1182.
Saladin is among the best-known generals of the Middle Ages, famous for his overwhelming victory at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, in which he destroyed the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s entire army, and his showdown with Richard the Lionheart and the Third Crusade, which confined their territory to a sliver of coastline for the next hundred years.
Less well-known are Saladin’s earlier exploits against these states. For nearly two decades before Hattin, he conducted a number of campaigns against the three Christian states which controlled the entire eastern shore of the Mediterranean – from north to south, these were the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Crusaders were tough and wily opponents. Although usually outnumbered, they played a superb defensive game, capitalizing on their strengths and refusing to leave an opening that their enemies could exploit. They also made the most of their geographic advantages: their frontiers were protected by imposing coastal mountain ranges, the river Jordan, and formidable deserts. This forced Saladin to experiment with a variety of approaches to land a decisive blow. It was during one such attempt that he launched his attack on Beirut.
Archaeologists have found what they say is the first solid scientific evidence suggesting that Vikings crossed the North Sea to Britain with dogs and horses.
Research led by Durham University, UK, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium, examined human and animal remains from Britain's only known Viking cremation cemetery at Heath Wood, in Derbyshire.
Scientists looked at strontium isotopes contained within the remains. Strontium is a natural element found in different ratios across the world and provides a geographical fingerprint for human and animal movements.
Their analysis showed that within the context of the archaeology, one human adult and several animals almost certainly came from the Baltic Shield area of Scandinavia, covering Norway and central and northern Sweden, and died soon after arrival in Britain.
The researchers say this suggests that Vikings were not only stealing animals when they arrived in Britain, as accounts from the time describe, but were also transporting animals from Scandinavia, too.