Archaeology - The Parnassian (Page 2)

Archaeology · Science · Nature

Continuing our reading on plague among the hunter-gatherers of the Baikal region 5,500 years ago

Continuing our reading on plague among the hunter-gatherers of the Baikal region 5,500 years ago. An international team has studied ancient DNA from human remains at four burial grounds in the Lake Baikal area and, by sequencing genetic material preserved in teeth, has reconstructed bacterial genomes and identified

Archaeology · Science · Society · Ethnography

A new estimate of the Indigenous population of Australia before the arrival of Europeans has been published

A new estimate of the Indigenous population of Australia before the arrival of Europeans has been published. Modelling based on archaeological, genetic, ethnographic and ecological data has produced a median estimate of 2.22 million people by 1788, that is, by the arrival of the First Fleet. Earlier estimates ranged

Archaeology · Faith · Observations · Science

Swedish astrophysicist Göran Henriksson of Uppsala University finds that the pagan inhabitants of Old Uppsala used an exact lunisolar calendar to fix the date of the great winter sacrifice

Swedish astrophysicist Göran Henriksson of Uppsala University has established that the pagan inhabitants of Old Uppsala used an exact lunisolar calendar to fix the date of the great winter sacrifice. In the pre-Christian era Old Uppsala was the principal religious and political centre of the Svear, one of the

Archaeology · Science

A team of researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution has found traces of cannibalism in three caves in southern Spain

The scholars examined some one thousand human bones and teeth from the caves of Malalmuerzo, Carigüela and Maiolicas. They looked for signs pointing to the eating of human flesh: butchery marks, characteristic fractures, traces of boiling and tooth impressions. By butchery marks archaeologists mean the cuts and notches left on

Archaeology · Geography · Science · Nature

This melon seed is more than 1,000 years old, and its DNA proves that melons reached China from South Asia

Melon seeds found during the 2024 excavations at the submerged medieval port of Shomen Gugan, in the present-day city of Wenzhou in south-eastern China, have preserved their DNA thanks to airtight, waterlogged sediments. Four seeds were found in all. Two of them contained enough genetic material for sequencing,

Archaeology · Heritage · Science

A NASA Method for Processing Satellite Images Is Now Used to Read Faded Rock Art

The technique is called decorrelation stretch. The algorithm was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and its description was published in 1996 by a member of the laboratory's staff, Ronald Alley, in connection with an instrument that later flew on the Terra satellite.

Archaeology · The East · Science

Tiny 80,000-year-old stone points found in Uzbekistan's Obi-Rakhmat cave, which by wear traces and mass can only have served as arrowheads: the earliest evidence of ranged weapons in Eurasia

Tiny stone points 80,000 years old have been found in Uzbekistan's Obi-Rakhmat cave, which by wear traces and mass can only have served as arrowheads: that is, the earliest evidence of ranged weapons in Eurasia. Such technology has hitherto been associated exclusively with Homo sapiens, so

Archaeology · Faith · The East · Art · Books · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Science · Society · Nature

Marcus Aurelius advised retreating into oneself, for nowhere does a man withdraw more quietly

Marcus Aurelius advised retreating into oneself, for nowhere does a man withdraw more quietly. In the digest, for my part, I try to gather what has been published over the month while the memories are still fresh. So, the main things on the channel for August. The section on archaeology

Archaeology · Faith · The East · Science

A cheap copper-alloy ring, dug up in the 1960s at Herodium, King Herod's fortress-palace in the Judaean Desert, bearing the image of a vessel and the Greek letters ΠΙΛΑΤΟ

A cheap copper-alloy ring, dug up in the 1960s at Herodium, King Herod's fortress-palace in the Judaean Desert, bearing the image of a vessel and the Greek letters ΠΙΛΑΤΟ. Despite suggestions that the signet might have belonged to the most famous official in history, Pontius Pilate,

Archaeology · Science

It turns out that the so-called "Egyptian blue", the first synthetic pigment in history, is far more intricately made than previously thought

It turns out that the so-called "Egyptian blue", the first synthetic pigment in history, is far more intricately made than previously thought. The paint is not a homogeneous crystal: its blue crystals were fused with a glassy mass and several kinds of quartz particles, and so the

Archaeology · Museums · Observations · Heritage

The Villena Treasure, one of the greatest Bronze Age hoards, stolen in Spain

Fifty-nine objects, ten kilograms of gold and almost seven hundred grams of silver, which lay in the bed of a dried-up river near Alicante from the thirteenth century BC until December 1963, when the archaeologist José María Soler found them, survived three thousand three hundred years, a civil

Archaeology · Museums · Science

The Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Historical Museum work for a seventh season at the Gnezdilovo burial ground near Suzdal

The Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Historical Museum are working for a seventh season at the Gnezdilovo burial ground near Suzdal. This year they found a wooden burial chamber measuring 3.1 by 2.7 metres, the roof of which had collapsed by