Guatemala
Two intact Maya tombs have been found in northern Guatemala near the border with Belize.
Using LiDar, the tombs were found at Holmul, a Maya site in the Petén region. Archaeologists are surprised the tombs have not previously been looted.
Both tombs, dating to between 650 and 700 AD, are likely to be of the Maya elite and will no doubt contain great treasures, but more importantly the tombs will shed light on the mysterious snake cult. The “snake kings” were once thought to have been somewhat isolated in a particular region, but these tombs suggest the cult was far more widespread.
Italy
An amazing eleven-minute video shows the virtual recreation of a house in Pompeii.
The town of Pompeii was destroyed in 79 AD after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The subsequent pyroclastic flow covered much of the town in volcanic ash, which today has provided us with valuable insights into Roman life due to the buried and intact remains.
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/house-caecilius-iucundus-pompeii-04248.html
Turkey
A 2,100-year-old statue of the Anatolian goddess Cybele is the first marble statue ever found in situ in Turkey.
The statue was found in the 2,300-year-old Kurul Kalesi (Council Fortress) site on the Black Sea coast and weighs 200 kg (31.5 stone).
The priceless statue of Cybele, sitting on her throne, is of such antiquity that it is very unlikely such a rare find will ever occur again. It is extremely unusual that this is the first marble statue found in situ in the whole of Turkey because of the country’s ancient origins – the oldest in the world. Anatolia, however, was the seat of warfare and the power struggles of East versus West for millennia, and for that reason many cities were destroyed and rebuilt, often many times over. Adding earthquakes into the mix, one can see how rare this find actually is.
**Breaking News**
Egypt
An ancient ‘city’ has been found at Abydos in Egypt, near the Nile River.
Dating to 5316 BC (that seems strangely accurate), the ‘city’ was a residential area for officials and tomb builders who were responsible for the royal tombs of the era. Apparently.
The area was discovered 400 metres south of King Seti I temple in Abydos, and that kind of accurate measuring is why I’ve put apostrophes around the word ‘city’ – it clearly isn’t a city, even by the standards of 7,000 years ago. It was, however, a part of the existing ancient city of Abydos.
These sensationalistic headlines are extremely frustrating, especially when they come from archaeologists who should know better, and even more so when they come from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
But that’s not all. According to the report:
“Remains of huts and daily life tools were found in the site, including the remains of pottery and stone tools, which indicates that the residential city supplied the labour force engaged in the construction of royal tombs with food and drink, according to Afify.”
How on earth do you come to a conclusion like that? There is no evidence they supplied the labour force with food and drink; the only evidence that exists is that they found “pottery and stone tools”. It’s amazing the conclusions people come to.
Still, this is a great discovery and I hope there will be more to come.
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/ancient-residential-city-cemetery-discovered-abydos
Argentina
A 14,000-year-old camp site in Argentina is adding more evidence to a much earlier human migration into the Americas. A pre-“ice corridor” colonisation of the continent is more than apparent, as more and more sites are found in south America dating to many thousands of years before the Clovis culture of north America. Again we need to re-evaluate the story, as more evidence provides insight into a continent-wide migration, rather than a single route from Siberia. If the dates that are coming out of the archaeological strata are accepted, then we have to start looking at the idea that humans may have reached the Americas at least 20,000 years ago. I’ve been saying that for a long time now though 🙂
Here is the scientific paper for those nerds like myself! 🙂
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162870
United States / Canada / The Americas
As you know by now I do not support the prevailing migration theory of the Americas.
Here again, another study disproves the accepted idea that the first Americans migrated through an ice corridor through the Bering Land Bridge and into North America.
The study has found that although the ice corridor did open up, it was not passable. Their study was meticulously carried out by looking at the fauna and how the ice corridor would have altered during the time period in question. And that time period puts the Clovis culture on the eastern side of the United States long before people were able to pass through the ice corridor.
Unfortunately their answer to this problem is to suggest that humans took the route of the Pacific coast and then migrated inland. Again, the archaeologists are just following the rhetoric and trying to fit their findings into the preconceived theory.
It is very clear from my perspective the Americas were populated from both sides, and from north and south, at different time periods.
More and more evidence is coming forward on a regular basis. The accepted theory is slowly cracking at the seams. Hopefully it won’t be too long before it collapses altogether.
**Breaking News**
Mexico
A third pyramid has been discovered within the interior of the famous pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza.
The Maya pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza is famous for its remarkable mathematics and incredible equinox-related properties.
There are 91 steps on each side of the pyramid and the platform on the top makes the total 365 – the days of the solar year. But the most remarkable phenomenon occurs during the two equinoxes. As the sun moves in the sky the shadow of the corner stones falls onto the walls of the central stairways, and slowly the shadow moves in the same way a snake would if it was winding its way down the pyramid. At the bottom of the steps, on each wall, there is a carved statue of a snake’s head. It’s an incredible feat of engineering and would have required meticulous study of the sun’s path through the sky over many decades.
The new third structure is a third of the size (10m) of the main outer pyramid (30m) and gives more insight into Maya architecture.
The discovery of the new inner pyramid is very exciting but it is not something new – most large pyramids were built in the same way, one pyramid built on top of another, and so on. This phenomenon is found all over central and south America and was a common feature of pyramid building for at least two thousand years.
Malaysia
Previously I reported on the site of Sungai Batu, which is likely to receive World Heritage status due to its immense importance in the history of south-east Asia.
The reason for its sudden prominence in the archaeological world was the discovery that the city was much older than Angkor Wat in Cambodia, previously considered to be the oldest civilisation in the region. Naturally I think it’s ludicrous to think civilisation rose in such a vast area only a thousand years ago, but still. From previous evidence, what Sungai Batu has done is push back that date by another 1500 years – more than doubling the age of south-east Asian civilisation. No surprise there.
This time around at Sungai Batu archaeologists have found 5 to 7 “ships or barges”, buried in the mud and potentially intact in some form or another, each measuring between 40 and 50 feet in length. This discovery has been made by satellite images of the ancient river and show the vessels to be up to 3,000 years old, although evidence of the settlement suggests an age of 2,500 years. The first vessel was actually found in 2011, but after excavating a five-metre deep pit and uncovering a two-metre long mast in situ, the walls of the excavation pit collapsed in 2012 and it filled with water… an archaeologist’s worst nightmare, I can assure you.
Presently, Sungai Batu is proving to be one of the most important archaeological sites in the entire south-east Asian region.
**Breaking News**
Iraq
Nimrud, the 3,300-year-old capital of the Assyrian Empire, has been almost completely destroyed.
I find it very difficult to write those words, let alone read them.
**Breaking News**
Bulgaria
One of the archaeological finds of the century has uncovered around 40 intact shipwrecks at the bottom of the Black Sea, off the coast of Bulgaria.
Australia
Ironic I have come across this report today as I saw something yesterday evening along these lines. It’s not particularly surprising that the indigenous Australians are the earliest culture on earth – they have been isolated there for at least 50,000 years and, in another report I came across and which I posted here, may be up to 80,000 years on the continent.
But I still do not believe the migration theory of humans out of Africa. The story changes every time we hear it. First of all man left Africa 50,000 years ago, but that idea was put to bed a long time ago when other findings came out, and other hominid species were found to be much older than 50,000 years. So how did they resolve this issue? Instead of looking at the entire model again they simply put the date back to 100,000 years. That’s bad science. And in this report we hear that the native Australians left Africa a long time ago, spread by boat through Asia, meeting other hominids and mating with them, and eventually landed on Australia. It’s just utter nonsense. And yet the scholars, anthropologists and archaeologists always have to tow the line and follow the rhetoric of the man out of Africa theory.
The article I saw yesterday suggests that humans actually started in Australia and then moved north and spread around the world. Now that is an interesting idea. However, as I stated in my book, and I will continue to do so, I believe very strongly that different human groups evolved in different areas of the world at different times. I am certain we did not all originate in Africa. As the article states, all “non-African” human beings share “1 to 6% of Neanderthal DNA”. That clearly suggests the Neanderthal did not have African origins. So, if the Neanderthal did not originate in Africa, then… go figure!
China
The crown of Empress Xiao of the Sui Dynasty has been revealed after years of restoration work.
The Sui dynasty lasted for just 37 years from 581 to 618 AD. There were only two emperors, and Empress Xiao was the wife of the second and last emperor, Yang Guang.
The crown was discovered in 2012 and is the oldest crown of an empress ever found in China.
I find it doubtful the restored version is actually the original, and is most likely a remade copy.
Cyprus
After completing the first draft of The Guru, I have found it an intense struggle to begin the second draft and the editing process. There is something wrong with the book but I cannot figure out what it is yet. The Guru is already two-and-a-half years in the making and, with The Evolution taking four-and-a-half years, I am getting concerned The Guru will take even longer with the way things are going.
In the meantime I have reverted back to the travelogues and I am starting a new section – Cyprus. It has taken me a month of hard work to complete this travelogue. There were many issues, but mainly the problem has been cross-referencing my photos with those in the main text book / reference. One of those issues took several days to figure out, but I eventually realised it wasn’t my photo that was the problem – the photo in the reference book had been labelled wrong!
Anyway, it is now complete and it is now published.
https://www.stephenmaybury.co.uk/travelogue/1-paphos-tombs-of-the-kings/
Mexico
The Grolier Codex, found the the 1960s and thought to be a fake, has now been proven to be genuine. The manuscript is the oldest book found anywhere in ancient America and is dated to the 13th Century.
The codex has had a controversial history since its discovery, but academia’s previous reasoning for the codex being a fake cannot be attributed to academic reasoning!
Because the codex was found by looters in 1964, and it wasn’t discovered by archaeologists or anyone that was considered to be in possession of a trusting personality, scholars believed it was a fake. But not only is the codex genuine, carbon dating has proven the codex to be older than the three other famous surviving Maya codices – the Dresden Codex, Madrid Codex, and Paris Codex.
In fact, even with removing the results of the Carbon 14 test, the reasons for its authenticity are so obvious the mind boggles that anyone would have considered the codex to be a fake in the first place.
I would love to have a rant about this error and the knowledge filtering peer-review process but I won’t.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-13th-century-maya-codex-shrouded.html