To read the whole article, please go to:http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/mysterious-minoans-were-european-130514.htm

A mural appears inside the Minoan palace of Knossos, Crete Island, Greece.
KEREN SU/CORBIS

The Minoans, the builders of Europe’s first advanced civilization, really were European, new research suggests. The conclusion, was drawn by comparing DNA from 4,000-year-old Minoan skeletons with genetic material from people living throughout Europe and Africa in the past and today.
“We now know that the founders of the first advanced European civilization were European,” said study co-author George Stamatoyannopoulos, a human geneticist at the University of Washington. “They were very similar to Neolithic Europeans and very similar to present day-Cretans,” residents of the Mediterranean island of Crete.
First European Civilization
The Minoan culture emerged on Crete, which is now part of Greece, and flourished from about 2,700 B.C. to 1,420 B.C. Some believe that a massive eruption from the Volcano Thera on the island of Santorini doomed the Bronze Age civilization, while others argue that invading Mycenaeans toppled the once-great power.
When British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the Minoan palace of Knossos more than 100 years ago, he was dumbstruck by its beauty. He also noticed an eerie similarity between Minoan and Egyptian art, and didn’t believe that the culture was homegrown. “That’s why Evans postulated the civilization was imported from Egypt or Libya.”
Genetic clues
To test that idea, the research team analyzed DNA from ancient Minoan skeletons that were sealed in a cave in Crete’s Lassithi Plateau between 3,700 and 4,400 years ago. They then compared the skeletal mitochondrial DNA, which is stored in the energy powerhouses of cells and passed on through the maternal line, with that found in a sample of 135 modern and ancient populations from around Europe and Africa.
The researchers found that the Minoan skeletons were genetically very similar to modern-day Europeans — and especially close to modern-day Cretans, particularly those from the Lassithi Plateau. They were also genetically similar to Neolithic Europeans, but distinct from Egyptian or Libyan populations.
The findings argue against Evan’s hypothesis and suggest that locals, not African expats, developed the Minoan culture.
Ancient language?
The findings suggest that the ancient Minoans were likely descended from a branch of agriculturalists in Anatolia (what is now modern-day Turkey and Iraq) that fanned out into Europe about 9,000 years ago. If so, the Minoans may have spoken a proto-Indo-European language derived from the one possibly spoken by those Anatolian farmers, the researchers speculate.
Knowing that the Minoan language has Indo-European roots could help archaeologists decipher a mysterious Minoan writing system, known as Linear A, Stamatoyannopoulos said.

To read the complete article, please go to: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/archaeology/10022628/Lost-city-of-Heracleion-gives-up-its-secrets.html

Photo: Christoph Gerigk

For centuries it was thought to be a legend, a city of extraordinary wealth mentioned in Homer, visited by Helen of Troy and Paris, her lover, but apparently buried under the sea. In fact, Heracleion was true, and a decade after divers began uncovering its treasures, archaeologists have produced a picture of what life was like in the city in the era of the pharaohs.
The city, also called Thonis, disappeared beneath the Mediterranean around 1,200 years ago and was found during a survey of the Egyptian shore at the beginning of the last decade. Now its life at the heart of trade routes in classical times are becoming clear, with researchers forming the view that the city was the main customs hub through which all trade from Greece and elsewhere in the Mediterranean entered Egypt.

They have discovered the remains of more than 64 ships buried in the thick clay and sand that now covers the sea bed. Gold coins and weights made from bronze and stone have also been found, hinting at the trade that went on. Giant 16 foot statues have been uncovered and brought to the surface while archaeologists have found hundreds of smaller statues of minor gods on the sea floor. Slabs of stone inscribed in both ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian have also been brought to the surface. Dozens of small limestone sarcophagi were also recently uncovered by divers and are believed to have once contained mummified animals, put there to appease the gods.

Photo: Christoph Gerigk

“The site has amazing preservation. We are now starting to look at some of the more interesting areas within it to try to understand life there. “The ships are really interesting as it is the biggest number of ancient ships found in one place and we have found over 700 ancient anchors so far.” The researchers, working with German TV documentary makers, have also created a three dimensional reconstruction of the city. At its heart was a huge temple to the god Amun-Gereb, the supreme god of the Egyptians at the time. From this stretched a vast network of canals and channels, which allowed the city to become the most important port in the Mediterranean at the time. It was also mentioned fleetingly in ancient texts.
Dr Robinson said: “It was the major international trading port for Egypt at this time. It is where taxation was taken on import and export duties. All of this was run by the main temple.”

Submerged under 150 feet of water, the site sits in what is now the Bay of Aboukir. In the 8th Century BC, when the city is thought to have been built, it would have sat at the mouth of the River Nile delta as it opened up into the Mediterranean. Over time the city faded from memory and its existence, along with other lost settlements along the coast, was only known from a few ancient texts. “We are just at the beginning of our research. We will probably have to continue working for the next 200 years for Thonis-Heracleion to be fully revealed and understood.”

To read the complete article, please go to:http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/ancient-gold-adorned-skeleton-found-130423.htm

A computer-generated image showing the Copper Age woman buried near Windsor Castle in England. Credit: Wessex Archaeology.

British archaeologists have unearthed the remains of what might be the first queen of Windsor in a 4,400-year-old female skeleton adorned with some of Britain’s earliest gold jewels. The find could predate Windsor’s royal connection by more than three millennia. Archaeologists discovered the remains at Kingsmead Quarry, not far from Windsor Castle, which, since the time of Henry I (1068 – 1135), has been associated with British royals.
The burial was dated to the Copper Age, between 2,200 and 2,500 B.C. — just a century or two after the construction of Stonehenge, which stands about 60 miles to the south-west.
The bones, which were almost destroyed by the acidic soil around the grave, indicate the individual was a woman aged at least 35. At the time of her burial she wore a necklace of tubular sheet gold beads and black disks of lignite (a form of coal).
In a row along the body, the archaeologists found a number of pierced amber beads, possibly buttons for her long-vanished woven wool clothes. A number of black beads found near her hand suggest she wore a bracelet.
Interestingly, a large drinking vessel lay by the woman’s hip. Decorated with a comb-like stamp, the fine pottery, known to archaeologist as a beaker, linked the burial to communities which lived across Europe at around 2,500 B.C.
According to the archaeologists in charge of the excavation, Gareth Chaffey of Wessex Archaeology, the woman was probably “an important person in her society, perhaps holding some standing which gave her access to prestigious, rare and exotic items.” “She could have been a leader, a person with power and authority, or possibly part of an elite family — perhaps a princess or queen,” Chaffey said. According to Wessex Archaeology, an “extensive prehistoric landscape” is still buried beneath the quarry and surrounding areas on the edge of West London and East Berkshire.

To read the complete article, please go to:

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/gate-to-hell-found-in-turkey-1303291.htm

Hierapolis runs –Curtesy Wikimedia Commons

A “gate to hell” has emerged from ruins in southwestern Turkey, Italian archaeologists have announced.
Known as Pluto’s Gate — Ploutonion in Greek, Plutonium in Latin — the cave was celebrated as the portal to the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology and tradition. Historic sources located the site in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now called Pamukkale, and described the opening as filled with lethal mephitic vapors. “This space is full of a vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Any animal that passes inside meets instant death,” the Greek geographer Strabo (64/63 BC — about 24 AD) wrote. “I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell,” he added. Founded around 190 B.C. by Eumenes II, King of Pergamum (197 B.C.-159 B.C.), Hierapolis was given over to Rome in 133 B.C.

The Hellenistic city grew into a flourishing Roman city, with temples, a theater and popular sacred hot springs, believed to have healing properties. Featuring a vast array of abandoned broken ruins, possibly the result of earthquakes, the site revealed more ruins once it was excavated. The archaeologists found Ionic semi columns and, on top of them, an inscription with a dedication to the deities of the underworld — Pluto and Kore. According to D’Andria, the site was a famous destination for rites of incubation. Pilgrims took the waters in the pool near the temple, slept not too far from the cave and received visions and prophecies, in a sort of oracle of Delphi effect. Indeed, the fumes coming from the depths of Hierapoli’s phreatic groundwater produced hallucinations.

Fully functional until the 4th century AD, and occasionally visited during the following two centuries, the site represented “an important pilgrimage destination for the last pagan intellectuals of the Late Antiquity,” Filippini said. During the 6th century AD, the Plutonium was obliterated by the Christians. Earthquakes may have then completed the destruction.

To read the whole article, please go to: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130404122455.htm

Analysis of a bronze battering ram from a 2000 year-old warship sheds light on how such an object would have been made in ancient times. (Credit: Image courtesy of National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK))

Known as the Belgammel Ram, the 20kg artefact was discovered by a group of British divers off the coast of Libya near Tobruk in 1964. The ram is from a small Greek or Roman warship — a “tesseraria.” These ships were equipped with massive bronze rams on the bow at the waterline and were used for ramming the side timbers of enemy ships. At 65cm long, the Belgammel Ram is smaller in size and would have been sited on the upper level on the bow. This second ram is known as a proembolion, which strengthened the bow and also served to break the oars of an enemy ship. Leading marine archaeologist, Dr Nic Flemming a visiting fellow of the National Oceanography Centre, co-ordinated a team of specialists from five institutes to analyse the artefact before it was returned to the National Museum in Tripoli in May 2010. Their results have been published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.
Dr Flemming said: “Casting a large alloy object weighing more than 20kg is not easy. To find out how it was done we needed specialists who could analyse the mix of metals in the alloys; experts who could study the internal crystal structure and the distribution of gas bubbles; and scholars who could examine the classical literature and other known examples of bronze castings.

Dr Chris Hunt and Annita Antoniadou of Queen’s University Belfast used radiocarbon dating of burnt wood found inside the ram to date it to between 100 BC to 100 AD. This date is consistent with the decorative style of the tridents and bird motive on the top of the ram, which were revealed in detail by laser-scanned images taken by archaeologist Dr Jon Adams of the University of Southampton.
The X-ray team produced a 3-D image of the ram’s internal structure using a machine capable of generating X-rays of 10 mevs to shine through 15cm of solid bronze. By rotating the ram on a turntable and making 360 images they created a complete 3-D replica of the ram similar to a medical CT scan. An animation of the X-rays has been put together by Dr Richard Boardman of m-VIS (mu-VIS), a dedicated centre for computed tomography (CT) at the University of Southampton.
Further analysis was carried out by geochemists Professor Ian Croudace, Dr Rex Taylor and Dr Richard Pearce at the University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Science (based at the National Oceanography Centre). Micro-drilled samples show that the composition of the bronze was 87 per cent copper, 6 per cent tin and 7 per cent lead. The concentrations of the different metals vary throughout the casting. Scanning Electron Microscopy, SEM, reveals that the lead was not dissolved with the other metals to make a composite alloy but that it had separated out into segregated intergranular blobs within the alloy as the metal cooled.

These results indicate the likelihood that the Belgammel Ram was cast in one piece and cooled as a single object. The thicker parts cooled more slowly than the thin parts so that the crystal structure and number of bubbles trapped in the metal varies from place to place.
The isotope characterisation of the lead component found in the bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) can be used as a fingerprint to reveal the origin of the lead ore used in making the metal alloy. Up until now, this approach has only provided a general location in the Mediterranean. But recent advances in the analysis technique means that the location can be identified with higher accuracy. The result shows that the lead component of the metal could have come from a district of Attica in Greece called Lavrion.
Micro-X-Ray fluorescence of the surface showed that corrosion by seawater had dissolved out some of the copper leaving it richer in tin and lead. It is significant that when comparing photographs from 1964 and 2008 there is no indication of change in the surface texture. This implies that the metal is stable and is not suffering from “Bronze Disease,” a corrosion process that can destroy bronze artefacts. The team’s objective was to understand how such a large bronze was cast, the history and composition of the alloy, its strength, how it was used in naval warfare, and how it survived 2000 years under the sea.
Since the Belgammel Ram was discovered, other rams have been found, some off the coast of Israel near Athlit, and more recently, off western Sicily.

“We will never know why the Belgammel Ram was on the seabed near Tobruk. There may have been a battle in the area, a skirmish with pirates. It could be that it was cargo from an ancient commercial vessel, about to be sold as salvage. The fragments of wood inside the ram show signs of fire, and we now know that parts of the bronze had been heated to a high temperature since it was cast which caused the crystal structure to change. The ship may have caught fire and the ram fell into the sea as the flames licked towards it. Some things will always remain a mystery. But we are pleased that we have gleaned so many details from this study that will help future work.”