A temple built on a circular base, possibly consecrated to the Aztec wind god, has been found in the historical centre of Mexico City.

Archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma told the German Press Agency Matos Moctezuma, Mexico’s most respected archaeologist and coordinator since 1978 of excavations on the remnants of the former Aztec capital, said the building was found behind Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral.

Experts believe it was consecrated to the Aztec wind god, Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, because “such temples had as their characteristic the presence of a circular base and of a square base.”

The temple was part of the great Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, and is believed to have been built in the late 15th century, Matos Moctezuma said.

Its precise dimensions were not known, though the researcher said the structure “could have a diameter of over 30 metres,” though excavations were ongoing. - Sapa-dpa — www.int.iol.co.za

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago, according to Press Trust of India (PTI) on Tuesday.

The international and multidisciplinary research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, has uncovered what it calls ‘Pompeii-like excavations’ beneath the Toba ash.

The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time.

“This suggests that human populations were present in India prior to 74,000 years ago, or about 15,000 years earlier than expected based on some genetic clocks,” said project director Michael Petraglia, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.

The team has concluded that many forms of life survived he super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks.

According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo sapiens.

Stone tool analysis has revealed that the artefacts consist of cores and flakes, which are classified in India as Middle Palaeolithic and are similar to those made by modern humans in Africa.

“Though we are still searching for human fossils to definitively prove the case, we are encouraged by the technological similarities.

An area of widespread speculation about the Toba super-eruption is that it nearly drove humanity to extinction.

The fact that the Middle Palaeolithic tools of similar styles are found right before and after the Toba super-eruption, suggests that the people who survived the eruption were the same populations, using the same kinds of tools, says Petraglia.

The research agrees with evidence that other human ancestors, such as the Neanderthals in Europe and the small brained Hobbits in Southeastern Asia, continued to survive well after Toba.

Although some scholars have speculated that the Toba volcano led to severe and wholesale environmental destruction, the Oxford-led research in India suggests that a mosaic of ecological settings was present, and some areas experienced a relatively rapid recovery after the volcanic event.

The team has not discovered much bone in Toba ash sites, but in the Billasurgam cave complex in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, the researchers have found deposits which they believe range from at least 100,000 years ago to the present.

They contain a wealth of animal bones such as wild cattle, carnivores and monkeys.

They have also identified plant materials in the Toba ash sites and caves, yielding important information about the impact of the Toba super-eruption on the ecological settings. — www.bernama.com

British Columbia, Canada: DNA recovered from ancient caribou bones reveals a possible link between several small unique caribou herds and a massive volcanic eruption that blanketed much of the Alaskan Yukon territory in a thick layer of ash 1,000 years ago, reports research published today in Molecular Ecology.

It’s just part of the story being read from ancient caribou remains by an international team of scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Canada who have been studying the history of this iconic and fragile Canadian species.

Tyler Kuhn, a Whitehorse native and Simon Fraser University graduate researcher, were able to coax short bits of ancient DNA from caribou bones found in 6,000-yr-old ice patches scattered across an area just north of the British Columbia border.

He and colleagues from Alberta, Alaska, Pennsylvania and Oxford compared this ancient DNA with DNA from caribou living nearby today. To their surprise, DNA from bones older than 1,000 years in the Whitehorse area did not match with the local caribou grazing nearby.

The modern caribou also turn out to not be related to caribou herds to the North, East or West. They represent new arrivals, possibly from farther south, though the caribou currently living just south are ecologically very different.

Critically, the 1,000-yr-old replacements coincide with the eruption of a huge volcano in nearby Southern Alaska that deposited a thick layer of ash called the White River Tephra.

The research is the first to identify a possible link between changes in local wildlife and the volcanic eruption.

The eruption has already been linked to major changes in the cultures of the First Nations, aboriginal peoples from the region, marking the transition between the atl-atl (throwing dart) hunting technology and newer and more effective bow and arrow technology.

Kuhn and his colleagues believe this surprising decoding of the history of caribou herds in the Yukon is more than just a scientific curiosity. “Most woodland caribou herds in Canada are threatened, and their survival will likely depend on our ability to act in the best interest of these herds,” says Kuhn.

“Understanding the relationships among herds is important, but understanding how herds react to environmental changes through time is equally necessary for us to manage caribou properly.” — www.eurekalert.org

A section of city wall that enclosed ancient Jerusalem and was probably built by King Solomon in the 10th century BC was found during recent digs, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said on Monday.

The unearthed wall is six metres high (20 feet) and 70 metres (230 feet) long, a statement said.

“We can estimate, with a high degree of certainty, that this was built by King Solomon toward the end of the 10th century BC,” archaeologist Eilat Mazar, who excavated for three months, said in the statement.

According to the Bible, Solomon built the first Jewish temple of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC.

The latest discovery “could corroborate written descriptions which recount construction projects carried out by King Solomon in Jerusalem,” the statement said.

The section of wall was discovered in the Ophel area, between the City of David and the southern part of another wall that surrounds the Temple Mount.

Also found were structures built at the same time as the section of wall, including a gatehouse accessing the royal district and a tower overlooking the Kidron Valley at the foot of the Mount of Olives, the statement said.

Pottery shards and the remains of two earthenware jars measuring 1.15 metres (3.8 feet) tall were also found, the statement said. One jar handle bore the inscription “For the King.”

All that remains of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, is the temple’s Western or Wailing Wall, the principal Jewish place of pilgrimage.

The holy site in east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed unilaterally after capturing the Arab sector of the city in 1967, houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, and is the third holiest site in the Islamic world. — news.yahoo.com

Over the last three decades, technological advancement has allowed archeologists to answer longstanding questions and refute misconceptions about missing details of Egypt’s history. From the remains of ancient rulers to Napoleon’s flagship, et takes you through some of archeology’s most significant discoveries in the last 30 years.

Tombs of the Pyramid Builders

For years it has been assumed that sites exist that could shed light on the lives of the Giza pyramid builders. Now that assumption is backed up by proof.

Since 1990, an Egyptian archeological team headed by Dr. Zahi Hawass has been excavating the remains of the town where the permanent workforce of pyramid artisans and their supervisors lived, In addition, the team also excavated a section where temporary workmen were housed and fed, and a vast cemetery in which all of the pyramid builders were buried.

The cemetery is divided into two sections — an upper section for the artistic overseers, including the overseers of the sculptors, and a lower section for the actual workers. At the time of the pyramid construction, 20 percent of Egyptians were royalty. The tombs yield important information about how the other 80 percent lived.

“The construction of the pyramids was a national project,” says Hawass. “The massive monument symbolized the might and power of the royal house, and many of the large families in Upper Egypt and the Delta contributed to its construction. This was either done by sending money or food.”

New evidence in the tombs put much speculation about the pyramids’ construction to rest. Unlike the 100,000 workers the Greek historian Herodotus estimated to have built the pyramids, the new evidence points to a figure closer to 10,000. Aside from providing proof of their actual numbers, the tombs also confirm their true identities.
“One of the biggest falsehoods about the Great Pyramid of Khufu is that it was built by slaves,” says Hawass. “The discovery of the tombs of the pyramid builders on the Giza Plateau has finally and conclusively put this theory to rest. We now know with certainty that the Pyramids were built by Egyptian men and women — not slaves!”

Had the workers been slaves, he says, they would never have been buried beside the pyramids with tombs prepared for the afterlife.

A Golden Opportunity

Dating back to Roman times, the Valley of the Golden Mummies was discovered by pure chance. In 1996, on the road to Farafra, the donkey of an antiquities guard tripped on the edge of what turned out to be a hidden tomb. The tomb held the mummies of men, women and children, many of which were covered in gold.

The site is of particular significance for the information it provides about the religious and social customs of the Greco-Roman era. Though many of the funerary traditions of the Pharaonic period were still in use until the second century AD, mummification methods used for the Bahariyya bodies were different than those used on New Kingdom-era mummies. Reeds were placed to the right and left of the body, then wrapped with linen and covered with resin. This made the mummies more stable and ultimately better preserved than their New Kingdom-era counterparts.

Hawass and his team brought an x-ray machine to the site and were able to find evidence of how the people buried in the tomb died; they were even able to detect signs of diseases such as cancer.

The Clue of the Queen’s Molar

Archeological technology took another step forward with the search for Queen Hatshepsut.

“[The Discovery Channel] built for us the only DNA lab in the world that is dedicated exclusively to mummies,” says Hawass. “DNA has never before been shown to be reliable for mummies, since it is hard to get a long enough sequence to learn anything useful, and it is very hard to be sure that the sample has not been contaminated. When you take a mummy and put it in another lab that is used for other things, you can have a 40 percent rate of error in the results due to contamination.”

Conducting DNA tests and CT scans on a portable machine donated by National Geographic, the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, one of the notable exceptions in the overwhelmingly male list of pharoahs, was conclusively identified, Hawass says.

The project examined unidentified New Kingdom mummies found in the Royal Mummy Caches. Hawass describes the site as a series of secret tombs in the Valley of the Kings where the high priests of Amun hid royal mummies from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties.

Identifying these mummies is difficult, according to Hawass. “We have to keep in mind that these mummies were moved at night, and we have to know that the bodies could be misplaced and misidentified. When they were being transferred, the mummy of one king could easily be placed in a coffin intended for another.”

In the search for Hatshepsut, two mummies were examined first: a small woman found inside an Eighteenth Dynasty coffin inscribed with the name of a royal nurse called In and an obese woman lying on the floor next to In’s coffin.

Originally discovered by Howard Carter in 1903, the tomb’s inscription named the small woman’s mummy as Sitre-In, Hatshepsut’s wet-nurse. The mummy of the obese woman has its left hand clenched across its chest — a sign of a royal mummy. The obese woman was assumed to be Hatshepsut, but there was no concrete proof.

CT scans were conducted on the two mummies and objects found in the tomb, including Hatshepsut’s canopic jars and a wooden box bearing her cartouches. The wooden box held the key to Hatshepsut’s identity.

“We know from other embalming caches that anything associated with a body or its mummification became ritually charged and had to be buried properly,” Hawass says. “Therefore, it seemed that during the mummification of Queen Hatshepsut, the embalmers put into the box anything that came loose from the body during the mummification process.” Aside from mummified viscera, there was a single tooth inside the box.

Dr. Galal El Beheri, a dentist from Cairo University, was brought in to study the CT scans of the mummies. The obese woman was missing a tooth, and an empty socket in her mouth was an exact match for the tooth in the box. When the results came in, Hawass was finally able to proclaim: “We therefore have scientific proof that this is the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut.”

According to an article by Dan Morrison for National Geographic News in June 2007, Hatshepsut and suffered from diabetes and died of bone cancer around the age of 50.

Identification of the mummies set new scientific standards for Egyptologists. The specialized DNA lab for mummies and the use of CT scans were groundbreaking in the world of archeology.

The Theban Mapping Project

Technology is not simply being used to unearth new treasures; it is being used to preserve old ones.

Packed with countless monuments and riches, Luxor was once the New Kingdom’s capital Thebes. Unfortunately, its notoriety has made it the target of treasure hunters throughout history. Now it is seeing traffic of a different sort, as millions of tourists visit every year to see what remains of the New Kingdom.

To prevent future degradation of the site, the Theban Mapping Project (TMP), led by Dr. Kent Weeks, has worked since 1978 to document archeological finds at the site, beginning with the Valley of the Kings.

As a first step in protecting the heritage of the site, a comprehensive database is being compiled using modern surveying techniques. Future plans include 3D computer models of the tombs. Due to heavy tourist traffic at the delicate site, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) demanded a management plan to preserve the Valley of the Kings in 2004. The World Monument Fund and the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), along with private donors, supported the initiative.

The management plan includes a comprehensive diagnosis of factors affecting the monuments on a daily basis. With such a massive task at hand, the project is still underway and remains critical to finding a balance between tourism, exploration and preservation in the area.

The Sons of Ramses II

While working on the mapping project, the team rediscovered the tomb of Ramses II’s sons, the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings. James Burton, who visited the tomb in 1825, only managed to crawl through a few chambers and never discovered the full extent of the site. In subsequent years the tomb was essentially forgotten.

In 1989, events took an unexpected turn when the TMP team started excavating the tomb and found decorations on the walls. Among the decorations were the names of six of Ramses II’s sons.

A narrow channel was cut through debris that blocked chamber three of the tomb in 1995. Instead of leading to a small side chamber as expected, it led to a 60-meter-long corridor lined with side chambers. Objects including human and animal remains, jewelry and written documents were found at the site. Today the tomb remains closed to the public as cleaning and conservation work takes place.

Hidden Portraits

Sohag’s Church of Saints Bishai and Bigol is unique in Coptic history. Known as the Red Monastery, the site dates back to the early Byzantine period, and contains a number of beautiful architectural artworks.

ARCE headed the campaign to conserve and study the monastery under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Bolman from Temple University. In 2007 the cleaning and conservation of niches and architecture in the southern apse revealed elaborate, colorful paintings. As work progresses, intriguing discoveries are being made, such as a bearded figure emerging from green foliage, reminiscent of the Green Man in Gothic sculpture. Others include peacocks and gazelles among plants and painted curtains.Many images remain a mystery, waiting to be uncovered from behind blackened surfaces.

With substantial support from the Coptic Church, the work continues to reveal more about the monastery, regarded as the heart of a monastic community in the fifth century AD.

Making Waves

Founded by Alexander the Great and once the nation’s cultural and political capital, Alexandria today is being rediscovered underwater. But underwater archeology has a less extensive history in Egypt than the land-based excavations. It was not until 1962 that Kamel Abu-Saadat, now considered a pioneer of underwater diving in Alexandria, convinced the navy to raise a colossal statue of Isis lying eight meters under the waves near the Qaitbey fortress. The project opened the door for other underwater excavations in Alexandria and an underwater archeology department was opened in 1996.

After Abu-Saadat’s work, underwater discoveries took off. Franck Goddio, a French underwater archeologist, and a team of Egyptian archeologists have recovered antiquities that included a statue of a high priest of Isis and another statue thought to be a sphinx representing Cleopatra’s father Ptolemy VII.

In the coastal town of Abu Qir, exciting recoveries were made when Jacques Dumas excavated L’Orient, the flagship of Napoleon’s fleet. Napoleon’s command ship lay 11 meters deep and yielded a treasure of gold coins from Egypt, Malta, Spain and Turkey, as well as artifacts that provided clues about the lives of its crew.

Three other ships, Le Guerrier, L’Artemise and La Serieuse, were also identified; objects recovered from them include iron cannons, small arms, and ammunition, ceramic plates, wine bottles and glass perfume flasks, along with gold, silver and bronze coins.

Underwater discoveries have gained increased importance for Alexandria. According to Dr. Ibrahim Darwish, director of the Alexandria National Museum and former director of the Underwater Archeology Department at the SCA, three earthquakes damaged the city in the second, fourth and twelfth centuries AD and many monuments fell into the sea.

“The Ptolemaic era remains a shady one in history, as we only have accounts from historians from the fourth, fifth and eighth centuries and no substantial material,” says Darwish. “Salvaging and rediscovering many of these sites is important for the study of that period.”

Advances in underwater archeology mean that much of the area’s Ptolemaic history may finally be recovered.

The Islamic Period

Dr. Bernard O’Kane, professor of Islamic art and architecture at the American University in Cairo, is navigating a landscape far different from the watery depths of the Mediterranean, but no less challenging. His project is to record every inscription on Cairo’s monuments, including prayers and Qur’anic inscriptions, not just dates and foundation stones.

“The project is designed to be a tool for historians and architects,” O’Kane explains. “It covers all Cairene monuments constructed before 1800, starting with the earliest Islamic monumental inscription.”

O’Kane’s team is photographing and translating every inscription. “This is a unique feature in the project because it was not done before,” says O’Kane. “Even though records were made by Max Van Berschem in the 1920s to record monumental inscriptions, [they did] not include translation.”

Because some monuments in the city have not stood the test of time, like the Musafir Khana palace that burned down in 1998, the project is invaluable for preserving monuments and providing a resource for future researchers.

The project’s fieldwork required an adventurous three-person team to scale imposing heights and deal with the awkward positions required to access some inscriptions. O’Kane explains, “One took the photos, another kept records and the third sketched a ground plan with arrows pointing to where photos of the inscription were taken.” The crew was recruited from students at AUC’s Islamic Art and Architecture Department, who received fellowships from the project. Some graduate students based their master’s theses on the project.

“Many collaborated in this project,” says O’Kane. “AUC and the American Research Center in Egypt covered many of the costs, especially because I got course release during the time I was working on the project. Also, there was a project director, Dr. Lubna Lufti and three students who received fellowships.”

The project has encountered problems trying to record monuments in military areas such as Moqqatam and Heliopolis; due to restoration efforts some monument inscriptions cannot be photographed. Nonetheless, publication is underway. The Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (Cultnat) is developing user-friendly software for the database so that it can be put on a DVD, slated for release later in the year, followed by a website that will provide updates on the project.

“The publication of this data is most likely going to be a collaboration between ARCE, AUC and Cultnat,” says O’Kane. “It will have worldwide distribution through AUC and will be most beneficial to Islamic art historians, epigraphers and calligraphers, as well as linguists.” — www.egypttoday.com

A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains.

East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built.

The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill”—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge—the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high—the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt’s German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is “unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date,” according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford’s archeology program. Enthusing over the “huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art” at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: “Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong.”

Schmidt’s thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a “Neolithic revolution” 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion. As far back as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thinkers have argued that the social compact of cities came first, and only then the “high” religions with their great temples, a paradigm still taught in American high schools.

Religion now appears so early in civilized life—earlier than civilized life, if Schmidt is correct—that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it, less a revelation than a genetic inheritance. The archeologist Jacques Cauvin once posited that “the beginning of the gods was the beginning of agriculture,” and Göbekli may prove his case.

The builders of Göbekli Tepe could not write or leave other explanations of their work. Schmidt speculates that nomadic bands from hundreds of miles in every direction were already gathering here for rituals, feasting, and initiation rites before the first stones were cut. The religious purpose of the site is implicit in its size and location. “You don’t move 10-ton stones for no reason,” Schmidt observes. “Temples like to be on high sites,” he adds, waving an arm over the stony, round hilltop. “Sanctuaries like to be away from the mundane world.”

Unlike most discoveries from the ancient world, Göbekli Tepe was found intact, the stones upright, the order and artistry of the work plain even to the un-trained eye. Most startling is the elaborate carving found on about half of the 50 pillars Schmidt has unearthed. There are a few abstract symbols, but the site is almost covered in graceful, naturalistic sculptures and bas-reliefs of the animals that were central to the imagination of hunter-gatherers. Wild boar and cattle are depicted, along with totems of power and intelligence, like lions, foxes, and leopards. Many of the biggest pillars are carved with arms, including shoulders, elbows, and jointed fingers. The T shapes appear to be towering humanoids but have no faces, hinting at the worship of ancestors or humanlike deities. “In the Bible it talks about how God created man in his image,” says Johns Hopkins archeologist Glenn Schwartz. Göbekli Tepe “is the first time you can see humans with that idea, that they resemble gods.”

The temples thus offer unexpected proof that mankind emerged from the 140,000-year reign of hunter-gatherers with a ready vocabulary of spiritual imagery, and capable of huge logistical, economic, and political efforts. A Catholic born in Franconia, Germany, Schmidt wanders the site in a white turban, pointing out the evidence of that transition. “The people here invented agriculture. They were the inventors of cultivated plants, of domestic architecture,” he says.

Göbekli sits at the Fertile Crescent’s northernmost tip, a productive borderland on the shoulder of forests and within sight of plains. The hill was ideally situated for ancient hunters. Wild gazelles still migrate past twice a year as they did 11 millennia ago, and birds fly overhead in long skeins. Genetic mapping shows that the first domestication of wheat was in this immediate area—perhaps at a mountain visible in the distance—a few centuries after Göbekli’s founding. Animal husbandry also began near here—the first domesticated pigs came from the surrounding area in about 8000 B.C., and cattle were domesticated in Turkey before 6500 B.C. Pottery followed. Those discoveries then flowed out to places like Çatalhöyük, the oldest-known Neolithic village, which is 300 miles to the west.

The artists of Göbekli Tepe depicted swarms of what Schmidt calls “scary, nasty” creatures: spiders, scorpions, snakes, triple-fanged monsters, and, most common of all, carrion birds. The single largest carving shows a vulture poised over a headless human. Schmidt theorizes that human corpses were ex-posed here on the hilltop for consumption by birds—what a Tibetan would call a sky burial. Sifting the tons of dirt removed from the site has produced very few human bones, however, perhaps because they were removed to distant homes for ancestor worship. Absence is the source of Schmidt’s great theoretical claim. “There are no traces of daily life,” he explains. “No fire pits. No trash heaps. There is no water here.” Everything from food to flint had to be imported, so the site “was not a village,” Schmidt says. Since the temples predate any known settlement anywhere, Schmidt concludes that man’s first house was a house of worship: “First the temple, then the city,” he insists.

Some archeologists, like Hodder, the Neolithic specialist, wonder if Schmidt has simply missed evidence of a village or if his dating of the site is too precise. But the real reason the ruins at Göbekli remain almost unknown, not yet incorporated in textbooks, is that the evidence is too strong, not too weak. “The problem with this discovery,” as Schwartz of Johns Hopkins puts it, “is that it is unique.” No other monumental sites from the era have been found. Before Göbekli, humans drew stick figures on cave walls, shaped clay into tiny dolls, and perhaps piled up small stones for shelter or worship. Even after Göbekli, there is little evidence of sophisticated building. Dating of ancient sites is highly contested, but Çatalhöyük is probably about 1,500 years younger than Göbekli, and features no carvings or grand constructions. The walls of Jericho, thought until now to be the oldest monumental construction by man, were probably started more than a thousand years after Göbekli. Huge temples did emerge again—but the next unambiguous example dates from 5,000 years later, in southern Iraq.

The site is such an outlier that an American archeologist who stumbled on it in the 1960s simply walked away, unable to interpret what he saw. On a hunch, Schmidt followed the American’s notes to the hilltop 15 years ago, a day he still recalls with a huge grin. He saw carved flint everywhere, and recognized a Neolithic quarry on an adjacent hill, with unfinished slabs of limestone hinting at some monument buried nearby. “In one minute—in one second—it was clear,” the bearded, sun-browned archeologist recalls. He too considered walking away, he says, knowing that if he stayed, he would have to spend the rest of his life digging on the hill.

Now 55 and a staff member at the German Archaeological Institute, Schmidt has joined a long line of his countrymen here, reaching back to Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. He has settled in, marrying a Turkish woman and making a home in a modest “dig house” in the narrow streets of old Urfa. Decades of work lie ahead.

Disputes are normal at the site—the workers, Schmidt laments, are divided into three separate clans who feud constantly. (”Three groups,” the archeologist says, exasperated. “Not two. Three!”) So far Schmidt has uncovered less than 5 percent of the site, and he plans to leave some temples untouched so that future researchers can examine them with more sophisticated tools.

Whatever mysterious rituals were conducted in the temples, they ended abruptly before 8000 B.C., when the entire site was buried, deliberately and all at once, Schmidt believes. The temples had been in decline for a thousand years—later circles are less than half the size of the early ones, indicating a lack of resources or motivation among the worshipers. This “clear digression” followed by a sudden burial marks “the end of a very strange culture,” Schmidt says. But it was also the birth of a new, settled civilization, humanity having now exchanged the hilltops of hunters for the valleys of farmers and shepherds. New ways of life demand new religious practices, Schmidt suggests, and “when you have new gods, you have to get rid of the old ones.” — www.newsweek.com

Bricks dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years have been unearthed in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, adding between 1,000 to 2,000 years onto Chinese brick-making history, archaeologists claimed Saturday.

“The five calcined bricks were unearthed from a site of the Yangshao Culture Period dating 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest known bricks in the country were more than 4,000 years old,” Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology researcher Yang Yachang said.

The bricks, including three red ones and two gray ones, all uncompleted, Yang said. The site under excavation is located at Liaoyuan Village of Baqiao District, and Huaxu Town, Lantian County of Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province.

Yangshao Culture is a Neolithic culture that flourished along the Yellow River, which runs across China from west to east. The culture was named after Yangshao, the name of the first village discovered of the culture, in 1921 in central China’s Henan Province.

Archaeologists used to believe the ceramics were applied to architecture in the Shang Dynasty (1600 B.C-1100 B.C.), which had been proved wrong by the new discovery, Yang said.

The smooth surface and rough surface of most well preserved red bricks are vertical to each other, and the rough surface was designed to be stuck to other materials, Yang said.

“It is still unknown whether the bricks were in a square or rectangle shape as none of them are complete,” he said.

The site, called Lantian New Street Site and covering an area of more than 200,000 square meters, was to be cut through by a new highway, said Shao Jing, assistant researcher of the institute.

The salvage excavation was launched in August 2009. As of February, more than 2,300 square meters had been excavated, Shao said.

More than 150 sites, including houses, ash pits, ash grooves and kilns, had been found in the area, Shao said.

“The bricks were all discovered in ash pits, which were garbage containers for the ancient people. For the modern archaeologist, these garbage containers are treasure troves of artifacts,” she said.

The world’s oldest unearthed bricks date back 8,000 to 10,000 years. They were discovered in Middle East and they were adobes which had not been calcined. Thus, the brick-making history of human kind should be about 10,000 years, Yang Yachang said. — english.cri.cn

His Highness Sayyid Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, minister of heritage and culture, yesterday presided over the launch ceremony of Omani heritage website enlisted in the World Heritage list.

The launching ceremony, held at the office of HM the Sultan adviser for cultural affairs, was attended by Sayyid Ali bin Hamoud bin Ali Al Busaidi, minister of the Diwan of Royal Court; Abdulaziz bin Mohammed Al Rowas, HM the Sultan adviser for cultural affairs; Sheikh Abdullah bin Salim bin A’amir Al Rowas, minister of regional municipalities and water resources and other officials.

Sayyid Haitham, while expressing satisfaction over the launch of this website, affirmed that the constant and new archaeological discoveries in the Sultanate reflect the historic and cultural status of the country.

In a statement, Sayyid Haitham hailed the efforts undertaken by the Office of HM the Sultan adviser for cultural affairs and the vital role played by it. The minister also praised the efforts undertaken by the Sultanate to maintain the historic and heritage sites.

He pointed out that the Omani archaeological findings usher in a new reign of the archaeological findings in the Dhofar governorate.

“They are important archaeological findings that were lost in the past. With continuous work by the archaeologists, these monuments will soon be unveiled. The office of HM the Sultan adviser for cultural affairs will document these findings in the World Heritage list. This is a new thing added to the other sites that have been already recorded,” the minister explained.

Excavation works

Sayyid Haitham pointed out that these sites reflect the Sultanate’s historic status throughout history, which goes back to the pre-and post Islamic eras. The Sultanate continues its efforts to document these sites, he added.

The ceremony included a presentation on some of the archaeological sites and the work progress. Professor Elindra Afzine, chairperson of the Italian mission from Piza University spoke about Salout archaeological site in the wilayat of Bahla in Al Dakhiliyah region.

The commission is undertaking excavation works since 2004.

She added that Salout archaeological site is a plateau rich of heritage sites that date back to the early bronze age. She stressed that the area has been surveyed by a number of scientific missions since the 70s and that a team from Birmingham University is currently undertaking a project at the site.

She also spoke about Khur Ruri Samarham archaeological site in the Dhofar governorate, pointing out that the restoration works is going on by using materials that meet the requirements and laws of the Unesco and Icomos.

She said that Samarham was a small city, not more than one hectare. — www.timesofoman.com

A well-built aqueduct from time of King Herod was unearthed last week near the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem during work on infrastructure in the area.

The site of the discovery is not far from the place where a Byzantine street was recently unearthed.

Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists say they found about 40 meters of the ancient waterway, which was part of the sophisticated aqueduct that brought water to Jerusalem from springs in the Hebron hills to the south to the Mamilla pool, which still exists today, and from there through the aqueduct to Hezekiah’s Pool within the walled city.

Archaeologists say the aqueduct was first built in the first century BCE, and was in use in the second century. Within it were discovered roof tiles from the Roman Tenth Legion, which controlled the city at that time.

The aqueduct, which is 1.5 meters high and 60 centimeters wide, was built of large, flat stones. Every 15 meters a shaft connected the aqueduct to the road above it. According to the dig director, Dr. Ofer Sion, the shafts were used in maintenance work on the water system.

The 40-meter stretch ends just before the aqueduct reaches the Old City, where it is blocked, apparently by a collapsed shaft.

Scholars have known of the existence of an aqueduct here for about a century, thanks to a map by the German architect and archaeologist Conrad Schick, who unearthed a few meters of it. It was never excavated because this area is one of the city’s busiest intersections.

The recently discovered Byzantine street has already been covered as infrastructure work continues. The fate of the aqueduct has not yet been decided. Israel Antiquities Authority personnel say they believe an entrance to the aqueduct could remain, so that perhaps one day it could be opened to the public. —www.haaretz.com

The buried antiquities of Ur could one day outshine those of ancient Egypt, archaeologists at a large-scale excavation in Iraq believe.

With the country ravaged by war and strife since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Baghdad’s struggling government has had greater priorities than funding large-scale digs at Ur - the birth place of Abraham and one of the cradles of civilisation - where only small teams have been working since 2005.

“When the (large-scale) excavations restart, tons of antiquities will see the light of day, filling entire museum wings,” enthused Dhaif Moussin, who is in charge of protecting a site that has been prone to looting.

“This site will become perhaps more important than Giza,” he added, referring to the plateau outside the Egyptian capital of Cairo where some of mankind’s most treasured antiquities have been unearthed, including the Sphinx and several notable pyramids.

That may not be just an idle boast.

In the early 1900s an American archaeologist, Charles Leonard Woolley, made some stunning finds when he unearthed 16 tombs of Ur’s elite.

Inside he found some of the greatest treasures of antiquity, including a golden dagger encrusted with lapis lazuli, an intricately carved golden statue of a ram caught in a thicket, a lyre decorated with a bull’s head and the gold headdress of a Sumerian queen.

Those treasures have been compared to the riches from the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king, Tutankhamun, but they excite archaeologists even more because the graves at Ur are more than 1,000 years older.

Archaeologically, the most astonishing find of Ur has been a remarkably well-preserved stepped platform, or ziggurat, which dates back to the third millennium BC, when it was part of a temple complex that served as the administrative centre of the Sumerian capital.

To date, hardly 20 per cent of the site has been excavated, mainly by American and British archaeologists.

“Some archaeologists estimate it will take more than 30 years to dig out the entire city,” said Moussin, surveying the site. Ur lies near a US air base just outside the southern city of Nasiriyah, a major battle ground of the American invasion.

“It is certain that much more material remains to be discovered,” said Steve Tinney, professor of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania which, together with the British Museum, sponsored Woolley’s excavations between 1922 and 1934.

Ur of the Chaldees, as it is mentioned in the Bible, was one of the great urban centres of the Sumerian civilisation of southern Iraq and remained an important city until its conquest by Alexander the Great a few centuries before Christ.

It is thought to have reached its apogee under King Ur-Nammu, an accomplished warrior and founder of Sumer’s third dynasty, who is believed to have lived between 2112 and 2095 BC.

During his rule, the Sumerian capital boasted paved roads, tree-lined avenues, schools, poets, scribes, and stunning works of art and architecture of the kind discovered by Woolley and his team.

The kingdom was governed by a real administration and code of laws. Sumerian script, called cuneiform, is the earliest known writing system in the world.

Tinney said he hoped for the discovery of texts that would shed light on the culture and polytheistic religion of the Sumerians.

“We do not have literature on Ur-Nammu and his successors, the Sumerians or their rituals,” said Tinney.

The site would be unequalled in the world if it proves to be the birthplace of Abraham, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, said Moussin.

Woolley wanted to prove that Abraham had lived in Ur, after discovering Abraham’s name on a brick unearthed there.

But for all of its former glory, Ur is likely to remain buried under the site that is protected by a fragile barrier and some guards, lost in a country rocked by violence and more worried about rebuilding its present capital.

“Much remains to be done, and an endeavour must be authorised together with the central government if Iraq wants to benefit from its enormous potential as a Mecca of tourism,” said Anna Prouse, an Italian diplomat in charge of a regional rebuilding team in the Iraqi province of Dhi Qar.

In addition to Ur, the province has 47 other sites “of great archaeological value,” she added.

The provincial authorities do not have the budget to start titanic archaeological excavations because they are focusing on restoring electricity, sewerage systems, schools, roads, and drinking water for their war-ravaged population, Prouse said. — www.telegraph.co.uk