Ancient-Feudal World Thread 🗿🏹🏛

[Immortan Jonesy]

In this thread you can share all kinds of articles, thoughts and information on archeology and ancient civilizations:

Looking for Queen Nefertiti

Nearly a century after the rediscovery of King Tut's tomb ignited a worldwide craze for Egyptology, new findings could turn out to be almost as stunning: secret doors may conceal the burial chamber of Queen Nefertiti.

National Geographic

Huge ritual arena discovered near Stonehenge

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a massive stone monument buried under a thick, grassy bank only two miles from Stonehenge.

The hidden arrangement of up to 90 huge standing stones formed part of a C-shaped Neolithic arena that bordered a dry valley and faced directly towards the river Avon.

The Guardian

Antikythera device expedition

Archaeologists excavating the famous 2,050-year-old Roman shipwreck off the remote island of Antikythera, Greece, have uncovered more than fifty new artifacts including a bronze armrest (possibly part of a throne), remains of a bone flute, pawn from an ancient board game, luxury ceramics and glassware.

Sci-News

New 'Gilgamesh' Verse

A serendipitous deal between a history museum and a smuggler has provided new insight into one of the most famous stories ever told: "The Epic of Gilgamesh."

The new finding, a clay tablet, reveals a previously unknown "chapter" of the epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. This new section brings both noise and color to a forest for the gods that was thought to be a quiet place in the work of literature. The newfound verse also reveals details about the inner conflict the poem's heroes endured.

Discovery News   

Archimedes' legendary sphere brought to life

A mechanical model of the Universe attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician and polymath Archimedes has been reconstructed after more than two millennia. The metallic globe, which reproduces the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets through the night sky, will be displayed for the first time at an exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, starting on 27 September.

Nature

[Vertigo]

I'm sure that Stonehenge-adjacent arena won't be the last major Neolithic monument we find in England. There are processional causeways from the period all over the place, often leading away from spiritual sites like Stonehenge and Avebury, and in many cases we don't currently know where they lead. Unfortunately there's not a lot of funding for investigating British pre-Roman archaeology.

[Immortan Jonesy]

Neanderthal stone ring structures found in French cave

The discovery provides yet more evidence that we may have underestimated the capabilities of our evolutionary cousins. The structures were made from hundreds of stalagmites, the mineral deposits which rise from the floors of caves. Dating techniques showed that they were broken off 175,000 years ago. The findings are reported in the journal Nature.

See more

Work from 1616 is 'the first ever science fiction novel'

A 400-year-old story about a man who journeys to a mysterious royal wedding is "the first science fiction novel", long predating Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and other, later writers considered pioneers, according to the award-winning writer John Crowley. In his opinion, the genre starts with Johann Valentin Andreae's 1616 work The Chymical Wedding, a new version of which he is publishing in November.

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Aristotle's lost tomb has finally been found

Greek archaeologists at Ancient Stagira, Central Macedonia, say they have found Aristotle's tomb. Addressing the Aristotle 2400 Years World Congress, they point to the 2,400-year-old tomb as the most important finding from the 20-year excavation.

Source

[PVTDukeMorrison]

Watching thread with interest

[Immortan Jonesy]

King Tut's Blade Made of Meteorite

King Tut was buried with a dagger made of an iron that literally came from space, says a new study into the composition of the iron blade from the sarcophagus of the boy king.

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In Bethlehem's Ancient Church, a Long Unseen Presence Appears

BETHLEHEM, West Bank—Silvia Starinieri, a young restoration technician, was slowly passing a thermographic camera over the smooth plaster walls of the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ, when she spotted an intriguing shape.

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Did humans sail 3,700 miles from Asia to Madagascar 1,200 years ago?

For millennia it remained an untouched paradise of giant baobab trees, strange birds and a unique group of primates called lemurs.

But around 2,000 to 1,000 years ago the first humans arrived on the enormous and eccentric island of Madagascar, just off the east coast of Africa.

Now researchers have discovered the first archaeological evidence for where these first human inhabitants of Madagascar may have come from – southeast Asia.

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Hitler's WWII Coding Machine Found on eBay

Sometimes you can find a real gem on eBay. The UK's National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park certainly did: It spotted a Nazi teleprinter used during the war for sale on the site and bought it for just $15.

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[Immortan Jonesy]

Teen Discovers Lost Maya City Using Ancient Star Maps [Updated]

Using an unprecedented technique of matching stars to the locations of temples on Earth, a 15-year-old Canadian student says he's discovered a forgotten Maya city in Mexico. Images from space suggest he may actually be onto something—but experts say it's something much simpler.

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Canadian Teen Who 'Discovered' Lost Maya City Speaks Out

"I think scientists are jealous," the teen declared. "Sometimes they are scared of new ideas. They're afraid to have their established ideas criticized." Ultimately, Gadoury wants scientists "to have more open minds and to listen to other ideas."

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Underwater 'lost city' in Greece is actually the aftermath of a gas leak

An underwater "lost city" appearing to boast colonnades and courtyards has turned out to be nothing more than the aftermath of a gas leak.

When divers first spotted the structures in shallow water off the Greek island of Zakynthos in 2013 they thought they had discovered the ruins of a long-forgotten civilisation.

However, new research published today reveals the site was created by a natural geological phenomenon that took place up to five million years ago in the Pliocene era.

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Scans using 'cosmic particles' to reveal secrets of the Great Pyramid of Giza

For more than 4,500 years, Egypt's pyramids have kept their secrets hidden deep within the labyrinth of passages and chambers that lie inside their towering stone structures.

But the long-running row over whether the Great Pyramid of Giza is hiding a network of previously undiscovered tunnels behind its stone walls could soon finally be answered.

A group of researchers who have been using cosmic particles known as muons to scan the Great Pyramid of Giza have said they expect to finish their work later this month.

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More than a Dozen Mysterious Prehistoric Tunnels in Cornwall, England, Mystify Researchers

More than a dozen tunnels have been found in Cornwall, England, that are unique in the British Isles. No one knows why Iron Age people created them. The fact that the ancients supported their tops and sides with stone, suggests that they wanted them to endure, and that they have, for about 2,400 years.

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[Immortan Jonesy]

700,000-Year-Old Tiny Humans Found at Hobbit Homeland

Remains of at least three tiny humans dating to 700,000 years ago have been found on the Indonesian island of Flores, which was the homeland of Homo floresiensis, aka "Hobbit Humans," according to two new papers in the journal Nature.
The newly found early humans, represented by a partial right jaw and some isolated teeth, predate the Hobbits by more than half a million years, the papers report. Their presence on the island suggests that the small individuals were part of a population that later gave rise to the Hobbits, whose fossils were previously discovered at Flores' Liang Bua cave.

See more at Seeker

Massive New Monument Found in Petra

An enormous monument has been hiding in plain sight at the World Heritage site of Petra, according to a study recently published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Archaeologists Sarah Parcak, a National Geographic fellow, and Christopher Tuttle, executive director of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, used high-resolution satellite imagery followed by aerial drone photography and ground surveys to locate and document the structure.

See more at National Geographic

500 year-old shipwreck loaded with gold found in Namibian desert

Diamond miners recently discovered a ship that went down 500 years ago after draining a man-made lagoon on Namibia's coast. While shipwrecks are often found along Africa's Skeleton Coast, this one just so happened to be loaded with $13,000,000 worth of gold coins.

It also answers a centuries–old mystery and is what some archaeologists are calling one of the most significant shipwrecks ever found.

See more at FOX NEWS

Medieval Armies Didn't Use Fire Arrows

Fire arrows are in everything from Gladiator to Braveheart to Game of Thrones. The good guys stretch their bows in unison and rain flaming death en masse onto the opposing army, looking like total badasses the whole time. But like so many things on this terrible planet, fire arrows are too good to be true and almost no Medieval army actually used them in open warfare.

See more at Sploid

Wild speculation below...

The Loa Giants: Impressive and Enigmatic Geoglyphs in Northern Chile

Alberto Nadgar Rojas, researcher, visual artist, and photographer, defends the existence in northern Chile of an ancient civilization of giants as a hypothesis to explain what may be the biggest geoglyphs in the world. He explained to Ancient Origins that some geoglyphs are atypical because they contain many designs and predominantly geometric forms, in comparison to the classical anthropomorphic geoglyphs of the Inca culture.

See more at Ancient Origins

Cambodia's vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle

Archaeologists in Cambodia have found multiple, previously undocumented medieval cities not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat, the Guardian can reveal, in groundbreaking discoveries that promise to upend key assumptions about south-east Asia's history.

See more at The Guardian

The World's Oldest Computer May Have Been Used to Predict the Future

The researchers described the machine as a kind of philosopher's instructional device. The new analysis confirms that the mechanism displayed planets, while also showing the position of the sun and the moon in the sky. But while the device had a definite astronomical purpose, it appears the machine was also used to see what the future holds. The researchers suspect this because some of the inscriptions on the device refer to the color of a forthcoming eclipse.

See more at Gizmodo

Europe's First Pornographic Blockbuster Was Made in the Vatican

Any pilgrims visiting Vatican City will spend some time in the Raphael Rooms. Decorated with iconic frescoes by Raphael and the artists of his workshop, these reception rooms in the Palace of the Vatican have left generations of tourists awestruck. They may also have inspired awe in the less high-minded.

According to legend, these Vatican showrooms, the apartments of the popes, once contained the now-lost artwork for the western world's first pornographic blockbuster.

See more at Atlas Obscura

[Immortan Jonesy]

Great Pyramid of Giza Is Slightly Lopsided

The Great Pyramid of Giza may be a Wonder of the Ancient World, but it's not perfect: Its base is a little lopsided because its builders made a teensy mistake when constructing it, new research reveals.

The west side of the pyramid is slightly longer than the east side, scientists have found. Although the difference is very slight, it's enough that a modern-day research team, led by engineer Glen Dash and Egyptologist Mark Lehner, was able to detect the small flaw in a new measuring project.

Read more at Live Science

Bizarre Alien-Like Skull Unearthed in Korea was Naturally Formed

Archaeologists have unearthed an elongated skull in a grave belonging to the ancient Silla culture of Korea, which experts say was NOT deliberately flattened through the practice of cranial deformation.

The skull was found in the grave of a woman near Gyeongju, which was once the historical capital of the Silla Kingdom that reigned over most of the Korean peninsula for nearly 1,000 years from 57 B.C. to A.D. 935.

Read more at Ancient Origins

Dan Brown Is Paying a Lot of Money to Digitize a Library Devoted to Mysticism

Dan Brown, who gave us tomes like The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, and words like "symbologist," is donating €300,000, or around $337,500, to a Dutch library with a vast collection of books and other materials about ancient mysticism, according to the Guardian.

Read more at Atlas Obscura

Stonehenge Experiment May Show How Monument Was Built

The massive megaliths at Stonehenge have fascinated scholars and tourists for centuries, but one of the most enduring mysteries about the site is how the ancient builders of the monument moved the giant stones into place — some more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from where they were quarried.

In the Middle Ages, a legend arose that Stonehenge was built by giants on the orders of the wizard Merlin, as a tomb for British nobles who were slain by the invading Saxons. Now, a group of university students in the United Kingdom has come to grips, literally, with how the Neolithic people of Britain might have transported the huge stones over such distances. Using only rope, wood and stone tools, in front of a cheering crowd in a park in central London last month, they put their theories — and their muscles — to the test.

In an archaeological experiment that combined the public demonstration with feats of strength, dozens of students joined an effort to haul a sycamore-wood sled carrying a 1-ton stone block over a wooden trackway. The experiment took place in Gordon Square, which is located next to the University College London (UCL) Institute of Archaeology.

Read more at Live Science

Drone Footage Inside a 19th-Century Church

The talented pilots and cinematographers of France's BigFly skillfully piloted a camera-equipped drone through the sanctuary of the 137-year-old Église Saint-Louis de Paimbœuf. Given the church is filled with priceless art and architecture, the skills needed to ensure the drone didn't hit anything are easily as impressive as the stunning footage they captured.

See more at Sploid

[Immortan Jonesy]

https://twitter.com/PopMech/status/1062730951258595330

https://twitter.com/SmithsonianMag/status/1063559900889051136

Grain of salt alert...

https://twitter.com/ScienceAlert/status/1062528370586607616

[Immortan Jonesy]

[Immortan Jonesy]

https://twitter.com/SmithsonianMag/status/1083817730615230465

[Immortan Jonesy]

https://twitter.com/PopMech/status/1095400899063754753

[Bitcher]

Anyone watching Bright Insight videos on Youtube? Lots of interesting speculation there - guy basically claims that many of the perplexing ancient sites, such as the pyramids, the City of Petra in Jordan, or the recently discovered Gobekli Tepe, are a work of civilizations that existed prior to the cataclysm inaugurated by an asteroid hitting the Earth approx. 12.000 years ago (that the latter happened is now confirmed - there's the crater in Iceland). Kinda like the Ancient Aliens stuff, except, you know, without the ancient aliens part. He certainly raises a lot of interesting questions as to what kind of knowledge would have been needed to build some of these sites, as well as to what their original purpose could be. Granted, I haven't watched all his videos, so it's possible that some historical quackery slips in now and then, but from what I've seen so far, the dude isn't just some sensationalist loon/fraudster.  His videos on Atlantis are certainly captivating and if nothing else, he draws attention to things a layperson is probably unaware of.

[oduodu]

[Shinawi]

The disappearance of the Amazon cities remind me of Alien: Covenant.