All posts tagged: ancient

Ancient tombs with vibrant wall paintings open to public in southern Israel

Ancient tombs with vibrant wall paintings open to public in southern Israel

Published by skeptic

ASHKELON, Israel (AP) — Two nearly 2,000-year-old tombs with magnificent wall paintings will be open to the public for the first time in southern Israel after a painstaking conservation process, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday. British archaeologists first discovered the sand-filled tombs in the 1930s, awed by the colorful paintings on the wall depicting vibrant grape vines twining their way around birds, animals, and mythological characters. But for nearly a century, the site was dormant and closed to the public to protect the paintings. As new apartment buildings sprouted around the area, the city decided to turn the site into an educational park and renovate the tombs to allow public visits. “This tomb has wonderful paintings that were preserved remarkably well, and that’s surprising considering that the time that has passed and the location next to the sea, the humidity, the sand, the winds, everything affects the plaster and the paintings,” said Anat Rasiuk, an archaeologist with the Antiquities Authority. The tombs, located a few hundred meters from the beach, were likely the …

Solving a 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle: How a Cambridge Student Cracked an Ancient Sanskrit Code

Solving a 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle: How a Cambridge Student Cracked an Ancient Sanskrit Code

Published by José

If you find your­self grap­pling with an intel­lec­tu­al prob­lem that’s gone unsolved for mil­len­nia, try tak­ing a few months off and spend­ing them on activ­i­ties like swim­ming and med­i­tat­ing. That very strat­e­gy worked for a Cam­bridge PhD stu­dent named Rishi Rajpopat, who, after a sum­mer of non-research-relat­ed activ­i­ties, returned to a text by the ancient gram­mar­i­an, logi­cian, and “father of lin­guis­tics” Pāṇi­ni and found it new­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble. The rules of its com­po­si­tion had stumped schol­ars for 2,500 years, but, as Rajpopat tells it in an arti­cle by Tom Almeroth-Williams at Cam­bridge’s web­site, “With­in min­utes, as I turned the pages, these pat­terns start­ed emerg­ing, and it all start­ed to make sense.” Pāṇi­ni com­posed his texts using a kind of algo­rithm: “Feed in the base and suf­fix of a word and it should turn them into gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect words and sen­tences through a step-by-step process,” writes Almeroth-Williams. But “often, two or more of Pāṇini’s rules are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly applic­a­ble at the same step, leav­ing schol­ars to ago­nize over which one to choose.” Or such was the case, at …

The end of the great northern forests? The tiny tree-killing beetle wreaking havoc on our ancient giants | Trees and forests

The end of the great northern forests? The tiny tree-killing beetle wreaking havoc on our ancient giants | Trees and forests

Published by skeptic

The giant sequoia is so enormous that it was once believed to be indestructible. High in California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains, the oldest trees – known as monarchs – have stood for more than 2,000 years. Today, however, in Sequoia national park, huge trunks lie sprawled on the forest floor, like blue whale carcasses stranded on a beach. Many of these trees were felled by a combination of drought and fire. But among the factors responsible for the rising toll is a tiny new suspect: the bark beetle. You could have a feedback effect, where warming becomes more rapid if we lose the carbon fixation of boreal forests Thomas Seth David Along with wildfires and rising temperatures, scientists fear that the insects could contribute to the breakdown of Earth’s northern conifer forests, including the potential dieback of the taiga, the vast ecosystem that stretches across Canada, Scandinavia, Siberia and Alaska. The boreal forest spans 11.3m sq km (2,800m acres) and stores about 272 gigatonnes of carbon. Its possible collapse is considered a climate tipping point: …

‘Without them, the city would be lost’: the art of preserving Mexico City’s ancient floating gardens | Global development

‘Without them, the city would be lost’: the art of preserving Mexico City’s ancient floating gardens | Global development

Published by skeptic

Barrera Aguirre and his daughter, Mixtli Barrera Fernández, at their family’s chinampa, the strip of land they farm. ‘If these problems are not fixed, our history, my family’s history, is going to end. Apart from losing this historical memory, the city itself would also be lost because there would no longer be water,’ he says. ‘The opportunity to have this land so rich, so fertile, to produce food would also be lost, and we would be talking about a possible collapse of Mexico City. But we still have time’ Source link

Ancient Egyptian Structure Discovered Near Giza Pyramids

Ancient Egyptian Structure Discovered Near Giza Pyramids

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The Giza Plateau in Egypt. Source: Wikimedia Commons.   A previously unknown structure was discovered in an apparent “blank area” of the Giza pyramid complex. Using ground-penetrating technology, a joint research team from Higashi Nippon International University, Tohoku University, and Egypt’s National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics found an ancient “anomaly” hidden beneath the sand of Giza’s West Field Cemetery.   Ground-Penetrating Radar Revealed an “Anomaly” The red rectangle indicates the initial archaeological survey area at Giza. Source: Archaeological Prospection.   Located west of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the West Field Cemetery is an important burial site for ancient royals and high-ranking officers. Archaeologists have long been curious about a so-called “blank area” in the middle of the cemetery that is surrounded by mastabas. These are a type of tomb with a flat-roofed rectangular structure that marks an underground burial site.   Previous excavations in this area of the Giza pyramid complex did not yield significant discoveries. However, a newly-published article about a 2021-2023 excavation revealed a new underground discovery: “We conducted a …

Ancient Egyptian Structure Identified Alongside the Giza Pyramids

Ancient Egyptian Structure Identified Alongside the Giza Pyramids

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A previously unknown L-shaped structure has been identified by researchers using ground-penetrating technology in an ancient Egyptian cemetery in Giza, according to a study published in the journal Archaeological Prospection on Monday. The researchers, a joint team of researchers from Higashi Nippon International University, Tohoku University, and Egypt’s National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, scanned below the sand’s surface in a “blank area” of Giza’s Western Cemetery alongside the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Related Articles The Western Cemetery is, according to the researchers, “an important burial place of members of the royal family and high-class officers” that is densely populated with mastabas, a type of tomb with rectangular funerary chapels that give way to shafts connected to underground burial chambers. However, there is the afforementioned blank space in the center of the cemetery with no aboveground structures and on which no noteworthy excavations have been conducted. Over two years beginning in 2021, the team conducted a geophysical survey, using a combination of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) to see under the surface. …

Stone with Ancient Writing Discovered in England by Geography Teacher

Stone with Ancient Writing Discovered in England by Geography Teacher

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A 1,600-year-old rock inscribed with early Irish writing was found by a teacher at his home in Coventry, England. The rare artifact offers insight into earlier forms of the Irish language. Geography teacher Graham Senior was gardening when he found the sandstone inscribed in ogham, an alphabet for writing in the Irish language that dates to the early Medieval period. The ogham writing system, comprised of groups of parallel lines typically found on such materials as stone, was used by the Irish before the availability of vellum manuscripts and use of Latin insular script. Related Articles Inscribed on three of its four sides, the stone is four inches long and weighs less than half a pound. It is believed that the inscription may be a person’s name, along with information about where that individual came from. When Senior found the carved stone just four to five inches beneath the ground, he washed it and sent pictures to a local archaeologist and relative Teresa Gilmore, who encouraged him to contact the Portable Antiquities Scheme. There, they …

How ancient Egyptian tech could save modern libraries from scourge of bookworms

How ancient Egyptian tech could save modern libraries from scourge of bookworms

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There are dozens of insects and arthropods that fall under the umbrella term “bookworms” — and true to their name, they feed on humanity’s pulp fictions (and non-fictions), gnawing through ancient pages and the thinning patience of conservators in libraries and museums throughout the world. But scientists may have just discovered the poison pill needed to drive off these unwelcome dinner guests — a gluten-free option found in ancient Egyptian texts.   In a recent study from the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Proteome Research, researchers analyzing books from the National Library of Medicine archives discovered that gluten-free glues are less attractive to the dozens of pests classed as bookworms. And these glues could also help treasured tomes stand the test of time by reducing deterioration. It all comes down to a particular type of protein. “This information could help conservators restore and preserve treasured tomes for future generations … understanding the nature of the proteins in these glues and how they affect the adhesives would help book conservators choose the best approaches and materials for their …

Which Reforms Shaped Ancient Sparta?

Which Reforms Shaped Ancient Sparta?

Published by skeptic

  With its oligarchic government, composed of the ephors, the Gerousia, and the two kings, Sparta’s government was an outlier in ancient Greece. Thanks to Sparta’s agōgē, a unique system of civil-military education, the word Spartan has become a byword for military discipline and austere living. This was Sparta, at least as we think of it; but politics in the Laconian city-state were not fixed. Like its neighbors, Sparta experienced periods of reform and conservatism that sometimes threatened to shake its foundations apart.   Lycurgus the Lawgiver of Sparta  Lycurgus of Sparta, Merry Joseph Blondel, 1828. Source: Wikimedia Commons   The popular vision of Sparta we hold today is due to the reforms of Lycurgus, a semi-mythical lawgiver of uncertain historicity who is said to have introduced Sparta’s peculiar constitution and military education. The date at which he introduced the Great Rhetra (“Great Proclamation”) is unclear, although by the reckoning of Herodotus, it was sometime before the reigns of King Leon and Agasicles, who ruled in the 6th century BCE, although many modern historians tends …

How Slavery in Ancient Rome Drove Farmers to Poverty

How Slavery in Ancient Rome Drove Farmers to Poverty

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  In the 2nd century BCE, rapid socio-economic change was afoot for the plebeian farmers of the Roman Republic. According to the traditional historical narrative, these citizen farmers, who owned family-run smallholdings, were overburdened with military duties during the period of the Second Punic War onwards. No longer able to effectively run their farms, they were displaced by wealthy landowners who established large agricultural estates worked by slaves. This led to an exodus of now landless farmers who became destitute proletarii in urban Rome.   Citizen Farmers: The Backbone of the Roman Republic  Cincinnatus, Léon Bénouville, 1844. Source: Wikimedia Commons   Plebeian farmers were the backbone of the Roman Republic. By the late 6th century BCE, after the last Etruscan king of Rome had been overthrown, the young Roman Republic had become a state largely populated by citizen smallholders of the plebeian class. These smallholders were at the heart of Rome’s agricultural output, but they also served in the military and participated politically as citizens.   The Romans grew a variety of grains including wheat …