More Interesting Archaeological Finds The second oldest ice on earth has been found in Siberia. You might be thinking who cares, but it is an important find. The ice is reported to be about 650,000 years old, and if current estimates for the dawn of Homo sapiens at 400,000 years ago is correct, that ice is older than us. The oldest ice comes from an ice core which contained ice which was about 800,000 years old. It is believed however the oldest glacier in Antarctica could be near 1,000,000 years old. What does all this mean to science? It might contain everything from unknown microbes to fossils, and could be used to determine what the climate was like in those days. There is a race of hominins which have been discovered named Homo naledi. It is said they had a brain about one-third the size of ours. Their bodies were also thought to be small. A cave was found where it is thought the first burial of a human or human like creature was found. A body in the fetal position was found buried in a pit in a cave. The burial is said to date back to between 335,000 to 236,000 years ago. While this might be the first burial of a human type creature found, who knows, we might find a burial even older someday. Interestingly, since Homo sapiens are now said to date back 400,000 years, they were around the same time. Some very strange ancient things get found from time to time. One of these things are Klerksdorp globules. They are all oval, with a few round grooves circling their exteriors. They are very old. They have been found in mines in South Africa and have been dated at 2.8 billion years old. They are so strange some believe aliens had something to do with them. The grooves going around them are perfectly carved and the objects are made of polished stone. They were found inside other stones. There is something so interesting about archaeology, especially when historical finds are made which validate such things and places which were named in the bible. I was just watching a show about two historical finds which were made in Israel. Either one of two places could be the lost city where Jesus performed many of his miracles. The lost city is Bethsaida. Nazca, Peru is the home of some amazing huge drawings made in the desert. They are usually so large they can only be viewed in their entirety from the air. Just when we thought we had seen all of them, archaeologists decided to employ artificial intelligence to see what else they could find. There are different kinds of drawings. Some are figures, lines and amazingly geometric drawings. New drawings have been found. One is the figure of a human, another a fish, another just a pair of legs and the last one a bird and all are huge. The figures were created by scraping away the top soil and revealing lighter soil underneath. It turns out civilization may have existed much further back in Greece than has been suspected. Habitation has been traced back another 250,000 years in that country. The proof was found in a coal mine in southern Greece in the form of rock tools which have been dated back to before 700,000 years ago. This is a hominin site which means pre Homo sapien. I always wonder about the validity of stone tools being created by hominins or even modern humans. One has to wonder how valid the idea is sometimes. I wonder if the scientists can be sure they are not looking at rock fragments caused by nature. In this case it seems many of the rocks show chipping which look like it was done on purpose. We just keep finding out Neanderthals were a lot smarter than we thought. We had completely different ideas about them in the beginning. We thought they were dumb brutes who didn’t have the power of speech. Now we know they did and even interacted with humans. Not everything we found out about them was good. We also discovered some tribes were cannibals. Now we have discovered they invented things. They had a way of creating a strong glue out of birch tar. The Neanderthals did this about 100,000 years before modern humans were around. Neanderthals actually found out how to distill the tar using a method which restricted oxygen. A Homo sapien footprint was found in South Africa and it is the oldest Homo sapien footprint found to date. The footprint, which was dated using a new method was found to have been made 153,000 years ago. While this is the oldest Homo sapien footprint, other hominin footprints have been found dating back to 3.66 million years ago at Laetoli, Tanzania. One has to wonder how long horses have been ridden. Archaeologists found out an interesting tidbit about that. They discovered a leather saddle, a very old leather saddle dating back 2,700 years and the saddle was not made for a man, but for a woman. It is believed to be the oldest leather saddle ever found. The saddle was sort of a leather saddle shaped bag filled with straw, deer and camel hair. There are castle ruins being excavated in Spain. The excavations are being conducted at the Castillo de Los Canos Del Rio near Salamanca, Spain. It is particularly interesting because the history of the castle tells it became part of an Arab Caliphate and was built after the Arabs conquered that part of Spain. Contrary to the legend, archaeologists claim not to have found any evidence Arabs built the castle and have found a full suit of Spanish armor at the site. There is an archaeologist who is challenging what we know about ancient Egypt and who claims most of it is wrong and was invented by British archaeologists in the 19th century. He used Rameses 2nd as an example and said all we know about him is what was made up. The archaeologist is also British and has devoted his life to the true history of ancient Egypt, according to what we are told. He went on to say the kings lived in small mud huts, because palaces were one or two story mud huts. Could our idea of a great empire be incorrect and if so, what are all those grand temples and pyramids doing there? Archaeologists believe they have found archaeological plans for a mystery structure and the plans are ancient and for large scale structures in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The plans depict ancient structures known as kites, which were large structures for trapping animals. It is believed these plans date back 8,000 years. The fact the plans were to scale has excited scientists.
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