Archaeology Finds Sometimes I think I am interested in too many different things. It is hard to keep track on what is happening in so many different fields and there is no doubt I miss a lot. I do my best however to try and put up the most interesting stuff. One of the things I monitor is archaeology, and it just so happens there seems to be more going on there than in any other field right now. As I said before this field will be expanding once we start sending humans to other planets. Back to the planet earth. An archaeological dig is being conducted on the island of Orkney. Orkney is part of the United Kingdom and is composed of 70 islands, 20 of which are inhabited. Archaeologists seem to be digging up a lot of ancient tombs. This one had 14 skeletons in it and they were of people who lived there over 5,000 years ago. The tomb was part of a stone structure. Every time an ancient grave is found we have a chance of learning a little more about how those people lived. I don’t know how surprising it was to archaeologists, but it was a surprise to me. Archaeologists just keep finding more interesting things at Pompeii. This time they found an election poster for a candidate named Aulus Rustius Verus. First of all, I never knew the Romans had elections. Secondly, I never would have suspected they had election posters. The poster was not what we would think of as a paper poster but an inscription on a house. Pompeii is one of the most interesting archaeological sites in the world. The volcano sealed the town completely and it became a time capsule. In case you are wondering what office the candidate was running for it was aedile. This was an elected public office in the Roman Empire and the aedile had the power to maintain public buildings and infrastructure and regulate public festivals and enforce public order. There is a disagreement on a couple of different fronts on what has been found and how old it may be. Many believe there is a pyramid in Lake Toba, North Sumatra and they also believe it is 75,000 years old. Here is the problem, anytime a pyramid is dated as being older than the pyramids of Egypt the deniers jump on board. Several pyramids which are said to exist around the world and are dated at about 20,000 years of age are either said to not be pyramids or not to exist at all. The pyramid in Bosnia is said to just be a natural structure by deniers but the Archaeologist working on uncovering it found a stone base and had the material dated between the stone at it came back as being 20,000 years old. Then there is the pyramid in Alaska which existence is being denied. These are not the only ones. Sometimes something completely unexpected is found and in the case of the discovery of something from the Ming Dynasty this was the case. Once in a while a few weapons are found, but this find was extremely unusual in that hand grenades were found which were hundreds of years old. They were made of hollowed out stone which could be filled with gunpowder and sealed. Grenades of this type were used by the Chinese from 1368 to 1644. It is believed that once a weapon’s warehouse might have stood on that spot. An archaeology student has made a nice discovery. The archaeologist was working for the first time as part of a dig conducted by the University of Glasgow. The student was digging around a fireplace in Glen Coe, Scotland. The structure was believe to once belong to a highland chief. She found a glazed pot with a sizeable number of coins inside. Besides the coins, other things were found such as pottery from many different countries, a musket and shot and more. Spain is no stranger to Archaeological digs. A Neolithic structure which is very old, being dated to 7,300 years ago has been found in La Drage in the city of Banyoles in northeastern Catalonia. Parts of a structure made of wood have been recovered. The archaeologists are also looking for the remains of other structures in the area. Archaeologists are finding ancient sites even in the United States. One is located in New Mexico and is known as the Clovis site. This site was discovered in 1929 and artifacts have been found there yielding signs of butchered animals as long ago as 13,000 years. The spearpoints found there have become iconic and are known as Clovis points and have been used to define the people who lived there. Some people tend to think the Egyptian pyramids are the oldest structures, but they couldn’t be more wrong. But their dates are becoming more controversial. It is interesting to me some date them at 20,000 years old which really disturbs the Egyptian government because that would mean they were not built by the ancient Egyptians. The 20,000 year old date is significant to me. That is the date given to other pyramids which are being denied, as I said above. Another structure which could be 20,000 years old as some believe and has been dated at around 12,000 years is Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. It is a fantastic group of temples which were found buried on purpose. The workmanship is incredible and so are all the carvings which many archaeologists believe should have been impossible to do given the tools of the time. There has been a big break for archaeologists. They have been able to use artificial intelligence to decipher ancient texts. It has been able to discover some of the secrets of Akkadian Cuneiform. This was a great test because this language is one of the world’s oldest written ones. The translation model was trained on 300 billion human words. This is hard to imagine. The archaeologists know Nero had a famous theatre built but didn’t know where it was built. While a Four Seasons hotel was being constructed in Rome and a garden dug, Nero’s theatre was found under the garden. The find was made very near to the Vatican. Pottery was also found at the site. The theatre was found to have marble columns, and walls decorated with gold leaf. It is said what can be moved will be sent to a museum and the rest covered. Archaeologists have found a workshop. While this might not sound too significant, this one could be one of the oldest glass workshops in the world and Celtic coins were found there. Quite a few glass objects were still in the shop. The shop was found in Nemcice, in the Czech Republic. The number of coins found was staggering. Over 2,000 gold and silver Celtic coins were found.
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