Ancient Update 16 November 2015

We have been finding out a lot lately about some ancient structures and how the area around Stonehenge was first populated. One of the stories which came out this week was about the Great Pyramid in Egypt. It is kind of funny in a way, because these pyramids have been studied so long, many people believe there is nothing new to be discovered about them. While it is true they have been studied for quite some time, we still say things about them which are not true. I was just reading about the great pyramid and the article stated it was used as a royal tomb. There has never been any Egyptian mummies found in one of the pyramids. This is one of the reasons there have been so many suggestions as to what the purpose of the pyramids might be. One of the craziest ideas I heard about the purpose of the pyramids was from Ben Carson who is running for president. He believes they were built to hold grain. Can you imagine tens of thousands of people including probably every craftsman in ancient Egypt taking 20 years or more to build a grain storage building out of carved stones when they could have simply used other types of structures such as mud brick? On top of all that the layout of the pyramid is such it doesn’t lend itself to such an idea. As we find more pyramids around the world we are beginning to realize they had some other function and some are a lot older than even those in Egypt.

Scientists testing the Great Pyramid have discovered that some areas of the pyramid are hotter than others and as of yet they don’t know why. It seems some of the stones at the bottom of the pyramid are much warmer than most of the others. This could be an indication that there are empty areas behind these stones which could mean hidden rooms. This might not be the only explanation however as air currents could be routed in different unknown ways throughout the pyramid. One thing has been discovered and that is there is a small tunnel under the pyramid leading into it. Tunnels have been suspected to exist for quite some time and some have been found, but this is a new one. Scientists now want to know what is behind this tunnel. Could all three of the pyramids at Gaza be connected somehow? There might also be a chance the tunnels will lead to burial areas which are still undiscovered.

Speaking about Stonehenge, Yahoo news ran an article about how one of the first homes were built some six thousand years ago in a place near it. I have to say I can’t help but feel it was a nice story, but a story never the less, since we really have no way of truly knowing why the place was built and if it was built at all. According to the article a tree toppled over which gave an opportunity to someone to stick a pole in the ground using the tree as a wall and using animal skins for a roof and maybe sides. This is only guess work however, but we do know people decided to settle down in an area near Stonehenge and it became quite a busy area at the time with roads being created and monuments being built. There was water nearby and the land was fruitful. This could have been one of the first times hunter gatherers decided to settle down. The roads were probably created for ceremonial purposes as was Stonehenge and the monuments nearby. It is amazing how this area was singled out to become one of the first European settlements.

Sometimes droughts reveal unexpected things. As waters recede buildings and structures long forgotten may emerge. Such is the case in Mexico. The water in a reservoir began to recede and as it went down something began to appear. As the water level went lower a building could be seen which was in the reservoir and eventually it could be identified. It was a centuries old church and while the roof was gone and one wall, the rest of the structure was clearly intact. The church is rather a large structure and the water is down to the main entrance on the church, about 8 to 10 feet deep. The drought has dropped the water line down over 80 feet. It turned out the church was built by the Dominican priests in Quechula. It was believed at the time that the town would become a large population center, but a disease struck the town and the area was abandoned in the 1770s. After that no one thought much about the area and the Mexican authorities built the reservoir on top of the town.

One of the oldest stories in the world is the Epic poem of Gilgamesh. The poem is about 3,000 years old and is a Mesopotamian poem. It was thought by many we had the entire poem, but the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq has announced it has found 20 more lines to the poem. The lines talk about Gilgamesh entering a cedar forest and slaying a demigod named Humbaba. It looks like more lines are missing since the tablet which was found that contained the missing lines was a fragment.
A new dinosaur species was discovered in Alaska and is known as Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis. That is quite a mouthful. The new species is a duck-billed dinosaur. The name means ancient grazer of the Colville River. It was about 30 feet long and is estimated to have lived about 69 million years ago. The majority of the bones came from the Liscomb Bonebed. Most skeletons in that area are of juveniles. Scientists think a herd of juvenile Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis were killed creating the bone bed. Trees were said to cover the area at the time.

Scientists think they have found the earliest creature to stand on four legs and being able to maintain a fully erect gate. The animal, a pre-reptile, was thought to be as big as a cow with a knobby head. It is known as Bunostegos akakanensis. The creature had bony armor down its back and ate plants. Because this animal was a herbivore and we think the region it lived in was arid we may be wrong about the region, else how could the animal have survived in a desert like area?