Interesting Ancient Finds
One of the most famous ancient finds is the golden mask of ancient Egypt’s Tutankhamun. The mask exudes the riches of Egypt at the time and the riches of the pharaoh, but wait new research has found out something incredible. Since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb everyone has assumed the mask was made for him. New research by British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves has discovered it was probably not made for Tutankhamun, but for a woman and that woman was probably Queen Nefertiti. There is just something about the fact a British Egyptologist said this which makes it more believable. It seems when we think of archaeologists who specialize in ancient Egypt, the British ones seem to fit the bill better than any others. It is the same when one watches a movie about ancient Romans. The British make the best Romans don’t they? When the artifact was examined carefully it was noted that there was another inscription below Tutankhamun’s and it seemed to be the one used by Nefertiti. The inscription used by Nefertiti in English was Living Manifestation of the Sun God, Beloved of Akhenaten, Beauty of Beauties of the Disk of the Sun.
Maybe it is just me, but I am always skeptical when a scientists finds a bone and suddenly tells us exactly what type of animal it came from in ancient times. The reason I feel this way is there have been a lot of mistakes made which were found out much later. In this case one scientists found a jaw bone and has announced it proves there was a dog-sized horned dinosaur that roamed eastern North America up to 100 million years ago. I have to wonder about this on several levels. One is maybe the bone is of a baby horned dinosaur and it only looks mature, because of some other event which effected it. I also have to wonder if the conclusion that it was a horned dinosaur the size of a dog is completely in error. I can’t help but remember the wrong heads which were put on dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History and stayed on them for years before finding out they belonged to other dinosaurs.
Many of us know about ancient carvings into the earth which can only be appreciated from the air, but we associate these with places mostly in South America. This may not be the only place with such ancient carvings. Large carvings in the earth have been found in the Kazakhstan desert. Archaeologists have been investigating these symbols for a while now. They are not of animals such as those found in Nacza, but different shapes. The scientists think they know when they were created and their purpose. The carvings or better described as drawing range from 295 feet across to 1,312 feet. There are squares, crosses, rings and a type of swastika. Swastikas were quite common in ancient times and had no sinister meaning in those days. Some were thought to bring good luck. It is believed the earliest drawings date back 2,800 years ago. The New York Times didn’t agree with the conclusion and was said to have suggested they were ancient earthworks and dated back as far as 8,000 years. The Nazca Lines in Peru only are said to date back to 200 B.C. When something is said to date back as far as the Times said it did, it makes scientists edgy, most don’t like to say anything is that old, because it suggests our history is erroneous. After the article the scientists who dated the objects were said to have been contacted and said the earthworks were not that old. The Times was said to have replied the date was not from the scientists who worked on the earthworks but from a different scholarly report which linked artifacts from the Mahandzhar culture to the figures. That culture existed from 7,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C. One guess for the purpose of the earthworks is to mark territory by different tribes. If this is true than why were they created so large as to only be figured out from the air?
U.S. archaeologists digging in Greece have discovered a tomb which had laid undisturbed for over 3,500 years. In the tomb was an ancient warrior and a huge hoard of treasure. The announcement was made by the Greek culture ministry. They said the treasure is the most important discovered in Greece in the last 65 years. The person inside was called an unknown soldier and lay in a wooden coffin. The tomb was discovered at the site of the Mycenaean-era Palace of Nestor on Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula. In the tomb was all sorts of gold jewelry, pearls, rings, a bronze sword with a gold and ivory handle, silver vases and ivory combs. The jewelry was decorated in the style of the Minoans, a civilization which lived on Crete from about 2,000 B.C. There were also figures of gods, animals and floral motifs. The palace was built between 1,300 B.C. and 1,200 B.C.
Many species have gone extinct in the last 100,000 years. Among them were the sabre-tooth cat, the wooly mammoth and cave bears. It is an incredible event when any of these creatures can be found preserved. We know that a couple of wooly mammoths have been found. At the end of the ice age the cave lion went extinct. It is suspected they preyed on such animals as horses, deer and even bison. Some say they could even attack and kill young wooly mammoths. Paleontologists were very excited to find two well preserved cave lion cubs preserved by the permafrost in the Sakha Republic also known as Yakutia. They are among the best preserved fossils ever found and could be the best preserved fossils in the world according to one scientist.
Scientists now believe that at least some of the very early birds could fly. They base this on the fact they have found a very well preserved fossil of a wing which belonged to an early Cretaceous bird. The wing was found in a limestone site in Spain and has many features found on modern birds. Could it be that birds flew above the early dinosaurs? Perhaps they did according to some scientists. The wing is believed to be at least 125 million years old.
