Tag: Ngách kho báu

This photo taken on Aug. 7, 2016, shows Eli Mabel of the Dani tribe holding the mummified remains of his ancestor, Agat Mamete Mabel, in the village of Wogi in Wamena, the long-isolated home of the Dani high in the Papuan central highlands

How would you like to spend the night with the mummified remains of a long-dead relative?
What sounds like a scene from some schlocky horror flick is part of real life for a tribal leader in Wogi, a remote village in the Indonesian province of Papua.
Eli Mabel of the Dani tribe (see more remarkable photos below) spends many nights in the hut where the mummy is kept to make sure nothing happens to it, he told Agence France-Presse.

In protecting the blackened mummy ― said to be the remains of an ancestor of his who ruled some 250 years ago ― Mabel aims to preserve the old Dani tradition of mummification, in which the bodies of venerated tribespeople were preserved with smoke after death.

“We must protect our culture, including the ceremonies for the mummy, the way we treat it, and maintain and fire for it,” Mabel told AFP.

The mummy is decorated with feathers, pig tusks and a traditional gourd covering for the penis. A fire is kept burning in the hut, which is known as a “honai.”
To mummify the bodies, the Dani people dried them under the sun and then stashed them in a cave, Dr. Semiarto Aji Purwanto, a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Indonesia and an expert on Dani culture, told The Huffington Post in an email. Next, he said, the remains were exposed to hot smoke, drained of liquified fat through piercings and slathered with lard. The entire process took months.

Mummification was once common among the Dani but died out after Christian missionaries who came to the area 30 to 50 years ago encouraged them to bury rather than mummify their dead, Purwanto said, adding that only six or seven mummies are left.

But mummies never die.

The Dani people no longer practice mummification, but tribespeople keep a number of mummies, some a few hundred years old, as a symbol of respect to their ancestors.

The mummy is curled up like a fetus, like all mummies in the Dani tradition.

Dr. Alexander J.E. Pryor, an archeological postdoctoral researcher at Southampton University, has recently published a research paper from Cambridge University Press.

 

The members of his team claiming they have found the oldest man-made structure in Russia about three hundred miles from Moscow. No one knows for certain why it was built.

Kostenki 11 is a large bone circle built during the Upper Paleolithic era, over 40,000 years ago. It’s located within the Kostyonki–Borshchyovo archaeological complex in the Khokholsky District, Voronezh Oblast, Russia.

Close up of the structure, featuring long bones, a lower jaw (top middle) and articulated vertebrae.
The majority of the bones in the circle and the remnants of a bone hut were made from woolly mammoths, but bones from Arctic foxes, reindeer, bears, wolves, and horses have also been found, the findings were published in the journal Antiquity.

The archaeological site was discovered in 1951, but little work was done there until the 1960s when the first bone circle was discovered.

In 1970, another mammoth bone structure and a pit were discovered about sixty feet from the circle. Another five feet away is the newly discovered bone hut that is about forty-one feet in diameter and sits on a gradual slope.

The circle has no break for an entrance, but just outside are three small pits where burnt bones, ivory, and charcoal were found. They were carbon-dated to around twenty-five thousand years old.

Dwelling made with mammoth bones. Reconstruction based on the example of Mezhirich. Exhibit in the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan
Some scientists believe the shelter may have been covered with animal skins, but Dr. Pryor does not believe it was a living abode as all of the common artifacts usually found among dwellings were absent.

According to The Independent, some researchers have suggested structures such as this might have been ritual monuments.

There is, however, no evidence for this conclusion. Another factor is that some of the bones were still stuck together indicating there was still animal material on them when they were stacked.

This would have been not only smelly but very dangerous, as it would attract predators.

Circular bone features such as this have been found in about twenty-five different locations in the Ukraine and Russia but none are as old as Kostenki 11, which is still being studied.

Built at the end of the last ice age when winters were long and harsh, reaching twenty degrees below zero on average, by the humans that didn’t travel south to escape the cold, Dr. Pryor believes the hut may have been used for food storage, as a garbage dump that would keep scavengers away from their living area, or even for rituals of some sort.

The Mammoth Bones structure seen from above
Evidence of tool usage including percussion rocks and striking platforms were found as well as over fifty small seeds that had been partially burned leading researchers to wonder if they were from native plants growing around the area or from plants that had been collected and brought to the site for consumption.

Three other pits in the same area tested exactly the same as the materials found at the bone hut according to Dr. Pryor’s research paper on Cambridge Core.

Dr. Pryor stated that Kostenki 1 is a rare site where scientists can learn more about hunter-gatherers in the Paleolithic era and how they survived in such a harsh climate, the height of the last ice age.

The site is providing information as to what places like this may have been used for. He notes that the people of that time used ingenuity in finding ways to survive using the materials available in their ice age environment.

Dr. E. James Dixon, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, is quoted by smithsonianmag.com saying that this is a “fascinating time period in Eurasian archaeology” and the study “clearly demonstrates that modern humans were adapted to higher latitudes at the very height of the last ice age.”

On 2018 Ancient Origins reported on the fascinating discovery of a golden treasure left by the ancient Saka people in a burial mound in Kazakhstan. It was called one of the most significant finds in helping archaeologists unravel the history of the ancient Scythian sub-group. Now, archaeologists have found the missing element of the Saka burial mound – a ‘golden man’.

According to Archaeology News Network , the mummy of a Saka man who died in the 8th-7th centuries BC was found in the Yeleke Sazy burial mound in the remote Tarbagatai Mountains of eastern Kazakhstan. He died when he was just 17 or 18 years old and it is estimated he was 165-170 centimeters (5.4-5.6 ft.) tall.

There are plans underway to find out more about the man, as lead archaeologist Zeinolla Samashev, stated, “We will do facial reconstruction from the skull of this young man, extract DNA from the bones to find out the environment people lived in back then, to learn about their everyday life and habits”.

Kazakhstan’s ministry of information and communications explained why the human remains received its shining nickname, “When buried, the young man was dressed in gold, with all of his clothes being embroidered with gold beads. The man was buried with a massive gold torc around his neck (suggesting his noble origin) and a dagger in a golden quiver beside him.”

That fits in well with the previous discovery of 3000 golden artifacts in the kurgan (burial mound). Archaeologists have unearthed plates, necklaces with precious stones, earrings, beautifully crafted figurines of animals, and golden beads which may have been used to embellish Saka clothing.

The find also corresponds with the belief that elite members of the culture were laid to rest in the Saka burial mound. As Yegor Kitov, an anthropologist at Moscow’s Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, said, “The finds and the size of the mound suggest that the young man buried inside had a high social status.” Kitov also suggests “The body was mummified to allow time for those coming from far away to say farewell to the man,” further exemplifying the man’s social status in his time.

The burial mound which held the man’s remains was created by members of the Saka culture. This was a Scythian nomadic group who spoke an Iranian language and lived on the Eurasian Steppe. The Saka are best remembered as s𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ed horsemen and metalworkers. Danial Akhmentov, head of the East Kazakhstan regional administration, notes the craftsmanship of the Saka in the recently revealed treasures from the burial mound, “The finds indicate the high level of technological development in gold jewelry production in the 8th century B.C., which, in turn, suggests the high level of civilization at that time,” he said .

The Saka are known to have buried members of the elite in their kurgans, usually in pairs or as a family unit. That means that there may still be other skeletons inside the Yeleke Sazy burial mound. There are still more plans to excavate in the area because estimates suggest that there may be 200 burial sites in varying states of conservation nearby. Unfortunately, it is believed that looting has been an issue in at least some of the kurgans.

Akhmetov said that the discovery of the burial mound “shows that the people of Kazakhstan are descended from a great culture” and “gives us a completely different view of the history of our people.”

Dutch archaeologists have discovered a 6,000-year-old Stone Age burial of a woman with a baby cradled in her arm in the central Netherlands city of Nieuwegein. It is the oldest infant burial ever found in the Netherlands.

Nieuwegein is rich with archaeological material from the Swifterbant culture, a Neolithic-era culture who transitioned from hunter-gathering to cattle farming in settlements along the riverbanks and wetlands of what are today the Netherlands between 5300 and 3400 B.C.

An abundance of Swifterbant artifacts and remains, about 136,000 of them (far more than were discovered at the type site in Swifterbant, Flevoland province), have been found under six and a half feet of clay and peat at Nieuwegein’s Het Klooster business park. Artifacts include hundreds of pieces of flint, a grindstone worn to a smooth surface by the second grinding stone used the mill grains and cereals, a striking jet pendant, animal bone chisels and earthenware pottery. The clay and peat have kept the objects and remains in an unusually good state of preservation for thousands of years. One of the pottery vessels still had a layer of food in it.

They also discovered four skeletons which they cut out of the clay en bloc and transported to the Leiden laboratory of RAAP Archaeological Consultancy for careful excavation. One of them was the skeleton of a young adult woman who was 20-30 years old at time of death. When the remains were first unearthed, archaeologists didn’t realize they’d just found the oldest infant burial in the Netherlands. They didn’t realize it was an infant burial period. There was no osteological material immediately visible pointing to the presence of a baby buried with the young woman. It was the woman’s right arm bent at a 90 degree angle with her elbow out that suggested to archaeologists there was something anomalous in that spot. The Swifterbant culture buried their ᴅᴇᴀᴅ with their legs outstretched and arms straight by their sides.

When the remains were excavated in the lab, archaeologists discovered small bone fragments in the crook of the woman’s right arm: pieces of the clavicles, skull, a leg bone, a mandible complete with milk teeth. The teeth were so small they could have belonged to a newborn (there are teethlets in their wee jaws, they just haven’t erupted yet) or a baby up to six months old.

“It really makes an impression when you find little baby teeth buried in clay for 6,000 years and see how similar they are to all those milk teeth that are kept in matchboxes by parents everywhere!” [Dutch broadcaster] NOS quotes [project leader Helle] Molthof as saying.
This is an exceptionally rare discovery. Infants have such soft bones that they disintegrate within months of burial. The waterlogged conditions of this burial, the thick alluvial clay deposits and the peat, preserved these fragile remains for 6,000 years.

The archaeological team hopes to determine whether the adult woman and the baby she was laid to rest cradling are, as one would suspect, mother and child, using DNA analysis.

DNA testing will have to determine whether the woman is the baby’s mother, although there seems to be little doubt that she is, and the Sєx of the baby. The archaeologists hope the find will tell them more about the burial ceremonies of the Swifterbant people. “We know how they lived, what sort of food they ate, what their houses were like but we don’t know very much yet about how they buried their ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and what happened to the children,” Molthof told the broadcaster.

Isotope analysis will have to show if the woman was born in the area or whether she travelled there at a later date.

It’s the stuff of nightmares: A dig at a macabre graveyard has revealed a Bulgarian vampire pinned to his resting place by a metal spike.

The ancient skeleton, identified as a 35 to 40 year old male, is only the second ever skeleton with a spike driven near its heart in this way, after one that was found last year in the southern town of Sozopol.

It is thought the man, considered to be a vampire by his medieval contemporaries, was pinned to his grave using the ploughshare – the metal end of a plough – to prevent him from leaving at midnight and terrorising the living.

The ancient skeleton, identified as a 35-40 year old male, was discovered with a large metal ploughshare (pictured in rusty orange, top right) driven through his left shoulder

The discovery was made at the Perperikon site, in the east of the country, during a dig led by the ‘Bulgarian Indiana Jones’ Professor Nikolai Ovcharov.

Last year, a group heading by Professor Ovcharov unearthed another 700-year-old skeleton of a man pinned down in his earth in a church in the Black Sea town of Sozopol.

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The skeleton, which quickly became known as the ‘Sozopol vampire,’ was pierced through the chest with a ploughshare and has his teeth pulled out before being put to rest.

Professor Ovcharov has said described the latest finding as the ‘twin of the Sozopol vampire’ and said it could shed light on how vampire beliefs in the Pagan times were preserved by Christians in the middle ages.

The man, thought at the time to be a vampire, was pinned to his grave using the plough to prevent him from leaving at midnight and terrorising the living

The discovery was made at Perperikon in a dig led by the ‘Bulgarian Indiana Jones’ Professor Nikolai Ovcharov

Coins found with the body have been dated it to the 13th and 14th century.

In other cases Professor Ovcharov said he had found skeletons ‘nailed to the ground with iron staples driven into the limbs’ but this was only the second case were a ploughshare was used near the heart.

‘[The ploughshare] weighs almost 2 pounds (0.9kg) and is dug into the body into a broken shoulder bone,’ he said.

‘You can clearly see how the collarbone has literally popped out.’

This is the latest in a succession of finds across western and central Europe that shed new light on how seriously people took the threat of vampires. 

Last year, a group heading by Professor Ovcharov unearthed another 700-year-old skeleton of a man pinned down in his earth in a church in the Black Sea town of Sozopol

Professor Ovcharov has said described the latest finding, discovered at Perperikon (pictured) as the ‘twin of the Sozopol vampire’ and said it could shed light on how vampire beliefs in the Pagan times were preserved by Christians in the middle ages

According to Pagan belief, people who were considered bad during their lifetimes might turn into vampires after death unless stabbed in the chest with an iron or wooden rod before being buried.

These ‘vampires’ were often, intellectuals, aristocrats and clerics.

A skeleton found last year, which quickly became known as the ‘Sozopol vampire,’ was also pierced through the chest with a ploughshare

‘The curious thing is that there are no women among them. They were not afraid of witches,’ said Bulgaria’s national history museum chief, Bozhidar Dimitrov.

The string of plagues which ravaged Europe between 1300 and 1700 helped cement an already growing belief in vampires.

Gravediggers reopening mass graves following a plague would sometimes come across bodies bloated by gas, with hair still growing, and blood seeping from their mouths.The shrouds used to cover the faces of the dead were often decayed by bacteria in the mouth, revealing the corpse’s teeth, and vampires became known as ‘shroud-eaters.’

According to medieval medical and religious texts, the ‘undead’ were believed to spread pestilence in order to suck the remaining life from corpses until they acquired the strength to return to the streets again.

‘In my opinion it’s not about criminals or bad people,’ said Professor Ovcharov.

‘Rather, these are precautionary measures that prevent the soul from being taken by the forces of evil in the 40 day period after death.’

Over 100 buried people whose corpses were stabbed to prevent them from becoming vampires have been discovered across Bulgaria over the years.

EUROPE’S FEAR OF BLOOD-SUCKING VAMPIRES IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The belief in vampires was widespread throughout Bulgaria and other parts of central Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

The word vampire is derived from the original Slavic term opyrb or opir which later appears as vipir, vepir, or vapir.

Drunkards, thieves and murderers were all believed to be likely candidates to become vampires.

John van Eyssen prepares to drive a wooden stake through the heart of vampire. The scene was in ‘Horror of Dracula’

Appearing completely normal, they would arrive at a town and live amongst the people often even marrying and fathering children. But at night they would wander the countryside in search of blood.

These types of vampires could be destroyed with a stake through the heart.

One account maintains that a vampire was the soul of an outlaw who died in the mountains or forest or along a country road, and whose corpse is eaten by crows, wolves, or some other such scavengers.

Because such a soul is not permitted to enter heaven or hell it remains on earth haunting the place where he was killed strangling and drinking the blood of anyone who comes by.

Another account states a person who died a violent, unnatural death or whose corpse was jumped over by a cat before burial, can become a vampire.

In such cases during the first 40 days after burial, the bones turn to gelatin and the vampire performs mischief at night  – releasing animals from their pens, scattering house hold items, and suffocating people.

During the first forty days it can be destroyed by a Vampiridzhija – a professional vampire hunter capable of seeing them – or alternatively devoured by a wolf.

However if not destroyed in this time period the Vampire would develop a skeleton and becomes even more fierce.

As humans, our fascination with uncovering hidden treasures carrying secrets from ancient times has endured throughout history. These treasures hold not only monetary value but also offer invaluable insights into our past. In this article, we delve into the discovery of the five greatest treasures by ancient civilizations.”

The first treasure on our list was found in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter. The treasure was none other than the tomb of Tutankhamun, a pharaoh of ancient Egypt. The tomb was filled with numerous treasures, including golden masks, jewelry, and other valuable artifacts. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb provided valuable insights into the religious and cultural practices of ancient Egyptians.

The second treasure on our list is the Treasure of Troy. This treasure was discovered by German businessman Heinrich Schliemann in the late 1800s. The treasure included a vast amount of gold, silver, and other valuable artifacts. The discovery of the Treasure of Troy confirmed the existence of the ancient city of Troy, which was previously only known through the works of Homer.

The third treasure on our list is the Dead Sea Scrolls. These scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea in Israel. The scrolls contained religious texts dating back to the 3rd century BC, and were of immense importance to historians and scholars.

The fourth treasure on our list is the Rosetta Stone. This stone was discovered by a French soldier during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt in 1799. The Rosetta Stone contained inscriptions in three different languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphs. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone helped scholars to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were previously undecipherable.

The fifth and final treasure on our list is the Sutton Hoo burial site. This site was discovered by archaeologist Basil Brown in 1939 in Suffolk, England. The site contained the remains of an ancient ship burial, along with numerous valuable artifacts, including a gold buckle, a helmet, and a sword. The Sutton Hoo burial site provided valuable insights into the Anglo-Saxon culture and way of life.

In conclusion, the discovery of ancient treasures has been instrumental in expanding our knowledge of the history and culture of our ancestors. The 5 treasures we explored in this article have not only provided us with valuable historical information, but have also captured our imagination and sparked our curiosity for the past. These treasures remind us of the importance of preserving our cultural heritage for future generations to learn from and enjoy.