Wanderlust

Tag: archaeology

  • ‘Oldest known drawing’ found on tiny rock in South Africa

    The oldest-known drawing, painted in ochre pigment on a small stone Image copyright Reuters Image caption The drawing dates back 73,000 years

    Scientists say they have discovered humanity’s oldest known drawing on a small fragment of rock in South Africa.

    The drawing is about 73,000 years old, and shows cross-hatch lines sketched onto stone with red ochre pigment.

    Scientists discovered the small fragment of the drawing – which some say looks a bit like a hashtag – in Blombos Cave on the southern coast.

    The find is “a prime indicator of modern cognition” in our species, the report says.

    While scientists have found older engravings around the world, research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature says the lines on this stone mark the first abstract drawing.

    Image copyright Reuters Image caption Scientists found the stone fragment in Blombos Cave, 300 kilometres (185 miles) east of Cape Town

    Humanity has used ochre, a clay earth pigment, for at least 285,000 years.

    The drawing was “probably more complex” in its entirety, archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood told Reuters.

    “The abrupt termination of all lines on the fragment edges indicates that the pattern originally extended over a larger surface,” he said.

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    Mr Henshilwood works at Norway’s University of Bergen and South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand and led the research into the drawing.

    He told Reuters that while the team would be “hesitant to call it art”, it almost definitely had “some meaning to the maker”.

    There have been numerous other artefacts found in Blombos Cave, 300 kilometres (185 miles) east of Cape Town, including beads covered in red ochre, engraved ochre fragments, and a paint-making kit dating back around 100,000 years.

    Modern man, known as homo sapiens, is first known to have appeared more than 315,000 years ago in what is now Africa.

  • ‘Oldest library in Germany’ unearthed via Cologne archaeologist

    The library discovered in Cologne Image copyright EPA

    Archaeologists in Cologne imagine they have got exposed the rules of the oldest identified library in Germany, courting again to 2 AD.

    A team from the city’s Roman-Germanic Museum came upon the library remains even as excavating the positioning of a Protestant church.

    The construction likely housed up to 20,000 scrolls, in keeping with Dr Dirk Schmitz, a researcher at the excursion.

    He defined the to find as “in reality impressive”.

    The archaeologists all for the parish church challenge uncovered the remains of a Roman construction from 2 ADVERT.

    Symbol copyright EPA

    THE FORMER library is believed to have had a dimension of around 20 metres by means of 9 and used to be two stories top.

    “to start with we idea they have been the continues to be of a space for public gatherings,” Marcus Trier, director of the town’s Romano-Germanic Museum stated, but the partitions had “abnormal, cavernous systems”.

    After extensive research and comparability with historical homes similar to the Ephesus in Turkey, the archaeologists were assured that they had found the remains of what used to be a library.

    “It took us a while to compare up the parallels – lets see the niches have been too small to bear statues within,” said Dr Schmitz, from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne.

    “They’re very specific to libraries – you’ll see the similar ones within the library at Ephesus.”

    The ancient ruins have also discovered niches and circumstances, which most likely saved an implausible choice of parchment and papyrus rolls. “Possibly 20,000,” he estimates.

    Image copyright EPA

    The western German city on the Rhine River is over 2,000 years old – so stumbling upon historical ruins isn’t ordinary.

    Cologne is the one city in Germany, with a history going again 2 AD. Cologne (or in its original title Colonia) is understood for its impressive gothic Cathedral.

    the rules are now to be built-in as an important part into the new protestant church and can be open to the public. Different continues to be of the newly found library will be left for additional archaeological examinations.

    Follow us on Fb, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. if you happen to have a narrative suggestion e-mail entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

  • Prehistoric bake-off: Recipe for oldest bread found out

    Image copyright Alexis Pantos Image caption Plant roots were flooring to add to the bread

    Take flour created from wild wheat and barley, mix with the pulverised roots of plants, upload water, then bake.

    According to scientists, that is the recipe for the world’s oldest bread, courting again greater than 14,000 years.

    The bake might have looked like a flatbread and tasted a little bit like modern day multi-grain bread, they say.

    Our ancestors can have used the bread as a wrap for roasted meat. Therefore, to boot as being the oldest bread, it is going to also have been the oldest sandwich.

    “that is the earliest proof we’ve got for what shall we really call a cuisine, in that it’s a combined meals product,” Prof Dorian Fuller of College School London told BBC Information.

    Symbol copyright Joe Roe Symbol caption Ali Shakaiteer and Dr Amaia Arranz-Otaegui sampling cereals in the area where the bread used to be came upon

    Bread has lengthy been part of our staple nutrition. However little is known concerning the origins of bread-making.

    Until now, the oldest proof of bread got here from Turkey NINE,000 years ago.

    The recent to find, from an archaeological site within the Black Wasteland in Jordan, pushes back the first evidence for bread-making by means of greater than FIVE,000 years.

    Scientists uncovered buildings, every containing a large round stone hearth in which charred bread crumbs were found.

    Iceman’s last meal was once prime fats feastWhy we would possibly soon have no bananas (again) Symbol copyright Alexis Pantos Symbol caption trying to flip plant roots into flour

    Analysed beneath the microscope, the bread samples showed inform-story indicators of grinding, sieving and kneading.

    Dr Amaia Arranz-Otaegui of the College of Copenhagen, who came upon the continues to be of the bread, said it was the very last thing they expected to search out at the site.

    “Bread is a powerful link among our prior and present meals cultures,” she said. “It connects us with our prehistoric ancestors.”

    The bread may have been made in different ranges, including “grinding cereals and membership-rush tubers to procure advantageous flour, blending of flour with water to produce dough, and baking the dough within the sizzling ashes of a hearth or in a scorching flat-stone”, she defined.

    Jordanian bread recipe from 14,000 years ago

    Make flour from wild wheat and wild barley Pound tubers (roots) of untamed vegetation that develop in water (sedges or club- or bull-rushes) to a dry pulp Mix along with water to make a batter or dough Bake on hot stones round a fireplace.

    the folk residing in the space on the time had been hunter gatherers. they’d have hunted gazelle and trapped smaller animals similar to hares and birds.

    in addition they foraged for plant meals such as nuts, fruits and wild cereals.

    The researchers suppose the bread was once made when people collected in combination for a celebration or feast.

    This happened before the arrival of farming, while other folks started growing cereal vegetation and maintaining animals.

    Symbol copyright Alexis Pantos Symbol caption the fireside the place the bread was found at an archaeological web site known as Shubayqa 1

    This increases the fascinating possibility that rising cereals for bread may have been the driving force at the back of farming.

    “the significance of this bread is that it presentations investment of additional effort into making meals that has blended foods,” stated Prof Fuller. “So, making a few type of a recipe, and that means that bread played a special function for unique events.

    “that during flip shows one of the prospective motivations as to why folks later chose to cultivate and cultivate wheat and barley, as a result of wheat and barley had been species that already had a distinct place in phrases of different meals.”

    Image copyright Amaia Arranz Otaegui Image caption The crumbs were FIVE.7mm lengthy through 4.4mm huge and 2.5mm thick

    The bread was unleavened and might have resembled a wrap, pitta bread or chapatti.

    Researchers have tried to reconstruct the recipe within the lab. they say the blended grains gave the bread a nutty flavour, similar to modern day multi-grain loaves.

    Lara Gonzalez Carretero of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, who is an expert on prehistoric bread, tested the 24 crumbs beneath an electron microscope.

    “this will likely be a bread made of wild wheat and wild barley flour, blended with water, and cooked on a fireplace on a fire,” she stated.

    “There’s additionally the addition of wild tuber flour into it which gives a slightly nutty, bitter flavour to it.”

    Turkish bread recipe from 9,000 years ago

    Make flour from domesticated wheat and barleyAdd floor beans equivalent to chick peas and lentils Combine with waterCook in an oven.

    the discovery is said within the magazine PNAS.

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