CANADA: The permafrost of the highest
Arctic reaches of the Northwest Territories
can make it difficult to inter the
dead underground. The Inuvialuit and
Inuinnait people of the region buried
their dead above ground, covered with
large flat stones. Archaeologists have
recently documented four examples of
these graves dating to either 700 years
ago or the 19th century. The graves will
be left undisturbed, but nearby sites,
including food caches, will be examined
to learn more about the cultures that
made them.
(Courtesy Eric Baron/Parks Canada)
MARYLAND: A dinosaur bone at an archaeological
site? No, there were no dinos patrolling
the Eastern Seaboard 1,000 years ago.
Rather, the bone, from an unidentified
species, had been
collected by Native
Americans living at
Pig Point, a site with
a 10,000-year history,
for use as a pot
boiler, a heated stone
used for cooking purposes. It came from the
Arundel Formation, a sandstone deposit that
offered up some of the first dinosaur bones
to be studied in the 19th century.
(Courtesy Al Luckenbach, Anne Arundel County)
ENGLAND: "Can this cockpit hold/ The
vasty fields of France? Or may we cram/
Within this wooden O the very casques/
That did affright the air at Agincourt?" The
"wooden O" from the prologue to Shakespeare's
Henry V has been found behind
a pub in Shoreditch. There, archaeologists
uncovered the remains of the Curtain Theatre, which was home to the bard's theatrical
company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, for two years before the Globe opened. The playhouse
likely saw the first performances of Henry V and Romeo and Juliet.
(Courtesy Museum of London)
IRELAND: While
dredging for a wastewater
treatment plant
on the Cork coast,
workers uncovered the
previously undocumented
wreck of a
ship from the 16th or
17th century. While
little is known of the ship just yet, marine
archaeologists found that it carried an
exotic load—seven coconuts, all stamped
with an unknown mark. Found amid barrels
and fragments of Seville olive jars, the
coconuts might have been cargo from the
Caribbean or North Africa.
(Courtesy Julianna O'Donoghue)
ARGENTINA: New England whaling fleets scoured the Seven
Seas in the 19th century, so it's no surprise when wrecks of
these ships turn up in out-of-the-way places. Off the coast of
Puerto Madryn, nautical archaeologists believe they have the
wreck of Dolphin, a whaler that went down in the vicinity in
1859. Whalers are known to have visited this area, and in addition
to the ship's wood, researchers found iron try-pots (for
boiling blubber) and harpoon heads not far away.
(Courtesy PROAS-INAPL)
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UKRAINE: Different lines of evidence for
the earliest domestication of horses have
sometimes led to different conclusions.
Some models suggest horses were domesticated
in a single place, while others suggest
that wild
horse populations
were
domesticated
independently
in various
locations.
A new study of horse genetics suggests
that equines were initially domesticated in
one area of the Eurasian steppes, and that
domestic herds were then restocked with
wild female horses as the practice spread—
an intermediate path that reconciles the
competing theories.
(iStockphoto)
CAMBODIA: An unknown
people in
the highlands
of the
country's
Cardamom
Mountains buried their dead on rock
ledges—in jars and coffins hand-hewn
from logs. Researchers have conducted
the first radiocarbon dating on 10 of
these mysterious sites, and determined
that these burial rites were practiced
from at least A.D. 1395 to 1650. This
period coincides with the decline of the
lowland Kingdom of Angkor. In the lowlands,
bodies were primarily cremated,
so it is clear that this highland culture
was very different from that of the
Khmer people below.
(Courtesy Nancy Beavan, University of Otago)
PAKISTAN: The Indus Valley Civilization,
one of the earliest urban cultures, with
cities such as Harappa and Mohenjodaro,
flourished for 600 years during a
climatic "Goldilocks" period—not too
wet, not too dry. According to a new
study of river and flood deposits, when
the civilization first began to grow,
around 4,500 years ago, the monsoon
rains were declining and flood intensity
decreased enough to make intensive
agriculture possible. The monsoon continued
to weaken over time, and the
increasing aridity might have contributed
to the abandonment of the great
Indus cities around 3,900 years ago.
(Images of Asia)
LIBYA: Ten thousand years ago,
the Sahara was a far greener place.
As it became more arid, people
came to rely heavily on livestock,
and rock art from the region
depicts cattle and even milking.
But rock art is hard to date, making
it difficult to identify the onset
of dairy practices in Africa. New
analysis of residues in pots has
revealed evidence of milk fat that
can be reliably dated to around
7,000 years ago. This early onset
of dairy use might help unravel
the evolution of the gene that lets
many people digest lactose.
(Edward J. Westmacaott/Alamy)
MADAGASCAR: For a sailor on a ship in the 17th century,
there weren't many options for getting or receiving messages
from other ships or back home. But sailors for the
Dutch East India Company used a rudimentary postal system
for ships: a series of inscriptions on stones at a beach on tiny
Nosy Mangabe Island, under which seamen could leave letters
for another ship to pick up and deliver. Experts recently documented these inscriptions
and found 40 of them, left by at least 11 different ships.
(Courtesy Mark E. Polzer, Flinders University)
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