Underwater technology helps solve Lake Seneca mystery

Scientists excavating a cave in South Africa believe they have found the world's oldest necklace.

Perforated shells found at Blombos Cave appear to have been strung as beads about 75,000 years ago, according to research published in American Journal Science.

Archaeologists conducting the dig on the coast of the Indian Ocean said the beads provided some of the earliest evidence of our ancestors' modern behavior.

A total of 41 shells, from a tiny river-dwelling mollusc scavenger, were discovered in a layer of sediment deposited during the Middle Stone Age - making them 30,000 years older than any previously identified personal ornaments.

The shells, which were found in clusters of up to 17 beads, all contained holes and had marks in similar positions.

The research stated they appeared to have been selected for size and deliberately perforated after being found in rivers 20km from the site.

Christopher Henshilwood, program director of the Blombos Cave Project, believes the use of external symbols, such as beads and tools, is evidence that modern behavior - such as the existence of a language - developed gradually throughout the Middle Stone Age.

Previous theories of behavioral evolution state that humans did not develop critical modern behaviors until some punctuating event 40,000 or 50,000 years ago when our ancestors spread from Africa to Eurasia.

"Agreement is widespread that personal ornaments, such as beads, incontrovertibly represent symbolically mediated modern behavior," Henshilwood said.

"Until now, the oldest beads in Africa date to about 45,000 years. The discovery of 41 shell beads in sand layers at Blombos Cave accurately dated as 75,000-years-old provides important new evidence for early symbolically organized behavior in Africa."

Courtesy of Ananova.com

This artifact, the Lady’s Head from Warka (ancient Uruk), is made of marble and dates to 3000 B.C. It was stolen from the Iraqi National Museum in April 2003 and recovered in September. This modern impression of a cylinder seal from Tell Billa, which shows two cultic scenes involving a boat ride and a procession toward a temple, is missing from the Iraqi National Museum collection. The item dates to 3000 B.C. This large cylindrical vessel made of alabaster displays cultic and daily life scenes. It was discovered in Warka (ancient Uruk) and dates to 3000 B.C. Stolen in April 2003 from the Iraqi National Museum, the vessel was recovered, in pieces, in June. This image shows the vase in its prewar condition, and the image immediately above it shows the vase's condition at the time of its return in June.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baghdad, Iraq-A year after the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, Oriental Institute archaeologists continue to track missing artifacts. And their work is playing a pivotal role in helping  recover items stolen from the museum in Baghdad between April 9 and 11, 2003.

"This event provoked great outrage around the world and attracted new attention by both media and the public on the Mesopotamian civilization, Iraq's cultural heritage," Clemens Reichel, research associate with the Oriental Institute, said.

Reichel and Charles Jones, head librarian for the Oriental Institute’s Research Archives, are continuing their work on a Web database, which documents the losses of the Iraq museum as well as of Iraq libraries. The database is accessible at http://oi.uchicago.edu

Press reports following the museum looting last April initially had suggested a total loss of the museum’s collection—about 170,000 registered objects.

“Such reports fortunately turned out to be exaggerations; thanks to the foresight of the museum staff, a lot of objects had been stored away in safe locations before the outbreak of hostilities,” Reichel explained.

Among the items protected from destruction were the so-called Nimrud Gold Treasure (860 to 700 B.C.), gold finds from the Royal Tombs of Ur, dating from about 2600 to 2400 B.C., and a life-size head of an Akkadian king, cast in copper and found at Nineveh, which dates to ca. 2200 B

Reports both highlighted the damage and confused the issue. Some news outlets began to speak of “only 40” objects being taken from the museum.

Those reports, said Reichel, “only referred to objects on display in the gallery but omitted any reference to objects stolen from the storerooms and magazines of the museum. The losses encountered there were sizeable, though even now it remains difficult to put an exact figure on it.”

The destruction of the archives that recorded information about the museum holdings complicated the job of totaling the loss. “By fall 2003, the figures quoted by Donny George, director of the Iraq Museum, and Col. Matthew Bogdanos, (U.S. Marine Corps) who led a U.S. team investigating the museum looting last year, put the number of objects stolen at over 10,000. This figure, however, has recently been revised by George to about 15,000 pieces, indicating this tally is far from final at this point,” Reichel said..

Many artifacts were recovered throughout the last 11 months. By early February, as many as 5,000 objects were reported to have been recovered in Iraq or abroad, including 1,000 pieces in the United States, 700 in Jordan, 500 in France and 250 in Switzerland.

Pieces recovered in police raids in Iraq included two of the most famous pieces from the Iraqi National Museum’s collection—the Lady’s Head from Warka, a beautifully sculpted marble head of a woman, dating to about 3000 B.C., which was recovered in September, and the Bassetki Statue, the lower half of a sitting figure of a hero, cast in copper and dating to ca. 2200 B.C., which was recovered in October.

Other pieces were returned anonymously and voluntarily, including the famous Warka Vase, an alabaster vase decorated with elaborate relief scenes that dates to about 3000 B.C. 

“Mixed in with the joy over the recovery of these pieces is the sorrow over the loss of other objects, which will remain difficult if not impossible to recover. This list may well be topped by 4,795 cylinder seals, which originally had been thought to be safe in the museum’s storerooms and whose loss was only noted in June,” Reichel said.

These objects, often made of precious stones, decorated with elaborate images and sometimes bearing inscriptions, were ancient bureaucratic devices, used to verify business or legal transactions by impressing the seal into documents inscribed on clay tablets. In modern times, however, these seals have become highly desirable collectors’ items, which often sell for astronomical prices at auction. Many of the seals from the Iraq Museum could end up in the hands of collectors worldwide, never to be seen again.

In terms of archaeological losses, the looting of the museum may well be dwarfed by the continual destruction of archaeological sites all over Iraq by looters. This looting has touched upon well-known sites such as Nippur, home of an archaeological expedition of the Oriental Institute, Umma, Lagash, and Isin, but many more unexcavated sites are destroyed by the unsystematic onslaught of pick axes used by the looters throughout the country.

Courtesy of Archaeology. org