Wasous

The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned what it said were illegal excavation works by US, French and Turkish troops as well as their local allies in areas of Syria under their control, including ancient sites at Manbij, Afrin, Idlib, Hasaka, and Raqqa.

Credit: FARS News Agency

Speaking to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), a ministry official said that there had been an increase in excavation work, looting, and theft of ancient cultural artifacts.

"These actions represent a new war crime added to the crimes committed against the Syrian people and Syrian heritage", the official said. According to Damascus, the looting of Syria's historical treasures is part of a deliberate plot by terrorist organizations and their backers to rob the Syrian people of their past and destroy the country's civilizational and cultural heritage.

The Foreign Ministry called on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to condemn the alleged violations and expose those who stand behind them.

Syria is home to some of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, and contains cultural artifacts from numerous ancient empires. Amid the war in Syria archeologists worldwide have looked on in horror as terrorists looted and destroyed priceless artifacts in areas under their control.

The Foreign Ministry statement follows remarks by Mahmoud Hammoud, director general of Syria's museums and antiquities, alleging that the US, France, and Kurdish militias were carrying out illegal excavations in northern Syria in areas under their control, including "archeological tombs in the eastern side of Manbij".

"We hope that the Syrian Army will return peace and security to all those areas soon because it's the only force capable of protecting our heritage", Hammoud stressed.

The Syrian government has devoted considerable resources to the search for looted artifacts, and is working with international authorities to recover treasures illegally smuggled abroad by criminal enterprises during the terrorist occupation. In late October, authorities reopened the National Museum of Damascus, touting it as a symbolic "political, cultural, and economic victory", a symbol of the return to normal life and defiance of efforts by terrorists to loot and destroy the country's treasures. In September, authorities began a major project to restore the Krak de Chevaliers, an 11th century castle in Homs.

Source: FARS News Agency [December 11, 2018]

Khirki is crowded, with narrow roads and tall buildings bundled together like Lego bricks stacked precariously. Smack in the middle of this chaos is Khirki Mosque, a 14th century fortress-like structure built during the Tughlaq dynasty.

The style of writing on the coins indicates that they might be from the Lodi dynasty [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

The mosque is fenced in by high compound walls and the uneven ground is lower than the houses that surround the structure. It is deathly quiet inside, with its myriad archways partially lit by Delhi’s smoggy sunlight. Standing there, it is easy to imagine a priest, or a trader, furtively hurrying along the walls of the mosque to find a spot to bury treasure.

Treasure is what the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) found two months ago in this complex — a hoard of small copper coins vaguely resembling those bite-sized Britannia biscuits from the 90s.

A team from ASI’s conservation wing was levelling the ground in early September as part of ongoing conservation work when one of the workers’ pickaxes landed on a mud pot. Work was halted and ASI archaeologists were called.

The office was abuzz when they learned about the discovery, says N.K. Pathak, superintending archaeologist, ASI-Delhi circle. “As soon as the coins were discovered, there was a big halla. For archaeologists, discoveries like this are always exciting, no matter the value. Everyone said, Khazana mil gaya!” he says, laughing.

Khirki Mosque, Main (South) Entrance Gate [Credit: Varun Shiv Kapur/WikiCommons]

The discovery of these coins is what those in the field call a ‘chance discovery’, as opposed to a planned dig. The mosque is also the site of an earlier discovery of 63 coins in 2003, which was also a chance discovery. There is a possibility that both sets of coins might be from the same era.

Preliminary investigations of the 254 coins reveal that they are from Delhi’s medieval period — 13th to 16th century — the latter part straddling the early modern period. Proper identification can happen only after they are cleaned and studied, says Pathak. “However, some of the coins belong to the reign of Islam Shah Suri.”

Islam Shah Suri is the son of Sher Shah Suri, who founded the Sur dynasty and ruled Delhi for seven years from 1538 to 1545. “Most Islamic coins have inscriptions (what we call legends) on them — the name of the ruler and their father’s name. In this case, some of the coins had ‘Islam Shah Suri, son of Sher Shah Suri’ inscribed on them,” says Shahmoon Ahmad, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI-Lucknow circle, who will be studying the coins further.

Notably, it was Sher Shah who introduced the precursors to the modern rupee and paise — the silver rupaiya and the copper paisa. The gold coins issued by the Sur dynasty were called mohurs. “Discoveries of gold and silver coins are rather rare. Copper coins are not that much of a surprise,” says Pathak.

That’s because copper coins were reused by the general populace; the gold and the silver ones had to be re-minted with the names of current rulers, adds Ahmad.

He suspects that this might be true for this hoard as well. There are several paleographic indications — the style of writing — that indicate that some of the coins might be from the Lodi dynasty, which fell less than two decades before Islam Shah’s reign.

Khirki Mosque, Main (South) Entrance Gate [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

However, any discovery, even something as small as a copper coin hoard, is quite significant. “The monument is of the Tughlaq period, but the coins are from the Lodi and the Sur periods. Once we date the coins, we can establish that people used money regularly from the earliest date on the coin to the latest,” says Ahmad.

Interestingly, the fact that there are coins from two different dynasties might mean that this was not the hoard of a single person. “It could be the savings of one or two generations of a family,” he adds.

These coins can also establish other things. “They tell us this area was populated, the jurisdiction of the particular ruler, the prosperity of his rule, the money usage patterns, and so on,” says Pathak.

The coins also show that the mosque was in use during the reign of that particular ruler.

If they were indeed minted during the time of Islam Shah, it would mean the mosque was in use even 200 years after it was built.

More than half a millennium later, however, the Khirki Mosque is in bad shape. The buildings that flout ASI’s 100-metre-rule is the least of the concerns. There are broken pillars, loose bricks, decaying stones, a decades-old bat infestation, and more. The boundary wall around the monument came up only in 2003, according to an earlier report in The Hindu.

Khirki Mosque, interior [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

Conservation work, which began roughly mid-August, started with clearing the debris to bring the lower plinth of the monument to an even level, says deputy superintending archaeologist, Sanjay Kumar Singh. “It was also to make the movement of water on the ground smoother, especially in the monsoon. So work began with levelling the ground,” he says.

When the coins were found, the area around the discovery was carefully cordoned off, while all the debris and mud excavated so far were sieved thoroughly for more surprises from the past. “There is possibility to get anything, even pot shards, at any important site in Delhi. Workers, supervisors, and other staff are trained to be vigilant. We tell them this work is different from what the Public Works Department might do,” says Pathak.

Conservation work will go on for another six months, during which time the broken pillars and the decayed chajja stones will be replaced. “We will also undertake ‘pointing and underpinning’ work to fix the loose bricks and mortar. We will be using the lime mortar mix that was originally used,” adds Pathak.

Detailed information on the coins, however, will roll in before work on the monument is finished. “We will first send them to the science branch for cleaning, after which our numismatics branch will come in to decipher the writing. It will take three to four months,” says Pathak.

What are the possibilities of finding more antiquities here? “That’s just it,” he says. “You can never predict what you can find in Delhi and when. What is beneath the earth, you never know.”

Author: Janane Venkatraman | Source: The Hindu [December 10, 2018]

Archaeologists at the archaeology research institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have unveiled the details of a deluxe carriage unearthed in a cemetery dating back to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256 BC) in north China's Hebei Province.

Credit: Xinhua

According to the archaeologists, the carriage is 142.5 cm wide, 106 cm in length and has two wheels with a diameter of 140 centimeters and 38 spokes each. The large volume of the carriage is rare for those that date back to the times before the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), said Li Cunxin, an associate researcher.

The archaeologists also found many exquisite patterns painted on the surface of the carriage and a pair of beast-shaped metal badges embedded into the carriage that have gold foil decorations stuck to them, which still hold their shine even after being underground for such a long period of time.

Credit: Xinhua

Researchers speculated that the occupant of the cemetery was high up in the social pecking order and could be at the level of a tribal leader.


The archaeological team is currently trying to further unveil the details of the carriage via various technologies before fully restoring the finding in the future.

Source: Xinhua [December 10, 2018]

The analysis of the world’s most complete skeleton of an early human ancestor, conducted by a research collaboration involving the University of Liverpool, offers conclusive evidence that human ancestors became efficient upright walkers while they were still substantially tree dwelling animals.

Professor Ronald Clarke with Little Foot [Credit: University of Liverpool]

The first bones of the 3.67 million old skeleton, specimen StW 573 nicknamed ‘Little Foot’, were 12 foot bones and leg bone fragments identified in boxes in the 1990s. The rest of the skeleton has undergone two decades of painstaking excavation, cleaning, restoring and analysis. It was found in a very deep cavern, with the bone embedded in a concrete-like matrix. The bone is very delicate and in some cases literally paper-thin. However, it has given scientists a far greater understanding of how our species evolved.

Limbs intact

The over 90% complete skeleton of an old female, much more than twice as complete as the famous Lucy, and considerably older as well, Little Foot is a member of the genus Australopithecus, a widespread and varied genus of hominins to which Lucy belonged, and which was an early precursor to modern-day Homo sapiens which appeared roughly 300,000 years ago. Little Foot is the first fossil of Australopithecus ever to have been discovered with its limbs intact.

Little Foot’s fossil bones [Credit: Patrick Landmann/Science Photo Library]

The studies support the argument of her discoverer, Professor Ronald Clarke of the University of the Witwatersrand, that there were two species of Australopithecus living at the same time in South Africa’s ‘Cradle of Humankind’, Australopithecus africanus, which was small, like Lucy, and probably primarily tree-dwelling, and Australopithecus prometheus, which was probably just within the range of modern human stature.

Important finding

As part of the study, which has been reported in Nature Science, Professor Robin Crompton, Honorary University of Liverpool Research Associate in Musculoskeletal Biology, and his colleagues analysed how she would have walked.


Professor Crompton, states: “This hominin, for the first time in the fossil record, had longer lower limbs than upper limbs, like ourselves. This is an important finding, as the slightly older hominin Ardipithecus, which came before Australopithecus, had longer arms than legs – more like other great apes such as the gorilla.

“That means she was being selected for long stride length in bipedalism. Moreover, unlike Lucy, ‘Littlefoot’ had a hip joint like our own, able to transmit large forces from the trunk to the leg and vice versa. Although Little Foot’s legs were longer than her arms, they had not yet achieved the great relative leg length found in humans. Thus, she would not have been as good at carrying objects as we are. However, she would have been much better at climbing trees than modern humans.

“It is most likely that she would have resided in an area that was a mix of tropical rainforest, broken woodland and grassland, through which she would roam around. She would have lived primarily on forest fruits and leaves”

Source: University of Liverpool [December 10, 2018]

Archaeologists have made an "unparalleled" discovery in East Yorkshire of a chariot buried with two horses, which look as if they "were leaping upwards out of the grave."

The chariot with its ponies [Credit: David Keys]

The pair had been carefully positioned in the Iron Age grave at Pocklington with their back legs bent and hooves just off the ground - ready to spring into the next life.

The chariot - with a man aged in his late 40 upwards in a fetal position inside - had also been buried upright, as though the vehicle was ready to roll on "into any future life."

Archaeologists say the horses may have originally been buried with their heads sticking out of the grave, although when found they were headless.

The discovery comes just a year after another Iron Age chariot and two well-preserved horses were discovered on another building site in the town, David Wilson Homes’ Pavilion Square development.

The horses were buried with a "highly regarded member of the community" who was in his late 40s or older, whose head was surrounded by the bones of six piglets, believed to be an offering, along with a well-preserved shield and a highly decorative brooch.

East Yorkshire is known for its chariot burials but Paula Ware from MAP Archaeological Practice said the type of burial rite had “no British parallel."

The excavation of an Iron Age chariot burial near Pocklington, Yorkshire [Credit: David Keys]

She said: "We couldn't tell how they were placed in the grave. Both were still upright and they were placed as though in motion as if they were leaping out of the grave. It looked as though their skulls were removed centuries ago.

"Possibly the heads were coming out of the graves. Did they go in alive who knows? There's no evidence of a ramp. This is a new burial rite which has never been seen before.

"How spectacular this is - and what time and effort must have gone into it and the people who must have taken part in this burial process, digging this 4.7m by 3.9m grave.

"There is more pig bone in this burial than there has been seen in burials across the Wolds.

"He is honoured with at least six piglets - normally there would be a quarter of a jaw. He was someone so significant."

Nearby was another amazing find - a young man aged 17 to 25 - who had been "ritually speared" with 10 iron and bone spears.

The excavation of the remains of a speared Iron Age man near Pocklington, Yorkshire [Credit: David Keys]

He had suffered blunt force trauma indicative of being in a conflict. It has been suggested by other experts following similar discoveries that it could be a ritual to ensure the corpse remained dead.

But Ms Ware believes it was to release the youngster's spirit, and was a sign of respect from the community.

Ms Ware said: "We will never know because there was no written word and we can only speculate." Simon Usher, managing director at Persimmon Homes Yorkshire, said: “Everyone has been absolutely thrilled by the finds.

"Keeping the news under wraps while the excavation was completed has been a real challenge, but so important to ensure the integrity of the site.”

Author: Alex Wood | Source: The Yorkshire Post [December 09, 2018]