643 replies to this topic

[Amra the Warrior]

Very cool.

[timeless]

Pretty interesting:


http://www.foxnews.c...,290799,00.html

[deuce]

Cool. I'd read several times over the last decade or so that there could be a significant site below the Hellenistic city. Nice to see that being confirmed.

[Almuric]

Ran across this recently:

http://www.swordhist.../crusaders.html

It's about an account of a Caucasus tribe, the Khevsoor who claim to be descendants of Crusaders. Interesting stuff. They apparently dressed in shirts bearing crosses, mail and wore helmets and fought with sword and buckler, all as late as 1915. There's not much online about them. I wonder if they still exist?

I've even heard about a tribe in Afghanistan, the Kalash, who are supposed to be descendants of the Greek armies of Alexander the Great (shades of the "The Lost Valley of Iskander"!).

I wonder what other "lost tribes" are still out there, forgotten by the modern world?

[deuce]

Hey Almuric! Cool. The thing is, I seem to remember reading about this those guys on this board. It might've been another board, though.

[Primeval]

Another lost tribe, or rather, unknown tribe:


Unknown tribe in Peru

[Ironhand]

Go to

http://www.newsweek....id/67475/page/1

To read about the unearthing of 39 ancient Roman cargo ships in Pisa, Italy.

[deuce]

Very cool, Ironhand. Some exciting stuff. One thing though, the article says there were no Roman "passenger ships". I've seen at least two programs (complete with CGI recreations) showing just that. Very impressive. The West didn't see their like again until the 1800s.

[Ironhand]

Prehistoric women had passion for fashion By Ljilja Cvekic

PLOCNIK, Serbia (Reuters) - If the figurines found in an ancient European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress for at least 7,500 years.

Recent excavations at the site -- part of the Vinca culture which was Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization -- point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion, archaeologists say.

In the Neolithic settlement in a valley nestled between rivers, mountains and forests in what is now southern Serbia, men rushed around a smoking furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short skirts.

"According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms," said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic.

The unnamed tribe who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-hectare site at what is now Plocnik knew about trade, handcrafts, art and metallurgy. Near the settlement, a thermal well might be evidence of Europe's oldest spa.

"They pursued beauty and produced 60 different forms of wonderful pottery and figurines, not only to represent deities, but also out of pure enjoyment," said Kuzmanovic.

The findings suggest an advanced division of labor and organization. Houses had stoves, there were special holes for trash, and the dead were buried in a tidy necropolis. People slept on woolen mats and fur, made clothes of wool, flax and leather and kept animals.

The community was especially fond of children. Artifacts include toys such as animals and rattles of clay, and small, clumsily crafted pots apparently made by children at playtime.

COPPER AGE

One of the most exciting finds for archaeologists was the discovery of a sophisticated metal workshop with a furnace and tools including a copper chisel and a two-headed hammer and axe.

"This might prove that the Copper Age started in Europe at least 500 years earlier than we thought," Kuzmanovic said.

The Copper Age marks the first stage of humans' use of metal, with copper tools used alongside older stone implements. It is thought to have started around the 4th millennium BC in south-east Europe, and earlier in the Middle East.

The Vinca culture flourished from 5500 to 4000 BC on the territories of what is now Bosnia, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia.

It got its name from the present-day village of Vinca, 10 km east of Belgrade on the Danube river, where early 20th-century excavations uncovered the remains of eight Neolithic villages.

The discovery of a mine -- Europe's oldest -- at the nearby Mlava river suggested at the time that Vinca could be Europe's first metal culture, a theory now backed up by the Plocnik site.

"These latest findings show that the Vinca culture was from the very beginning a metallurgical culture," said archaeologist Dusan Sljivar of Serbia's National Museum. "They knew how to find minerals, to transport them and melt them into tools."

The metal workshop in Plocnik was a room of some 25 square meters, with walls built out of wood coated with clay.

The furnace, built on the outside of the room, featured earthen pipe-like air vents with hundreds of tiny holes in them and a prototype chimney to ensure air goes into the furnace to feed the fire and smoke comes out safely.

"In Bulgaria and Cyprus, where such workshops have also been found, they didn't have chimneys but blew air on the fire with straws, exposing man to heat and carbon dioxide," Sljivar said.

COLOURFUL MINERALS

He said the early metal workers very likely experimented with colorful minerals that caught their eye -- blue azurite, bright green malachite and red cuprite, all containing copper -- as evidenced by malachite traces found on the inside of a pot.

The settlement was destroyed at some point, probably in the first part of the fifth millennium, by a huge fire.

The Plocnik site was first discovered in 1927 when the then Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was building a rail line from the southern city of Nis to the province of Kosovo.

Some findings were published at the time but war, lack of funds and objections from farmers meant it was investigated only sporadically until digging started in earnest in 1996.

"The saddest thing for us is always the moment when we finish our work and everything has to be covered up with earth again," Kuzmanovic said. "That's the easiest for the state, conservation is very expensive and the land owners want to work in their fields."

But there was some hope that the latest excavation would be preserved due to its importance, Kuzmanovic added.

"We dream of uncovering the entire town one day, and people will be able to see prehistoric life at its fullest," she said.

Edited by Ironhand, 12 November 2007 - 06:19 AM.

[deuce]

Thanks, Ironhand! Cool stuff.

[Almuric]

Those must be some of the oldest Copper Age artifacts ever found. Cool.

[Sermon Bath]

this also proves that the culture of macedonia (alexander the great) is very old indeed......maybe plato did have some good information about the (very) ancient world!!

[Kortoso]

The Vinca culture is also remarkable for having one of the oldest writing systems.
No Rosetta stone, alas.

[Mondas]

For some reason archaeologists seem to want to discount writings of people like plato for some reason. When a source says that civilization is much older than these so called scholars think then suddenly people like Plato or Herodotus didn't know what they were talking about. When in fact the human culture seems to be much older than previously believed.

[Pictish Scout]

For some reason archaeologists seem to want to discount writings of people like plato for some reason. When a source says that civilization is much older than these so called scholars think then suddenly people like Plato or Herodotus didn't know what they were talking about. When in fact the human culture seems to be much older than previously believed.

Why archaeologist would do that?

If I write about Serpent Men in the White House, archaeologists of the year 5000 should give me credit? There are a lot of people writing about reptaliens nowadays so the future historians should give them credit too?

It is possible Plato was inspired by something real, some people think it was Crete, Thera and Persia. Even the context Plato uses of Atlantis is very political and pro-Athenian. He writes about Atlantis to show that the mythical Athens was greater then the classical one and lead , not only ALL greek city-states, bot also ALL the mediterranian nations against the Atlantean Empire.
No evidence , untill now, confirms the existence of Atlantis.

Herodotus is the so called "father of History" but it is hard to confirm the veracity and neutrality of all his informations.

The thing is that everybody likes a good story (that's why we are all here, right?) and sometimes the real history and real archaeology aren't that exciting for the general public.

Archaelogy and History are both sciences, and are updating everyday. Dates for the Copper, Bronze and Iron Age are subject to updating too, as these dates are compared to Pharaonic lysts ( which aren't all correct). It is almost certain that the first "metal age" is much earlier then once thought, but not in 10 000 years...

[Kylel Ironclaw]

Hmm, I thought I was the only one who still used the archaic way of spelling "archaeology."

[rabbits]

I would say its a bit of a mistake to jump to the conclusion that just becuase they ( Proto Europeans) were using Copper thousands of years before we thought they were, proves that Plato's account of Atlantis is accurate.

It just means that western civilization is older than we thought. That to me isn't a bad thing. I personally still feel it is older than that even, but I have no evidence and I'm not going to use a guy who was alive 2500 years ago as my evidence of it.
Though one day, some one might stumble onto something.. but its unlikely at this point, with the propensity for humans to live near coast lines.. and the looming threat of climate change, its more likely we will lose even more information to the seas and deserts than has already happened.

Edited by rabbits, 13 November 2007 - 07:55 AM.

[John Maddox Roberts]

Settled communities with nice pots, pretty jewelry, miniskirts and copper implements don't constitute "civilization." (Okay, the miniskirts are a strong argument for.) It may constitute a local culture, but you might as well say the Cimmerians were civilized. I'd have to see evidence for a great deal more organization, more settlements with a shared culture and traditions, laws, and, yeah, the ability to wage war on an organized rather than a heroic basis.

[Mondas]

The establishment of a code of laws to me is a good indication of a civilized people.

[Ironhand]

IMHO, part of the evidence for civilization is the presence of specialists who didn't grow or hunt their own food, but worked full-time, building and working in copper smelters full-time. The copper smelters directly require organization, and imply organized agriculture to support the specialist workers.