Free Republic

An archaeological discovery in France has revealed the Stone Age remains of two women thought to have been tortured and sacrificed in a form of murder associated with the Italian Mafia. Though the remains were discovered in 1985, a study published last week in the journal Science Advances reveals the "atypical" positioning of the bodies. The paper's authors believe the women could have died by "self-strangulation" using a ligature that bound their ankles to their necks. The torture is known as "incaprettamento," a homicide ritual of the Italian Mafia, sometimes used to punish people thought to be traitors. A third...

An analysis of over 4,000 stone artifacts discovered on an island off northwestern Australia provides a snapshot of Aboriginal life tens of thousands of years ago...The diverse artifacts found on the island also reveal intriguing insights about the movement of people between Australia's mainland and the island, especially during the peak of the last ice age, between 29,000 and 19,000 years ago, according to the study, which was published April 1 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.At that time, sea levels were low enough to expose the continental shelf between Australia and what is now Barrow Island, a 78-square-mile (202...

...Located in Marliens, a commune in eastern France, the site has a large bowtie-shaped structure, whose middle sports a circular construction measuring 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter. This center circlet is interconnected by a 26-foot-long (8 m) horseshoe-shaped structure on one side and a jug-handle-shaped feature on the other, according to a translated statement from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), which carried out the excavations...Based on the plethora of artifacts found there — including a bundle containing seven flint arrowheads, two protective armbands worn by archers, a flint lighter and a copper-alloy dagger — archaeologists...

Unearthed, the prince of Stonehenge By Roger Highfield (Filed: 21/08/2002) A prehistoric prince with gold ear-rings has been found near Stonehenge a few yards away from the richest early Bronze Age burial in Britain. Earlier this year, archaeologists found an aristocratic warrior, also with gold ear-rings, on Salisbury Plain and speculated that he may have been an ancient king of Stonehenge. The body was laid to rest 4,300 years ago during the construction of the monument, along with stone arrow heads and slate wristguards that protected the arm from the recoil of the bow. Archaeologists named him the Amesbury Archer....

Mounted Archers Training in a Mongol plateau Some S. Koreans dug up old military training manuals from 18th century and are trying to restore the art of ancient warriors.Here, they are practicing once-lost art of mounted archery. They went to Mongol steppe to do their summer training.It was done this August on Arkhangel Aimac, a plateau which is 1,000 km from its capital Ulan Bator and 1,700 m (5660 feet) above sea-level .The uniform they are wearing is from Chosun(1392~1910) era.A trainee practicing so-called 'Parthian Parting Shot'This is a favorite technique of Northen steppe warriors in the past. Koreans also used to use it....

  For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!   ANCIENT WARFAREPart III: Ancient Greek Military:  Mercenaries Struggle for Hegemony MercenariesMercenaries were very important in the ancient history. The Greek armies did not need them at first, but later on they were even used in Hellas. Mercenaries were normally used because they were capable of doing something which the army could not do. That is why the Greeks hired Scythic archers, why the Persians used Greek...

Evidence of a large settlement full of houses dating back to 2,600 BC has been discovered near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge in southwest England, scientists said on Tuesday. They suspect inhabitants of the houses, forming the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain, built the stone circle at Stonehenge -- generally thought to have been a temple, burial ground or an astronomy site -- between 3,000 and 1,600 BC. "We found the remains of eight houses," Mike Parker Pearson, a professor of archaeology at Sheffield University, said in a teleconference to announce the discovery. "We think they are...

The site of Stonehenge — that mysterious collection of British rocks that could have served as a calendar using the stars — was also a graveyard for the elite, according to new research. A British group led by the University College London looked at 63 bodies surrounding the historical site. They determined these people were part of a group of elite families that brought their relatives to Stonehenge for burial over more than 200 years, starting from 2,900 BC. The bodies were buried long before the rocks visible today were erected, though. Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/101771/stonehenge-was-an-ancient-burial-ground-for-the-rich-study/#ixzz2Rh4d8FWJ

A 4,000-year- old grave found near Stonehenge contains the remains of an archer and a trove of artifacts that make it one of the richest early Bronze Age sites in Europe, archeologists said Thursday. "It's a fantastically important discovery both for the number of artifacts found in that grave and the range of artifacts. It's absolutely unique," said Gillian Varndell, a curator of the British Museum's prehistory department. About 100 objects, including a pair of rare gold earrings, were found three miles east of Stonehenge with the bones of a man who died at about the time the monolithic stone...

Tests reveal Amesbury Archer ‘King of Stonehenge’ was a settler from the Alps The man who may have helped organise the building of Stonehenge was a settler from continental Europe, archaeologists say. The latest tests on the Amesbury Archer, whose grave astonished archaeologists last year with the richness of its contents, show he was originally from the Alps region, probably Switzerland, Austria or Germany. The tests also show that the gold hair tresses found in the grave are the earliest gold objects found in Britain. The grave of the Archer, who lived around 2,300BC, contained about 100 items, more than...

Antiquities and Archaeology Conservation News Spain Prehistoric hunting scenes unearthed in Spanish cave Threat of vandalism puts ancient paintings at risk By Belén Palanco. Web onlyPublished online: 23 May 2014 A cave painting of a bull, with colours accentuated by archaeologists. Credit: Courtesy of Ines Domingo A series of hunting scenes dating from 7,000 years ago have been found by archaeologists on the six-metre long wall of a small cave in the region of Vilafranca in Castellón, eastern Spain—but it is being kept a secret for now. A layer of dust and dirt covered ten figures, including bulls, two...

A melting patch of ancient snow in the mountains of Norway has revealed a bow and arrows likely used by hunters to kill reindeer as long ago as 5,400 years. The discovery highlights the worrying effects of climate change, said study author Martin Callanan, an archaeologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. "It's actually a little bit unnerving that they're so old and that they're coming out right now," Callanan told LiveScience. "It tells us that there's something changing." Locked in snow Callanan and his colleagues spend every summer hiking up the Trollheim and Dovre mountains a few...

The research found evidence of the "incaprettamento" method of murder at 14 Neolithic sites in Europe.The murder of sacrificial victims by "incaprettamento" — tying their neck to their legs bent behind their back, so that they effectively strangled themselves — seems to have been a tradition across much of Neolithic Europe, with a new study identifying more than a dozen such murders over more than 2,000 years.The study comes after a reassessment of an ancient tomb that was discovered more than 20 years ago at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux near Avignon, in southern France. The tomb mimics a silo, or pit where grain...

A burial monument with human remains thought to be about 4,500 years old has been discovered in East Yorkshire.Parts of a Roman road and a burnt mound were also discovered during a £5m project to build a 5.2km (3.2 miles) sewer near Full Sutton.Ecus Archaelogy, working on the site for Yorkshire Water, said the three sites give a glimpse into the prehistoric and early historic past of the area.The analysis stage of the project is yet to start and the sewer is now being laid.The small circular burial monument was discovered in the vicinity of Full Sutton with the human...

Archaeological excavations off the coast of Rome in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that Stone Age people living over 7,000 years ago utilized sophisticated manufacturing techniques and advanced nautical technology in the construction and operation of their seafaring vessels.According to an analysis published in the journal PLOS ONE, the ancient seafaring vessels discovered at the site are the oldest ever found in the Mediterranean, which may offer "invaluable insights" into the technological sophistication employed by Neolithic navigators...According to the researchers, they found five dugout canoes in the ancient lakeshore village of La Marmotta near the coast of Rome, Italy, dating from...

Çatalhöyük is noteworthy because it is one of the first human proto-cities to have been built. Full of densely packed mud brick houses covered in paintings and symbolic decorations, its population hovered around 8,000. That made it one of the biggest settlements of its era, somewhere between an outsized village and a tiny city. People, mud-brick homes through ceiling doors, and they navigated sidewalks that wound around the city’s rooftops.Archaeologists have discovered an oven structure in the area called "Mekan 66”. Around the largely destroyed oven, wheat, barley, pea seeds, and a handful find that could be food were found.Analyses...

The rise of farming in late Stone Age Europe was no smooth transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles but a bloody takeover that saw nomadic populations wiped out by farmer-settlers in a few generations, a new study has found.In fact, twice in just a thousand years, the population of southern Scandinavia was entirely replaced by newcomers to the area, whose remains bear next to no trace of their predecessors in DNA profiles, analyzed by an international team of researchers."This transition has previously been presented as peaceful," explains study author and palaeoecologist Anne Birgitte Nielsen of Lund University...Using a technique called shotgun sequencing,...

Archaeologists have discovered a small chlorite vial containing a deep red cosmetic preparation believed to be an ancient type of lipstick in the Jiroft region of southeastern Iran. This relic, published in the journal Scientific Reports on February 1st, is the oldest known red lipstick from the Bronze Age (between 2000 and 1600 B.C.). The carved tube came from an ancient graveyard that reemerged in 2001 after the nearby river flooded. According to the study, people plundered the cemetery and sold whatever they could find. Several of the artifacts were eventually found and given back to a nearby museum by...

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde report the discovery of an ancient, 10,000-year-old massive stone wall that has remained submerged beneath the Baltic Sea for millennia.At nearly a kilometer in length, the Stone Age megastructure hidden beneath the waters of the Bay of Mecklenburg in Germany is not only one of the oldest man-made hunting structures in Europe but likely one of the oldest pieces of construction in the entire world."It was likely constructed by hunter–gatherer groups more than 10000 y ago and ultimately drowned during the Littorina transgression at 8500 y B.P.," the researchers...

Archaeologists hoping to discover Roman and Iron Age finds at a Welsh hillfort were shocked to unearth pottery and arrowheads predating their predicted finds by 4,000 years at the home of a powerful Iron Age community, including flint tools and weapons from 3,600 BC. Caerau, an Iron Age residency on the outskirts of Cardiff, would have been a battleground more than 5,000 years ago according to the arrowheads, awls, scrapers and polished stone axe fragments found during the surprising excavation. “Quite frankly, we were amazed,” says Dr Dave Wyatt, the co-director of the dig, from Cardiff University... “But no-one realised...