40
Coins, dedications, and other 'ritual' objects have been buried in the foundations of buildings since prehistory. The function of these artefacts is unclear, but they do not appear to have been placed there for future generations.
What you are looking for is usually called a 'time-capsule', and as the Wikipedia article observes:
A time capsule is a ...
33
The beginnings of human Civilization by-and-large are coincident with the start of our current interglacial period, known as the Holocene at roughly 10,000BC. At the start of it, worldwide sea levels were about 60m lower than today (and that was down from more than 120 at the glacial maximum 10,000 years prior). They rose quite rapidly after that, to nearly ...
27
Porcelain originates in China. They were able to reach the 1,200C needed to vitrify pottery as far back as the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 CE) and there was much earlier proto-porcelain (it had been around since 1,000BCE). Based on this, it's reasonable to infer that nonporous ceramic was relatively widespread in ancient China.
Chinaware then slowly made its ...
27
The claim that prehistoric hunter gatherers were egalitarian is mostly supported by:
analogy to some modern or historic hunter-gatherer societies
lack of monumental buildings in the archeological record
same for elaborate graves
hunter-gatherers can only possess as much as they can carry so little chance to amass possessions.
A recent example for this ...
25
We can be fairly certain that humans did not live on Antarctica, the continent, before the 20th century.
Since about 15 Ma, the continent has been mostly covered with ice.
Ref: Trewby, Mary, ed. Antarctica: An Encyclopedia from Abbott Ice Shelf to Zooplankton. Firefly Books. ISBN 1-55297-590-8.
Intermittent warm periods allowed Nothofagus shrubs to ...
22
(Most of what I'm writing is a summary of "After the Ice: A global human history 20,000-5,000 BC" by Steven Mithen - published 2003 so it's pretty up to date as an overview of what is known).
It is indeed tied to the end of the last ice age. All the sites known from the ice age and immediately afterwards are temporary hunter gatherer camps.
In the ...
20
There are many theories & interpretations, but relatively little evidence to support most of them. Of course, there are no written sources from the Ubaid period to support them.
You are absolutely right that there hasn't been a great deal of published material on the subject. However, a good, and relatively recent (2006), paper on the subject is A ...
19
This is a marble plinth or capital for a decorative column, likely of Classical Roman origin - the harpies and the immodesty of the subjects particularly give it away. There was a major Roman city nearby at Caesarea.
It will be impossible to give you more information over the internet - your best bet would be to report its discovery to the Antiquities ...
19
Most likely because they never had it to start with.
There are two big problems with this portion of the book's thesis:
I see no evidence whatsoever put forth in the above text supporting the assertion that human women were socially equal or superior prior to the agricultural revolution. Such evidence should not be hard to come by, simply by talking with ...
19
The ancient Sumerians and Babylonians, from about 3000 BC on, used to bury clay tablets in the foundations of their temples and other major buildings giving the name of the king who founded the temple and threatening to curse anyone who might in the future destroy the building. These inscriptions were not addressed to their contemporaries (they were buried ...
18
We actually have a lot of good evidence written by workers from that period. The bulk of that evidence comes from the workers' village of Deir el-Medina which housed the men who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings (and their families) during the 18th to 20th dynasties (Ramesses II was 19th dynasty).
It is probably not surprising that the people who ...
18
There are a few underground cities that I can think of, some may fit your requirements better than others. If you consider tunneling into rocks, then Petra would be a very large city that was built into the cliffs and ground. If you are only considering cities that are entirely under the ground, Naours France has an underground city that was built in an ...
18
Short Answer
The dating of cave art, while still a far from exact science, has come a long way in the last 25 years and includes:
comparisons to known pieces of art and animals known to have existed at a given time
parietal stratigraphy (order and position of layers of archaeological remains)
radiocarbon dating
uranium series dating (analysing carbonate ...
17
I'll summarize what the Jewish Study Bible, 2nd edition says about the subject. This material is from the introduction to Exodus and two essays: "The Religion of the Bible" and "Archeology and the Hebrew Bible".
Positive evidence: We know that Semites of similar ethnicity to the Hebrews had for centuries migrated to Egypt in search of food and water during ...
17
There are several theories of disappearance of the Dorset people. Two are discussed in the article "Disappearance of Dorset Culture" published on the webpage of the Canadian Museum of History:
Climate change. The disappearance of Dorset people coincides with the period of the Medieval Warm Period:
In the centuries around A.D. 1000, the Arctic ...
15
That is a really good question. The truth is that evidence for any sort of "cultural continuity" is scant.
One word of caution though. I generally hesitate to use the word "ritual" in an archaeological context. Too often, the word has been used as a synonym for "I don't know", or, as Paul Bahn put it:
Ritual - All-purpose explanation used where nothing ...
14
For reference, here is the official classification from Wikipedia of the conditions necessary for a "pleasant" Antarctic day:
Condition 3
Windspeed below 48 knots (55 miles per hour)
Visibility greater than 1/4 of a mile (402 meters)
Wind chill above −75 °F (−60 °C)
Description: Pleasant conditions; all outside travel is permitted.
Condition 3 ...
13
The imperial regalia of Rome were not a single thing but a collection of various objects carried in tow during processions of the emperor. The main items were various lances and spears along with a standard, which was an embroidered banner surmounted by a gold eagle. The emperor also carried a scepter.
The regalia of the Byzantines were all probably lost if ...
12
UCSD held a fascinating conference on the topic of the Exodus a couple of years back, which I highly recommend viewing - It contains a variety of views on the subject, along with both archeological and textual attempts to support the various hypotheses.
That the Exodus story as described in the Old Testament is a myth, is a pretty much universally agreed ...
12
Such stippling is a common feature at prehistoric Maltese sites. They are often considered a primitive decorative pattern - somewhat of a forerunner of a modern art form.
It is the best preserved of all the Maltese temples ... The two left-hand lobed chambers are linked by a trilith niche of stones decorated by stippling; the inner of these two chambers ...
12
Blame the weather.
Larger version
The reason it took so long for agriculture to develop can be summed up in this chart which shows variation in global temperature against time. The analysis in the academic paper from which this chart is taken, isn't terribly insightful. But, the chart really says it all.
In a nutshell, temperatures fluctuated wildly (as ...
12
Ceramic glaze became "prevalent" in Islamic art about the 8th century CE. It also became popular in China and Japan through the introduction of "colored" glazes in the 6th to 8th centuries CE.
So I would say 8th century CE, or slightly before. The caveat is that Europe at the time was in the Dark Ages (except for certain parts, such as Spain), so this idea ...
12
Dating in its origins from the 2 millenium BCE and still inhabited by up to 40 million people today:
The first type of yaodong were underground dwellings that date back to the 2nd millennium BC, China's Bronze Age, and according to Chinese tradition, the Xia Dynasty. Chinese scholars generally believe that this type of habitat has developed mainly from ...
12
According to the chronicler Orderic Vitalis (1075 – c. 1142), most of the royal treasure was recovered:
The dwellers on the coast, as soon as they ascertained that the
reports of the disaster was well founded, dragged to the shore the
wreck of the ship, with the whole of the royal treasure; and almost
all that was in the vessel, the crew and ...
12
"BPE" stands for "Before Present Era", and is equivalent to the more familiar BP (Before Present = 1950). It is a new "standard" abbreviation that I have seen appearing over the last decade or so (more commonly in publications from the USA).
It is worth noting that the original BP standard was established solely for the reporting of radiocarbon dates. ...
11
As a complement to other answers, and especially to nbubis' answer.
Based to a large extent on the work of the Israeli archeologist Israel Finkelstein (a youtube video with him talking on this topic HERE; other similar videos are easy to find) the general problem of advancing from "biblical archeology" (archeology that aims at proving that biblical ...
11
That article seems to be about the North Tombs cemetery, which was excavated as part of the Amarna Project in 2015. Like you, I'm really looking forward to the publication of the DNA data.
However, it's still a bit early to expect publication of all the details from the 2015 excavations. When they are available we should be able to read copies on the Amarna ...
11
Possibly - but neither dinosaurs nor woolly mammoths.
Antarctica froze over about 34 million years ago, which is long after extinction of the dinosaurs (other than their avian descendants) some 60 million years ago.
However glacial movement severely restricts where any such might be found. Below is a map of current movement rates for Antarctica's glaciers, ...
10
Yes a buried piece of wood, or other biological tissue, could survive for thousands of years without decomposing with appropriate environmental conditions. While the conditions for this are rather specific; an anaerobic and antiseptic environment or at least one which limits microbial growth. These conditions can be found in quite few situations; tar pits, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
