Ancient World Review

Crusaders' Mass Graves Discovered In Lebanon

"A pair of mass graves containing [at least] 25 Crusaders who were slaughtered during a 13th-century war in the Holy Land have been unearthed in Lebanon." Source: Daily Mail (Sept. 2021).

"A team of international archaeologists uncovered the gruesome scene at Sidon Castle on the eastern Mediterranean coast of south Lebanon."

Note: The "Sidon Castle" here refers to the land castle, aka Saint Louis castle, not the Sidon sea castle. I think the two structures are connected. I imagine these crusaders were killed during a battle that raged over the entire area and were later buried together near the land castle.

The original study can be found here.

No English available. This is the only video I could find of the castle where these graves were discovered.

"Wounds on the remains suggests the soldiers died at the end of swords, maces and arrows, and charring on some bones means they were burned after being dropped into the pit.

"Other remains show markings on the neck, which likely means these individuals were captured on the battlefield and later decapitated.

"Historical records written by crusaders show that Sidon was attacked and destroyed in 1253 by Mamluk troops, and again in 1260 by Mongols, and the soldiers found in the mass graves likely perished in one of these battles."

Note: According to the original paper, researchers found evidence that fires had been started in both mass graves. The majority of the injuries were apparently caused by "heavy bladed weapons such as swords and axes," but there is evidence for all sorts of really brutal mayhem:

"The evidence for trauma most likely reflects injuries sustained in close combat, in which both pointed and bladed weapons were involved, in addition to crushing injuries from blunt force. The large sharp force injuries such as the ‘scoop’ lesion ... where a slice of bone is removed by a glancing blow, and the other more deeply penetrating sharp force lesions, demonstrate the use of bladed weapons. Crush injuries would be compatible with projectiles from siege engines, such as catapult stones, and blows from rounded maces. Penetrating wounds of square or diamond shape may have been caused by arrows, lances, or blows from the spiked mace. The lesion pattern is consistent with the weaponry of the period including swords, axes, maces, war hammers, arrows, lances and javelins."

Also see: Mass Grave of Slaughtered Crusaders Discovered In Lebanon (Sept. 2021).

Mamluks Defeated Crusaders By Destroying The Levant

The Mamluk Sultanate was "a medieval realm spanning Egypt, the Levant and Hejaz that established itself as a caliphate. It lasted from the overthrow of the Ayyubid dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517." (Wikipedia) 

The Mamluks were a warrior class like the medieval European knights. The Mamluks started off as slave soldiers for the Ayyubid Dynasty, which was founded by Saladin after he invaded and occupied the territory of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt in 1171, but they weren't ordinary slaves.

The history here is fantastically complex and confusing, but the Mamluks grew more powerful and influential and eventually took over the Ayyubid Dynasty, establishing the Mamluk Sultanate. Their conquest of Egypt, the western Mediterranean and part of Saudi Arabia is a convoluted story of power struggles, assassinations, shifting alliances, wars against the Crusaders, etc., that went on until the Mamluk Sultanate was finally defeated by the Ottomans.

Footprints From Site A At Laetoli, Tanzania, Are From Early Humans, Not Bears

"The oldest unequivocal evidence of upright walking in the human lineage are footprints discovered at Laetoli, Tanzania in 1978, by paleontologist Mary Leakey and her team. The bipedal trackways date to 3.7 million years ago. Another set of mysterious footprints was partially excavated at nearby Site A in 1976 but dismissed as possibly being made by a bear. A recent re-excavation of the Site A footprints at Laetoli and a detailed comparative analysis reveal that the footprints were made by an early human -- a bipedal hominin." Source: Science Daily.

Ref: Footprint Evidence of Early Hominin Locomotor Diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania. If accurate, this study shows that "there were different hominin species walking bipedally on this landscape but in different ways on different feet," according to one of the researchers.

Video from 2012.

Variations In Earth's Orbit Can Drive Biological Evolution

Narration here is almost incomprehensible. Closed captions useful.

"Coccolithophores are microscopic algae that form tiny limestone plates, called coccoliths, around their single cells. They are responsible for half of the limestone produced in the oceans and therefore play a major role in the carbon cycle and in determining ocean chemistry. A team of scientists show that certain variations in Earth's orbit have influenced the evolution of coccolithophores." Source: Science Daily.

This is an interesting theory. As explained in the video, "The researchers observed that coccoliths underwent cycles of higher and lower diversity in size and shape, with rhythms of 100 and 400 thousand years. They also propose a cause: the more or less circular shape of Earth's orbit around the Sun, which varies at the same rhythms." Changes in the planet's orbit would effect the climate and the evolution of micro-organisms would be particularly influenced by fluctuations in their environment. If this theory is accurate, it's the first case I'm aware of where the biological evolution of a particular species has been shown to be driven by long-term, cyclical cosmic events.

How Caesar Won The Great Roman Civil War

Another outstanding animated documentary from the Kings and Generals channel. Highly recommended.

The Immortal Publius Quinctilius Varus (Updated)

Publius Quinctilius Varus is a tragic figure remembered only because of his disastrous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 AD), aka the Varian Disaster and "Rome's greatest defeat." I wonder what he would have thought if he'd known he would gain immortality by committing such a gigantic blunder that it would end up being named after him? There are many paths to fame and screwing up big time is one of them.

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised, Varus came from a "patrician family that had been of no importance for centuries. He owed his career to the favor of Augustus," who probably regretted his choice later on when Varus lost three legions in the forests of Germany. According to Tacitus, many of the defeated Roman soldiers were enslaved or sacrificed to the Germanic gods. Not a good end to a legionary's career.

Varus has gone down in history for his monumental defeat in Germania, but he must have been a reasonably competent man to win the favor of a capable administrator like Augustus. Up until the debacle in the Teutoburg Forest, Varus had had a fairly distinguished career:

"Varus became proconsul of Africa (?7-6 BC), and then legate of Syria. When Judea revolted after the death of Herod the Great, he marched rapidly southwards and dealt firmly with the insurgents." (OCD)

"Next heard of as legate of the Rhine army [governor of Germania] in AD 9, Varus fell victim to geography and the German tribes' resistance to Roman rule:"

According to Livius, "Varus and the three legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were somewhere near the river Weser (perhaps near modern Minden) when he learned of an insurrection in the west. He decided to return to the Rhine and make a detour through the rebellious area. The only road led through a small strip of accessible land; to the south, there were the inaccessible hills of the Teutoburg forest, and to the north, marshes made progress difficult. It was the perfect place to trap the heavy legionaries."

Filmed in 2015 at the supposed site of the disaster in Germany.

The terrain probably made it impossible for Varus to cover his flanks, but he seems to have assumed that he wouldn't have problems from the local Germanic tribes. As it turned out, this was a mistake:

"[He] was treacherously attacked in difficult country by Arminius [chief of the Cherusci], whom he had trusted. The Roman army was destroyed ... and Varus took his own life." (OCD)

Arminius apparently lured Varus into the trap by posing as a friend of Rome and informing him of the rebellion in the west. In a disgraceful act all too familiar from recent history, Augustus blamed Varus not only for the disaster, but for the failure of his entire policy in Germany:

"Varus was made the scapegoat for the signal failure of Augustus' whole German policy. He is alleged to have been grossly extortionate in Syria, torpid and incompetent in his German command." (OCD)

This just begs the question, of course. After all, if Varus was so incompetent and corrupt, why was he given command in Germania in the first place? In any case, the defeat had major repercussions for the Roman empire, which halted its attempts to conquer the Germans and limited its frontier to the Rhine, laying the foundations for many more calamities to come.

Conclusion: If you want to go down in history, you have to either achieve great things like Thomas Edison, kill someone important (like Lee Harvey Oswald), or, like Publius Quinctilius Varus, fail in such a spectacular fashion that your name lives on forever.

The Ancient City Of Sigiriya In Sri Lanka

"Once a famous royal palace, Sigiriya is a popular tourist destination, known for its ancient frescoes, which are similar to those found in the Indian Ajanta caves. It is one of the seventh sites in Sri Lanka that were listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It is considered one of the best examples of town-planning that date back from ancient times." Source: Unusual Places.

"During the Middle Ages, Sigiriya was for a short time the capital of the island. It was under the reign of Dhatusena Dynasty. Originally used in the third century BC by Buddhist monks as a place of retreat and meditation, the site served later as a residence and fortress to King Kassapa I (477 – 495 AD). When Kassapa was defeated by Mogallana and lost his throne, the site was given to the Buddhist monks. In the fifth century, the Buddhist cult Sangha opened here a church."

Note: "The environment around the Sigiriya [rock] may have been inhabited since prehistoric times. There is clear evidence that the many rock shelters and caves in the vicinity were occupied by Buddhist monks and ascetics from as early as the 3rd century BC. The earliest evidence of human habitation at Sigiriya is the Aligala rock shelter to the east of Sigiriya rock, indicating that the area was occupied nearly five thousand years ago during the Mesolithic Period." (Wikipedia)

The city and citadel at Sigiriya were built by King Kassapa I during the conflict following his usurpation of the throne previously held by his father, Dhatusena. The story is all too familiar. Kassapa wasn't in line to become king even though he was Dhatusena's eldest son -- the rightful heir was his brother, Moggalana -- so Kassapa staged a coup and threw his father into prison and his brother fled to India. 

The mirror wall at Sigiriya and views from the rock.

Kassapa thought Dhatusena had a large treasure stashed away somewhere, demanded its return and ended up murdering his own father because he thought the former king was holding out on him. Widely condemned for this and worried that his brother was going to attack him, Kassapa moved to Sigiriya where he built an elaborate defensive position:

"Sigiriya was a large rock rising above the surrounding plain, offering an unhindered view in all directions. It was chosen as the capital because of the strategic advantage this would give the defenders during an attack. Large ramparts and moats were built around the city. An elaborate and large garden was built around the rock. These gardens consisted a number of pools, fountains and other structures. A complex underground irrigation system supplied water to these pools and fountains, and the fountains are functional to this day." (Wikipedia)

"The constructions on top of the Sigiriya rock include the king’s palace among several other buildings and pools. The Sigiriya frescoes [next video], which depict maidens carrying flowers, were also created during Kashyapa’s reign at Sigiriya.The Mirror Wall which is also known as the Ketapath Pawura is another important creation."

Kassapa's defenses didn't do him any good, however. His brother returned and defeated his army, and he ended up killing himself with his own sword.

The Mysterious Barabar Caves Of India

"The Barabar Hill Caves ... are the oldest surviving rock-cut caves in India, dating from the Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE), some with Ashokan inscriptions, located in the Makhdumpur region of Jehanabad district, Bihar, India, 24 km (15 mi) north of Gaya." (Wikipedia)

"These caves are situated in the twin hills of Barabar (four caves) and Nagarjuni (three caves); caves of the 1.6 km (0.99 mi)-distant Nagarjuni Hill are sometimes singled out as the Nagarjuni Caves. These rock-cut chambers bear dedicatory inscriptions in the name of 'King Piyadasi' for the Barabar group, and 'Devanampiya Dasaratha' for the Nagarjuni group, thought to date back to the 3rd century BCE during the Maurya period, and to correspond respectively to Ashoka (reigned 273–232 BCE) and his grandson, Dasharatha Maurya."

The precision stonework seen in the Barabar caves is amazingly similar to that found in various megalithic sites in South America (among other places), suggesting, once again, that prehistoric civilizations around the world were much more advanced than commonly believed.

The stonework at Barabar is really stunning, considering the site's age, and the techniques used there may have come to India from Persia through a kind of brain drain following Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire:

"The caves were carved out of granite, an extremely hard rock, then finished with a very nice polishing of the inner surface, giving a mirror effect of a great regularity, as well as an echo effect." (Wikipedia) According to one expert, the "extraordinary precision and accuracy which characterizes all Mauryan works ... has never, we venture to say, been surpassed even by the finest workmanship on Athenian buildings".

"...This remarkable and large-scale polishing technique, and in many ways without parallel, seems nevertheless to have been derived from polishing techniques in Achaemenid statuary, the stone-working techniques having spread in India after the destruction of the empire by Alexander the Great in 330 BC and the displacement of Persian and Perso-Greek artists and technicians."

Earliest Adobe Architecture In The Americas Discovered In Peru

"On the north coast of Peru, researchers have discovered the oldest adobe architecture in the Americas, constructed with ancient mud bricks carved from natural clay deposits created by floods caused by El Nino." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"The pre-Hispanic bricks — carved from sedimentary layers versus created by mixing clay, temper and water — date the invention of adobe architecture to more than 5,100 years ago, according to the international research team led by archaeologist Ana Cecilia Mauricio."

Germanic Languages Comparison

Note: There are something like 48 living Germanic languages, all of them derived from Proto-Germanic, "the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages." (Wikipedia) All of the Indo-European languages, in turn, are thought to derive from a single Neolithic language known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

"PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis [see next video], the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers."