Ancient World Review

The Roman Harbor Of Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica, not to be confused with the modern suburb of Ostia, is the name given to the archaeological site of the port city of ancient Rome.

"According to Livy Ostia was founded by Ancus Martius, the fourth king of Rome. In Latin ostium meant entrance, a reference to the location of the town at the mouth of the River Tiber. At the beginning it was just a castrum, a fortified settlement, which protected Rome from enemies attempting to attack the city by sailing up the river. Eventually the nature of Ostia changed and it became a commercial and cosmopolitan town where advanced forms of trading were developed." Source: Roman Art Lovers

Note: "The House of Apuleius was built in the republican period, as is indicated by a few remains of opus quasi reticulatum [a kind of brickwork]. The house was rebuilt in the Antonine period, after 148 AD (opus mixtum; dated brickstamps were found). It was excavated in 1885-1886 by Lanciani." Source: Ostia - Harbor City of Ancient Rome (photographs of the site and a floor plan of the house can be found here).

Ostia was sacked by pirates in 68 BC. "During the sack, the port was set on fire, the consular war fleet was destroyed, and two prominent senators were kidnapped," (Wikipedia). Pompey the Great took advantage of this disaster to get a new law passed, the Lex Gabinia, which gave him the authority to raise an army and clear the pirates from the Mediterranean once and for all. Pompey crushed the pirates in about a year, greatly increasing his fame, power and political influence.

In later years, Ostia was expanded to meet changing conditions and the demands of increased trade. According to A Guide To The Ancient World, by Michael Grant, "the [Ostia] harbor was too small to handle all the ships that now sought entry and the larger of them could not pass the sand bar at the river mouth," so the emperor Claudius [AD 41-54] "constructed a large artificial port two miles to its north, equipped with a towering lighthouse and linked to the Tiber by two canals." This new harbor turned out to be vulnerable to storms, so more modifications were made to solve the problem "and caused Ostia's activity and prosperity to reach its peak."

"In the following century," according to Grant, "emphasis shifted to the harbor quarter inaugurated by Claudius and Trajan [who expanded the work started by Claudius], which under Constantine I the Great (306-7) assumed an autonomous entity of its own under the name of Portus ... Meanwhile the city of Ostia itself had become much more a residential center than a trading town; the big apartment houses were allowed to go to ruin, but the construction of lavish new private houses went ahead."

The new harbor of Portus was sacked by the Visigoths in 408 AD.

Related: Roman Sea-borne Trading and the Port of Ostia

The Roman Way of Life and Death at Ostia, the Port of Rome

Glassified Brain Cells Found In Victim Of Vesuvius Eruption

"Preserved brain cells have been found in the remains of a young man who died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79." Source: Live Science.

"The brain cells' structure is still visible in a black, glassy material found in the man's skull. The new discovery of this structure, described today (Oct. 2) in the journal PLOS ONE, adds to the accumulating evidence that this glassy material is indeed part of the man's brain. The transformation to glass occurred as a result of extreme heating and rapid cooling.

"'The results of our study show that the vitrification process occurred at Herculaneum, unique of its kind, has frozen the neuronal structures of this victim, preserving them intact until today,' study lead author Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at University Federico II of Naples in Italy, said in a statement."

I don't understand how organic material could survive the high temperatures involved with this kind of vitrification. According to Live Science, Herculaneum was hit by a pyroclastic flow of super-hot gases and ash which actually carbonized its victims but somehow preserved them at the same time:

"This hot ash simultaneously destroyed and buried the town, rapidly heating organic materials. Strangely, though, the rapid burial meant that even though materials like wood and flesh were carbonized, or essentially turned to charcoal, they were also preserved as they were in the moments after being suddenly heated to 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius). 

"In rare cases, this preserved organic material seems to have included brains."

You'd think that a human neuron couldn't survive in any shape or form if it was heated to almost a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but I guess it happened in this case. The next video explains the chemical processes involved with the vitrification of stone found in various ancient megaliths and the walls of Scottish hillforts.

Note: Cryopreservation -- the widespread technique used to preserve organic material like embryos, ovarian tissue, semen, microbiological cultures, etc. -- is also referred to as vitrification, but the cryopreservation process involves cooling the specimens to very low temperatures, usually with liquid nitrogen.

Germanic Lord Probably Wasn't Buried With A Harem

In September of this year, the Daily Mail and many other outlets reported that "The complex grave of a Germanic lord or prince who lived 1,500 years ago during the Great Migration has been unearthed in Saxony-Anhalt, near Brücken-Hackpfüffel [Germany]."

According to the story, "Experts say the site is the country's most important archaeological find for 40 years and have kept the exact location of the dig a secret to stave off thieves."

The remains of the lord or prince weren't discovered, but archaeologists said that his ashes might be inside  a cauldron found in the grave (see comment):

"The cauldron, the focal point of the mounded tomb, is surrounded by six women buried in a radial alignment from the pot, like the hands of a clock, The Times reports."

"Researchers say these may well have been concubines or widows belonging to the person being buried, but it remains a mystery as to whether they were slain for the burial or sacrificed themselves."

Update: It now appears that the original story may not have been accurate:

"An early medieval cemetery unearthed in Germany may not contain 'a harem for the hereafter,' as some news outlets reported; but it's still a remarkable find, likely holding the remains of a wealthy aristocrat and about 80 other people, some buried with riches such as glass bowls, gold jewelry and sharp weapons, according to the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Germany." Source: Live Science (Oct. 2020).

"The individuals buried at the roughly 1,500-year-old aristocratic estate were part of the short-lived Thuringian Kingdom, which lasted for about 80 years before the Franks conquered them in A.D. 531. Before its demise, the kingdom reigned during a tumultuous time known as the Migration Period, when the so-called Barbarian peoples, such as the Huns, Goths and Vandals, gained power as the remains of the Western Roman Empire crumbled."

Comment: Once again, too much research appears to have wrecked a juicy story. The mass media, of course, were all over the "medieval lord buried with a harem of wives" angle, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to correct their original version of the news. As it turns out, the sex of the six bodies thought to be the wives or sacrificial victims hasn't even been determined yet (which makes me wonder where the original story came from in the first place -- was some archaeologist looking for publicity?). It also appears that the lord's ashes probably aren't in the cauldron, either, since cremation was apparently not a common practice at the time. Still, I suppose the original interpretation of the find could come back to life if it turns out that the six other bodies are female after all.

Study Casts Doubts On "Sky Disk" Thought To Be Oldest Representation Of The Cosmos

Video from 2010. Date of the disk has now been called into question.

"The Nebra sky disk is a bronze disk of around 30 centimeters (11 ³⁄₄ in) diameter and a weight of 2.2 kilograms (4.9 lb), having a blue-green patina and inlaid with gold symbols. These symbols are interpreted generally as the Sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, and stars (including a cluster of seven interpreted as the Pleiades). Two golden arcs along the sides, interpreted to mark the angle between the solstices, were added later. A final addition was another arc at the bottom surrounded with multiple strokes (of uncertain meaning, variously interpreted as a solar barge with numerous oars, the Milky Way, or a rainbow).

"If its Bronze Age dating is accurate, the Nebra sky disk features the oldest concrete depiction of the cosmos yet known from anywhere in the world. In June 2013 it was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and termed 'one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century.'" (Wikipedia)

The disk is thought to date back to the 2nd millennium BC. This is based on the dating of various Bronze Age weapons thought to be from the same site.

Video from 2010.

According to a recent study, however, the dating of the sky disk and its interpretation may be inaccurate. According to Live Science (Sept. 2020), "One of Germany's most famous ancient artifacts may not be what it seems, if a new study is to be believed.

"Fierce debate over the Nebra Sky Disk has been reignited by a new study that suggests it is at least 1,000 years younger than previously thought, and probably doesn't have any of the elaborate meanings proposed for it."

This kind of thing is all too typical in archaeology. The disk along with the weapons used to date it were supposedly discovered near Nebra, a town in Germany, but in their new study, the researchers argue that the disk came from some other location:

"Their analyses lead Rupert Gebhard, Director of the Archäologische Staatssammlung München and Professor of Pre- and Protohistory at Munich University (LMU), and Rüdiger Krause, Professor of Pre- and Protohistory at Frankfurt a. M. University, to conclude that the site and circumstances of the discovery of the Sky Disk, which were investigated in 2002 in a subsequent scientific excavation, cannot have been correctly described and depicted in the specialist literature." Source: "Nebra Sky Disk is 1000 Years Younger Than Previously Assumed," DGUF.

If true, this would mean that the sky disk probably isn't from the Bronze Age at all. But even if it isn't the oldest representation of the cosmos, it's still an interesting artifact.

Video from May, 2020.

Early Homo Sapiens Settled Along Coastal North Africa Before Spreading East

Current model of early human migration. Image: NordNord-West, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

"Favourable climatic conditions influenced the sequence of settlement movements of Homo sapiens in the Levant on their way from Africa to Europe. In a first step, modern humans settled along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Only then did they spread out into the Sinai desert and the eastern Jordanian Rift Valley." Source: Science Daily.

"The success story of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa began about 100,000 years ago with well-known sites such as Qafzeh and Skhul in Israel. However, these early records only reveal a brief, temporary expansion of the territory into the Levant. Permanent settlement of the region only dates back to about 43,000 years ago, scientists believe. During the epoch of the so-called 'Early Ahmarian', modern humans gradually had been spreading throughout the Levant -- a first step on their way to Asia and Europe."

Related: Skhul and Qafzeh hominins.

A Lost World Off The Southern Coast Of Africa

Cape Agulhas, South Africa.

"Scientists have reconstructed the paleoecology of the Paleo-Agulhas Plain, a now-drowned landscape on the southern tip of Africa that was high and dry during glacial phases of the last 2 million years and may have been instrumental in shaping the evolution of early modern humans." Source: Science Daily (May,2020)..

Ice Age landscapes like the Paleo-Agulhas Plain exist along the coasts of all modern continents. Now submerged, these ancient landscapes would have altered the shape of the continents as we know them, sometimes dramatically. In this case, "the paleo-landscape exposed during glacial low-sea levels added a land area the size of Ireland to the southern tip of Africa."

This baffled archaeologists for a while because they didn't take into account the fact that the southern coast of modern Africa was far inland during the last ice age:

 "Some of the oldest anatomically modern human bones and artifacts have been found in cliff caves along the coast of South Africa. For many years, the lack of shellfish in some layers at these sites puzzled archaeologists. In spite of apparently living near the ocean, the inhabitants hunted mostly big game -- the sort of animals that typically live farther inland."

Note: Extensive research has been carried out at the Pinnacle Point caves [next video] on the southern coast of South Africa. According to Wikipedia, "Excavations since the year 2000 of a series of caves at Pinnacle Point have revealed occupation by Middle Stone Age people between 170,000 and 40,000 years ago. The focus of excavations has been at Cave 13B (PP13B), where the earliest evidence for the systematic exploitation of marine resources (shellfish) [1] and symbolic behaviour has been documented, and at Pinnacle Point Cave 5–6 (PP5–6), where the oldest evidence for the heat treatment of rock to make stone tools has been documented. The only human remains have been recovered from younger deposits at PP13B which are c. 100,000 years old."

[1] The presence of shellfish in these cave layers suggest that the sea-level was rising (and the coast retreating inland) at the time of occupation.

Related: A lost world and extinct ecosystem on the southern shores of South Africa

Climate and Ecology of the paleo-Algulhas Plain.

Was Jesus A Magician And Necromancer?

"Ancient art throughout the catacombs of Rome, painted on the walls and carved into stone coffins, shows Jesus as he multiplies loaves of bread, heals the sick and brings the dead back to life. These images are unified by one surprising element: In each of them, Jesus appears to brandish a wand. That led scholars to wonder: Did ancient Christians see Jesus as a magician?" Source: Live Science.

"Despite these evocative images, most evidence suggests early Christians didn't see Jesus as a magician. Magic was considered a purely human pursuit that could not raise the dead [this is nonsense -- see below], whereas Jesus' supernatural acts were always seen by believers as miracles performed through a powerful God. What's more, the 'wand' carried by Jesus was in fact not a wand —magicians of the day never carried wands anyway, experts told Live Science."

The Live Science article makes the claim that "magic was considered a purely human pursuit that could not raise the dead," but this just isn't true. The extremely ancient magical practice of necromancy, aka "Death Magic," was used to communicate with the dead, "either by summoning their spirits as apparitions, visions or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events, discover hidden knowledge, to bring someone back from the dead, or to use the dead as a weapon." (Wikipedia)

Necromancers were practicing their dark arts a long time before Jesus is said to have lived:

"Necromancy was prevalent throughout Western antiquity with records of its practice in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece and Rome. In his Geographica, Strabo refers to νεκρομαντία (nekromantia), or 'diviners by the dead', as the foremost practitioners of divination among the people of Persia, and it is believed to have also been widespread among the peoples of Chaldea (particularly the Sabians, or 'star-worshipers'), Etruria and Babylonia. The Babylonian necromancers were called manzazuu or sha'etemmu, and the spirits they raised were called etemmu." (Wikipedia)

The earliest account of necromancy occurs in The Odyssey, thought to have been composed during the 7th or 8th centuries BC, so raising the dead wasn't exactly new when Jesus supposedly brought Lazarus back to life.

No matter what else you may think about him, Jesus was a magician (a true magician, not a stage entertainer who performs tricks of illusion and sleight of hand). This is obvious from the stories in the New Testament. Jesus exercised "an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source." That's the third sense of the word "magic" as defined by Merriam-Webster. He could also be said to have cast spells (the fourth sense of the word) when he did things like curse the fig tree and drive out demons. And he had "supernatural power over natural forces" (the first sense) when he walked on water, calmed the storm, turned water into wine, etc. The fact that he was supposedly channeling the spirit of God when he performed these miracles is irrelevant since all magic is based on the invocation of higher powers or outside forces of some kind.

Jesus also used supernatural means (in his case prayer or "faith") to raise the dead. That makes him a necromancer by definition. He didn't use magic circles or skulls or any of the other paraphernalia commonly associated with black magic, but he still performed acts widely condemned back then (and today):

"When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one who maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or who useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. [Emphasis added] For all who do these things are an abomination unto the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee (KJV)." -- The Book of Deuteronomy (18:9–12).

Christians believe that it's possible to raise the dead. Obviously. They believe that Jesus raised Lazarus and came back from the dead himself. The belief in magic of all kinds was widespread in the ancient world -- just as it is today -- but most Christians thought (and still think, I believe) that the spirits invoked by necromancers are actually demons.

Personally, I never believed that it's possible to raise the dead until I read H.P. Lovecraft's non-fiction accounts of the research conducted by medical student Herbert West in the early 1900s and the especially frightening case of Charles Dexter Ward which occurred in Providence, Rhode Island in 1928. Like all of Lovecraft's work, these stories were passed off as fiction, but some of us know better.

Longest Known Human Trackway Discovered In New Mexico

"Hungry giant predators, treacherous mud and a tired, probably cranky toddler -- more than 10,000 years ago, that was the stuff of every parent's nightmare. Evidence of that type of frightening trek was recently uncovered, and at nearly a mile it is the longest known trackway of early-human footprints ever found." Source: Science Daily.

"...The tracks were found in a dried-up lakebed, which contains a range of other footprints dating from 11,550 to 13,000 years ago. The lakebed's formerly muddy surface preserved footprints for thousands of years as it dried up.

"Previously found in the terrain are the prints of animals such as mammoths, giant sloths, saber-toothed cats and dire wolves. Sloths and mammoths were found to have intersected the human tracks after they were made, showing that this terrain hosted both humans and large animals at the same time, making the journey taken by this individual and child a dangerous one."

 

Giant Prehistoric Bird Ate Neanderthal Child's Bones (2013)

"One Neanderthal child had a very bad day about 115,000 years ago. The child died — that much is certain — and the bones were gulped down and digested by a giant, prehistoric bird, according to archaeologists in Poland." Source: Live Science (2018).

"However, it's unclear whether the giant bird killed the child before the gruesome feast or whether the child died from another cause before the bird scavenged the remains, the archaeologists said."

Note: The bones, discovered in Ciemna Cave, one of several caves in Ojcow National Park in Poland, are "the oldest known human remains ever to be found in Poland." The bird that ate the child's bones isn't identified, which is too bad. I've got this picture of a Neanderthal kid wandering off from its cave and getting gobbled up by a huge terror bird, but the terror birds, unfortunately, lived in South America during a different time period.

Top 10 Terrifying Animals That Lived Alongside Prehistoric Man

"Despite the façade of modernity and a world under technical human control, being alone in the dark far from others can show us a different side of humanity.  Alone in unfamiliar places we quickly become more cautious, more observant and sometimes even fearful. The genes that helped us survive a much more savage world still whisper to us the truth in the dark; we were prey before we were top predators." Source: Earth.com.