Ancient World Review

How Was The Friction Method For Making Fire Discovered?

"The discovery of fire, or, more precisely, the innovation of the controlled use of fire was, of necessity, one of the earliest of human discoveries ... The human control of fire likely required a cognitive ability to conceptualize the idea of fire, which itself has been recognized in chimpanzees; great apes have been known to prefer cooked foods, so the very great age of the earliest human fire experimentation should not come as a terrific surprise." (Thought Company)

Comment: "Conceptualizing the idea of fire" is one thing, but learning how to make it is a completely different matter. The techniques for starting fires using the friction method are well known, but I can't imagine how the basic principle was ever discovered in the first place. After all, prehistoric men couldn't have known that friction would cause heat which would in turn ignite kindling. This isn't intuitively obvious and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing you could just stumble across by accident, though I suppose someone might have noticed that rubbing things together warms them up. In any case, it takes time to make fire this way and the method requires specific materials and techniques.

I can see how a Stone Age hunter might accidentally learn that striking stones together creates sparks which in turn can start a fire. Sparks are a natural byproduct of flintknapping, but I don't see how anybody could inadvertently start a fire with friction. It takes too long, for one thing. The more I think about how the basic principle of this technology could have been discovered, the more mysterious it becomes.

"Successfully creating fire by friction involves skill, fitness, knowledge, and acceptable environmental conditions. Some techniques involve crafting a system of interlocking pieces that give the practitioner an improved mechanical advantage; these techniques require more skill and knowledge but less fitness, and work in less ideal conditions." Source: Wikipedia.

The discovery of how to use friction to create fire becomes even more baffling when you realize that it must've been done millions of years ago, perhaps before modern humans even came along:

"The controlled use of fire was likely an invention of our ancestor Homo erectus, during the Early Stone Age (or Lower Paleolithic). The earliest [?] evidence for fire associated with humans comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya. The site of Koobi Fora (... dated 1.6 million years ago) contained oxidized patches of earth to a depth of several centimeters, which some scholars interpret as evidence for fire control. At 1.4 million years of age, the Australopithecine site of Chesowanja in central Kenya also contained burned clay clasts in small areas." (Thought Company)

The idea that Australopithecus might have known how to make fire is truly mind-boggling. Apes have been known to make fires, but they cheat by using lighters.

Related: The Discovery of Fire by Humans: A Long and Convoluted Process

Finding The Deer Goddess Of The Ancient World

"Caroline Wise shares her quest to find ‘Elen of the Ways’, an elusive figure who is associated with deer and the ancient tracks of the land. In Britain, her story is conflated with that of St Elen of Wales, Elen Luyddog, whose mythic story is told in the Mabinogion. But her tracks and her ways take us much further afield. Who is Elen? Where does she come from, and where can we find her?" Source: Megalithomania.

The Face Of A Stone Age Man Whose Skull Was Found On A Spike

"We may never know why the skull of a Stone Age man ended up on a stake in a mysterious underwater grave 8,000 years ago, but thanks to a new facial reconstruction, we can see what he probably looked like before he died." Source: Live Science (2020).

"Archaeologists discovered the man's skull, as well as the remains of at least 10 other Stone Age adults and an infant, in 2012 at the bottom of what used to be a small lake in what is now Motala, a municipality in eastern-central Sweden. However, only one of the adults had a jaw; the rest were jawless, and two of the skulls had been placed on stakes sticking out from the lake's surface.

"Now, a 3D facial reconstruction reveals the likeness of one of those jawless skulls. Oscar Nilsson, a forensic artist based in Sweden, used this skull as well as genetic and anatomical information gleaned from it to create a bust of the man — a blue-eyed, brown-haired and pale-skinned individual in his 50s."

Shift To Farming Produced "Extreme Violence" In Atacama Desert, Ancient Mummies Reveal

"Skeletal and mummified ancient remains from the Atacama Desert in what is now Chile show evidence of a surge of extreme violence tied to the rise of farming, a new study finds." Source: Live Science.

"The team analyzed the remains of 194 people who lived between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 600 in the Atacama Desert, and found that while violence was more prevalent at the beginning of the transition to farming, it persisted even after farming villages had been around for hundreds of years. Moreover, the violence targeted men and women alike.

"For instance, one woman appears to have been tortured; the skin on her face was stretched so much that her 'mouth' was pulled high above its natural position. This was likely an 'intentional act, occurring at the time of death when the skin was still fresh and causing deep agony,' the researchers wrote in the study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology."

Note: The Acatama Desert has been compared to the surface of Mars and it has apparently been like that for a long time. These people may have been fighting over the few areas where agriculture was possible in the desert, but the violence apparently got so extreme at times that it sounds like these early farmers went kind of insane:

"Perhaps the males' trauma came from intense brawls or fights that involved weapons, such as spear throwers, slings, maces, sticks and knives, the researchers said. It's possible that the women were injured due to domestic violence, they wrote in the study."

The Tartaria Tablets - World's Oldest Writing?

The three Tartaria tablets were discovered over fifty years ago at a Stone Age site in the village of Tărtăria in Romania. No one knows how old these small tablets are, but some experts think they could date back to around 5300 BC. As for the writing on the tablets, it's just as mysterious:

"The tablets bear incised symbols and have been the subject of considerable controversy among archaeologists, some of whom claimed in the past that the symbols represent the earliest known form of writing in the world. The symbols are thought to be Vinča symbols, although some scholars have considered them to be Sumerian. The signs are Sumerian proto-cuneiform-like, so quasi-Sumerian." (Wikipedia)

In the next video (2010), a mathematician describes his own interpretation of the symbols on the tablets.

Related: Tartaria Tablets: The Latest Evidence in an Archaeological Thriller (2021).

Computational Models Used To Analyze Proto-Indo-European Language

Video from Aug. 14, 2020. I'm not sure how anyone knows what Proto-Indo-European sounded like, but I'm assuming this is reasonably accurate.

"A new linguistic study sheds light on the nature of languages spoken before the written period, using computational modeling to reconstruct the grammar of the 6500-7000 year-old Proto-Indo-European language." Source: Science Daily.

Comment: As far as I can tell, there is no hard evidence for the Proto-Indo-European language. According to Wikipedia, "Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists." So this reconstruction of the language's grammar using computers is also a theoretical reconstruction. I'm assuming that it's reasonably accurate, however:

"The study confirms that Proto-Indo-European was similar to Classical Greek and Sanskrit, supporting the theory of ... 19^th century scholars. However, the study also provides new insights into the mechanisms of language change. Some features of the proto-language were very stable and dominant over time. Moreover, features of higher prominence and frequency were less likely to change."

Linguistic studies like this -- along with DNA research and archaeological digs -- are part of a continuing effort to unravel the still hidden origins of Europeans.

Video from March, 2021.

Ohio's Mysterious Serpent Mound

Video from 2017.

"The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-foot-long, three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound on a plateau of the Serpent Mound crater along Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio." (Wikipedia) As far as I can tell, nobody knows how old the mound is or who built it, but "The two leading theories are that the mound was built by either the Adena Culture (800 BC to 100 AD) around 320 BC, or the Fort Ancient Culture (1000 to 1750 AD) around 1070 AD."

No artifacts or remains have been found in the mound which could help archaeologists figure out how old it is. The theory that the earthwork was built by the Adena Culture is based on carbon dating of human remains unearthed in the vicinity. The Fort Ancient Culture theory, however, is based on the carbon dating of charcoal found in a trench dug into the mound itself, so the later dates (1000 - 1750 AD) seem more likely. Everything's still up in the air, though, because the charcoal itself might have been shifted by various processes (frost, burrowing insects and animals, etc).

The mound is located on the site of an ancient meteorite impact crater which is over 200 million years old. According to Megalithomania, this crater creates all sorts of magnetic and gravitational anomalies which cause "weather fluctuations and earth energy effects in the form of earth lights" in the area. (Quote is from the description for the video below.) Make of that what you will. It's still a mystery why the mound was built, but its orientation seems to have astronomical significance. According to Wikipedia, "The head of the serpent is aligned to the summer solstice sunset and the coils also may point to the winter solstice sunrise and the equinox sunrise."

Note: "If 1070 AD is accurate as the construction year, building the mound could theoretically have been influenced by two astronomical events: the light from the supernova that created the Crab Nebula in 1054, and the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1066." (Wikipedia)

The Ohio Serpent Mound, naturally, has attracted the attention of the ancient-aliens crowd, who have connected these strange effigy mounds in North America to everything from the Nazca Lines in South America to the crop circles in England, arguing that they are either an attempt to communicate with Earth or a kind of air-traffic control system for UFOs, or both.

Theories like these have come under attack recently for being -- drumroll -- racist, but that's not too surprising because everything is racist these days. Personally, I think that the Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by a prehistoric Yig cult -- a cult that still exists, by the way -- but it would put my life in danger to disclose my sources for that in a public forum.

Is Iceland The Tip Of A Lost Continent?

"Iceland may be the last exposed remnant of a nearly Texas-size continent — called Icelandia — that sank beneath the North Atlantic Ocean about 10 million years ago, according to a new theory proposed by an international team of geophysicists and geologists." Source: Live Science.

"The theory goes against long-standing ideas about the formation of Iceland and the North Atlantic, but the researchers say the theory explains both the geological features of the ocean floor and why Earth's crust beneath Iceland is so much thicker than it should be. Outside experts not affiliated with the research told Live Science they are skeptical that Icelandia exists based on the evidence collected so far."

Was There A Real King Arthur?

"It seems that there was a war leader, whose name we do not know, who defeated the Saxons, checking their advance temporarily ... Eventually the name Arthur adhered to this folk memory, and his list of accomplishments grew. Arthur is in many ways greater because we do not know the truth ..." Source: Britain Express.

"The real Arthur may have been a man named Ambrosius Aurelianus, or perhaps his war leader, who defeated the Saxons in a major battle we know as Mount Badon ... halting their advance for as long as forty years. In the end, however, the superior might and numbers of the Saxons and their allies were too much for the islanders, and Arthur's efforts became little more than a historical footnote. A terrifically romantic and exciting footnote though, for Arthur and his deeds were woven like a silk thread into the fabric of myth and legend in which Celtic storytellers delight."

Did a King Arthur actually exist? As mentioned above, various attempts have been made to connect the legendary king with actual historical figures. For instance, according to a 1998 Archaeology story, "possible evidence of the existence of Arthur, the legendary warrior king, has been found at Tintagel in Cornwall. A Cornish slate with sixth-century engravings was found in July on the eastern terraces of Tintagel on the edge of a cliff overlooking the place traditionally known as Merlin's Cave [see next video for more on Merlin]. It was discovered under broken pottery and glass from the late sixth or seventh centuries during the re-excavations of an area last dug in the 1930s." The evidence here consists of a Latin inscription which may refer to Arthur.

This next video shows the ruins of Tintagel Castle: King Arthur's birthplace, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Tintagel is only one of the Arthurian locations proposed over the years. Historic UK has a list of places that have been associated with Camelot, though the consensus is that the legends are entirely fictional. That could be true, but these stories must have come from somewhere. "The King Arthur we know is one of romance, ephemera and myth," according to the Independent (2010). "But is he real? Arthur has been in and out of fashion more than denim: one year his veracity is being argued by every archaeologist in Britain, the next he's ignored or derided."

Video from 2016.

Maybe I'm just a hopeless Romantic, but I like to think that King Arthur actually existed. Despite its implausibility there's a fair amount of documentary evidence to support the idea:

"One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), sees Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century." (Wikipedia)

Librovox recording of the History of the Britons by Nennius, read by various.

"The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon [next video], where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies, however, question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum."

I really doubt if King Arthur killed 960 men in battle, but it would be interesting to know how Nennius came up with that specific number, assuming, that is, that the 9th century Welsh monk actually wrote the Historia Brittonum. Some authorities believe he compiled the book from various older sources.

"The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon."

The most well-known account of the Arthurian legend is Le Morte d'Arthur, first published in 1485 and written by Sir Thomas Malory, whoever he was. Several candidates with the same name exist, but he was most likely Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, a  soldier, former MP and possible "thief, bandit, kidnapper, and rapist," said to have written the book using French and English sources while he was being held prisoner during the Wars of the Roses.

Related: Arthurian Timeline

The Kingdom of Mercia, Medieval Wales and King Arthur

The Yonaguni Monument: Japan's "Lost Atlantis" Or Natural Formation?

Video from 2017. Note the mention of artwork discovered on the formations.

"The Yonaguni-jima Kaitei Chikei, literally translated as 'Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography,' is an underwater mystery off the coast of the Ryukyu Islands, Japan. The massive underwater rock formation is speculated to have existed for more than 10,000 years, but whether the formation is completely man-made, entirely natural, or has been altered by human hands is still up for debate." Source: Atlas Obscura.

Many sources matter-of-factly describe the formations of the Yonaguni Monument as the ruins of an advanced prehistoric city which sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago. For instance, see the book Underworld by Graham Hancock, author of the classic work of alternate history "Fingerprints Of The Gods." This theory was first put forward by the Japanese professor and marine geologist Masaaki Kimura who began studying the monument in 1992 (the formation was first discovered by local divers in the 1980s).

Video from 2015.

After exploring the monument for around twenty years, Kimura "remains convinced that the site was carved thousands of years ago, when the land mass was above water. According to Kimura the Yonaguni’s numerous right angles, strategically placed holes and aesthetic triangles are signs of human alteration. He also claims that carvings exist on the monuments, resembling Kaida script. He believes that a pyramid, castles, roads, monuments and a stadium can be identified within the structure – which for him is evidence that the monument is what remains of the Lost Continent of Mu, the Japanese equivalent to Atlantis." (Atlas Obscura)

Note: Mu was also the home of the dreaded Ghatanothoa, an elder god so hideous that anyone who saw him (or an image of him, no matter how small) was instantly petrified, their skin turned to leather and bone while their brains remained alive and conscious forever. For more information on Ghatanothoa, see Out of the Aeons by H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald.

The Yonaguni Monument could be part of a prehistoric city, I guess. It doesn't look natural to me -- there are two many straight lines and right angles and structures that definitely resemble loose blocks, stairs and what could be terraces or plazas -- but Kimura loses me when he claims that the monument originally stood on the Lost Continent of Mu. I'd like to believe in Mu and I suppose it's possible that lost continents once existed, but it would be nice to have some evidence other than ambiguous formations on the bottom of the sea.

Even if the monument is artificial, there are no signs (as far as I know) that it was ever inhabited. The top video mentions that artwork was discovered in the submerged "ruins," and Kimura claims in the next video that "tools and engraved stones" were discovered there, but I haven't been able to verify that these tools and engravings actually exist. The engravings may just be scratches in the rocks. To the best of my knowledge, no artifacts of any kind have ever been discovered in the Yonaguni Monument. In contrast, divers exploring the very real sunken town of Baiae off the coast of Italy have found all sorts of Roman statuary, mosaics, etc., lying around on the bottom of the Gulf of Naples.  There doesn't seem to be anything like that in this enigmatic site off the coast of Japan.

Mainstream archaeologists and other experts call Kimura's "sunken city" pseudoarchaeology, and they're probably right. If you believe the geologists, anyway,  this bizarre formation may not be all that bizarre after all:

"Some of those who have studied the formation, such as geologist Robert Schoch of Boston University, state that it is most likely natural. Schoch observed the sandstones that make up the Yonaguni formation to 'contain numerous well-defined, parallel bedding planes along which the layers easily separate. The rocks of this group are also criss-crossed by numerous sets of parallel, vertically oriented joints in the rock. These joints are natural, parallel fractures by which the rectangular formations seen in the area likely formed. Yonaguni lies in an earthquake-prone region; such earthquakes tend to fracture the rocks in a regular manner.' He also observes that there are similar formations on the northeast coast of Yonaguni. John Anthony West also reaches the same conclusion. Schoch also believes that the 'drawings' identified by Kimura are natural scratches on the rocks, and suggests that the 'walls' are simply natural horizontal platforms which fell into a vertical position when rock below them eroded, and the alleged roads are simply channels in the rock." (Wikipedia)