Paleolithic plaque

A cave called El Sidrón (3rd image), discovered in northern Spain in 1994, continues to yield rich evidence of occupation by Neanderthals 47,300-50,600 years ago (1st image, video about the reconstruction here). It was reported by National Geographic that at least 13 individuals had been butchered for their brains and marrow at the site. Their remains (2nd image) fell 60' into a sediment-filled hollow before they could be scavenged by animals, and there they mineralized. The teeth of 5 of these cave-dwellers (4 adults and a child) have just revealed that Neanderthals - long thought to be predominantly meat-eaters - ate a variety of cooked plant foods and were aware of their nutritional and medicinal qualities. The dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) has been analyzed on a molecular level by an international team of researchers led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of York. They combined thermal desorption and pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry with morphological analysis of plant microfossils to identify starches and carbohydrates. Chemical markers of exposure to wood smoke indicate that some of the foods were cooked, and the fact that others are bitter and of little nutritional value shows that they were eaten  for reasons other than taste. Karen Hardy is lead author of the study just published in Naturwissenschaften and sums up, "The varied use of plants we identified suggests that the Neanderthal occupants of El Sidrón had a sophisticated knowledge of their natural surroundings which included the ability to select and use certain plants for their nutritional value and for self-medication. While meat was clearly important, our research points to an even more complex diet than has previously been supposed." That diet included the following:

• nuts
• grasses
• green vegetables
• yarrow
• camomile

Antonio Rosas of Madrid's Museum of Natural History says, "El Sidrón has allowed us to banish many of the preconceptions we had of Neanderthals. Thanks to previous studies, we know that they looked after the sick, buried their dead and decorated their bodies. Now another dimension has been added relating to their diet and self-medication."

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Previous posts about human teeth:

Testing a tooth

Churchill's choppers

Kunstkammer

Charles Gaal, Jr.

Middle age vampires!

 

The deciding factor in what to blog about today is the poorly-worded translation in a Bulgarian newspaper about medieval skeletons unearthed with signs of superstition. Indications are that they were considered vampires (the closest Bulgarian word I could find is undead: немъртви). An excavation in Venice in 2009 revealed similar signs. Details are below:

Stakes in their hearts
The 700-year-old remains of 2 men were found stabbed through the chest with iron rods (1st image, another photo here) during excavation of a monastery near Sozopol, Bulgaria. "This was a pagan belief widespread in the Bulgarian lands in the 12th to 14th centuries. People were very superstitious then. Throughout the country we have found over 100 such 'vampire' burials of mainly noblemen from the middle ages who were branded bloodsucking immortals," said Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of the National History Museum. Such people were considered evil during their lifetime and could continue to torment the living unless they were pinned to their graves. A 3rd centuries-old skeleton has also been found in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, tied to the ground with four iron clamps. "This man is not a vampire but was subjected to this pagan superstition-driven ritual to prevent him from becoming one after his death," explained archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov. Due to international interest, the Sozopol "vampire skeletons" will be displayed at the museum. Dimitrov commented, "I do not know why an ordinary discovery like that became so popular. Perhaps because of the mysteriousness of the word 'vampire'."


Bricks in their mouths
The remains of thousands dating from 700 to 1400AD have been unearthed between 2005 and 2009 in Kilteasheen, Ireland. Two of 137 skeletons excavated so far have been found with large stones wedged into their mouths (2nd image), probably intended to prevent them from rising from the dead. The "deviant burials," a 40-60-year-old adult male and a young adult aged 20-30, were buried side by side at different times in the 8th c. "One of them was lying with his head looking straight up. A large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth. The other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated," said lead archeologist Chris Read from the Institute of Technology in Sligo. The ritual slayings may have been to prevent men who were feared or hated from becoming revenants. The mouth was the portal through which the soul left - and therefore could return to - the body after death.

The well-preserved skeleton of a 60-year-old female is one of more than 100 found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of Venice. She had been buried in a mass grave during an outbreak of plague in 16th c. Italy, but a brick had been forced into her mouth (photo here) when the grave was reopened to dispose of more victims. The brick may have been used to starve to death a body that appeared well-fed, but was actually decomposing and bloated. To further fuel their fears, a hole caused naturally by bacteria found in the mouth area, may have identified her as a "shroud-eater," a vampire who fed on the cloth and spread the Black Death. "For the first time we have found evidence of an exorcism against a vampire," declares Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University.

Thanks to Jill and Val for inciting this post!

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Previous posts about vampires:

Frankenstein and dracula

Pishtaco

Cruentation

Vlad the impaler

Countess Elizabeth Báthory

Geißenklösterle flute

 

Since the 1st archaeological exploration of Geißenklösterle cave (photo of the entrance here) in 1963, it has offered several superlatives, including the oldest sculpture of a human being, but the reanalysis of objects discovered in the early 1970s adds another claim to fame. It has now been confirmed that the cave in Blaubeuren, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, yielded up flutes dating to 42,000 years ago (5,000 years earlier than previously thought), making them the world's oldest musical instruments. Researchers from Oxford and Tübingen retested the flutes and published the new radiocarbon dates in the Journal of Human Evolution. Two of the flutes were fashioned from swan bones (photo here), which are already hollow, so they are considered relatively unsophisticated. (A replica of the bird bone flutes was made and can be heard here.) But the 3rd had been carved from mammoth ivory (images above), which the artisan would have had to split, hollow out, and then glue back together with a perfectly airtight seam. Though it was made of the highest quality material available at the time, it was found in 31 pieces. When reconstructed, it had 3 finger holes, measured 18.7cm long, and would have been capable of playing relatively complex melodies. "This 3rd flute is like a Rolls Royce compared with a Hyundai," described Nicholas Conard from the University of Tübingen. Friedrich Seeberger, an expert in prehistoric music, made a replica in elder wood and commented, "The tones are quite harmonic," but hopes to make an even more faithful replica out of mammoth ivory. Carbon dating expert Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford notes that although the flutes are the earliest yet discovered, they do not pinpoint how old music is as a technology: "We just don't know....The problem is that we have virtually no other evidence for this behavior archaeologically to be able to comment more confidently. There are other musical instruments like these, for example at Isturitz in the French Pyrenees, but whether these are the same age is not known. There are later examples, from the Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian periods, but from this period, nothing else. It seems unlikely that we have the oldest examples. The likelihood is that this behavior is older, but by how much is a guess."

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Previous posts about musical instruments:

Violin violence

Cello passenger

Katzenklavier

Glass harmonica

Harps, played and painted

Gibson guitar

Happy New Year!

Huge

I have blogged about petroglyphs before (see Scratchings and "TRENT"), but never about geoglyphs, either the well-known Nazca Lines in Peru or the lesser-known markings in England, Australia, and the U.S. (take a virtual world of ancient and modern geoglyphs here). I even skipped over the weird news that broke a couple of years ago about geoglyphs exposed in the Amazon rainforest after clear-cutting. But described in the most recent issue of Antiquity is an extraordinary geoglyph - found by satellite imagery and visible on Google Earth (coordinates: 54°56'33"N, 59°11'32"E) - in an entirely different part of the world. At an undetermined time in the past, an ancient people carried out the large-scale project on a slope in what is now Zjuratkul National Park (1st image) in the southern Urals of Russia. By systematically arranging and layering large and small stones (2nd image) in a trench 2-4m wide, they created the image of a large hoofed animal with 4 legs, 2 antlers, and a large projecting muzzle (3rd image), probably an elk. The figure measures 218m x 195m and would have been visible from the height of an adjacent ridge. The use of the native white quartzite meant that the figure would initially have looked white and slightly shiny against the green grass background, with subsequent infilling of dust and soil turning much of it grey. The accumulation of soil over the virgin soil of the trench suggests that the geoglyph possibly dates back as far as the Neolithic age, 7,000-9,000 years ago, but probably more recently. It would have been laid out in an open landscape, which puts it at 2,500 years ago, when forests developed in the area. The Russian elk differs in technique than the geoglyphs in the West, though - like them - the figure certainly had a cultic character. "There are, to our knowledge, no analogues for our figure in continental Eurasia," write Stanislav A. Grigoriev of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Nikolai M. Menshenin of the State Centre for Monument Protection, Chelyabinsk. They indicate that research including further excavation, radiocarbon and luminescence dating, and palynological and petrographic analyses will shed more light on this unique elk.

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Here's what Sam Pickering has said about my new book:

"Dissection on Display is an astonishingly interesting and good book - learned, well-written, and filled with quick, not dead, anecdotes. Bodies sold for dissection on the basis of their length--what a thing! And the poor Hottentot Venus! Before reading your book, I had not thought about the distinction between an autopsy and a dissection. Richard Grazemark seems, alas, a modern--such horrors never end. But, golly, this is a fine scholarly book, one that informs and entertains and the combination makes it a rarity."

What the teeth tell us

There is a group of pervasive extinct mammals you've likely never heard of (I hadn't): multituberculates. They made their appearance in the weird news (artist's rendition 3rd image, also here) and caught my eye because of their diet of flowers. As I found out, this order of animals has the longest fossil history of any mammal lineage - 120 million years - and existed in as many varieties as the angiospores (2nd image) they favored. There were tree-dwelling squirrel-like varieties, terrestrial types as small as a mouse and as large as a beaver, and burrowing gopher-like "multis," as they are called. They are named after their teeth ("tubercles" are cusps) and these are the most prevalent remnants in the fossil record. It was by studying the changes in the teeth and developing a new way to quantify their bumpiness that University of Washington paleontologist Greg Wilson (1st image, holding a cast of a multi's jaw) and his colleagues concluded that multis flourished during and after the age of the dinosaurs. As they explain in their scientific paper, "Here we show that in arguably the most evolutionarily successful clade of Mesozoic mammals, the Multituberculata, an adaptive radiation began at least 20 million years before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and continued across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary." But to me and other laypeople, Wilson's quote to the popular press is more understandable: "If you pull out a textbook, it will basically say that with the extinction of the dinosaurs, the opportunity became available so that mammals could evolve into diverse forms. What we're seeing is that at least in this important group of mammals, extinction of the dinosaurs wasn't the driver." So they survived the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and lived throughout the world for another 30 million years, but then lost out to primates, ungulates, and rodents. Today multituberculates - represented by more than 200 species - are the only major branch of mammals to have become completely extinct, and have no living descendants.

Earliest artificial eye

The world's earliest prosthetic eye was worn by an ancient Persian priestess. The female soothsayer stood 6' (1.82m) tall, and the mesmerizing effects of the golden eyeball would have convinced those who saw it that she could see into the future. "It must have glittered spectacularly, conferring on the woman a mysterious and supernatural gaze,” said leader of the Italian team Lorenzo Costantini, adding, "She must have been a very striking and exotic figure." The priestess lived 5,000 years ago in what is now Iran, where her skeleton was unearthed in 2006 by Iranian and Italian archaeologists excavating an ancient necropolis at Shahr-i-Sokhta ["Burnt City"] in the Sistan desert. The eyeball was made of a lightweight material thought to be derived from bitumen paste and later determined to consist of a mixture of natural tar and animal fat. Lines had been engraved radiating from the iris and gold that had been applied in a thin layer over the surface. A tiny hole had been drilled on each side of the half-sphere, which had a diameter of just over 1" (2.5cm), so that it could be held in place with thread. Microscopic examination confirmed that the artificial eye had been worn during life: the socket had an imprint from prolonged contact and marks from the thread. Further analysis suggested that the woman may have had an abscess on her eyelid because of long-term contact with the golden eyeball. Mansour Sajjadi (pictured), leader of the Iranian team, stated that the skeleton was that of a woman, aged between 25 and 30, whose cause of death could not be determined. She had lived between 2900 and 2800 B.C. and her facial characteristics (see video about facial reconstruction here) differed from the local inhabitants, suggesting that she had migrated from Arabia. "However, considering the usage of tar in the artificial eyeball and proficiency of jewelers of Burnt City during ancient times, what we can say for sure is that the eye was made in this city."

NOTE: This post was inspired by an article forwarded to my friend Sue from her daughter-in-law Yvonne. Just as I began it, I saw on TV the 1st photograph of American model Lauren Scruggs published since receiving a prosthetic eye following her horrific accident in December.

In the trenches

German soldiers of the 6th Company, 94th Reserve Infantry Regiment hunkered down in an underground shelter on the Western Front in the Alsace region of France during World War I. Their basic needs were met - they had wood stoves for heat, telephone connections, furniture, electricity, rudimentary plumbing, and even a goat to provide fresh milk - but they had no peace of mind. The soldiers had taken refuge in the trench (which was 125m long and up to 6m deep) on March 18, 1918. That morning, the German artillery had pounded the front lines with gas shells and by early afternoon the French were responding. The 1.1m x 1.7m tunnel was hit 3 times and then, shortly after noon, collapsed at its weakest point. When the Germans attempted a rescue under cover of darkness, they found 2 survivors among the 34 who were trapped by the cave-in, but both later died. They removed 13 of the casualties, but were unable to continue because of continued collapse and continuing combat. It was not until Nov. 2011 that the bodies of the 21 remaining soldiers were recovered. Archaeologist Michael Landolt describes, "It's a bit like Pompeii. Everything collapsed in seconds and is just the way it was at the time. Here, as in Pompeii, we found the bodies as they were at the moment of their death. Some of the men were found in sitting positions on a bench, others lying down. One was projected down a flight of wooden stairs and was found in a fetal position." Landolt is leading the team that began excavating the trench (2nd and 4th images) after it was discovered while a road was being built. The Interdepartmental Centre of Archaeology Rhinelander (PAIR) archaeologists are finding well-preserved personal effects including boots, helmets (1st image), rifles (3rd image), wine bottles, glasses, wallets, pipes, and still-legible newspapers (more photos here). "The collapsed shelter was filled with soil. The items were very well preserved because of the absence of air and light and water. Metal objects were rusty, wood was in good condition....Leather was in good condition as well, still supple," continues Landolt. The bodies - including that of Musketeer Martin Heidrich, 20, Private Harry Bierkamp, 22, and Lieutenant August Hutten, 37 - have been handed over to the German War Graves Commission. Unless surviving relatives request repatriation, they will be interred in the nearby German war cemetery of Illfurth, where their names - known now for nearly a century - were inscribed on a monument 50 years ago.

Doughboy dog tags

Frenchmen Michael Jean Toussaint and Claude Fonderflick have been using metal detectors to search for artifacts on World War I battlefields (1st image, troops who fought in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive). When they turn up military ID tags, they attempt to return them to the soldier's family. They have succeeded in some instances and are still researching others:

Kent Potter
Unit 139, of the 134th Infantry Division, Company M, U. S. Army
Found: Liverdun, Lorraine, France
Returned: Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, U.S.
A ceremony was held at the Chase County Historical Museum on Thursday to restore the dog tag of Infantryman Kent Potter (3rd image) to his family 94 years after it was lost. Potter did not lose his life on the battlefield, but possibly while hauling supplies when - according to family legend - he put his gas mask on his mule to protect it from a mustard gas attack. Potter returned to his home state to tell such stories, marry, and raise a family. His son, Dale Potter (2nd image, examining a photo with Doris Archer), accepted the medal (photo here), who said, "I'm amazed that these 2 people in France still remember and appreciate what the United States did for their country....My dad didn't die there, he came home. There were so many who did not get to come home."

Leonard Stoltz
Found: A field near the village of Vaxainville, France
Returned: Montezuma, Ohio
Audrey Stoltz (photo here) and her siblings Jack Stoltz (photo here) and Joyce Ann Kiser claimed the military ID of their father from the 2 Frenchmen and received it by mail. They were glad to have it, even though they remember very little about him. One day in the 1930s, Leonard Stoltz - who was a deputy sheriff at the time and had served in the military before he married - went to the grocery store and never came back. They had only learned in 1987 that their father had died in 1968 at a veterans hospital in Miami and had been buried in a veterans cemetery in Andersonville, Georgia. The dog tag only answers a few of the many questions they are left with. Says Jack, "When he left, we went to live with our grandparents. Unfortunately, the house burnt up, and all the pictures were lost. The dog tag is the only thing we have."

The dog tag of Walter Renfro was returned to a descendant in El Paso, Illinois. "When they first called, my husband and I thought it was some kind of scam. No one is that nice anymore," said Renfro's granddaughter, Rita Drake, who is helping Toussaint and Fonderflick search for relatives of 2 other soldiers, Frank Kubas (Kansas City, Kansas) and Charles R. Thomas (home state uncertain).

Knock knock

A remarkable find has been made in Barley, Lancashire, U.K. In advance of digging by United Utilities near Lower Black Moss reservoir, archaeologists brought in to survey the site unearthed a partially intact structure under a grass mound. "We rarely get the opportunity to work with something so well preserved. As soon as we started digging, we found the tops of doors, and knew we were on to something special.....The building is a microcosm for the rise and fall of this area....There are layers of local history right before your eyes," raves archaeologist Frank Giecco. Later layers contain a 19th c. kitchen range and Victorian artifacts including crockery, a tin bath, and a bedstead. Earlier layers date all the way back to the 17th c. and revealed the bones of a cat bricked up in the wall. Because mummified cats were sometimes entombed in this way to ward off evil, bad luck, or vermin - and because the Pendleton witch trial of 1612 was held in the immediate vicinity - there is speculation that the well-preserved cottage may have belonged to one of the Pendle witches. "Cats feature prominently in folklore about witches," says historian Simon Entwistle, who notes that the 400th anniversary of the Pendle witch trial is just a few months away. "It's not often you come across a fairytale cottage complete with witch's cat. The building is in remarkable condition. You can walk through it and get a real sense that you're peering into the past," says project manager Carl Sanders. The headlines are proclaiming that a "witch's cottage" has been found, but since I was chastised by a Wiccan years ago for making light of witches and neo-pagan religion, I am taking a tamer tack. The photos above show the condition of the house. Whatever its historical implications, the find has been compared to the excavation of Pompeii in the 1800s and the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1921.

Skeletal affection

1st image) A woman and 2 children laid to rest embracing on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert. The grave is among 200 found in Gobero, Niger, in 2005 and 2006 by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and his colleagues, who refer to it as the "Stone Age Embrace."
2nd image) A skeletal couple found in an embrace in 2007 at a Neolithic site near Mantua, Italy. They had been buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago and were no more than 20 years old at death. "I am so thrilled at this find...because this is the discovery of something special," says lead archaeologist Elena Maria Menotti. The "Lovers of Valdaro," as they have been dubbed, were removed en bloc for analysis at the Musei Civici in Como, but are now looking for a permanent home.
3rd image) Skeletons found in situ in a Roman house in Kourion, Cyprus, by David and Noelle Soren in the mid-1980s include a family killed in the earthquake that struck in 365 A.D. The mother cradles an infant in her arms as the the father tries to protect them both from the falling debris.
4th image) The skeletons of a man and woman found in a joint tomb in Modena, Italy, in 2006. They were buried during the Roman Era - 1,500 years ago - holding hands. The male (left) and female were originally positioned as if the were gazing at each other, but the man's head rolled away after burial, possibly due to flooding from the nearby river. The bones are being studied at the University of Bologna to determine their ages, relationship, and cause of death. Excavation director Donato Labate said, “I have been involved in many digs but I’ve never felt so moved."

Thanks to follower Jill Harris!

Stone Age studio

An interesting find has been made in South Africa's Blombos Cave (1st image). A team of researchers from the universities of Bergen and Witwatersrand, led by Professor Christopher Henshilwood (2nd image, pictured in 2002), discovered artefacts that indicate the cave was used by an artisan 100,000 years ago as a studio. The Archaeology News Network brings the scene to life:

"It was a beautiful spot, a workshop with a glorious natural picture window, cooled by a sea breeze in summer, warmed by a small fire in winter. The sandy cliff top above was covered with a white-flowering shrub that one distant day would be known as blombos and give this place the name Blombos Cave. The man picked up a piece of reddish brown stone about 3" long that he - or she, no one knows - had polished. With a stone point, he etched a geometric design in the flat surface-simple crosshatchings framed by 2 parallel lines with a 3rd line down the middle. Today the stone offers no clue to its original purpose. It could have been a religious object, an ornament or just an ancient doodle. But to see it is to immediately recognize it as something only a person could have made. Carving the stone was a very human thing to do. The scratchings on this piece of red ocher mudstone are the oldest known example of an intricate design made by a human being."

The items found:

• ochre slabs
• abalone shells containing the residue of red ochre
• bone tools for incising lines
• charcoal from fires used to heat the materials
• quartzite grindstones used to mix the pigments
• hammerstones
• shells that were deliberately perforated and decorated with ochre to wear as beads

The pigments may have been used to paint bodies in addition to objects and walls.

Topsy-turvy

A pyramid of mummies, some in very unusual postures, has been found far from Egypt. During restoration work to the northern Italian church of Conversione di San Paolo Apostolo in Roccapelago, a pile of 281 skeletonized and mummified bodies were found in the crypt (see slideshow here). About a third of the remains of adults, infants and children had intact skin, tendons, and hair. The hands of the mummies were clasped in prayer, and they were dressed in simple tunics, socks, and caps of wool, linen, and cotton (video in Italian here). They were found wearing rings, necklaces, religious medallions, and crucifixes that had been fashioned from gold, silver, wood, stone, and glass. "We can say that an entire community, who lived here from the mid-16th to the 18th centuries, has been naturally mummified. This is quite unique," said Donato Labate of the Archaeological Superintendency of Emilia Romagna. The preservation of soft tissue was aided by the constant circulation of air through openings in the wall. Researchers in Ravenna are examining the mummies and skeletons for information about the the isolated Apennine community:

• osteological analysis, with the help of x-rays and CT scans
• histological analysis to understand the demographics of the population
• palaeopathological analysis of teeth and bones to investigate trauma, diseases, diet, and hygiene
• analysis of musculoskeletal markers to look into biomechanical stress on the skeletons
• trace element analysis of the teeth and stable isotope analysis of the bones to reconstruct their diets
• biological distance analysis using epigenetic traits of the skeleton
• DNA analysis, to look for population affinities
• entomological analysis to investigate the conditions of burial
• palaeomicrobiological investigations to detect pathogens and other microorganisms

The anthropologists also intend to analyze the textiles and to perform some facial reconstructions. After they are studied, the mummies will be returned to the church, with some being placed on display and the rest being buried on the grounds. But why were the bodies found in a pyramidal heap? After the floor of the crypt had filled up with traditional graves, the dead - wrapped in or shrouds - were simply dropped through a trap door in the floor of the church above!

Thanks, Wright!

Crannogs and roundhouses

Today's post was inspired by the newly-revealed fact the people of the Iron Age* decorated the walls of their dwellings, as can be seen on fragments of a clay wall found during an excavation near Wennungen, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. “We know now that prehistoric times were not grey but rather that prehistoric houses were colorfully painted,” said state archaeologist Harald Meller. Iron Age Britons lived in roundhouses or crannogs, which looked like huts, but were actually very sturdy little homes. Roundhouses were typically constructed by joining stone or wooden posts with wattle-and-daub panels and adding a conical thatched roof. Several of these have been reconstructed, for example at Pembrokeshire, Wales; Bostadh Beach on the Outer Hebrides; Peebles, Scotland (1st image, by Jim Barton, who also photographed the exterior); and Peterborough, England. Crannogs were similar structures built atop water and particular to Scotland (where reconstructions may be seen in Kenmore, Perthshire) and Ireland.

A roundhouse would have been 6-15m in diameter, with chest-high walls. The entrance may have had a porch and would have faced toward the rising sun, but away from prevailing westerly winds. Based on discoveries of iron latch-lifters, at least some roundhouses had solid wooden doors. The fire in a central open hearth would have been maintained at all times. In addition to warming the dwelling, the fire would have been used to cook food in a cauldron suspended by a chain or tripod, and to preserve food by drying or smoking it. Weaving was an activity carried out within the home, while bronze- and iron-working, flint-knapping, lathe-turning wood, and firing ceramics would have been done elsewhere in the village. Much of what we know about the Iron Age is through experimental archaeology, and a lot of that was conceived by British archaeologist Peter J. Reynolds (1939-2001). Reynolds was the 1st director of Butser Ancient Farm, an open-air museum in Petersfield, Hampshire, England, founded in 1970 to recreate a permanent working Iron Age village (see photos of the reconstruction of a roundhouse here). Reynolds' crowning achievement was the full-sized Pimperne House, at the time the largest building in Western Europe to follow prehistoric principles, and the 1st to provide real evidence of construction methods and labor and material requirements.

*The dates of this archaeological age vary by geography, but think 2,500 years ago.

71 years ago

This rosy-cheeked young man is 27-year-old Royal Canadian Air Force pilot Ted Bates of Guelph, Ontario. On Dec. 12, 1940, he was sent up on a training flight with his copilot Peter Campbell, a 24-year-old from Sussex, England. It was the last time they were heard from. They ascended into blizzard conditions and were later turning toward the airport to refuel their Nomad 3521 when they collided with another RCAF plane. Both planes went down. A massive aerial search was mustered the following day from their base at Borden. The bodies of the pilots of the 2nd plane - L. Francis of Glamorgan, Wales, and W.P. Gosling of Edmonton, Alberta - were recovered, but Campbell and Bates were never found, despite 50 aircraft searching from Georgian Bay to Sudbury to Trenton. The only clue to the crash was an oil slick on the surface of Lake Muskoka, but despite dragging it and sending a diver down multiple times over the next several weeks, the RCAF could find neither the bodies nor the other plane. World War II raged on, and the families' questions remained unanswered.

In 2004, the Lost Airmen of Muskoka Project (LAMP) was established to investigate more than a dozen known WWII-era crash sites in the area. Founders Al Bacon, Matt Fairbrass, and Don Ruud renewed the search for the men whose graves are marked as "unknown" on the Commonwealth Air Force Memorial on Green Island, Ottawa. “This is our honour and our duty. These were our servicemen and they’re heroes as far as I’m concerned,” said Bacon. The team researched archival records, reviewed eyewitness accounts, and used side-scan sonar technology in the lake to narrow the possible location of the missing plane. The Ontario Provincial Police sent divers down who made the discovery on Wednesday. The remains of the pilots were not found, and may not be recoverable, but the divers did locate artifacts and personal effects. Police have contacted next-of-kin - Campbell’s nephew in Montreal and Bates’ brother (who was 14 at the time of the accident) in Guelph. “We’re not sure whether the plane will come up or not,” said Bacon, but the members of LAMP have solved the 71-year-old mystery.

Underwater automobiles

Ascona, Switzerland
(1st image)
A 1925 Bugatti Brescia Type 22 Roadster (here's one being driven by French racer René Dreyfus, who won the 1929 Grand Prix in one) was recovered from Lake Maggiore 2 summers ago after it had lain 150' underwater for almost 70 years. The best reconstruction of the car's history reveals that it had been purchased in 1930 by Georges Paiva of Paris. Swiss architect Max Schmuklerski bought the car a few years later from Paiva (or a later owner) and drove it in Switzerland for years without having paid import duties. When Schmuklerski moved from Ascona in 1936, he left the Bugatti behind. Local customs officers demanded that the new owner pay the duties, but by that time they exceeded the value of the car, so it was sunk in the nearby lake.
The race car (click here for a schematic drawing and here for more period photos) was rediscovered in 1967 and became a popular target for local divers. In 2009, the diving club raised the sunken car to raise money to fight youth violence after one of its members was attacked and died as a result. The Bugatti was lifted by crane before a sizable crowd of onlookers (video and photos here). It had deteriorated extensively, particularly on the right-hand side which had not lain buried in the silt. After its salvage (here is another photo from a Swiss newspaper), it was auctioned by Bonhams without being restored. Expected to bring in between $98,000 and $127,000, the car fetched $366,500 to fund the diving club's charity. The winning bid was placed by the Mullin Automotive Museum in California, where the Bugatti is now on display.

Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
(2nd image)
When he was vacationing near Lake Winnipesaukee as a child, Connecticut IT specialist Brad Swain became intrigued when he heard a story about a car that had gone through the ice in the 1930s or 1940s. After he graduated from college and continued to spend part of every summer near the lake, the car was still on his mind. In 1981, he became a certified SCUBA diver, but his delayed attempt to locate the car in 1991 was unsuccessful. In 2002, research of the story led to the front page of the Granite State News for February 26, 1937. The article details the accident. Roy Thompson, 30, had been driving when the car broke through ice 12" to 14" thick on the way to a fishing house. Although he was known to be a good swimmer, he drowned, possibly weighted down by his heavy wool coat, and his body was recovered the following day. Thompson's passenger, 20-year-old Mary Sullivan, was rescued by nearby fishermen as she floated on a piece of ice. During another dive on August 23, 2004 - 67 years later - Swain was surprised: "Suddenly I found something dark looming in front of me, something with right angles. I came right up to the front of the car and was looking right at the radiator and headlights. My heart started pounding. I realized I had discovered what I'd been looking for all these years." The diver describes the car, identified as a 1930 Oldsmobile: "It is upright and sitting, slightly tilted front end down, in about 29' of water. The car still has some structure remaining but all of the top and the interior has rusted out. The two front headlights and radiator are in place. It is a 2-door Oldsmobile as identified by the radiator medallion and hubcaps. It has a 4 cylinder engine and spoke wheels" (see more photos here).

Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles
(3rd image)
Off the coast of this island are cars, trucks, and earth-moving equipment dating back as far as the 1940s. The vehicles were sunk just offshore in the 1960s to create an artificial reef. The Car Pile, as it is known, is in water 60' to 125' deep. In addition to coral- and sponge-covered wrecks, divers are likely to see spotted drum, turtles, angelfish, lobster, silversides, and - appropriately enough - trunkfish (to experience what it's like, take a dive).

Skull surfaces

Presbyterian widow Julia Martha Thomas lived just 90m from a pub called the Hole in the Wall in the Richmond area of South London. She hired heavy-drinking Irish-born Kate Webster (3rd image), a former thief and prostitute, as a housekeeper. Webster intimidated Thomas with her size and temper, and they were heard to argue. Only 2 months after Webster came to work for her, Mrs. Thomas resolved to fire Webster and promptly disappeared. The housekeeper explained away her absence, sold off her belongings, and fled. In actuality, she had murdered her employer by throwing her down the stairs and strangling her. Webster dismembered the body, packed it in a box, and threw it into the river. The box washed up on the shore of the Thames near Barnes Bridge. Police were able to identify the victim even though her head was missing. Rumors spread that the murderess had boiled the body to make it easier to cut up, and had fed the "drippings" to 2 boys who ate it, believing it to be pig's lard. Webster was found wearing Mrs. Thomas' clothes and jewels. She was convicted and finally confessed, "We had an argument which ripened into a quarrel, and in the height of my anger and rage I threw her from the top of the stairs to the ground floor. She had a heavy fall. I felt that she was seriously injured and I became agitated at what had happened, lost all control of myself and to prevent her screaming or getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat and in the struggle choked her." Webster claimed to be pregnant to avoid execution, but was found to be lying and was hanged in 1879 at Wandsworth prison in London.

Flash forward 132 years to the garden (1st image) of British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough (watch clips here). Now retired, 85-year-old Attenborough (2nd image, observing a golden frog) decided to add an extension to his £1.5million West London home. During the excavation (photo here) of an old pub in the garden, contractors discovered human remains and reported it to the authorities. A skull was handed over to the University of Edinburgh for examination. Physical anthropologists determined that it belonged to an edentulous white female of roughly menopausal age and displayed fracture marks consistent with a fall down some stairs. Testing of the damaged skull (photo here) revealed that the woman died between 1650 and 1880, and that she ate a lot of fish. Collagen levels showed that her skull had been boiled. Matching the evidence with census records of the time, West London Coroner Alison Thompson confirmed that the remains were those of Julia Martha Thomas, who had died at the age of 55 from asphyxiation and a head injury. A total of 132 years after the crime, Thompson delivered a verdict of unlawful killing. No family of Mrs. Thomas could be traced, but she can now be given a proper burial. "This is a fascinating case and a good example of how good old-fashioned detective work, historical records and technological advances came together to solve the 'Barnes mystery,'" said Clive Chalk, chief superintendent of Scotland Yard.

Rare earths

Like warnings about the world's dwindling supply of helium, essential for operating MRI machines, news about the limited sources of rare earth elements seems to be flying under the radar of the public. These 17 metals are essential in the production of numerous hi-tech devices: aerospace components, battery electrodes, camera lenses, catalytic converters, computer memories, cordless power drills, energy-saving light bulbs, flat-screen televisions, fluorescent lamps, hybrid vehicles, laptops, lasers, magnets, military weapons, MRI contrast agents, night-vision goggles, portable x-ray machines, smart phones, welding goggles, and wind turbines. Listed below are the rare earths by symbol and name, with current pricing*:

• Ce Cerium(2nd image, 2nd clockwise from top center) $115/kg
• Dy Dysprosium $1,200/kg
• Er Erbium $260/kg
  
• Eu Europium $3,000/kg
  
• Gd Gadolinium (2nd image, 6th clockwise from top center) $210/kg
  
• Ho Holmium
• La Lanthanum (2nd image, 3rd clockwise from top center) $110/kg
  
• Lu Lutetium
  
• Nd Neodymium (2nd image, 4th clockwise from top center) $245/kg
  
• Pm Promethium
  
• Pr Praseodymium (2nd image, top center) $230/kg
  
• Sc Scandium $6,500/kg
  
• Sm Samarium (1st image; 2nd image, 5th clockwise from top center)
  
• Tb Terbium $3,500/kg
• Tm Thulium
  
• Y Yttrium $200/kg
  
• Yb Ytterbium

The elements are not really rare, but deposits large and concentrated enough to be worth mining are. Currently, China supplies 97% of the world's rare earth needs and is expected to steadily reduce rare earth exports in order to protect its supplies. Fears of future shortages have caused prices to skyrocket, with demand expected to exceed supply by the end of the year and showing no signs of abating. In 2015 the world's industries are forecast to consume an estimated 185,000 tons of rare earths, 50% more than the total for 2010.

The world is now scrambling to find other sources of supply, including recycling and deep sea mud. The bad news is that rare earth mines often also contain radioactive elements, such as uranium and thorium, which contaminate mine waste. The good news is that the Molycorp Minerals Facility in Mountain Pass, California, which closed in 2002, has reopened. The mine is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements outside China and has big expansion plans. President and CEO Mark A. Smith explains, "The current U.S. demand is somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 tons per year. In principle, Mountain Pass could eventually make the United States independent in rare earths."

*Prices are from June 2011 for oxides, as depicted in 2nd image.