Lost pyramids discovered via Google Earth

I've been behind on keeping this blog up to date! I've got a backlog of old posts, links, and half-articles. I'd feel better if I could just get a little caught up. So here are some (older) news briefs:

Archeologists may have discovered lost pyramids using satelite imagery from Google Earth.

From Archeology News Network:

The sites have been documented and discovered by satellite archaeology researcher Angela Micol of Maiden, North Carolina. Angela has been conducting satellite archaeology research for over ten years, searching for ancient sites from space using Google Earth. Angela is a UNC Charlotte alumnus and has studied archaeology since childhood. Google Earth has allowed her to document many possible archaeological sites, including a potential underwater city off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula that has sparked the interest of scientists, researchers and archaeologists. Angela is also a board member of the APEX Institute, founded by archaeologist William Donato, who is pioneering underwater archaeological research in the Bahamas. Angela has been assisted by Don J. Long, fellow APEX researcher and colleague.

So far, the sites have been confirmed as not being previously cataloged by egpytologists.

Images via Archeology News Network

Has the lost continent of Lemuria been found off Madagascar?

Image: Jack Abuin/ZUMA Press/Corbis via Nature 

Well this is one way to start out a Monday--researchers publishing in the journal Nature (yeah, a REAL scientific publication!) have confirmed that there is a forgotten continent submerged under the Indian Ocean. Could this be the source of the legend of the lost land of Lemuria?


Ring-tailed lemurs. Source: Wikipedia

In 1864, British zoologist Philip Sclater published a paper on primates from Madagascar--noting that they had similarities to organisms in India--but not Africa (the continent the isle is closest too). He speculated that India and Madagascar were once connected and dubbed the "lost" land continent to be "Lemuria". The name given to the primates he studied? Lemurs!

His theory was that a land bridge connected Madgascar to India. When the continent broke up, it left behind separated groups of the same species that eventually evolved along divergent paths--but that still held similarities. The theory of land bridges became en vogue in the 19th century and eventually fell out of favor once plate tectonics was discovered.

Fast forward to today's news: After analyzing crystalization in beach sand, they concluded an island chain is actually the remains of a long lost continent. From Nature:

Evidence for the long-lost land comes from Mauritius (see photo at top), a volcanic island about 900 kilometres east of Madagascar. The oldest basalts on the island date to about 8.9 million years ago, says Bjørn Jamtveit, a geologist at the University of Oslo. Yet grain-by-grain analyses of beach sand that Jamtveit and his colleagues collected at two sites on the Mauritian coast revealed around 20 zircons — tiny crystals of zirconium silicate that are exceedingly resistant to erosion or chemical change — that were far older.

Another interesting bit...

The paper also suggests that not just one but many fragments of continental crust lie beneath the floor of the Indian Ocean. Analyses of Earth’s gravitational field reveal several broad areas where sea-floor crust is much thicker than normal — at least 25 to 30 kilometres thick, rather than the normal 5 to 10 kilometres. Those crustal anomalies may be the remains of a landmass that the team has dubbed Mauritia, which they suggest split from Madagascar when tectonic rifting and sea-floor spreading sent the Indian subcontinent surging northeast millions of years ago. Subsequent stretching and thinning of the region’s crust sank the fragments of Mauritia, which together had comprised an island or archipelago about three times the size of Crete, the researchers estimate.

So maybe Lemuria DID exist as a land bridge that later (for lack of a better term) "disolved" into the plate on which it rode. More research is needed, but the new science does seem to at least corroborate some of the earlier biology work done by Sclater.

The kicker? There may be MORE of these "ghost continents" lying in wait, under the oceans of the world. The researchers included, in the same journal, an additional submission positing the possibility that there are many more of these hidden land masses.

This is adding fuel to the claims that other forgotten continents like Mu and Atlantis also may have actually existed--or at least there is scientific basis behind the legends.

What do you think--are the legends true?

Sandstone caves of Nottingham

Video: Nottingham Caves Survey
Boing Boing mentions a post over at the BLDG BLOG on the caves of Nottingham, which are being mapped as part of the Nottingham Caves Survey. They are, in many respects, similar to those at Cappadocia (manmade, cut into sandstone bedrock and cliffsides).

The storied history of the caves which inlcudes ties to Robin of Locksley--has long been the spark of tall tales. From the article:

Incredibly, there are more than 450 artificial caves excavated from the sandstone beneath the streets and buildings of Nottingham, England—including, legendarily, the old dungeon that once held Robin Hood—and not all of them are known even today, let alone mapped or studied. The city sits atop a labyrinth of human-carved spaces—some of them huge—and it will quite simply never be certain if archaeologists and historians have found them all.

"Even back in Saxon times, Nottingham was known for its caves," local historian Tony Waltham writes in his helpful guide Sandstone Caves of Nottingham, "though the great majority of those which survive today were cut much more recently." From malt kilns to pub cellars, "gentlemen's lounges" to jails, and wells to cisterns, these caves form an almost entirely privately-owned lacework of voids beneath the city.

Here's a look at some maps they've created:

Some interior shots:

Images: Nottingham Cave Survey and BLDG BLOG

10 lost civilizations --some maybe not so familiar

What are the ten most familiar civilzations you think of when you hear the word "lost"? There's several on this remarkably ordered list over at io9 of ancient civilizations that I wasn't aware of. We've all heard of the Maya and Easter Island, but there's a few that (I am ashamed to admit) I missed in Archeology 101 from college. For instance:

Click to enlarge

4. Catalhöyük
Often called the world's oldest city, Catalhöyük was part of a large city-building and agricultural civilization thriving between 9,000-7,000 years ago in what is today south-central Turkey. What's interesting about Catalhöyük is its structure, which is quite unlike most other cities since. It contained no roads as we know them, and was instead built sort of like a hive, with houses built next to each other and entered through holes in the roofs. It's believed that people farmed everything from wheat to almonds outside the city walls, and got to their homes via ladders and sidewalks that traversed their roofs. Often, these people decorated the entrances to their homes with bull skulls, and buried the bones of their honored dead beneath the packed dirt of their floors. The civilization was pre-Iron Age and pre-literate, but they nevertheless left behind ample evidence of a sophisticated society, full of art and and public ritual, that was possibly 10,000 strong at many points in its 2,000 year existence. Why did people eventually abandon the city? It is unknown.

And I'm ashamed to say I don't think I knew there was a city here in the US--prior to Europeans arriving.

Click to enlarge

5. Cahokia
Long before Europeans made it to North America, the so-called Mississippians had build a great city surrounded by huge earthen pyramids and a Stonehenge-like structure made of wood to track the movements of the stars. Called Cahokia today, you can still see its remains in Illinois. At its height between 600-1400 AD, the city sprawled across 6 square miles, and contained almost a hundred earthen mounds as well as an enormous grand plaza at its center. Its population might have been as much as 40,000 people, some of whom would have lived in outlying villages. The people of this great city, the biggest so far north in Mesoamerica, were brilliant artists, architects, and farmers, creating incredible art with shells, copper, and stone. They even diverted a branch of the local Mississippi and Illinois rivers to suit their needs for irrigation. It's not entirely certain what led people to abandon the city starting in the 1200s, but some archaeologists say the city had always had problems with disease and famine (it had no sanitary system to speak of), and that people left for greener (and healthier) pastures elsewhere on the Mississippi River.

Great historical inspiration for getting the gears turning and fantastic fodder for stories, indeed!



Images are from the full article over at io9.