Vikings may have fled Greenland to escape rising seas

An account of a wedding that took place at this former church in 1408 is the last written record from the Norse occupation of Greenland.

In 1721, a Norwegian missionary set sail for Greenland in the hopes of converting the Viking descendants living there to Protestantism. When he arrived, the only traces he found of the Nordic society were ruins of settlements that had been abandoned 300 years earlier.

There is no written record to explain why the Vikings left or died out. But a new simulation of Greenland’s coastline reveals that as the ice sheet covering most of the island started to expand around that time, sea levels rose drastically, researchers report December 15 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in New Orleans.

These shifting coastlines would have inundated grazing areas and farmland, and could have helped bring about the end of the Nordic way of life in Greenland, says Marisa Borreggine, a geophysicist at Harvard University.

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Brutal Viking Ritual Called 'Blood Eagle' Was Anatomically Possible, Study Shows

Man lying on his belly with another man using a weapon on his back. (Stora Hammar Stone)

Famed for their swift longboats and bloody incursions, Vikings have long been associated with brutal, over-the-top violence. Between the eighth and 11th centuries, these groups left their Nordic homelands to make their fortunes by trading and raiding across Europe.

Particularly infamous is the so-called "blood eagle", a gory ritual these warriors are said to have performed on their most hated enemies. The ritual allegedly involved carving the victim's back open and cutting their ribs away from their spine, before the lungs were pulled out through the resulting wounds.

The final fluttering of the lungs splayed out on the outspread ribs would supposedly resemble the movement of a bird's wings – hence the eagle in the name.

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Five ice-age mammoths unearthed in Cotswolds after 220,000 years

Sir David Attenborough with some of the mammoth bones found in the gravel quarry near Swindon. Photograph: Julian Schwanitz/BBC/Windfall Films

Five ice-age mammoths in an extraordinary state of preservation have been discovered in the Cotswolds, to the astonishment of archaeologists and palaeontologists.

The extensive remains of two adults, two juveniles and an infant that roamed 200,000 years ago have been unearthed near Swindon, along with tools used by Neanderthals, who are likely to have hunted these 10-tonne beasts. More are expected to be found because only a fraction of the vast site, a gravel quarry, has been excavated.

Judging by the quality of the finds, the site is a goldmine. They range from other ice-age giants, such as elks – twice the size of their descendants today, with antlers 10ft across – to tiny creatures, notably dung beetles, which co-evolved with megafauna, using their droppings for food and shelter, and freshwater snails, just like those found today. Even seeds, pollen and plant fossils, including extinct varieties, have been preserved at this site.

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Galloway Hoard yields another exciting discovery

A rare rock crystal jar found wrapped in textiles as part of the Galloway Hoard, which dates back to around the year 900, has been conserved, revealing a Latin inscription written in gold. The inscription says the jar was made for a bishop named Hyguald.

The Galloway Hoard is the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in the British Isles. It was discovered in 2014 and acquired by National Museums Scotland in 2017. The hoard includes over a hundred objects, such as brooches, ingots, glass beads, a Christian cross, and a silver vessel. Even some textiles that originally wrapped the materials have survived.

The crystal jar, which is around 5cm high and resembles an ornate perfume bottle, is thought to have had an ecclesiastical function. It has now been carefully separated from its wrapping. The Latin inscription on the base, spelled out in gold letters, translates as ‘Bishop Hyguald had me made.’ It is the clearest evidence that some of the material in the hoard may have come from a church in the Kingdom of Northumbria, which stretched as far north as Edinburgh and as far south as Sheffield.

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Plans for new home refused due to site potentially housing Anglo-Saxon remains

The site of the proposed house sits between the A179 and the road leading to The Fens (Image: Google)

Councillors have refused plans for a new home after hearing the land could be of "national and international importance" due to potentially housing Anglo-Saxon remains.

Hartlepool Borough Council Planning Committee on Wednesday (December 15) refused proposals for a single house to be built on land at the Fens in Hart village.

The proposals, submitted by Mr R Greig, had been recommended for refusal, with council planning officers raising several concerns such as that it could cause "substantial harm" and a loss of archaeology to the area.

At the meeting, Robin Daniels, from Tees Archaeology, outlined how neighbouring land, which the Manor Park development has been built on, has shown to be home to an Anglo-Saxon cemetery with "something like 350" human remains.

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Neanderthals Changed Ecosystems 125,000 Years Ago – Were Not “Primal Hippies

Hunter-gatherers caused ecosystems to change 125,000 years ago. These are the findings of an interdisciplinary study by archaeologists from Leiden University in collaboration with other researchers. Neanderthals used fire to keep the landscape open and thus had a big impact on their local environment. The study was published in the journal Science Advances on December 15, 2021.

“Archaeologists have long been asking questions about the character and temporal depth of human intervention in our planet’s ecosystems. We are increasingly seeing very early, generally weak signs of this,” says Wil Roebroeks, Archaeology professor at Leiden University.

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Ancient sheep poop reveals an unknown population on Faroe Islands before Vikings

The bed of this lake on the Faroese island of Eysturoy contains sediment from 500 AD that documents the first arrival of sheep and humans.

The isolated Faroe Islands were once home to an unknown population in 500 AD, about 350 years before Vikings ever arrived, according to new research. And the evidence comes from an unusual source: ancient sheep poop.

The striking Faroes are a small archipelago located in the North Atlantic halfway between Norway and Iceland. Vikings reached the islands once they developed ships for long-distance sailing, about 850 AD, before they moved on to Iceland in 874. For a long time, researchers believed they were the first human inhabitants of the rugged Faroes.

Until this century, the only evidence for the first people to set foot on the Faroes ahead of the Vikings came from mentions in medieval texts. There is no current evidence to suggest that Indigenous people ever lived there.

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Get up close to Skara Brae with new 3D model of 5,000-year-old settlement

The interior of House Seven at Skara Brae. Although this structure has been closed to the public since 2006, the new 3D model allows virtual visitors to explore the interior.
(Historic Environment Scotland)

A new 3D model of Skara Brae is offering online visitors an immersive digital experience of the 5,000-year-old Neolithic settlement.

The Historic Environment Scotland (HES) model was created using ultra-fast, high-resolution laser scanners which capture 3D spatial data in the form of a point cloud. Hundreds of overlapping photographs are then combined with the 3D data to create the photogrammetric model.

As well as offering a unique perspective on the iconic site, the digital model also allows users to explore how climate change and its impacts have shaped Skara Brae – from its discovery just over 170 years ago as the result of a severe winter storm, to the threat of coastal erosion from rising sea levels and increasingly frequent extreme weather events the site is experiencing today.

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The objects that help us understand Stonehenge

Bronze Age sun pendant, 1000–800BC © The Trustees of the British Museum

The British Museum’s major Stonehenge exhibition sees over 430 objects brought together from across Europe to explore the history – and mystery – of the ancient monument

Even the British Museum can’t quite manage to bring the actual stones into the gallery for its forthcoming exhibition exploring the history of our greatest ancient monument.

But as reported widely, they are doing the next best thing by bringing together a highly impressive array of Bronze Age treasures – and the remains of the astonishing wooden monument dubbed Seahenge, which recently emerged after millennia from beneath the sands of a Norfolk beach.

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Early Humans May Have Transformed Their Surroundings

(Leiden University)

LEIDEN, THE NETHERLANDS—UPI reports that hundreds of butchered animal bones, some 20,000 stone artifacts, and evidence of fire building have been discovered at a 125,000-year-old Neanderthal site in the Neumark-Nord lake basin in central Germany’s Geisel Valley by a team of researchers led by Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University. Samples of ancient pollen at the site indicate that the area had been cleared of trees, while pollen counts in the nearby Harz Mountains show that they were forested. Neanderthals and other early humans, Roebroeks concluded, were a factor in shaping the vegetation in this environment. “We might expect to find other examples of this, especially since Neanderthals and their contemporaries were skilled in fire technology,” he said. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. For more on Neanderthals, go to "Neanderthal Hearing."

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Neanderthals, the Original Gardeners, Intentionally Altered the Landscape as Much as 125,000 Years Ago, a Study Finds

Archaeological site at Neumark-Nord in Germany. Courtesy Wil Roebroeks, Leiden University.

Hunter-gatherers were making changes to the ecosystem as early as 125,000 years ago, according to a newly published study by researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands and Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany. Decades of excavations at a quarry known as Neumark-Nord near Halle, Germany, have turned up plentiful evidence of Neanderthal activity, including indications that these hominins may have converted areas of forest into grasslands. This is the earliest evidence of such activity, said the findings, which were published in the journal Science Advances.

“Among other things, we found the remains of hundreds of slaughtered animals, surrounded by numerous stone tools and a huge amount of charcoal remains,” said Wil Reobroeks of Leiden University.

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1,400-Year-Old Byzantine Church, Mosaic Found Near Jerusalem

The impressive mosaics discovered in the church depict birds and plants but there is no icon of the martyr to whom the church was dedicated. Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority

An important archaeological discovery of a Byzantine mosaic and Greek inscriptions, which perhaps pose more questions than answers, was made public by members of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

After three years of painstaking excavations, a Byzantine-era Christian church with spectacular, well-preserved mosaics and frescoes has finally been completely unearthed. The structure is located approximately ten miles west of the city of Jerusalem.

The fascinating, yet mysterious, findings include some Greek inscriptions as well.

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‘Extraordinary’ restoration of Roman rock crystal jar from Galloway hoard

The rock crystal jar was part of the Galloway hoard, unearthed in Kirkcudbrightshire in 2014. Photograph: Neil Hanna

Exclusive: Vessel may have held a perfume or other potion used to anoint kings or in religious ceremonies

When the Galloway hoard was unearthed from a ploughed field in western Scotland in 2014, it offered the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland. But one of the artefacts paled in comparison with treasures such as a gold bird-shaped pin and a silver-gilt vessel because it was within a pouch that was mangled and misshapen after almost 1,000 years in the ground.

Now that pouch has been removed and its contents restored, revealing an extraordinary Roman rock crystal jar wrapped in exquisite layers of gold thread by the finest medieval craftsman in the late eighth or early ninth century.

About 5cm high, it may once have held a perfume or other prized potion used to anoint kings, or in religious ceremonies. It had been carefully wrapped in a silk-lined leather pouch, reflecting its significance.

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Wealth & Power in Medieval Iceland

Early medieval Iceland, the Viking colony, was a democratic and egalitarian society, but the scarcity of resources and the rough environment created competition, where local chieftains resorted to different tactics to acquire wealth and money, from using their advantage as men of the law and representatives of the people to the often complex social relationships they had with their followers.

Economic Challenges

To understand the economic challenges, we need to keep in mind that the short growing season in the north especially, was variable and mostly meant moss and lichens. Birch, Iceland's only tree, suffered from the changing temperatures and then the settlers' woodcutting. The settlers were probably pleased initially since the land was easy to clear for farming, but very soon the island started showing its boundaries. Overgrazing caused erosion, the cooling of the climate affected productivity, no new farming technologies were developed. In the south, it was possible to grow small crops of cereals, but the farmer (bændr) usually turned to sheep and cattle. Hay was vital, thus fertile meadows as well, turning land into the most desired commodity and the source of many disputes in the sagas.

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Spectacular 3D Video Depicts Ancient Athens as Never Seen Before

A realistic reconstruction of ancient Athens. Credit: Ancient Athens 3D

A spectacular 3D video reconstruction of ancient Athens in the late 5th century BC takes the viewer over the city pinpointing its monuments, markets, temples, and neighborhoods.

The video made by Ancient Athens 3D and released in November presents the city the way it would look in the years before the defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC.

The city of Athens was completely destroyed by the Persian army in the years 480-479 BC. In the years that followed, the Athenians managed to rebuild their city and by the middle of the 5th century BC, the statesman and general Pericles ordered an extensive construction program that made Athens the center of classical Greece.

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Viking sword discovered on Papa Westray, Orkney has 'many stories to tell'

The sword was found at a Viking burial site on Papa Westray, Orkney

 ARCHEOLOGISTS say a rare Viking sword discovered in Orkney has “many stories to tell”.

The sword found at a burial site on Papa Westray in 2015 is being carefully examined – and the researchers say it has been identified as one associated with the ninth century.

While the weapon is very corroded due to its age, the archaeologists say it was highly decorated, with contrasting metals used to create a honeycomb-style design. 

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The British Isles' oldest INK PEN dating back 1,000 years

The British Isles' oldest-known ink pen has been found during excavations of a cashel, or stone fort, in County Clare.

Archaeologist Michelle Comber of the National University of Ireland, Galway unearthed the 1,000-year-old writing implement from the Caherconnell Cashel.

This 140-foot-wide ringfort was built in the late 10th century and would have been home to wealthy — and, it seems, literate — local rulers until the early 1600s.

Other artefacts from the site have shown that the occupants engaged in varied pursuits, from fine craftworking and metalwork to trade, games and music.

Most examples of early literacy in Ireland come from the Church, whose hardworking scribes painstakingly copied all manner of ecclesiastical texts. 

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11th c. earring is first of its kind found in Scandinavia

A piece of gold art jewelry found by a metal detectorist in a field near Bøvling, West Jutland, is an extremely rare 11th century cloisonné enamel earring. Only 10 or 12 examples of them are known worldwide, and this is the first one ever discovered in Scandinavia.

The crescent-shaped earring is backed with a crescent-shaped gold plate framed with a gold beaded edge decorated with gold loops. The piece is made of cloisonné enamel in shades of purple, green and blue is divided by gold threads to form a stylized design of two birds on either side of a tree. This symbolizes the tree of life motif. This type of earring design has been found in Egypt, Syria, Byzantium and Russia. This example is likely of Egyptian origin.

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Viking Sword from Scotland X-Rayed

AOC Archaeology/Historic Environment Scotland)

ORKNEY, SCOTLAND—BBC News reports that an X-ray of a heavily corroded Viking sword discovered in a grave on the Orkney Island of Papa Westray in 2015 has revealed its highly decorated upper and lower handle guards made of contrasting metals. The excavation team, which included Andrew Morrison, Caroline Paterson, and Stephen Harrison of AOC Archaeology, lifted the weapon from the site in a block of soil in order to preserve as much evidence as possible.

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Intricate sword, buckle and arrows in Viking burial

The sword was found in 2015 during excavations of a cemetery at Mayback, Papa Westray, but has only now been identified as one of the heaviest designs of the Viking era

An intricate sword, buckle and arrows are among a treasure trove of goods discovered in a Viking burial in Orkney, dating back around 1,200 years.

The Mayback Viking burial in Papa Westray was first discovered back in 2015, but analysis of the precious items is now well underway.

One of the most exciting items is a sword, which is believed to be a Pederson Type D sword – one of the heaviest Viking weapons.

Andrew Morrison, from AOC Archaeology, said: 'Given very few Viking Age scabbards have survived, the Mayback example is a very important addition.

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“World-class find”: A rare Egyptian earring found in the middle of a field in Denmark

A “unique” earring more than 1,000 years old was recently found in a field in Bovling, in the west of the Jutland peninsula (Denmark). According to experts, this gem probably had its origin in Egypt.

The earring was found by a person using a metal detector and consists of a golden crescent-shaped plate with enamel decoration showing two birds around a tree. According to one of the researchers’ theories, this represents the tree of life of both Islamic and Christian cultures.

“There is only between 10 and 12 pieces of this type all over the world, all in old museum collections in the US, UK or Arab countries, “archaeologist and National Museum inspector Peter Pentz told Danish Radio, adding that” such a piece is unique“and it is” interesting “how it ended up in Jutland.

Pentz and his colleagues theorize that one of the rulers of the Byzantine Empire gifted the pendant to a Danish Viking who was part of his Scandinavian war service, known as the Varangian Guard. 

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Byzantine Skeletons Found in Greece Show Signs of Complex Surgery

Byzantine skulls found in Greece show signs of complex surgery. Photo: AMNA

A proto-Byzantine-era skull which was discovered by anthropologists in the Paliokastro area of Thasos shows signs of complicated surgery.

The skull, which dates from the early Byzantine period — the fourth to the seventh century AD — bears traces of surgery that are “incredibly complex,” according to researcher Anagnostis Agelarakis, Ph.D., who teaches at Adelphi University.

The discovery was made by an Adelphi University research team led by Agelarakis. A total of ten skeletons, of four women and six men, were found and studied. They are likely to be persons of high social status, based on the location and architecture of the burial site.

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At least 2 hominin species lived at Laetoli site 3.6 million years ago

A human relative left these five tracks in a 3.6 million-year-old layer of sediment at the Laetoli Fossil site in Tanzania.

The first evidence of human relatives walking on two feet comes from about 70 footprints left by at least two Australopithecus afarensis walking across soft volcanic ash about 3.6 million years ago. A. afarensis was a short hominin with a jutting lower jaw, which walked upright but may also have spent some time in the trees; the most famous member of the species is the fossils of a woman now called Lucy.

Not far from that site, another set of footprints reveals that Lucy and her kin may have lived alongside another bipedal hominin species, one that moved very differently.

The forgotten footprints

When the footprints were first spotted in 1976, the paleoanthropologists who unearthed them from what's called Site A weren't sure what to make of them. Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey suggested they could be hominin tracks, but others weren't so sure. One anthropologist even suggested the tracks could have been left by a young bear walking on its hind legs for a few steps.

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Norwegian Archaeologists Discover One of the Largest Viking Longhouses in Scandinavia

 The ship burial forms part of a larger mound cemetery and settlement site from the Iron Age next to the monumental Jell Mound.

Lars Gustavsen, NIKU

Archaeologists discovered several Iron Age Viking longhouses, according to a statement by the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. The discovery was made by a team working on a project intended to map the presence of Vikings in Gjellestad, a village thought to be a place of great importance during the Iron Age, which lasted roughly from 1200 B.C.E. to 600 B.C.E.

“Finding these longhouses confirms that Gjellestad was a central place in the late Iron Age,” said Lars Gustavsen, a Ph.D. candidate who is helping lead this project.

Out of the five identified using ground-penetrating radar, the largest measured 196 feet in length, making it one of the largest known longhouses in Scandinavia. A typical longhouse from the Iron Age is believed to have measured 65–98 feet in length. The size of a longhouse corresponds with the wealth and influence of its owner, only further proving that this site was one of great importance. Exactly who occupied that hall, however, is yet to be confirmed.

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Norwegian archaeologists find late Iron Age longhouses

Longhouses found near Gjellestad Ship

Norwegian archaeologists said Monday they have found a cluster of longhouses, including one of the largest in Scandinavia, using ground-penetrating radar in the southeastern part of the country—in an area that researchers believe was a central place in the late Nordic Iron Age. 

The longhouses—long and narrow, single-room buildings—were found in Gjellestad, 86 kilometers (53 miles) southeast of Oslo near where a Viking-era ship was found in 2018 close to the Swedish border.

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Viking Roles

(© P. Deckers, S. Croix, and S. M. Sindbæk)

Reproduced mold impressions of riderless stallion, armed woman, and man pulling hair

Small bronze figurines of women clad in armor and bearing weapons that date to the Viking Age have traditionally been seen as representations of Valkyries, the female warriors of Norse mythology who determined whether human combatants lived or died. Analysis of some of the 7,000 fragments of ceramic molds discovered at the site of Ribe in southwestern Denmark that were used to make these figurines, however, suggests that they actually depict human participants in ritual ceremonies. Using high-resolution laser scans of the ceramic fragments, researchers led by Pieterjan Deckers, an archaeologist now at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, fashioned 3-D models of the complete molds that were used to create the figurines in the first few decades of the ninth century A.D. In addition to the armed women, these include a man pulling his hair, a saddled stallion without a rider, and miniature wheels, swords, and shields.

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12 Types Of Extinct Human Species And How They Differ

Today, Homo sapiens are the only type of humans on Earth. However, we modern humans are just the most recent of many other human species that once existed. In fact, we don't know how many species, since scientist keep on finding new species of human. As Britannica explains, the forerunners to humans diverged from apes during the Middle Miocene Epoch from 16 to 11.6 million years ago. These nearly-human species then evolved so that by the Pliocene Epoch some 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, the human genus, Homo, arose.

Species of human are considered distinct by several traits. They are bipedal striders. They generally have large brains. Some also developed tools and use language. These traits became more pronounced as humans evolved further.

What is truly mind blowing is that there were times when there were several different species of human cohabitating the planet. When considering how well we humans of the same species get along with each other, it is not hard to speculate on how intra-human species relations were.

Let's take a look at some of these species of extinct humans and how they differed with one another. The truth of the matter is that the human species was once very diverse.

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Harald Hardrada: why there’s more to the last great Viking than his death in 1066

King Harald Sigurdsson of Norway – remembered by the name Hardrada, meaning ‘hard ruler’ – was a complex, fierce and ultimately doomed antihero. If the myriad ancient sagas and tales of him bear any truth, he was one of the great Vikings worthy of epic television series such as Game of Thrones or Vikings. An outcast son of a petty king, he rose to win a fortune, romance an empress, marry a princess, and carve himself a kingdom by the strength of his sword arm.

Harald made his first mark in history as a 15-year-old warrior, when he fought alongside his elder half-brother King Olaf II (later Saint Olaf) against Danes loyal to Cnut the Great in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. The day ended with defeat, and for Olaf, death.

According to the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson, the fighting took place in part under a total eclipse of the Sun; a night fight in the middle of the day. Pagans may have believed the hole in the sky was the one-eyed god Odin watching over the battle and choosing the slain for Valhalla, while Christians may have recalled the midday darkness at the Crucifixion, a thousand years past. Eclipses have customarily been regarded as a bad omen throughout history, and here it would have been no different. Not only was Olaf slain, but Harald barely got away from the battle with his life.

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The St Brice’s Day Massacre: what really happened?

The 11th century in English history features its fair share of bloodshed in battles, but right at the start of the new millennium, there is one event that has always seemed to stand out for its violence: the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 13 November 1002.

“It continues to exercise a curious allure over successive generations of undergraduate essay-writers and their lecturers, whose own occasionally lurid interest follows a historiographical tradition going back almost a millennium, beginning with the Norman observers who sought to depict the event as one of the great, gory English national sins justifying the conquest of 1066.”

That’s a quote from Dr Benjamin Savill, of Trinity College, Dublin, in his article Remembering St Brictius: Conspiracy, Violence and Liturgical Time in the Danish Massacre of 1002, published in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

The massacre is a striking incident, but one for which we have only limited evidence (in common with most of the events of the period). There is a reference to it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which notes that “in this year the king ordered to be slain all the Danish men who were in England”, and a further more detailed comment in a diploma of King Æthelred (the reigning monarch at the time) for the monastery of St Frideswide, Oxford, of 1004. That diploma describes how the Danes in that city sought sanctuary in a church, which was set upon and burnt down by “all the people in pursuit”.

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Metal detectorist unearths largest Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever discovered in England

 A number of gold coins and objects from the Norfolk hoard (Image credit: British Museum) 

A metal detectorist in West Norfolk, England, has unearthed the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever discovered: a bounty of 131 coins and four golden objects. Most of the items were found over the course of six years by a single detectorist, who wishes to remain anonymous, according to the British Museum. 

Ten of the coins were dug up by former-police officer David Cockle, also using a metal detector, the Evening Standard reported. However, Cockle kept his discovery secret and then illegally sold the coins for 15,000 British pounds (about $20,000), according to BBC News. When the authorities discovered his theft in 2017, he was charged with converting criminal property and sentenced to 16 months in prison for "pure greed," presiding Judge Rupert Overbury said at the sentencing. Cockle was also dismissed from the police force. Of the 10 coins he sold, eight have been recovered.

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First finished pieces of Sutton Hoo replica ship joined together

The first two finished pieces of an 88ft-long replica of the Sutton Hoo longship have been joined together.

Archaeologist Angela Care Evans, who worked on a dig at Sutton Hoo in the 1960s while working as a research assistant for the British Museum, knocked in the first of three wooden pegs to join the keel to an extension piece.

The full-size reconstruction of the Saxon ship that was excavated in 1939 is being built in a shed beside the River Deben in Woodbridge, Suffolk.

It is to be made of oak donated by Suffolk farmers and secured with iron rivets.

Dating from the early 7th century, the original Sutton Hoo longship has been described as a ghost ship, as its timber had rotted away in the acidic soil, leaving only an imprint in the sand.

The project’s master shipwright, Tim Kirk, said: “Through building this, and it is really just a big experimental archaeology programme, we’re hoping to learn how the ship actually sailed.

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A Viking axe struck a Newfoundland tree in the year 1021. Here’s how scientists proved it

Hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus, the Norse became the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic and settle in North America. This long-posited theory was finally proven in the 1960s, following an archeological expedition to the site of L’Anse aux Meadows on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland. Until recently, the exact timing of the Viking settlement was only speculation, based on architectural remains, a few surviving artefacts and interpretations of Icelandic sagas written in the 1200s. But, as this video from Nature explains, using new carbon dating techniques, scientists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have found the exact year that a tree was felled by a Viking axe – 1021 CE. Further, this research also marks the earliest known point in history by which human migration had encircled the globe.

Watch the video...

Did Vikings and their stowaway mice beat Portugal to the Azores?

Vikings, as imagined by NC Wyeth, and their stowaway mice are now thought to be the earliest settlers on the Azores. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

They came from the land of the ice and snow and the midnight sun – but still ended up in some balmy destinations. This is the conclusion of researchers who have discovered evidence to support the idea that the Vikings settled on the clement shores of the Azores several hundred years before the Portuguese arrived in 1427.

Given that the Vikings are usually associated with the frozen north, the claim is startling. Nevertheless, it is based on solid science, says a group of international researchers who recently analysed lakebed sediments in the Azores, an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic.

These were found to be rich in organic compounds that are found in cow and sheep faeces. At the same time, these samples were also found to contain high levels of charcoal but were low in pollen from native trees.

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Breakthrough Discovery Shows Vikings Were Active in North America 1,000 Years Ago

Reconstruction of a Viking building near L’Anse aux Meadows. (Glenn Nagel Photography)

New archaeological evidence has allowed scientists to refine the timeline for the Viking presence in North America.

Pieces of wood scarred with cut marks have been precisely dated to the year 1021 CE – exactly 1,000 years ago – and the metal tools that made those marks were not produced by the indigenous population, according to a team of archaeologists led by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Vikings, however, did make and use metal tools, and were known to have settled at the archaeological site of L'Anse aux Meadows, where the wood was found.

This is the earliest and most accurate date yet not just for the European settlement of the Americas, but for circumnavigation of the globe, the researchers said, giving us a definitive reference point for understanding the global transference of knowledge, goods, and genetic information.

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When the Vikings reached the Americas

Reconstructed Viking-Age building adjacent to the site of L’Anse aux Meadows. 

Credit: Glenn Nagel Photography

New research from the Netherlands has more accurately dated a Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, revealing that the seafaring people were active in North America by at least AD 1021.

Vikings are known to have sailing vast distances in their iconic longships, and forays into a mysterious foreign land out to the west were described in ancient sagas, but these stories were thought to be fantasy until the 1960s discovery of Norse buildings at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.

A new study from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, published today in the journal Nature, has revealed the most accurate dating yet of the L’Anse aux Meadows site.

In order to accurately place L’Anse aux Meadows in history, the researchers studied three pieces of wood from archaeological contexts containing Viking materials. Each piece showed clear evidence of being cut with metal, a material First Nations Americans weren’t using at that time.

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Word Of Viking Settlements In North America Reached Italy 150 Years Before Columbus

Word of the Viking exploration of North America appears to have reached Genoa, Christopher Columbus's hometown in Italy, centuries before Columbus sailed. This conclusion, based on a translation of a 14th-century history raises the possibility the Viking settlements in Vinland had previously unrecognized influence on subsequent events.

Around 1345, Galvaneus Flamma, a Milanese Dominican friar, wrote a document called Cronica universalis. The original was lost, but a copy made 50 years later was rediscovered in 2013. Professor Paolo Chiesa, an expert in Medieval Latin at the University of Milan, has made a translation. In the journal Terrae Incognitae, Chiesa reports that a portion of the text refers to Markalada, west of Greenland.

Four Icelandic sagas include accounts of Markland, thought to be modern Newfoundland or Labrador.

Flamma attributes this information to Genoese sailors, and Chiesa sees this as evidence that knowledge of the Viking voyages had reached Italy 150 years before Columbus arrived in the Americas.

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The Best-Preserved Pair of Skis from Prehistory

The second Digervarden ski, completely free of ice. 

Photo: Espen Finstad, secretsoftheice.com.

We have found the best-preserved pair of skis from prehistory! Back in 2014, the Secrets of the Ice program found an exceptional pre-Viking ski, 1300 years old, at the Digervarden Ice patch in Norway. The ski was complete, including the binding – one of only two skis from prehistory in this condition. Ever since, we have monitored the ice patch, hoping and praying for the second ski of the pair to melt out. Now it has happened! The new ski is even better preserved than the first one! It is an unbelievable find.
The new discovery

It has been seven years since the discovery of the first ski at the Digervarden ice patch. We have patiently monitored the melt of the ice patch, in case the second ski of the pair should melt out. We were back in 2016 for a general survey of the ice patch, but the ice had not retreated much then. This year, we could see on satellite imagery that the ice patch had retreated compared to 2014. We decided to send out an archaeologist to check it.

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Two men to face trial over £1m Viking hoard of coins and silver

Officers from Durham Police seized a large number of coins and a silver ingot in two raids in 2018 and 2019. The hoard contained coins of Alfred the Great of Wessex and his less well-known contemporary Ceolwulf II of Mercia.

Two men have denied charges relating to a Viking hoard of historically important coins and silver worth almost £1m.

Roger Pilling, 73, and Craig Best, 44, appeared before Durham Crown Court to plead not guilty to all charges.

They denied a charge of conspiracy to convert criminal property - Anglo-Saxon coins - between September 2018 and May 2019.

Pilling, of Loveclough, Lancashire, also denied two charges of possessing criminal property - Anglo-Saxon coins and a silver ingot.

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A Danish man found buried treasure from the Iron Age using a metal detector, just hours after turning it on for the first time

Gold medallions, coins, and jewelry comprise an Iron Age hoard that a rookie metal detectorist recently discovered in Denmark. Conservation Center Vejle

Ole Ginnerup Schytz had never used a metal detector before. He first gave it a shot on a former classmate's land in Vindelev, Denmark, in December.

Within hours of turning his detector on, Schytz stumbled across one of the largest treasure hoards ever found in the country.

"Well, that's the epitome of improbable luck," the rookie detectorist said in an interview with Danish outlet TV Syd earlier this month. "Denmark is 43,000 square kilometers, and then I happen to choose to put the detector exactly where this find was."

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Tiles ‘Fit for the Emperor’ Found in Roman Ruins Beneath English Cricket Club

The letters "IMP" stand for imperator, meaning the tile maker was "supplying tiles fit for the emperor" or "on the emperor's demands." Dot Boughton

Excavation of a Roman building on the grounds of a cricket club in the northern English city of Carlisle has yielded tiles with rare imperial stamps linked to Emperor Septimius Severus, reports Ted Peskett for the News & Star.

“The Romans would quite often stamp their tiles,” says archaeologist Frank Giecco, who is leading the dig for British firm Wardell Armstrong. “The legions would stamp tiles, the auxiliaries would stamp tiles; but this is the very top of the pile. This is the imperial court stamping the tile.”

Giecco says similar tiles have previously been found “in random places” across Carlisle. Since researchers discovered the ruined bathhouse in 2017, they’ve uncovered about a dozen of the tiles there, suggesting that the others also originated at the site.

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Viking Hygiene, Clothing, & Jewelry

Viking clothing was made of wool, linen, and animal hides, and for the wealthy, silk. Combs – which it seemed almost every Viking carried – were carved from antler, bone, ivory, and wood and often kept in their own cases. Jewelry of the upper class was fashioned from silver, gold, gemstones, and polished glass, but the lower class adorned themselves within their limits as well, using tin, lead, iron, and possibly copper. Shoes and boots were made of animal hide and without heels. Except for slaves, generally speaking, Scandinavians were well-dressed and took great pride in their personal appearance. They began each morning with a personal hygiene regimen, and Saturday was set aside for bathing and washing clothes; a practice the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers found both strange and objectionable.

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‘Prickles down the neck’: project reveals unsung female heroes of Sutton Hoo dig

The trust believes the resulting images are among the earliest surviving colour photographs of any major archaeological dig. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack’s photographs of 1939 excavation left in plastic bag at National Trust

It was 12 years ago that conservator Anita Bools first laid eyes on photographs which had been left in a plastic bag at the reception of the National Trust site Sutton Hoo by a mystery donor.

She remembered they were laid out on tables for her to see and decide how important they might be. “It was one of those moments you get prickles down the back of your neck. I thought ‘my goodness … this is the genuine thing’. It almost felt like the archaeological discovery itself.”

The hundreds of images in meticulously prepared albums were from August 1939. In fascinating detail they captured the excitement of one of the most extraordinary archaeological digs in British history.

On Wednesday, the trust announced it had completed a project conserving, digitising and making the photographs taken by Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack, two schoolteachers and friends with a passion for photography and archaeology, publicly available.

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Whence the White Horse of Uffington?

The White Horse of Uffington, a spectacular chalk figure on an English hillside, challenges the very idea of “heritage” as an unbroken line of descent. Made sometime between 1380 and 550 BCE by people who cut meter-deep trenches and filled them with chalk, the horse pattern should have disappeared under encroaching vegetation long ago. But it has been the work of generations to “scour” it—weeding, cleaning, and adding more chalk. It’s this tradition of scouring which so intrigues scholar Philip Schwyzer.

“Like other monuments of similar antiquity, the Horse has been the site of shifting and contested meanings,” writes Schwyzer. “Yet the White Horse is unique among such artifacts in that it has never been neglected, but has always possessed a real and active significance for the inhabitants of the immediate vicinity.”

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Viking Map of North America Identified as 20th-Century Forgery

 It seemed too good to be true. Acquired by Yale University and publicized to great fanfare in 1965, the Vinland Map—supposedly dated to mid-15th century Europe—showed part of the coast of North America, seemingly presenting medieval Scandinavians, not Christopher Columbus, as the true “discoverers” of the New World.

The idea wasn’t exactly new. Two short Icelandic sagas relate the story of Viking expeditions to North America, including the construction of short-lived settlements, attempts at trade and ill-fated battles with Indigenous peoples on the continent’s northeastern coast. Archaeological finds made on Newfoundland in the 1960s support these accounts. But this map suggested something more: namely, that knowledge of Western lands was reasonably common in Scandinavia and central Europe, with Vikings, rather than Columbus and his Iberian backers, acting as the harbingers of the colonial age.

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Amateur divers discover 'enormously valuable' hoard of Roman coins

Two amateur free divers have found one of the largest collections of Roman coins in Europe off the east coast of Spain.

Luis Lens and César Gimeno were diving off the island of Portitxol in Xàbia on August 24 when they found eight coins, before further dives by archaeologists returned another 45 coins, according to a press release from the University of Alicante on Tuesday.

 

Scientists from the university's Institute in Archaeology and Historical Heritage then analyzed the perfectly preserved coins, dating them to between the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th century.

 

The coins were in such good condition that the inscriptions were legible, allowing the team to identify coins from the reign of a number of Roman emperors.

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Temple at Uppsala

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Temple at Uppsala History Channel

The Temple at Uppsala was a religious center dedicated to the Norse gods Thor, Odin, and Freyr located in what is now Gamla Uppsala in Sweden. It is described by the 11th-century historian Adam of Bremen as the most significant pagan site in the region and was destroyed by the Christian King Inge the Elder c. 1080.

The site is also referenced in the Ynglinga Saga of the Heimskringla written by the Icelandic mythographer Snorri Sturluson (l. 1179-1241) and the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus (l. c. 1160 - c. 1220). In every case, it is associated with the gods of the Norse religion and in Adam and Saxo with human sacrifice. At the time Adam was writing (c. 1070), Christianity was still contending with the old Norse beliefs for supremacy in the region, while in Saxo’s time, it was more established. Both wrote from a Christian point of view and so cast the temple and its rites in a negative light. Sturluson was recounting ancient myths for his age and so humanized the gods, making deities like Odin into great kings of the past rather than gods and so avoided having to demonize the site for a Christian audience.

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Was 536 AD the worst year in history?

Archaeologists working in Bacho Kiro Cave earlier this year.
Image: Tsenka Tsanova, MPI-EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0

Europe was considerably colder 44,000 years ago than previously thought, according to new research. The finding is forcing a rethink about early human migration patterns and where our ancestors preferred to settle.

“The expansion of Homo sapiens across Eurasia marked a major milestone in human evolution that would eventually lead to our species being found across every continent,” write the authors of new research published today in Science Advances.

But scientists still aren’t sure how early modern humans managed to pull off this remarkable migrational trick, given considerable environmental variations around the world. The new study, co-authored by Sarah Pederzani from the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, sought to explore the climatic conditions experienced by Homo sapiens when venturing from southwest Asia to Europe.

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Melting ice and a high altitude dig reveal Viking secrets in Norway

A proposed digital reconstruction of one of the ancient Viking homes,
featuring Secrets of the Ice team member Elling Utvik Wammer.
Credit: Secrets of the Ice. Illustration: Espen Finstad/Hege Vatnaland

The summer of 2011 was unusually hot for southern Norway. Where high mountain passes had been choked with snow and ice in previous years, surveyors and team members of the acclaimed Secrets of the Ice project found only jumbled talus and meltwater. Picking their way through the boulders that covered the ice-free Lendbreen pass, the crew soon realized they had walked into a vast archaeological treasure, one that had stayed frozen for a thousand years. They began to collect countless tools, artifacts and weapons—items that had once been in the possession of Vikings.

After receiving international attention for their discovery, the crew decided to return to Lendbreen this summer in search of deeper answers. Questions remained, such as what purposes had occupied these alpine travelers and where they had been traveling. In search of understanding, team members ventured across and beyond the Lendbreen pass, which over the years has revealed clothing, household items, sleds and animal remains, among other artifacts.

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DNA Testing Just Revealed That This 1,000 Year Old Finnish Viking Was Likely A Well-Respected Intersex Warrior

A depiction of the Viking warrior as they would have been laid in the grave.

The Viking remains, which date to between 1050 and 1300, were buried with both male and female objects, suggesting a highly-regarded member of society with a non-binary gender identity.

In 1968, ditch-diggers in Suontaka, Finland, came across a puzzling mystery. They found a 1,000-year-old skeleton buried in women’s clothing — next to two swords. Archeologists speculated that they’d found a double burial, or perhaps evidence of a woman warrior.

In fact, DNA testing has shown that the skeleton was likely intersex, according to a study recently published in the European Journal of Archeology.

“According to current data, it is likely that the individual found in Suontaka had the chromosomes XXY, although the DNA results are based on a very small set of data,” explained Elina Salmela, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Helsinki.

For decades, the grave has confounded archeologists. The warrior, who likely died around 1050 to 1300, wore women’s clothing and had been buried with furs and jewelry. But its grave also contained two swords, including one laid at the skeleton’s hip, usually associated with male Viking burials.

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Spanish cave art was made by Neanderthals, study confirms

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A general view (left), medium close-up (middle) and extreme close up of a partly coloured stalagmite tower in the Spanish cave of Ardales, southern Spain.
Photograph: Joao Zilhao/ICREA/AFP/Getty Images

Study says pigments on cave stalagmites were applied through ‘splattering and blowing’ more than 60,000 years ago

Neanderthals, long perceived to have been unsophisticated and brutish, really did paint stalagmites in a Spanish cave more than 60,000 years ago, according to a study published on Monday.

The issue had roiled the world of paleoarchaeology ever since the publication of a 2018 paper attributing red ocher pigment found on the stalagmitic dome of Cueva de Ardales to our extinct “cousin” species.

The dating suggested the art was at least 64,800 years old, made at a time when modern humans did not inhabit the continent.

But the finding was contentious, and “a scientific article said that perhaps these pigments were a natural thing”, a result of iron oxide flow, Francesco d’Errico, co-author of a new paper in the journal PNAS, told AFP.

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