My weekend and all I can say is thank you for the days of calm reflection……I have studied archeology while in school and I like the history behind the field….so today I will post on a couple of archeological finds recently………
Iraq has been in the news a lot in the last couple of months and not in a good way…..but with all the death and destruction there has been an archeological find……..
An archaeologist is closing in on the location of an ancient temple so venerated that when it was sacked in 714 BC, its king tore off his crown, “pulled out his hair, pounded his chest with both hands”—then killed himself, according to an early account. The long-lost temple in question was in the city of Musasir, and Dutch doctoral student Dlshad Marf Zamua thinks he’s found its column bases in Kurdistan, in modern day Iraq, LiveScience reports. The temple was dedicated to Haldi, the supreme god of the Uratu kingdom, and its bases were found by villagers and date back 2,500 years to the Iron Age, when several groups competed for control of the region. The aforementioned drama king was the Urartu king Rusa I, after the Assyrians looted it.
Discovery of the column bases isn’t the end of the story. Marf Zamua has found a bronze statuette of a wild goat with cuneiform inscriptions that need decoding, and several 7 1/2-foot-tall statues of bearded men that were once raised above burial sites. An ancient carving of Musasir also revealed architecture similar to that found in modern villages, Marf Zamua says. His discoveries in Kurdistan have been made under the growing cloud of ISIS. LiveScience has photos of the finds here, but it’s not the only Iron Age story in the news today.
Have you seen the terracotta soldiers that were found in the tomb of the first emperor of China…..each one is unique in facial expression, size, etc…….now the mystery of these statues may have been solved……
Every member of First Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Terracotta Army—thousands of replicas of Chinese imperial guards rendered in clay around 221 BC—is unique and incredibly realistic, which is why they’ve fascinated researchers since they were discovered in 1974. Now, scientists in China say they’ve peeled back another layer of mystery—they’ve figured out the binding media used to paint the more than 8,000 soldiers, chariots, and horses, Science China Press announces. The army was covered with a couple layers of lacquer; layers of pigment and binding media went on top of this. The pigment was identified, but the binding media was a mystery, making it difficult to conserve or restore the figures—until now. By comparing “artificially aged” replica samples to the historical samples, researchers pinpointed the binding material as animal glue.
The Terracotta Army was built on the emperor’s orders to guard the underground palace where he was buried, to protect him in the afterlife. Just as the palace mirrored the imperial capital, the warriors replicated the imperial guard. The intricately detailed statues were posed as if ready for a fight—and now they look set to join the ranks of movie superheroes, thanks to a planned collaboration between movie companies in the US, UK, and China, the Sunday Express reports. But the plot of the potential movie—which could end up being just the first in a new franchise—is probably not what the First Emperor envisioned. On the silver screen, rather than protecting the emperor, they’ll come alive to protect the modern world from aliens. The movie studios have some pretty awesome-sounding working titles, including Rise of the Terracotta Warriors and Super Terracotta Warriors.
A few of the mysteries in archeology that may have an answer after years of questions……