National Geographic Tales of the Weird

by David Braun

  “You can wipe off the mark, but you can’t completely erase the groove,” Kelso, the archaeologist, said. “That’s why we have layer upon layer of drawings. In a way it’s archaeology. If one groove cuts across another groove, you could tell which one was the most recent.”

  He hopes eventually to sort out the sequence of the images with the help of NASA, where scientists at the Langley Research Center are using a high-precision, three-dimensional imaging system similar to a CT scanner to help isolate the layers and provide a detailed analysis of the tablet.

  Artifacts Found at Jamestown

  John Smith’s well has yielded other fascinating relics, some originating from far corners of the world. The artifacts include:

  1. Chinese porcelain wine cups

  2. Venetian glassware

  3. Pieces of a Bartmann jug, a German clay vessel shaped like a bearded man

  4. Telescope lenses

  5. Wall tiles from Holland

  6. A jet crucifix

  John Smith’s Well?

  Determining whether this is in fact Smith’s well will be key to understanding Jamestown’s most difficult early years. According to colonists’ accounts, water in Smith’s well became brackish within a year after it had been dug. Some experts think foul water may have been a major cause of death.

  Located near the James River, the well was discovered in 2008, and archaeologists believe it was dug before a well dating to 1611, which is located farther away from the river. Kelso said the colonists, having learned a difficult lesson from Smith’s well, would have dug their second well as far from the river as possible, to try to avoid contamination by the brackish river water.

  Archaeologists have dug down 5 feet (1.5 meters) so far, and the pit has narrowed into a more well-like, circular shape, which may reach 9 to 15 feet (2.7 to 4.5 meters) into the ground. Kelso said they won’t know for sure if it’s Smith’s well until they get to the bottom and date the objects there.

  Finding the well, he said, “will give us a chance to really look at the health issue and figure out what spoiled the water.” Some clues to the mysteries contained in the 400-year-old slate might emerge then too.

  EYE IN THE SKY

  “Lost” Fortresses of Sahara

  Revealed by Satellites

  Satellite photographs have exposed well-preserved settlements of a mysterious African kingdom discovered in Libya.

  Real-life “castles in the sand” made by an ancient culture have been revealed in the Sahara, archaeologists say. New satellite photographs show more than a hundred fortress settlements from a “lost” civilization in southwestern Libya.

  TRUTH:

  DATA COLLECTED BY SATELLITES SUGGEST THAT THE SAHARA HAD A WET CLIMATE THAT SUPPORTED VAST FORESTS 12,000 YEARS AGO.

  Lost Civilization Found

  The communities, which date to between about A.D. 1 and 500, belonged to an advanced but mysterious people called the Garamantes, who ruled from roughly the second century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. Researchers uncovered the Garamantes’ walled towns, villages, and farms after poring over modern satellite images—including high-resolution pictures used by the oil industry—as well as aerial photos taken during the 1950s and 1960s.

  Located about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Tripoli, the fortresses were confirmed based on Garamantes pottery samples collected during an early—2011 expedition. That field trip was cut short by the civil war that would end the 42-year regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

  “We were astonished to see the level of preservation” of the ancient mud-brick compounds, said project leader David Mattingly of the U.K.’s University of Leicester.

  “Although the walls of these sites have slumped a little bit, mainly due to wind erosion, they are still standing 3 to 4 meters [10 to 13 feet] high in places,” he said.

  The Good Life

  The Garamantes certainly had a comfortable existence that was unique for a desert-dwelling people. As a result of their aggressive mentality, the acquisition of slaves, and the production of water, the Garamantes lived in planned communities and ate locally grown grapes, figs, sorghum, pulses, barley, and wheat, as well as imported goods like wine and olive oil. Says archaeologist Andrew Wilson of the University of Oxford, “The combination of their slave-acquisition activities and their mastery of foggara irrigation technology enabled the Garamantes to enjoy a standard of living far superior to that of any other ancient Saharan society.”

  Powerful African Kingdom

  Archaeologists could have easily mistaken the well-planned, straight-line construction for Roman frontier forts of similar design, Mattingly observed. “But, actually, this is beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire—these sites are markers of a powerful native African kingdom,” he said.

  What’s more, the scientists were surprised that the sites—which include cemeteries and agricultural fields—are so tightly clustered. For instance, an area of 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers) contained at least ten village-size settlements—“that’s an extraordinary density,” Mattingly said.

  Previous knowledge of the Garamantes is based mainly on excavations at their capital, Jarma, some 125 miles (200 kilometers) to the northwest, as well as on ancient Roman and Greek texts. “We’ve built up a picture of them as being a very sophisticated, high-level civilization,” Mattingly said. “They’ve got metallurgy, very high-quality textiles, a writing system … those sorts of markers that would say this is an organized, state-level society,” he said.

  Cash-strapped heritage authorities in Libya have been unable to conduct field research, leaving a gap in knowledge of the ancient civilization, according to University of Oxford archaeologist Philip Kenrick, who was not involved in the new research. That’s why Mattingly and his team—aided by a $3.4-million grant from the E.U.’s European Research Council—have “been breaking new ground on an unprecedented scale,” Kenrick said.

  Creators of the Green Sahara

  The newfound remains are also a testament to the Garamantes’ advanced irrigation technology, which enabled them to create green oases in the desert. “It’s a deep Saharan, hyper-arid environment, and it’s only people’s ability to exploit groundwater that can change that,” project leader Mattingly said.

  The Garamantes mined reservoirs of prehistoric water using underground canals to cultivate Mediterranean crops—such as wheat, barley, figs, and grapes—and sub-Saharan African sorghum, pearl millet, and cotton. Mattingly and colleagues have calculated that 77,000 man-years of labor went into constructing the underground water channels—a figure that doesn’t include digging the wells or maintenance. A man-year is a unit of the work done by a person in a year.

  “The new archaeological evidence is showing that the Garamantes were brilliant farmers, resourceful engineers, and enterprising merchants who produced a remarkable civilization.”

  David Mattingly

  project leader, University of Leicester, U.K.

  All Dried Up?

  What happened to the Garamantes remains a riddle, but Mattingly’s team suspects that the desert communities declined once groundwater supplies diminished. Paul Bennett, head of mission of the U.K.-based Society of Libyan Studies, agreed that’s a likely scenario. “Groundwater is a nonrenewable source—as soon as you’ve tapped the reservoir and emptied it, it’s not going to fill again,” said Bennett, who was not involved in the new research.

  The collapse of the Roman Empire, and increasing conflict in the Mediterranean region, would have also seriously affected the trans-Saharan trade upon which the desert civilization depended, added Oxford’s Kenrick.

  PERSISTENT PLAGUE

  Spawn of Medieval “Black Death” Bug Still Roam the Earth

  The Black Death was more than the deadliest plague outbreak on record: The epidemic appears to be responsible for the cases of plague that still infect humans today.

  The Black Death killed millions of people in medieval Europe and continues to kill today. But anothe
r epidemic remains unlikely because recent studies show that the plague bacterium has changed little in the last 600 years.

  TRUTH:

  THE NURSERY RHYME “RING AROUND THE ROSY” IS TRACED TO THE PLAGUE’S ROSE-COLORED LESIONS AND DEADLY SPREAD.

  Same Old Plague

  The new findings are based on bacteria recovered from skeletons found in a mid-1300s cemetery for Black Death victims in London, England. The grave excavation was undertaken by the Museum of London Archaeology.

  Kirsten I. Bos of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and Verena J. Schuenemann of the University of Tübingen in Germany led an effort to sequence the genome of the Black Death pathogen, Yersinia pestis, recovered from the medieval grave.

  After examining Y. pestis samples from 46 teeth and 53 bones, the team determined that the plague hasn’t changed much, genetically speaking, in more than 600 years. The result “indicates that contemporary Y. pestis epidemics have their origins in the medieval era,” the study team writes.

  One Giant Leap for Bacterium

  Plague was already known to have evolved from a related soil-dwelling bacterium. The Black Death version of the pathogen has an additional segment of DNA that allows it to infect humans. Once plague made that leap, the pathogen spread wildly, carried by fleas that in turn traveled on rats—common hitchhikers on cargo ships and other trade vehicles.

  Once infected with Y. pestis, a person can develop bubonic plague, an infection of the lymph nodes, or the rarer pneumonic plague, a secondary infection of the lungs. When the plague arrived in Europe in the 1340s, it killed about 30 to 50 million people—or up to half the continent’s population—in five years.

  A man bears the symptoms of the bubonic plague in this 14th-century engraving. (Photo Credit 8.12)

  Modern Plague Followed Linear Evolution

  Today, plague is still spread mainly by fleas on burrowing rodents. The disease hits up to 3,000 people worldwide—most commonly in the United States, Madagascar, China, India, and South America. With treatment, 85 percent of modern victims survive the plague.

  The fact that the bacterial genome has been slow to change hints that modern medical knowledge and general susceptibility—not a less virulent version of Y. pestis—may be why the plague no longer devastates populations.

  The slow change could be partly because just one strain of plague exist worldwide, and so the bacteria can evolve only in linear fashion. By contrast, influenza “can change very rapidly due to recombination between co-circulating strains, which ultimately led to the tremendously virulent 1918 strain,” said study co-author Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University. The 1918 flu killed at least 50 million people—more than World War I—and was especially remarkable because it hit healthy adults rather than just the elderly and the very young.

  Due to the plague’s slow evolution, today’s antibiotics are effective against modern Y. pestis—and the drugs would have been effective against the Black Death, too. “This again emphasizes the power of modern-day medicine and the antibiotic toolkit we have at our disposal,” Poinar said.

  “Then the dreadful pestilence made its way along the coast by Southampton and reached Bristol, where almost the whole strength of the town perished, as it was surprised by sudden death; for few kept their beds more than two or three days, or even half a day.”

  Henry Knighton

  ca 1348, Chronicon

  ANCIENT TABLET FOUND

  Oldest Readable Writing

  in Europe

  Found at a site tied to myth, a Greek tablet with the oldest readable writing in Europe survived only by accident, experts say.

  Marks on a clay tablet fragment found in Greece are the oldest known decipherable text in Europe, a new study says. Considered “magical or mysterious” in its time, the writing survives only because a trash heap caught fire some 3,500 years ago.

  TRUTH:

  WRITING FOUND IN CHINA, EGYPT, AND MESOPOTAMIA IS BELIEVED TO DATE BACK AS FAR AS 3000 B.C.

  Ties to The Iliad

  Found in an olive grove in what is now the village of Iklaina, the tablet was created by a Greek-speaking Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350 B.C., archaeologists say. The Mycenaeans—made legendary in part by Homer’s Iliad, which fictionalizes their war with Troy—dominated much of Greece from about 1600 to 1100 B.C.

  So far, excavations at Iklaina have yielded evidence of an early Mycenaean palace, giant terrace walls, murals, and a surprisingly advanced drainage system, according to dig director Michael Cosmopoulos. But the tablet, found in 2010, is the biggest surprise of the multiyear project, Cosmopoulos said.

  “According to what we knew, that tablet should not have been there,” the University of Missouri-St. Louis archaeologist told National Geographic News.

  First, Mycenaean tablets weren’t thought to have been created so early he said. Second, “until now tablets had been found only in a handful of major palaces”—including the previous record holder, which was found among palace ruins in what was the city of Mycenae.

  Although the Iklaina site boasted a palace during the early Mycenaean period, by the time of the tablet, the settlement had been reduced to a satellite of the city of Pylos, seat of King Nestor, a key player in The Iliad. “This is a rare case where archaeology meets ancient texts and Greek myths,” Cosmopoulos said in a statement.

  Was the Trojan War Real?

  Homer wrote his epic poem The Iliad in the eighth or ninth century B.C., several centuries after the city is supposed to have fallen. The story of the Trojan War and its great warriors and kings-Achilles and Hector, Meneleus and Priam—has captured imaginations for millennia. But was Troy real? Most scholars say yes: Troy did exist, and it did fall. Many believe that the Trojan War was not a single event, but a process that occurred over a long period of time.

  Tablet Preserved by Cooking

  The markings on the tablet fragment—which is roughly 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) tall by 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) wide—are early examples of a writing system known as Linear B. Used for a very ancient form of Greek, Linear B consisted of about 87 signs, each representing one syllable.

  The Mycenaeans appear to have used Linear B to record only economic matters of interest to the ruling elite. Fittingly, the markings on the front of the Iklaina tablet appear to form a verb that relates to manufacturing, the researchers say. The back lists names alongside numbers—probably a property list.

  (Photo Credit 8.13)

  Because these records tended to be saved for only a single fiscal year, the clay wasn’t made to last, said Cosmopoulos, whose work was funded in part by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration.

  “Those tablets were not baked, only dried in the sun and [were], therefore, very brittle … Basically someone back then threw the tablet in the pit and then burned their garbage,” he said. “This fire hardened and preserved the tablet.”

  Not the Oldest Writing

  While the Iklaina tablet is an example of the earliest writing system in Europe, other writing is much older, explained classics professor Thomas Palaima, who wasn’t involved in the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the Athens Archaeological Society. For example, writings found in China, Mesopotamia, and Egypt are thought to date as far back as 3000 B.C. Linear B itself is thought to have descended from an older, still undeciphered writing system known as Linear A. And archaeologists think Linear A is related to the older hieroglyph system used by the ancient Egyptians.

  TRUTH:

  THE ABILITY TO READ AND WRITE WAS VERY RESTRICTED DURING THE MYCENAEAN PERIOD AND WAS CONSIDERED MAGICAL OR MYSTERIOUS BY MOST PEOPLE.

  Magical, Mysterious Writing

  Still, the Iklaina tablet is an “extraordinary find,” said Palaima, an expert in Mycenaean tablets and administration at the University of Texas-Austin. In addition to its sheer age, the artifact could provide unique insights about how ancient Greek kingdoms were organized and administered, he added.

&
nbsp; For example, archaeologists previously thought such tablets were created and kept exclusively at major state capitals, or “palatial centers,” such as Pylos and Mycenae. Found in the ruins of a second-tier town, the Iklaina tablet could indicate that literacy and bureaucracy during the late Mycenaean period were less centralized than previously thought.

  Palaima added that the ability to read and write was extremely restricted during the Mycenaean period and was regarded by most people as “magical or mysterious.” It would be some 400 to 600 years before the written word was demystified in Greece, as the ancient Greek alphabet overtook Linear B and eventually evolved into the 26 letters used on this page.

  PIRATE TREASURE!

  Blackbeard’s Ship Yields

  Ornamental Sword

  Archaeologists have made a remarkable discovery among the remains of Blackbeard’s flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge. Could it be the notorious pirate’s sword?

  Since 1997, archaeologists have been excavating the wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of the 18th-century pirate Blackbeard. The remains of the ship lay off the coast of North Carolina and contain a rich trove of artifacts and treasures. And now archaeologists have made a remarkable discovery: Could it be the pirate’s sword?

  TRUTH:

  QUEEN ANNE’S REVENGE WAS ORIGINALLY A FRENCH SHIP, LE CONCORDE, CAPTURED BY BLACKBEARD IN 1717.