Amanda Ruggeri: Skara Brae, first settled 5,000 years ago, is the best-preserved prehistoric village in northern Europe // Ian Sample: Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca
Orkney’s number of Stone Age sites implies
that the remote Scottish islands once may have been at the centre of it all.
But why? An exciting new discovery could hold the clues.
When the owners
of Brodgar Farm ploughed up a
large notched stone in their field in 2003, they knew it was no normal rock.
Someone had altered it. And given the farm’s location, it wouldn’t have been
surprising if that someone had lived a very, very long time ago. Even so, no one had
any idea of the discovery that lay ahead. “I don’t think anyone
could have predicted what we found,” said head archaeologist Nick Card. “It’s
rewriting aspects of prehistory.”
Within a mile and a half, you’ll also find the Barnhouse Settlement, the remnants of a village inhabited 5,100 years ago; Maeshowe, the most spectacular chambered tomb of its kind in northwest Europe, built around 3,000 BC and forgotten until Vikings broke in in 1153, leaving runes in their wake; and more than a dozen other prehistoric burial mounds, as well as standing stones and slabs. (Before the 2003 discovery, Brodgar Farm already had two ancient standing stones in the front garden). Skara Brae, the best-preserved prehistoric village in all of northern Europe, lies just another five miles away... read more:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20151210-were-these-remote-wild-islands-the-centre-of-everything
Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca
An ancient ceremonial
site described as exceptional has been discovered in the Andes by marine
archaeologists, who recovered ritual offerings and the remains of slaughtered
animals from a reef in the middle of Lake Titicaca. The remarkable haul
points to a history of highly charged ceremonies in which the elite of the
region’s Tiwanaku state boated out to the reef and sacrificed young llamas,
seemingly decorated for death, and made offerings of gold and exquisite stone
miniatures to a ray-faced deity, as incense billowed from pottery pumas.
Tiwanaku state arose
in the Lake Titicaca basin, around the border of modern Bolivia and Peru,
between the 5th and 12th centuries AD, and went on to become one of the largest
and most influential in the Andes. Formed by a natural fault that divides the
Andes into two mountain ranges, the basin is a unique ecosystem with an “inland
sea” set 3,800m above sea level. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the basin
was home to an estimated 1 million people.
Marine archaeologists
decided to explore the Khoa reef after amateur divers found a number of ancient
items at the site. The reef is submerged in more than 5m of water about 10km
off the northwestern tip of the Island of the Sun, a central feature of Lake
Titicaca. The researchers excavated
a trove of artefacts including a lapis lazuli puma figurine and other miniature
stone animals, ceramic puma incense burners and gold ornaments including
engraved sheets, a medallion, and an L-shaped piece marked with puma and condor
silhouettes. Perforated gold leaves still attached to fragments of leather may
have been used to make ear tassels and other regalia to dress young llamas
killed in the ancient ceremonies, the researchers believe...read more:
