Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 01:54 PM

That's one of those huge organisms, along with things like creosote bush that when discovered open new avenues of study. There may be things like that all over the world, we just never thought to look. (Perhaps all of the hackberry trees in Texas are spreading from a huge old one somewhere Under the X in Texas.) :)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 12:26 PM

There are a few examples of living fossils. A forest variety of a very old remaining species is the Pando forest

Since it can clone itself or make seed there is no way to judge its ancient age. It is believed to be the last stand of what was a widespread species.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 11:09 AM

The Olympic Peninsula in the northern coast of Washington State has a "ghost forest" from when the land level dropped in an ancient earthquake/tsunami event that bounced across the Pacific. Actually, a search on "ancient tsunami buried forest in Washington State" brings up results of "ghost forests" along the west coast. This may be the one I learned about years ago in Geology class. There's a similar place in Oregon where earthquake mud slides or a tsunami dropped debris, burying and killing them. Here is a US Geological Survey paper about that earthquake zone.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jul 23 - 07:47 PM

We have a submerged forest a few miles north of here. You can only see it at very low spring tides, on the beach at Westward Ho! (Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the town's name). I went there on a field trip in 1990 and was able to pick up some wood and acorns, around six thousand years old. All to do with sea level changes during warmer and colder periods since the last Ice Age. I think the submerged forest is around 6000 years old. The town is also slightly famous because Rudyard Kipling lived there for a few years. One of the shoreline features is called Kipling Cliff.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 26 Jul 23 - 06:29 PM

a Miocene jigsaw!

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jul 23 - 11:41 AM

This goes farther back than archaeology topics, but still, it's fascinating: the late Miocene was relatively recent (10.4 to 5 million years ago). Exquisitely Preserved Fossil Forest Uncovered in Japan. The story is in Science Alert, and I think sometimes it throws up a paywall.

The forest was first seen in modern times during a severe drought in 1994, when roughly 400 fossilized tree stumps emerged from the water.

Most of the stumps have since been submerged once more, but researchers have successfully examined 137 of them, and the surrounding fossilized leaves.

They've now published their analysis of the site and provided a picture of the plants that once covered the wooded area.

They could build a coffer dam in the area if they really want to work on it.

This forest offers a rare opportunity because one type of trunk and one type of leaf were clearly dominant in the area. Of the 137 stumps examined, 130 were identified as Wataria parvipora.

Apparently all of the scientific names that things were called by were decided based upon particular items found individually, not together with other parts of the plant. So different parts of the plant found at different times or places received other names. Now they have to fit it all together.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 06:43 PM

A Trove of Rare Gold Coins Found In a Cornfield May Actually Be Worth More Than $2 Million The coins were minted between 1840 and 1863.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Rain Dog
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 09:49 AM

From The Observer

"Were small-brained early humans intelligent? Row erupts over scientists’ claim

Homo naledi was claimed to be artistic, make tools and bury its dead, but warring experts now ask, where’s the evidence?"


Homo naledi’s resting place

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 06:59 AM

not just archaeology - The Channel Islands were the only piece of British territory Germany ever managed to occupy during the Second World War. On this deserted island, the Germans left a fingerprint of the Holocaust: SS concentration camps run on U.K. soil ...

Wikipedia - Alderney Camps

Journal article - Nazi camps on British soil by Gilly Carr -Journal of Conflict Archaeology

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 21 Jul 23 - 06:39 AM

3,000-Year-Old Grave of Charioteer Could Rewrite Siberian History

2 related links on the same page

2,000-Year-Old Mummified ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Dressed in Silk Emerges from Siberian Reservoir

Legal Bid Fails to Rebury Remains of 2,500-year-old Tattooed Ice Princess

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Jul 23 - 06:39 PM

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/stone-tools-and-camel-tooth-suggest-people-were-in-the-pacific-northwest-more-than-18000-years-ago

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 19 Jul 23 - 10:16 AM

Mammals may have hunted dinosaurs much larger than them, rare fossil find suggests An unusual fossil find in China suggests some early mammals may have hunted dinosaurs for dinner.
The fossil shows a badger-like creature chomping down on a small, beaked dinosaur, their skeletons intertwined ...

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jul 23 - 07:26 AM

A quarter million years ago our ancestors were humanoid but not us. Primate social cooperation traits were there but megalithic structures are not seen until 15,000 years ago despite homo sapiens being around for 100,000 years. We are the builders. Perhaps older structures may be found but an Ice Age and great floods could have obliterated the evidence. The capacity for language is more powerful than muscles when it comes to building.
100,000 years is a blink in the fullness of time.

Could such a blink have occurred and failed long before homo sapiens?
As Stilly said, "it's a matter of science fiction".
There are many dead ends in evolution but there is no fossil evidence for such a prehistoric blink.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 02:04 PM

Here is a photo of a pile of extra Bison skulls courtesy of new Americans.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/arthistorystudycollection/636/

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 01:52 PM

The earliest examples of homo sapiens burial are about 100,000 years ago. Our ancestors like homo erectus, Neanderthal and Homo naledi whose brain was only a third our size. The naledi did bury their dead in a very purposeful manner.

Here is a wonderful film about the naledi cave of bones

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 03:43 PM

*Agree*, SRS. I twice entered, and twice cancelled, blethers about the suspicious correlation in the archaeological record between the arrival of Hom Sap in various parts of the Americas and catastrophic population decline of the big beasts. Then, come to think, it happened all over again with the bison when the railroads opened the Central US to immigrants with guns.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 11:01 AM

Perhaps, but it doesn't take humans long to kill off the big stuff once they settle in an area. "Charismatic megafauna" don't fare well when people start hunting them.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 09:49 AM

Mammoth tusks are not simple treasures but I'll even take ones that smell.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Rain Dog
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 01:12 AM

"British and Europeans had long since killed off the elephants, lions, etc. that once roamed outside of Africa."

I think that the climate played a big part too.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 11:51 PM

History is relative to where we live. I'm in a house built in 1976 on an area that was a dairy farm for decades, probably the first European use of land in this area beyond the occasional transit of cattle being driven north through the region. Prior to this, it had Comanche encampments, US military encampments, and in the distant past, wild horses (escaped from early Europeans to the continent), Clovis-era people, and the passage of charismatic large mammals. Bison (southern populations), perhaps antelope, and way back, mammoths.

British and Europeans had long since killed off the elephants, lions, etc. that once roamed outside of Africa. Think of the Lascaux caves.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Raggytash
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 09:02 PM

1929 barely classifies as "history" on this side of the pond.

A while back someone said to me that the difference between Americans and the Irish and British is that Americans think 100 years is a long time ............. and we think 100 miles is a long way.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 03:38 PM

Attics of homes a century or more old are full of simple treasures.
My Mom also found; photos, pictures, letters, and sheet music from the civil war to 1929.;

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 10:18 AM

Speaking of bringing tragic shipwrecks to life, we found an old newspaper account of a tragic shipwreck off the coast of Oregon in the attic of the Hurlbert house where the family resided in the civil war era. The family was the first to patent a telescope in the US and later another Hurlbert learned how to train horses without reins and use only a light touch on the neck with a crop. This method was featured in one of the earliest issues of Scientific American Magazine. While there were no survivors the horses told the story. They were on tour across the US when the ship went down. The victims that washed ashore included the horses that had numerous life vests attached to them. The final moments of the ship must have lasted long enough to try a desperate attempt to save the lives of the Hurlbert horses.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 06:10 AM

Wreck of the Batavia brought back to life in forensic reconstruction by Flinders University Experts have used 3D imaging to bring the story of one of Western Australia's most tragic shipwrecks to life in intricate detail.
The Batavia was wrecked at the Abrolhos Islands on its maiden voyage from the Netherlands in 1629.
A deadly mutiny followed.
The wreck was not discovered until 1963, when all that remained was the ship's hull, now on display in the Maritime Museum in Fremantle.
But for the first time, antique models housed in Dutch museums are being used to make 3D scans revealing how the Batavia was made ...

"[The Batavia] is an iconic ship from the point of view of Australian archaeology, and also one of the only ships of this type where we have physical remains of the hull that … lends itself to this forensic reconstruction approach."
Dr McCarthy said the Batavia was a case study on how forensic imaging could be used to reconstruct other shipwrecks and archaeological sites ...
caption of a photos - A view from the air of the reef indentation made by the Batavia.

In 1976 my sister moved to Perth & some time after that took me to visit friends who worked in the Museum & I had a private backroom tour - wow! I can't remember now if the hull & artifacts were on public display.

Batavia's History - Western Australian Museum

video - Mudcatter Daniel Kelly's cover of John Warner's Batavia Shanty

~~~~~~~

THE BATAVIA SHANTY - words & music John Warner

John Warner’s song of the tragic and grisly tale of shipwreck, mutiny and slaughter in Houtman’s Abrolhos, a group of islands off the central coast of Western Australia, in 1629 by renegade sailors of the Dutch East India Company.

Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, tea
Heave and fall on the southern swells
Fill the holds of the VOC
Roll Batavia down

But down in stout Batavia’s hold
There’s a massive weight of jewels and gold
Quarter-million guilders worth, all told
Roll Batavia down.

For months the murderous plot’s been laid
Heave and fall on the southern swells
To slip away from the ships of trade
Roll Batavia down

Make passage south to the unknown land
Turn buccaneer as the skipper has planned
Slaughter all others out of hand
Roll Batavia down.

What’s that gleam on the larboard quarter?
Heave and fall on the southern swells
Moonlight glinting on the water
Roll Batavia down

No moonlight here, but the crashing wave
The lookout cries too late to save
Batavia from her island grave
Roll Batavia down

Now some did drown and some made land
Heave and fall on the southern swells
But few can hide from death’s cold hand
Roll Batavia down

The sword and dagger do their work
Who knows where bloody murderers lurk
To silence traitors with a dirk
Roll Batavia down

The commander’s gone and the captain too,
Heave and fall on the southern swells
Along with the best of the barge’s crew
Roll Batavia down

Protection that they might have made
By this desertion is betrayed
Throats stretched to the slaughterer’s blade
Roll Batavia down

The rescue ship has come too late
Heave and fall on the southern swells
For those who met a bloody fate
Roll Batavia down

The thieves have paid for their plunder dear
Trial and torture, pain and fear
Death for every mutineer
Roll Batavia down

Stark the creaking scaffolds stand
Heave and fall on the southern swells
The dead swing over the blowing sand
Roll Batavia down

They say that dead men tell no tales
Who knows but many a spirit wails
In the cold lament of the southern gales
Roll Batavia down

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Jul 23 - 07:01 PM

I'm playing the video of the footprints and am suitably impressed.

My only problem is the background narration, which seems to have been added later by the younger guy. He recites the script as if he were reading a fairy tale to a young kid, over EMPHASIZING certain SYLLables and words 'what it might be LIKE to meet a giant GROUND sloth!"

   I will finish the program tomorrow and try not to dwell on someone telling how me INTERESTING his expeditions are.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Jul 23 - 07:23 AM

m-m-m ground sloth brisket is so tasty and tender.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Jul 23 - 10:34 AM

I saw that program when it was first broadcast, it really is an interesting look at who was walking and what they were doing (and the child they were carrying). And who crossed their path at some point soon after.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jul 23 - 08:42 AM

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ice+Age+Footprints+%7C+Full+Documentary+%7C+NOVA+%7C+PBS&rlz=1C1YTUH_enUS1037US1037&biw=1920&bih

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Jul 23 - 08:22 AM

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/giant-sloth-pendants-suggest-ancient-migration-americas-rcna93812

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jul 23 - 05:40 AM

My last Wooly Mammoth hunt was so long ago I may have forgotten some of the finer points. It was a lot harder than cow tipping.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Jul 23 - 06:48 PM

*grin*

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Jul 23 - 11:19 AM

Before or after they're dead?

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Jul 23 - 07:26 AM

You don't throw them you cut the spinal chord at C1 to C7.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Rain Dog
Date: 11 Jul 23 - 03:32 AM

Internet Archaeology

was mentioned in the original Guardian report about the hand axes.

"Internet Archaeology (ISSN 1363-5387) is the premier open access archaeology journal. The journal publishes quality academic content and explores the potential of digital publication through the inclusion of data, video, audio, images, visualisations, animations and interactive mapping. Internet Archaeology is international in scope - a journal without borders - and all content is peer-reviewed. Internet Archaeology is hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of York and digitally archived by the Archaeology Data Service. Internet Archaeology has been awarded the Directory of Open Access Journals Seal in recognition of our high standards in publishing best practice, preservation and openness. Internet Archaeology was established in 1995 and has been publishing online since 1996.

The journal is hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of York and is produced, managed and edited by Judith Winters, who is supported by co-directors Prof. Julian Richards (York) and Dr Michael Heyworth (Council for British Archaeology). Advisory editors support the Editor. The contents of the journal are archived with the Archaeology Data Service whose remit is the long-term preservation of digital research materials."

Plenty of reading there.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Jul 23 - 02:47 PM

This article is making the rounds. Science Alert has the same as the Yahoo article linked above. From Business Insider: Mysterious giant 300,000-year-old hand axes were found at an Ice Age site in England. Scientists can't work out why they are so big.

It appears that the Yahoo & Science Alert articles all originated with the Business Insider article. Following the photo credit under the BI photos, I land on Archaeology South-East:

Archaeology South-East is part of the Centre for Applied Archaeology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. We work across south-east England, London and internationally to bring the world-class expertise of UCL to clients and communities in need of advice on heritage protection and archaeological research. We help shape the future through understanding the past.

A good place to visit for future shares on this thread!

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Jul 23 - 10:50 AM

Hand axes would be awfully large as weapons - and throwing them at mammoths is a non-starter. Large tools to process large animals could match up with the straight-tusked elephants mentioned in the article.

Don't forget about Roald Dahl's BFG (Big Friendly Giant). Or Grendel or his mother. :)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jul 23 - 10:44 AM

Bill the handaxes could be weapons for a Mammoth hunt.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Jul 23 - 10:30 AM

Setting aside the odd sweeping statements from the last few posts, bog archaeology is actually very interesting. A good read is the wiki article "Bog body," q.v. The chemistry of the particular bog determines the amount and the type of preservation of human bodies. Some bog chemistry is good for bone preservation, some is better for skin, hair and clothing, etc. Tollund Man from Denmark was found with the strangulation rope still round his neck and the anguished expression on his face tells a thousand stories (photo in said wiki article).

---

The last few bickering posts have been swept aside - PLEASE resist the urge to tangle these topical threads with personal animosities. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stanron
Date: 10 Jul 23 - 07:27 AM

It's a few days since I read the article but i vaguely remember an image of a vertical shaft and, at the bottom of that, horizontal shafts going off both ways. Over a couple of hundred years it is perfectly feasible that the horizontal shaft could get blocked by various kinds of debris and water run off, leaving the horizontal areas without access to fresh air.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jul 23 - 06:47 AM

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/europe-bog-bodies-reveal-secrets-180962770/

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 10 Jul 23 - 03:13 AM

Hm: "lack of oxygen" sounds like a journalistic Mondegreen to me (too many subeditors spoil the sense). "Undisturbed air", anyone?

.... That's gonna annoy me all day now. I know that earth that has been freshly dug for the first time in decades has a distinctive smell, which I was told comes from the soil bacteria having gone anaerobic.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Jul 23 - 10:03 AM

Mysterious giant 300,000-year-old hand axes were found at an Ice Age site in England

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Jul 23 - 12:43 AM

Cavers Discover 200-Year Old Mine, Untouched Since the Moment It Was Abandoned
Found in northwest England, the cobalt mine is perfectly preserved due to a lack of oxygen

Members of the Derbyshire Caving Club have uncovered a cobalt mine in Cheshire, England, that operated in the early 19th century.

Sealed off from oxygen, the site contains a “time capsule” of artifacts from the day workers abandoned it, shedding light on what mining was like some 200 years ago, according to a statement from the National Trust, which owns the site.

The small town of Alderly Edge has been a mining destination since the Bronze Age. While the caving club, which has leased the mines since the 1970s, has discovered other mines in the past, the newly-discovered mine is in “pristine condition,” says caving club member Ed Coghlan in the statement.

“This mine hasn’t been disturbed by later mining, it’s not been broken into by kids in the 1960s, it’s not been filled with bottles or other rubbish,” Jamie Lund, a National Trust archaeologist, tells the Guardian’s Esther Addley. “It literally is a time capsule in terms of giving a glimpse into the environment that these miners, who were extracting cobalt, encountered.”

Artifacts found in the mine include shoes, clay pipes and a windlass—a type of winch that would have been used to lift heavy objects. On clay handle holders, the miners’ fingerprints are still preserved, as is the imprint of one miner’s corduroy pants where he leaned against a wall.

Read the rest at the link.

There's a 3D "scan" of the cave here.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 07 Jul 23 - 05:34 PM

Lavish tomb for Spain's 'Ivory Lady' challenges assumptions of prehistoric gender roles Analysis of two teeth dating back nearly 5,000 years has shown that a lavish megalithic tomb in Spain contained a high-status woman, not the young man archaeologists first assumed.

Researchers used a new method of determining sex that analyses tooth enamel. This technique, developed about five years ago, is more reliable than analysing skeletal remains in poor condition, according to their study published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

The finding indicates the leadership role women played in this ancient society that predated the pyramids of Egypt — and perhaps elsewhere.

She has been dubbed the "Ivory Lady" because of the finely crafted ivory grave objects surrounding her and the fact that a full elephant tusk was laid above her head during burial, as if protecting her, in a tomb dating to between 2800 and 2900 BC.

The tomb, excavated in 2008 near the city of Valencia, was more impressive than any other known from the Iberian peninsula from the time.   (read on)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jul 23 - 07:06 AM

The backdoor to hell lies under the main altar of a Catholic church built over the ruins. Sounds like a cheap plot device for a horror movie.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Jul 23 - 09:34 PM

Archaeologists may have found ruins of fabled entrance to Zapotec underworld
Spanish missionaries deemed Lyobaa to be a "back door to hell" and sealed all entrances.

In 1674, a priest named Francisco de Burgoa published his account of visiting the ruins of the Zapotec city of Mitla in what is now Oaxaca in southern Mexico. He described a vast underground temple with four interconnected chambers, the last of which featured a stone door leading into a deep cavern. The Zapotec believed this to be the entrance to the underworld known as Lyobaa ("place of rest"). Burgoa claimed that Spanish missionaries who explored the ruins sealed all entrances to the temple, and local lore has long held that the entrance lies under the main altar of a Catholic church built over the ruins.

An international team of archaeologists recently announced that they found evidence for this fabled underground labyrinth under the ruins—right where the legends said it should be—after conducting scans of the site using ground penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), and seismic noise tomography (SNT). The team also found evidence of an earlier construction stage of a palace located in another part of the site.

Mitla is one of the most significant archaeological sites in Oaxaca Valley. It was an important religious center, serving as a sacred burial site—hence its name, which derives from Mictlan ("place of the dead" or "underworld"). The unique structures at Mitla feature impressively intricate mosaics and geometric designs on all the tombs, panels, friezes, and walls, made with small polished stone pieces fitted together without using mortar.

Spanish soldiers and Christian missionaries began arriving in the valley in the 1520s, and several mentioned the ruins of Mitla in their accounts. Naturally, they interpreted the underground temple as a site for an "evil spirit" and its "demoniacal servants." Burgoa's writing is the most descriptive, detailing how the Zapotec high priest used the palace of the living and the dead. He marveled at the mosaics and skilled construction of the site. And he specifically mentioned four chambers above the ground and four chambers below the ground.

A little further in the article it says

A stone slab covered the entrance. "Through this door they threw the bodies of the victims of the great lords and chieftains who had fallen in battle," Burgoa wrote. It seems that certain "zealous prelates" decided to explore the underground structures, carrying lighted torches and using ropes as guides to ensure they didn't get lost. They encountered "putrefaction," foul odors, and "poisonous reptiles," among other horrors.

Then, of course, the Spanish built Catholic churches with the rubble from the site, including right on top of the site. Gotta tear down those buildings, they have no business being there. They did that way too often in villages they conquered.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jul 23 - 08:32 PM

An ice dam collapse may have done the Channel scouring. In the spring I used to watch the ice speed down the Niagra River. You could hear it almost a mile away.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 06 Jul 23 - 05:56 PM

Re catastrophic flooding: I have in front of me a copy of the April 2017 issue of A&G (News and Reviews in Astronomy and Geophysics), open at an article titled "A megaflood in the English Channel". I can't paraphrase five pages of densely-argued prose here, still less include the illustrations; but the subheading is:

In the 2016 Harold Jeffrey Lecture, Jenny Collier describes the discovery of plunge pools and streamlined islands in the English Channel, the geological consequences of a Pleistocene Brexit.

Doggerland is a different case, and somewhat more recent. This Wikipedia article gives a decent summary of all this, both the gradual and the catastrophic. Hope this helps.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Jul 23 - 11:29 AM

To the stars and beyond - Have We Found Fragments of a Meteor from Another Star?

The story began in April 2019, when I found what’s thought to be the first known interstellar meteor, hiding in plain sight in publicly accessible data sourced from the U.S. government. Called IM1, this object had burned up in the atmosphere and rained fragments down into the ocean off the coast of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, five years prior, registering as an anomalously speedy and bright fireball in the sensors of secret spy satellites operated by the U.S. Department of Defense. Working with my then-adviser, the Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, I analyzed the U.S. government data to show how the trajectory and other properties of IM’s fireball were consistent with the meteor having an interstellar origin.

It seemed at first too good to be true; scientists had been searching for interstellar meteors for at least seven decades, and here I was, a sophomore in college sitting in my dorm room, thinking I’d bagged one. And sure enough, there was a catch—but it had nothing to do with my calculations. Because the data came from spy satellites, the U.S. government didn’t publish how precise the measurements were. And without knowing the level of precision, we couldn’t know for sure whether IM1 was truly interstellar, or just a fluke.

It took three years for U.S. government officials to publicly confirm that their satellite data supported our interstellar hypothesis for IM1. While I was waiting, I dreamed of searching the ocean floor for fragments of the object, and to learn more I reached out to the only team to ever go after submarine meteoritic material from an observed meteor fall. It turned out that the mile-deep water at the most likely region where IM1’s debris fell would be advantageous, as the relative inaccessibility of such depths would ensure the fragments remained unperturbed. So once official confirmation arrived, planning for an ocean voyage to 1.3S, 147.6E began in full force.

This sounds like a needle in the haystack, on steroids. They were clever, though - these meteor fragments have iron, so they calculated a path and dragged a magnet through the area.

Who knows what else one might find dropping a magnet into some of the areas where travelers are known to have sailed through millennia ago? (Magnet fishing is actually a favorite pastime of a couple of my Facebook friends; they occasionally post photos of large round heavy duty magnets studded with antique nails and old bottle caps.)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Raggytash
Date: 06 Jul 23 - 10:33 AM

Not mesolithic, my mistake.