Undiscovered Archaeological Sites
Through the centuries, historical sites are bound to disappear. Whether due to climate change, political turmoil, or even grave robbers, there are many reasons why discoveries at notable locations are sparse, but there are still typically traces of the people and customs. Occasionally, though, it's as if they never existed to begin with...
One might believe that, in regard to important historical figures and locations, there would be some form of record, whether written or oral, that would allude to a location. However, that's not always the case...From the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to Cleopatra's tomb, here are 9 important archaeological sites that may never be found:
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon:
Considered one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World," the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are the only Wonder that has remained elusive to archaeologists.Most historians believe that in the sixth century BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar II had the Gardens constructed as a gift for his wife, Amytis, who was homesick for her native Media (modern-day Iran). In that day and age, it would have taken a feat of engineering to ensure the gardens were properly irrigated, leading scientists to theorize that a system akin to Roman aqueducts would have delivered water from the nearby Euphrates River to the Gardens.While there are many descriptions of the Gardens in Greek and Roman texts, these were second-hand accounts that had been passed down throughout the centuries, as there is no mention of them in any preserved Babylonian texts. Due to the lack of archaeological evidence, some scientists assume the Gardens never truly existed. However, Oxford's Dr. Stephanie Dalley, an Assyriologist, discredited those assumptions: "That's a pretty stupid copout, really. It doesn't make sense to say we couldn't find it, so it didn't exist."
Dalley claims the lack of archaeological evidence is due, rather, to the fact that the Gardens weren't located in Babylon at all, but rather in Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria (modern-day Iraq and Turkey). She believes Assyrian king Sennacherib, not Nebuchadnezzar II, built the Gardens in the seventh century BCE, an entire century earlier than hypothesized in Babylon.
Genghis Khan's tomb:
Before Genghis Khan died in August 1227 CE, he requested that his grave not be marked in any way. However, this hasn't stopped a variety of individuals, from archaeologists to grave robbers, from attempting to find the ruler's final resting place, despite the fact that Marco Polo recounted that even by the late 13th century, the mystery eluded even the Mongols themselves.Most fieldwork that has taken place to find Khan's tomb has centered around Burkhan Khaldun in northeastern Mongolia, near his birthplace. The location was even mentioned in The Secret History of the Mongols, the oldest surviving work about Khan's final days. According to the text, he declared it to be the most sacred mountain in Mongolia and said, "Bury me here when I pass away." (Historians still don't know what officially caused his demise, but one popular theory is that it was due to injuries sustained from falling off a horse in 1226). Despite this statement, archaeological searches in the area have been fruitless.
The details of Khan's burial have long been shrouded in mystery. In an oft-recounted tale, Marco Polo claimed that after 2,000 slaves finished burying Khan, they were killed by soldiers, who were in turn killed by another group of soldiers, who later killed themselves in an effort to finally secure the privacy of their revered ruler's burial site. However, this legend is not mentioned in contemporary stories.
The Lost Colony of Roanoke:
One of the biggest mysteries of pre-colonial America is the fate of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. While we do know that the colony was located on present-day Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina, archaeologists are still unable to pinpoint the settlement's exact location and where/if the colonists resettled elsewhere. In the words of Adrian Masters, a University of Texas historian, "It's the 'Area 51' of colonial history."The story of the Lost Colony began in 1584 when Sir Walter Raleigh sought permission from Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent North American settlement. She approved his request and granted permission for the establishment of "Virginia." Shortly after, over 100 British men, women, and children boarded the ship Lyon, and ten weeks later, landed on the coast of North Carolina.Roanoke Island was only meant to be a stopping point in the settlers' journey, as records show they intended to move 50 miles into the mainland, eventually making their home in Salmon Creek. But winter derailed their plans, forcing them to settle in Roanoke for longer than intended. The changing seasons, as well as a tenuous relationship with the local Algonquian tribe, the colony's governor John White to return to England to gather supplies. On August 25, 1587, the settlers asked, "...we all of one mind, and consent, have most earnestly entreated, and incessantly requested John White, Governor of the planters in Virginia, to pass into England, for the better and more assured help..." White was reluctant, but realized supplies would be beneficial, so on August 27, he set off for his home country.
His return trip was particularly ill-timed as it took place in the midst of the war between Spain and England. The threat of the fearsome Spanish Armada caused Elizabeth I to prohibit British ships from leaving the port, lest they be needed to face off against the Spaniards. In April 1588, despite the prohibition, White was able to arrange a relief mission. However, a battle with the French forced the ships to return to England.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
When do cicadas go away? Here's when 17-year brood will peak in Cincinnati. See the map
They have been around for weeks, eerily and loudly calling out, making a mess and peeing on everything. Millions if not billions of 17-year cicadas have emerged in Cincinnati and Southwest Ohio. So, is the invasion by Brood XIV is almost over? Are the cicadas about to go away? These cicadas are only around for a few weeks, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, as they seek mates and lay eggs for the next generation. And since they started to emerge in mid-May, their time is nearly up, right? Here's what you need to know as cicadas peak and die off, and what you can do with the dead bugs left behind. Gene Kritsky, professor emeritus of biology with Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, said cicadas are still approaching their peak in many areas. Kritsky, founder of Cicada Safari, an app that crowdsources and reviews data on cicadas, attributed it to the cooler, rainy days in May. "People should notice the loud singing declining over the next over the next two weeks, and the singing should be over in early July," he said in an email on June 10. Brood XIV is one of 15 recognized broods of periodical cicadas that emerge every 13 or 17 years, and one of four that appear in the Buckeye State, according to ODNR. They emerge when the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees, which typically happens in the second half of May. They are active for three to four weeks as they focus on mating and reproduction, per ODNR. Male periodical cicadas produce a deafening chorus of calls to attract females. Once mated, female cicadas deposit their eggs into the branches of trees and shrubs. Annual cicadas emerge worldwide each year, but periodical cicadas are found only in eastern North America. They live underground as nymphs for either 13 or 17 years before emerging above ground in massive numbers. Different populations of periodical cicadas are called 'broods' and are numbered with Roman numerals. Scotts, the lawn-care company, says you'll want to work quickly to get rid of cicadas once they die, because "big quantities of decaying cicadas can smell like a meat market during a power outage." However, dead cicadas can be fertilizer gold for your yard or garden. The company offers a few tips: Add them to compost: Dead cicadas and nymph shells can be composted. Scotts says their potassium- and nitrogen-rich exoskeletons can improve organic matter. Turn them into mulch: Add nymph shells only to your mulch, unless you can tolerate the smell of decomposing insects. The shells can be whole or crushed. Bury them in a hole: More cicada shells or dead bugs than you can handle? Bury them. It speeds up decomposition and contains the smell. Let them decompose on your lawn: Doing nothing is also an option. But be aware that your yard may stink from the decomposing bugs. USA TODAY offers some additional tips on cleaning up after cicadas. Those include: Clean your gutters: Dead cicadas will clog your downspouts. Check your gutters frequently for the dead insects or their shells. Skim your pool: Likewise, dead cicadas or shells in your pool or hot tub will clog the filters. Skim them regularly, or keep them covered when not in use. Keep the yard tools handy: If you only have a few cicada shells to clean up, a small broom and dustpan may suffice. Larger messes will mean you'll need to break out a push broom, rake or snow shovel to clear the shells and dead insects. Dealing with the dead bugs isn't the only problem cicadas leave behind. Their eggs can attract a pest. One that can bite you and cause a rash. According to WebMD, the oak leaf itch mite is nearly invisible to the naked eye, being about 0.2 mm long. They commonly feed on larvae of an oak gall midge, a type of fly, that lives on pin oak leaves. Starting in late July, these mites drop from the tree or are blown on the wind, landing on animals and humans. Their bites can cause an itchy rash of small red bumps that can be painful to scratch. The rashes can be intense. They're also known to feed on cicada eggs, per WebMD, and were linked to a 2007 outbreak of rashes in Chicago, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, where the mites were feeding on 17-year cicada eggs. In 2021, the University of Maryland Extension found it likely that Brood X cicada eggs were likely the mite's food source for an outbreak of rashes in the Washington D.C. area, as reported by the Washington Post. Brood XIV cicadas will stretch from northern Georgia to Massachusetts. In Ohio, they were expected to emerge in a more than dozen counties, per ODNR, mostly in Southwest Ohio: Adams Brown Butler Champaign Clermont Clinton Gallia Greene Hamilton Highland Jackson Lawrence Pike Ross Scioto Warren Washington Some of the edge counties will not see as heavy an emergence as others. The cicadas that emerge every 13 or 17 years are different from the ones seen every summer, and it's not just the amount of time. Kritsky told WKRN in Nashville that periodical cicadas emerge in May or June, while annual cicadas show up later, in late June and July, and through the rest of summer. The two types also look different from each other. Periodical cicadas have black bodies with red eyes and red-orange wings and can be anywhere from three-quarters of an inch to an inch and one-quarter in length. Annual cicadas have dark green to black bodies with green-veined wings and black eyes and are larger. They can grow to an inch and one-third in length. Any animal that can eat insects will eat cicadas, according to the Purdue University Extension. Those include fish, bears, birds, raccoons and even other insects, like parasitic wasps. They're also safe for your dog to eat, to a point. According to the American Kennel Club, a dog that eats the occasional cicada should be fine. However, dogs that gorge on cicadas will find their exoskeletons difficult to digest, resulting in an upset stomach, abdominal pain, vomiting and bloody diarrhea. Some dogs that overconsume cicadas may require a trip to the vet for IV fluids, or pain and anti-nausea medications. Cicadas, like locusts, show up suddenly and in large numbers, and are sometimes called "locusts," according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. However, cicadas are not locusts. Locusts are grasshoppers, and the two species are not closely related, according to the Xerces Society. Locusts also swarm for different reasons. This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cicada map 2025: Here's when cicadas will peak in Cincinnati, Ohio
Indianapolis Star
5 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Archeologists discover 2,500-year-old Midas dynasty tomb in Turkey
A 2,500-year-old royal tomb has been discovered by archeologists at the site of an ancient city in Turkey. After four months of excavations, Penn Museum and Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University archeologists discovered a well-preserved royal tomb chamber that dates back to 8th century BCE (800 to 701 BCE). The tomb's roof was collapsed, but objects inside remained intact, including bronze vessels used during banquets, iron rods, a pair of large bronze cauldrons and assorted smaller bronze cauldrons, jugs and bowls, according to a news release. The tomb was discovered at the archeological site of Gordion, the capital of the Phrygian kingdom, which controlled much of Asia Minor during the first millennium BCE, Gordion Excavation Director C. Brian Rose said in a news release. Gordion is located in northwest Turkey, about 60 miles southwest of Turkey's capital Ankara. At one time, Gordion was ruled by King Midas, famously known for his "golden touch." Archeologists believe that the newly-discovered tomb may have belonged to a member of the Midas dynasty. Iron Age archaeological find: British 'bling' from 2,000 years ago included horse harnesses Archeologists used magnetic prospection technology to find the tomb, a news release states. This geophysical method uses variations in Earth's magnetic field to identify objects below the surface, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. To archeologists' surprise, the tomb indicated a cremated burial. Up until this latest excavation, researchers believed the first cremation to occur in Gordion was more than 100 years later. Vessels inside the tomb also featured textiles adhered to their exterior, which indicate that textiles were an important industry in Gordion, Rose said in a news release. 3,000-year-old Mayan city unearthed: Why it's named 'The Grandparents' The tomb was located near and appeared like the Midas Mound tomb, which is believed to have housed the body of King Midas' father. The Gordion site has proved fruitful for archeologists for 75 years, since Penn Museum began leading excavations there in 1950. Previous excavations included the oldest wooden building in the world, dating back to 740 BCE. Others include the earliest colored stone mosaics found in Gordion, the best-preserved citadel gate of the first millennium and a gilded ivory sphinx of the 6th century BCE, according to a news release.
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
How stress shapes cancer's course
About two millennia ago, the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen suggested that melancholia—depression brought on by an excess of "black bile" in the body—contributed to cancer. Since then, scores of researchers have investigated the association between cancer and the mind, with some going as far as to suggest that some people have a cancer-prone or "Type C" personality. Most researchers now reject the idea of a cancer-prone personality. But they still haven't settled what influence stress and other psychological factors can have on the onset and progression of cancer, Knowable Magazine notes. More than a hundred epidemiological studies—some involving tens of thousands of people—have linked depression, low socioeconomic status and other sources of psychological stress to an increase in cancer risk, and to a worse prognosis for people who already have the disease. However, this literature is full of contradictions, especially in the first case. In recent decades, scientists have approached the problem from another angle: experiments in cells and animals. These have revealed important mechanisms by which stress can alter tumors, says Julienne Bower, a health psychologist at UCLA who coauthored a 2023 article on the connection between the brain and the immune system in diseases, including cancer, in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. Such studies are showing that "psychological factors can influence aspects of actual tumor biology," she says. On the flip side, studies in people and animals suggest that blocking the chemical signals of stress may improve cancer outcomes. Today, a growing number of researchers think that psychological factors can influence cancer's progression once someone has the disease. "I don't think anyone appreciated the magnitude by which even mild stress, if it's chronic, can have such a negative influence on cancer growth," says Elizabeth Repasky, a cancer immunologist at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York. New interest in the relationship between stress and cancer growth emerged in part from research into how stress affects the body's response to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In the 1990s and early 2000s, genomics researcher Steve Cole and his team at UCLA investigated why people infected with HIV who were under high stress tended to have worse outcomes, including larger viral loads and poorer responses to antiretroviral drugs. Cole's team discovered several routes through which stress could worsen HIV infections. In monkeys, they found, the lymph nodes of stressed animals had many more connections to sympathetic nerve cell fibers—which execute the body's fight-or-flight response—than the nodes of unstressed monkeys. Lymph nodes contain immune cells, and the nerve fibers reduced the antiviral function of these cells, which, in turn, led to an increase in the replication of a version of HIV that infects monkeys and apes. Lymph nodes, in addition to housing immune cells, also act as the body's drainage system, flushing away toxins through a network of tissues, organs and nodes called the lymphatic system. Importantly, cancer cells can hijack this system, using it to travel through the body. Erica Sloan, a postdoctoral trainee of Cole who was involved in the HIV work, wondered whether stress, via the sympathetic nervous system, might also affect lymph nodes in those with cancer. Sloan, now a cancer researcher at Monash University in Australia, went on to discover in mice that chronic stress increases the number of connections between the lymphatic system and breast tumors, making the cancer cells more likely to spread. Strikingly, treatment with a drug—a beta blocker that blunts the activity of key molecules of the sympathetic nervous system such as norepinephrine—prevented these effects. Research by other groups has shown that stress can lead to molecular changes, particularly within the immune system, that influence how cancer progresses. Some of this work suggests that, when stress leads to inflammation—a broad immune reaction typically brought on by injuries and infections—it can boost the growth of tumors. Stress can also impair the activity of immune cells that play an active role in fighting cancer. In the early 2000s, research by University of Iowa behavioral scientist Susan Lutgendorf and her colleagues found that in patients with ovarian cancer, depression and anxiety were associated with impaired tumor-fighting immune cells. In another study of people with ovarian cancer, the researchers found that poor social support was linked to higher levels of a growth factor that stimulates blood vessel growth around tumors. This growth, called angiogenesis, enables new blood vessels to supply nutrients to tumors and—like the lymphatic system—provide pathways through which cancer cells can spread to other parts of the body. Lutgendorf and her colleagues have since found that stressful situations have a similar effect on mice with ovarian cancer, enhancing tumor angiogenesis and cancer spread. Equally important, they've found that these effects can be reversed with beta blockers. Other groups have found similar effects of blocking stress signals on other types of cancer in rodents, including blood and prostate cancer. In addition, researchers have found that increasing levels of stress hormones such as norepinephrine and cortisol in mice can make previously dormant cancer cells more likely to divide and form new tumors. Studies like these are revealing that stress can trigger a cascade of biochemical changes and alter a cancer cell's environment in a way that may promote its spread. "Stress signaling and stress biology really have an impact on most—if not all—of these processes," says Jennifer Knight, a cancer psychiatrist at the Medical College of Wisconsin. If stress can make cancer worse, how can the process be stopped? Little by little, new treatments are emerging. For about half a century, clinicians have used beta blockers to treat hypertension. By scouring data from patient registries, researchers found that people with cancer who already had been taking certain kinds of beta blockers at the time of diagnosis often had better outcomes, including longer survival times, than those who were not on the medicines. Over the past few years, several clinical trials—most of which are small and early-stage—have directly tested whether beta blockers could benefit people with cancer. In one pair of studies, a research team led by neuroscientist Shamgar Ben-Eliyahu at Tel Aviv University, administered the beta blocker propranolol along with an anti-inflammatory drug to people with colorectal or breast cancer five days before surgery. The team chose this timing because earlier research had shown that while surgery is an opportunity to remove the tumor, it can also paradoxically provide the chance for the cancer to spread. So blocking any potential effects of stress on cancer spread, they reasoned, could be crucial to a patient's long-term prognosis. These trials, which involved dozens of patients, revealed that the tumor cells of those who received the drugs showed fewer molecular signs of being able to spread—a process known as metastasis—less inflammation, and an increase in some tumor-fighting immune cells. For colorectal cancer patients, there were also hints that the intervention could reduce cancer recurrence: Three years after the procedure, cancer returned in two of the 16 patients who received the drugs, compared to six of 18 patients who didn't receive those meds. Other studies have assessed the effect of using beta blockers alone, without anti-inflammatory drugs. In 2020, Sloan and her colleagues published a study including 60 breast cancer patients, half of whom were randomly assigned to receive propranolol a week before surgery, while the other half received a placebo. They, too, found that tumor cells from patients who received beta blockers had fewer biomarkers of metastasis. Stress-reducing beta blockers may also benefit other cancer treatments. In a 2020 study, Knight and her team looked at the effect of beta blockers in 25 patients with multiple myeloma who were receiving blood stem cell transplants. Patients who took beta blockers had fewer infections and faster blood cell recovery—although the study was too small to properly evaluate clinical outcomes. And in a small study of nine people with metastatic skin cancer, Repasky and her colleagues found hints that beta blockers might boost the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy treatments. While studies on beta blockers are promising, it's not clear that these drugs will improve outcomes in all kinds of cancers, such as lung cancer and certain subtypes of breast cancer. Some patients can react badly to taking the medications—particularly those with asthma or heart conditions such as bradycardia, in which the heart beats unusually slowly. And, crucially, the drugs only block the endpoint of stress, not its cause, Repasky says. They will therefore likely need to be combined with mindfulness, counseling and other stress-reducing strategies that get closer to the root of the problem. Such interventions are also in the works. Bower and her team have conducted clinical trials of mind-body interventions such as yoga and mindfulness meditation with breast cancer survivors, to improve health and promote lasting remission. They've found that these therapies can decrease inflammatory activity in circulating immune cells, and they speculate that this may help to reduce tumor recurrence. Ultimately, bigger clinical trials are needed to firmly establish the benefits of beta blockers and other stress-reducing interventions on cancer survival outcomes—and determine how long such effects might last. The timing of treatment and the type of cancer being treated may play a role in how well such therapies work, researchers say. But lack of funding has been a barrier to conducting the larger follow-up studies needed to answer such questions. The work isn't yet backed by pharmaceutical companies or other organizations that support large studies in oncology, Knight says. And for now, whether stress can increase a person's risk of developing cancer in the first place, as the ancient Greeks once postulated, remains a mystery. Population studies linking stress to cancer risk are often complicated by other factors, such as smoking, poor nutrition and limited access to health care. "We have no definitive way of saying, 'If you're stressed out, you're going to develop cancer,'" says Patricia Moreno, a clinical psychologist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and coauthor of an article in the 2023 Annual Review of Psychology about stress management interventions in cancer. But for people who already have a cancer diagnosis, many researchers argue that the evidence is strong enough to include stress management in clinical practice. On average, cancer patients do not receive psychological therapies that can reduce stress at the level for which they are needed, says Barbara Andersen, a clinical psychologist at Ohio State University. Although they won't be necessary for every patient, many can benefit from mind-body interventions, she says. "I'm not saying they should be a first priority, but they shouldn't be the last." This story was produced by Knowable Magazine and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
