Vast Hoard of Ancient Treasure Discovered on a Hill in Hungary
Archaeologists have discovered a hilltop in western Hungary that contains a vast hoard of ancient treasure dating back more than 3,000 years.
The volcanic butte and its buried riches aren't protected by a fire-breathing dragon, but the discovery does feel like a story straight out of mythology.
In the very first year of surveys, researchers uncovered more than 300 buried artifacts on the hill, including a whole bunch of bronze items found with metal-detectors.
Most of the metal discoveries date from the Late Bronze Age, between 1400 and 900 BCE, but the site also contains one of the largest collections of Early Iron Age metal from hilltops in the region, between 800 and 450 BCE.
Based on what researchers in Hungary have found, including stacks of bronze lumps, droplets, casting jets, and fragmented ingots, they suspect this hill once hosted multiple bronze-working workshops.
It seems to have been an important site for the Hallstatt culture – a farming society that advanced metal work in Central and Western Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Many Hallstatt artifacts that scientists have already unearthed are scattered across landscapes, mostly in what is now Germany and Austria.
To find a hoard of Hallstatt metal work in Hungary is exciting stuff for archaeologists, and it could clear up the timeline and geological distribution of this once dominant human culture.
"Occupation on the hilltop seems to have been uninterrupted during the transition into the Early Iron Age," writes the team of researchers, led by archaeologist Bence Soós from the Hungarian National Museum Public Collection Centre.
"The unearthed hoards testify to an intentional and complex hoarding tradition on Somló Hill."
Somló Hill looks like a big old bump among the northwest vineyards of Hungary's Veszprém county.
Standing 431 meters (1,414 feet) high, the plateau looms over the local, low-lying wine region, and the hilltop has remained untouched by modern quarrying activity, making it the perfect spot for archaeological inquiry.
Some historical records from the late 19th century suggest that other ancient artifacts were found at the base of the hill and nearby areas, but details on these discoveries are scarce.
In early 2023, Hungary's National Institute of Archaeology launched a new research project on Somló to better understand the ancient humans who once called this region home.
Extensive surveys on the hill, combined with laser mapping in 2024, have now shed some light on that long-lost society.
Of the six new hoards of treasure on the hill, the one in the image below was found in the area with the highest density of metal items.
Further research is needed to figure out why so many metals were buried here, whether it be for mundane or ritualistic purposes. Some of the items were buried within ceramic pots, which haven't been found before from this time period.
Scientists didn't just find metal artifacts, like spearheads, buried on the hill; they also found amber beads, tusks from boars and domestic pigs, and fabric and leather components.
Some sediment samples taken from the hill also indicate the presence of small-seeded lentils and remnants of crop cereals, like millet. These are key subsistence features of the Bronze and Iron Ages.
A few of the materials uncovered at Somló are suitable for radiocarbon dating, which the team hopes to conduct soon. It's rare that Hallstatt discoveries offer up such useful forms of dating. Timelines often have to be inferred based on the context of ancient technology and sediment layers.
"This hoard, therefore, could provide clearer chronological understanding of the transitional period between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age at the site," concludes the team.
The study was published in Antiquity.
AI Detects an Unusual Detail Hidden in a Famous Raphael Masterpiece
Scientists Don't Know Why Consciousness Exists, And a New Study Proves It
Men Tend to Fall in Love Faster Than Women, New Study Shows
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Dead Sea Scrolls aged decades older by AI-powered discovery
'The implications are profound,' said Dr. Maruf Dhali, assistant professor of AI at Groningen and co‐author of the study. An international team led by the University of Groningen has combined radiocarbon dating, paleographic analysis and artificial intelligence to assign more precise dates to individual Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, showing many are significantly older than previously believed. Using a deep‐learning model called Enoch, researchers input digitized images of 135 scroll fragments and trained the system to recognize microscopic ink‐trace patterns, such as curvature and character shape, alongside new radiocarbon results for 24 samples. By correlating these handwriting features with empirically established dates, the team narrowed dating uncertainty to roughly ±30 years, outperforming conventional radiocarbon ranges for the period of 300–50 BCE. Until now, most Dead Sea Scrolls had been broadly placed between the third century BCE and the second century CE based on paleography alone, a method that lacked solid empirical markers. 'There simply were no securely dated Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts from the late Hellenistic era against which to compare,' explained Professor Mladen Popović, director of the Qumran Institute at Groningen. 'Our approach bridges that gap by using 24 radiocarbon‐anchored examples to give an objective timecode for handwriting styles.' BiNet, an earlier neural network that the Groningen group developed to detect handwritten ink traces, formed the foundation of Enoch's architecture. Once trained, Enoch produced date predictions that aligned remarkably closely with radiocarbon results—and, in some cases, suggested scrolls written in 'Hasmonaean‐type' script may date to decades earlier than the approximate 150–50 BCE range. Similarly, Herodian‐style fragments appear to have emerged in the late second century BCE rather than the mid‐first century BCE, indicating concurrent script traditions rather than a simple evolutionary sequence. 'The implications are profound,' said Dr. Maruf Dhali, assistant professor of artificial intelligence at Groningen and co‐author of the study published this week in PLOS One. 'With empirical evidence now anchoring paleographic analysis, scholars can revisit longstanding questions about when particular biblical texts circulated—and how these scripts relate to political and cultural shifts in ancient Judea.' Indeed, two biblical fragments—4QDanielc (4Q114) and 4QQoheleta (4Q109)—were shown by Enoch and new radiocarbon dates to originate roughly in the early 160s BCE and third century BCE respectively, matching the eras their anonymous authors likely composed the Books of Daniel and Ecclesiastes. 'This is the first tangible proof that portions of Daniel and Qohelet were penned contemporaneously with their presumed scribes,' noted Popović. 'It opens a window into the production of biblical literature at its very source.' Researchers stressed that Enoch does not replace human paleographers but augments their expertise with quantitative, explainable AI inferences. 'Within a few decades, we could use this model to date more than a thousand additional scroll fragments,' said Popović. 'The resulting new chronology will reshape our understanding of literacy, script development, and textual transmission in the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and early Roman eras.' Buddy Christ, an associate curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority who was not involved in the study, praised the advance: 'Marrying radiocarbon science with AI‐driven handwriting analysis represents a major leap forward. We now have a roadmap for dating unlabeled manuscripts across the Judean Desert corpus—and beyond.' The Enoch method could also be applied to other partially dated collections, such as Greek papyri or medieval European codices, providing a template for empirically grounded paleography. As the next step, Popović's team plans to make Enoch publicly accessible so that scholars worldwide can upload digitized manuscripts and receive probabilistic date estimates. For now, the Dead Sea Scrolls—drawing renewed attention thanks to this breakthrough—remain as historically vital as ever. With a precise 'timecode' now embedded in their script, the scrolls promise fresh insights into the political upheavals, theological debates, and cultural transformations that shaped the Jewish and early Christian worlds.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Many of Dead Sea scrolls may be older than thought, experts say
Many of the Dead Sea scrolls could be older than previously thought, with some biblical texts dating from the time of their original authors, researchers say. The first of the ancient scrolls were discovered in the caves of Qumran in the Judean desert by Bedouin shepherds in the mid-20th century. The manuscripts range from legal documents to parts of the Hebrew Bible, and are thought to date from around the third century BCE to the second century CE. Now researchers have used artificial intelligence to glean fresh insights into the dates of individual scrolls – findings experts suggest could challenge ideas about when, where and by whom they were produced. 'It's like a time machine. So we can shake hands with these people from 2,000 years ago, and we can put them in time much better now, said Prof Mladen Popović, first author of the research from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. While some scrolls were radiocarbon dated in the 1990s, Popović said scholars did not tackle the problem of castor oil contamination – a substance applied in the 1950s to help experts read the manuscripts, but which could skew results. In addition, many of the scrolls had only been dated by handwriting analysis. Writing in the journal Plos One, the team report how they attempted radiocarbon dating of 30 samples from different manuscripts found at four sites and thought to span five centuries. Crucially, the team first cleaned the samples to remove the castor oil contamination. The researchers successfully radiocarbon-dated 27 samples, finding that while two were younger than handwriting analysis had suggested, many were older. Among other findings, the researchers discovered two different writing styles, known as Hasmonean and Herodian scripts, coexisted for a much longer period than previously thought, while a sample from a manuscript called 4Q114 – which contains verses from the book of Daniel – was older than traditional palaeography had suggested. 'It was previously dated to the late second century BCE, a generation after the author of the Book of Daniel. Now, with our study we move back in time contemporary to that author,' said Popović. The team then used a type of AI known as machine learning to build a model they called Enoch – a nod to a biblical figure associated with scientific knowledge. The team trained Enoch by feeding it 62 digital images of ink traces from 24 of the radiocarbon dated manuscripts, together with the carbon-14 dates. They then verified the model by showing Enoch a further 13 images from the same manuscripts. In 85% of cases the model produced ages that tallied with the radiocarbon dates, and in many cases produced a smaller range of probable dates than obtained from radiocarbon dating alone. 'What we have created is a very robust tool that is empirically based – based on physics and on geometry,' said Popović. When Enoch was presented with images from 135 undated manuscripts it had not previously seen, it realistically dated 79% of them – as judged by expert palaeographers. Popović added those deemed unrealistic might have had problematic data, such as poor quality images. The system has already produced new insights including that a copy of the biblical book Ecclesiastes dates from the time of the book's presumed author. Popović said Enoch meant the age of further scrolls could now be uncovered without radiocarbon dating – a process that requires the destruction of small samples. 'There are more than 1,000 Dead Sea scrolls manuscripts so our study is a first but significant step, opening a door unto history with new possibilities for research,' he said. Prof emerita Joan Taylor of King's College London, said the results would have a major impact on Qumran studies. 'These results mean that most of the manuscripts found in the caves near Qumran would not have been written at the site of Qumran, which was not occupied until later,' she said. However, Dr Matthew Collins of the University of Chester cautioned that radiocarbon dating only shed light on the age of the parchment, not when it was written on, while there were also questions about how stylistically representative the small number of training samples were for different periods in time. 'Overall, this is an important and welcome study, and one which may provide us with a significant new tool in our armoury for dating these texts,' he said. 'Nevertheless, it's one that we should adopt with caution, and in careful conjunction with other evidence.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Dead Sea Scrolls possibly even older than scholars thought
A specially designed artificial intelligence program named after a Judaic prophet suggests one of biblical archeology's greatest finds require reexamination. According to an international team of researchers in consultation with 'Enoch,' some of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be a bit older than we thought. Their evidence is laid out in a study published on June 4 in the journal PLOS One. The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most remarkable and revolutionary archeological discoveries ever made. Researchers uncovered the first documents within the West Bank's Qumrum Caves in 1946, eventually amassing around 15,000 scrolls and parchment fragments over the next decade. Historians and religious studies experts have spent years examining the trove believed to date to the Second Temple era (516 BCE–70 CE), in the process learning invaluable details about ancient Jewish and early Christian life. The scrolls also include some of the oldest complete biblically canonical books known to exist, and helped confirm the era's rabbinic culture to maintain remarkably standardized written texts over a roughly 1,000-year period. Although ancient manuscripts occasionally feature written dates, many others are missing them. This often makes it difficult to easily pinpoint their provenance, but experts have ways to narrow down the possibilities. In addition to radiocarbon dating, scholars frequently study the evolution of ancient handwriting—a field of study known as paleography. Understanding these stylistic shifts can help indicate when authors penned certain documents, and thus fill in historical gaps. However, there's a catch to this approach. In order to get a sense of a written artifact's age from its script, paleographers require enough accurately dated manuscripts to serve as a reference. Add in the many nuances to historical documentation, and it can get very tricky, very quickly. Knowing this, a group of experts from universities across the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Italy recently collaborated on a new machine learning program specifically designed to analyze and evaluate scanned images of biblical writings. Enoch, named after the Book of Genesis prophet who 'did not experience death,' is built on two primary datasets—an index of radiocarbon dated historic biblical texts, and an analysis of each manuscript's handwriting. By combining these two databases, Enoch could then analyze a sample text in order to more accurately date it. Once Enoch was built, the team had it scan 135 non-dated Dead Sea Scrolls and offer an age estimate for each one. A group of paleography experts then compared those results to their own evaluations. They concluded Enoch offered 'realistic' dating estimates for nearly 80 percent of the scrolls, while the remaining conclusions were either too young, too old, or indecisive. Interestingly, researchers noted that some of Enoch's 'realistic' estimates meant that certain Dead Sea Scroll samples were actually older than scholars previously theorized. These revisions were further reinforced by additional radiocarbon testing. In one example, Enoch and scholars agreed a scroll fragment likely dated to the first half of the second century BCE—roughly 100 to 150 years older than existing estimates. What's more, two scroll fragments were dated to the time of their assumed authors, implying they may be primary texts. While more validation and testing is needed, the team believes Enoch may offer experts a new tool to help investigate, correlate, and date ancient texts.'It is very exciting to set a significant step into solving the dating problem of the Dead Sea Scrolls and also creating a new tool that could be used to study other partially dated manuscript collections from history,' the study's authors said in a statement. 'With the Enoch tool we have opened a new door into the ancient world, like a time machine, that allows us to study the hands that wrote the Bible.'
