Latest news with #humanhistory
Daily Mail
30-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Mysterious underwater 'lost city' believed to be 6,000 years old reshapes human history
A team of explorers believed they discovered an ancient sunken city that would rewrite human history, but the ruins have mysteriously been ignored for 25 years. In 2001, marine engineer Paulina Zelitsky and her husband, Paul Weinzweig, from Advanced Digital Communications (ADC), revealed that they had stumbled upon a collection of stone structures over 2,000 feet underwater near Cuba. Sonar scans of the area showed what looked like multiple pyramids, circular structures, and other buildings that seemed to belong to a lost city in the Caribbean. 'It's a really wonderful structure which really looks like it could have been a large urban center,' Zelitsky said after the discovery. Researchers suggested that the mysterious city could be more than 6,000 years old, making it significantly older than the Egyptian pyramids and potentially upending the currently accepted timeline of human development. However, an even bigger mystery unfolded after the discovery: no one ever went back to examine the alleged lost city in more than two decades. One factor that has held back further research has been the fact that fellow scientists have continued to voice their skepticism about the sunken city, saying it would have taken up to 50,000 years for a city to sink that far underwater. Other critics have contended that the 'structures' are natural rock formations, arguing that an entire city wouldn't have been so well preserved if it sank during a catastrophic seismic disaster. The neglected underwater structures have recently resurfaced on social media, with many people claiming that the explorers found the ruins of Atlantis. However, Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde-Vinent of Cuba's Natural History Museum was one of the skeptics who cautioned that the stone structures could be natural formations. 'It would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence,' Zelitsky added in a 2001 interview with BBC. Unfortunately, more evidence was never gathered, as a follow-up expedition to Cuba's Guanahacabibes Peninsula never took place. Social media users have continued to question why the research into this mysterious site was abandoned, with some claiming the implications of a city predating the ancient Egyptians have triggered a cover-up. 'Civilizations that existed before the ice age, perhaps multiple civilizations that rose and fell... The historical knowledge that has been lost (or hidden),' one person on X said. 'There is so much hidden history. Finding it so fascinating. Everything we been taught is a lie,' another person claimed. Despite rampant speculation of an archeological conspiracy, scientists have argued that there are legitimate reasons why the lost city of Cuba isn't real. In 2002, Iturralde noted that the structures were so deep underwater, it would have taken much longer than 6,000 years for this area to sink nearly half a mile due to shifting tectonic plates. If this were a sunken city that took roughly 50,000 years to reach these depths, it would completely change our understanding of human evolution. Currently, scientists have concluded that modern humans (Homo sapiens) were hunter-gatherers 50,000 years ago, since there's no evidence they created urban societies or sophisticated buildings. 'It's strange, it's weird; we've never seen something like this before, and we don't have an explanation for it,' Iturralde told The Washington Post. Michael Faught, a specialist in underwater archaeology at Florida State University, also shared his doubts that these structures were man-made. 'It would be cool if Zelitsky and Weinzweig were right, but it would be really advanced for anything we would see in the New World for that time frame. The structures are out of time and out of place,' Faught told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The unexplored city isn't the first mysterious structure to potentially rewrite human history. Archeologists have actually found several allegedly man-made temples which significantly predate the Egyptians, including Göbekli Tepe in Turkey - a site believed to have been inhabited from around 9500 BC to at least 8000 BCE. That's over 5,000 years before the Egyptian pyramids were built and roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge. Another underwater structure discovered near Japan, called the Yonaguni monument, features several sharp-angled steps that stand roughly 90 feet tall and appear to be made entirely of stone, leading many to believe it was man-made. Tests of the stone have shown it to be over 10,000 years old, meaning if a civilization built this pyramid by hand, it would have taken place before this region sank under water - more than 12,000 years ago. Along with scientists widely discounting the findings in Cuba as a natural phenomenon, its location so close to the socialist national have made returning to the site politically difficult. Advanced Digital Communications, the Canadian company that was mapping the ocean floor in Cuba's territorial waters, entered into a contract with the government of President Fidel Castro to conduct the original expedition. However, the Cuban government and institutions like the National Museum have not pursued further investigations in two decades. Sylvia Earl, an American oceanographer, also revealed in 2002 that a planned expedition to the lost city was canceled over funding problems.
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Brian Fagan obituary
Science is continuously revealing astonishing insights into ourselves and our world. Transmitting those advances to a wider public, while reminding specialists whom they really work for, is a rare craft. For the past half century, Brian Fagan, who has died aged 88, did that through his writing and speaking, shaping public understanding of ancient human history. Unlike Carl Sagan or David Attenborough, who brought cosmology and nature into millions of homes, Brian never fronted a television series. But his well-researched output was prodigious: including revised editions, he wrote or edited the equivalent of two books for every year of his life. Nine textbooks covering world prehistory and the practice of archaeology have been through a total of 83 revisions, most in recent years co-authored with the British editor and archaeologist Nadia Durrani. Books for a wider readership range in subject from human origins and the early Americas to the search for Tutankhamun. His first, The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists, and Archaeologists in Egypt (1975), won a California book award gold medal. The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (2008) was his New York Times bestseller, and Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors (2021, with Durrani) won Italy's Cosmos award for popular science writing. It is an immense challenge to bring the ancient past to proper life, informed by no more than broken remains and highly technical science. Brian's approach was to focus on the human and the global, throwing in contemporary references – notably in a number of books that dealt with climate change and rising sea levels – and fictional vignettes. A millennia ago in California, 'Flickering hearths and blazing firebrands highlight dark windows and doorways on the terrace of the great house that is Pueblo Bonito.' Describing two stoneworkers in 7000BC Belgium 'camped in a sandy clearing', he noted that one of them was left-handed, before explaining how that observation was obtained. His first rule of writing: 'Always tell a story.' Like Sagan, Brian was a university professor with his own research experiences. Born in Birmingham, he was adopted at birth by Margaret (nee Moir) and Brian Fagan. His father was a president of the Publishers' Association who worked in partnership with Edward Arnold, founder of Edward Arnold & Co, where he was responsible for school books and the university arts list. His grandfather, Patrick Fagan, was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic, Royal Astronomical and Royal Historical Societies. Brian was himself an honorary fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He was later to learn that his birth mother was a teacher. Like his father, he went to Rugby school. He did national service with the Royal Navy, before studying archaeology and anthropology at Pembroke College, Cambridge (1956–59). He then completed his Cambridge MA and PhD in Africa (1959-65), principally when keeper of prehistory at the Livingstone Museum, Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), and conducting archaeological fieldwork in that country and Kenya. In 1960 he had a short stint lecturing at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (he returned there as a visiting professor in 1982). He decided early on that his forte lay in teaching and popular writing, not primary research; he left Africa, he said, exhausted by the logistics of excavation and survey, and as 'a sound, but second-rate excavator'. He had thought of joining the family publishing business. When offered a visiting position at the University of Illinois, Urbana, however, he happened to lunch with Mortimer Wheeler, then a powerful archaeologist and media star. Wheeler advised him to write about archaeology for the public, saying, 'We need a new voice.' Brian spent a year at Urbana before moving to the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Newly faced in 1967 with a class of 300 introductory anthropology students, and no books to support his teaching, he set about filling the gap. Within seven years he had published two introductory readers, and two textbooks: In the Beginning: An Introduction to Archaeology (of which a 15th edition was published this year), and Men of the Earth: An Introduction to World Prehistory (currently, as People of the Earth, in its 16th edition). Told he could teach 'anything I liked', it was nonetheless a difficult time. Two influential and charismatic archaeologists, Lewis Binford and James Deetz, had left the department just as he arrived. That year, Ronald Reagan had begun his first term as governor of California, on a mission to stamp out campus protest (UCSB was notorious for its anti-Vietnam war activity, and in 1969 a caretaker was killed by a bomb), cut university spending, and bend curriculums towards conservative thinking. The anthropology department, Brian said, was 'reeling from the impact'. Nevertheless, unperturbed, and gifted with confidence, drive and vision, Brian stayed at UCSB, writing one book after another. He retired in 2003 as professor emeritus of anthropology. The Archaeological Institute of America recognised his books with a lifetime achievement award, and the Society for American Archaeology awarded him three times, for his public writing and media work, and his book Before California (2003). Beside books and teaching (in which he was an early adopter of new technologies, encouraging his students to think freely), Brian busied himself widely as university dean (various posts 1970–76), consultant (for the likes of the National Geographic Society, Time/Life, Microsoft and the BBC), magazine columnist and editorial adviser. He would have liked to have presented TV films, he once told me (though he claimed not to watch any), but that call never came. He was an impressive and charismatic speaker, however, in more recent years teasing his audiences with humour, and with the presence of an ageing Shakespearean actor who was fit enough to bicycle 100 miles a week into his 80s. Occasions ranged from Munro lecturer at the University of Edinburgh (1967), through to guest speaker at Flinders University Museum of Art (2014) – and many more. Other awards included recognition for his teaching, and the Cruising Association's Hanson Cup (he once crossed the Atlantic in his own boat). As a keen sailor he enjoyed California's coastal waters (and, naturally, published well-received cruising guides). He was working on new book editions, and a new title, when he died. His first marriage, to Judith Fontana, ended in divorce. He married Lesley Newhart in 1985, and she survives him, as do their daughter, Anastasia, and his daughter with Judith, Lindsay. Brian Murray Fagan, archaeologist and writer, born 1 August 1936; died 1 July 2025
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Confirmed: New Mexico Footprints Rewrite Timeline of Humans in America
Ancient seas left an expanse of rolling gypsum dunes known as White Sands in New Mexico, and within this surreal landscape lies evidence that humans have roamed the Americas for at least 20,000 years. While most of White Sands is protected as a national park, the US army controls part of it as a missile range. It was within this section that researchers found clay footprints, preserved below the gypsum, that have rewritten the timeline of human presence in the Americas. Previously, we thought humans arrived in North America around 13,200 to 15,500 years ago. But a new study led by University of Arizona archeologist Vance Holliday combines evidence from mud, Ruppia seeds and pollen found in layers above and below the trace fossils, to date the footprints as being between 20,700 and 22,400 years old. This means they were trod in the last Ice Age, by people crossing a floodplain on the margins of the extinct Lake Otero that once covered around 4,140 square kilometers (1,600 square miles) of the Tularosa Basin. "Pleistocene lakes and associated biological resources in western and southwestern North America must have attracted foragers, but archaeologists have surveyed few paleolake basins," Holliday and his colleagues write. Related: The footprints were first discovered in 2021, and were dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago using embedded seeds and pollen. But critics questioned this method to determine the footprints' age, since these lightweight biological materials can easily be moved in such a dynamic ecosystem. But the new paper found that analysis of mud layers backs up what the plant traces tell us. "Most of this dating of organic matter from palustrine muds complement the dating of the seeds and pollen previously reported," the authors report. "It would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that's in error," says Holliday. The research is published in Science Advances. Video: How Far Away Would You Need to Be to Survive a Nuclear Blast? What Really Killed The Neanderthals? A Space Physicist Has a Radical Idea Casino Lights Could Be Warping Your Brain to Take Risks, Scientists Warn
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
New research strengthens case for age of ancient New Mexico footprints
By Will Dunham (Reuters) -A new line of evidence is providing further corroboration of the antiquity of fossilized footprints discovered at White Sands National Park in New Mexico that rewrite the history of humans in the Americas. Researchers used a technique called radiocarbon dating to determine that organic matter in the remains of wetland muds and shallow lake sediments near the fossilized foot impressions is between 20,700 and 22,400 years old. That closely correlates to previous findings, based on the age of pollen and seeds at the site, that the tracks are between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. The footprints, whose discovery was announced in 2021, indicate that humans trod the landscape of North America thousands of years earlier than previously thought, during the most inhospitable conditions of the last Ice Age, a time called the last glacial maximum. The age of the footprints has been a contentious issue. Asked how the new findings align with the previous ones, University of Arizona archaeologist and geologist Vance Holliday, the study leader, replied: "Spectacularly well." Homo sapiens arose in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago and later spread worldwide. Scientists believe our species entered North America from Asia by trekking across a land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska. Previous archaeological evidence had suggested that human occupation of North America started roughly 16,000 years ago. The hunter-gatherers who left the tracks were traversing the floodplain of a river that flowed into an ancient body of water called Lake Otero. The mud through which they walked included bits of semi-aquatic plants that had grown in these wetlands. Radiocarbon dating is used to determine the age of organic material based on the decay of an isotope called carbon-14, a variant of the element carbon. Living organisms absorb carbon-14 into their tissue. After an organism dies, this isotope changes into other atoms over time, providing a metric for determining age. "Three separate carbon sources - pollen, seeds and organic muds and sediments - have now been dated by different radiocarbon labs over the course of the trackway research, and they all indicate a last glacial maximum age for the footprints," said Jason Windingstad, a University of Arizona doctoral candidate in environmental science and co-author of the study published this week in the journal Science Advances. The original 2021 study dated the footprints using radiocarbon dating on seeds of an aquatic plant called spiral ditchgrass found alongside the tracks. A study published in 2023 used radiocarbon dating on conifer pollen grains from the same sediment layers as the ditchgrass seeds. But some scientists had viewed the seeds and pollen as unreliable markers for dating the tracks. The new study provides further corroboration of the dating while also giving a better understanding of the local landscape at the time. "When the original paper appeared, at the time we didn't know enough about the ancient landscape because it was either buried under the White Sands dune field or was destroyed when ancient Lake Otero, which had a lot of gypsum, dried out after the last Ice Age and was eroded by the wind to create the dunes," Holliday said. Today, the landscape situated just west of the city of Alamogordo consists of rolling beige-colored dunes of the mineral gypsum. "The area of and around the tracks included water that came off the mountains to the east, the edge of the old lake and wetlands along the margins of the lake. Our dating shows that this environment persisted before, during and after the time that people left their tracks," Holliday said. The area could have provided important resources for hunter-gatherers. "We know from the abundant tracks in the area that at least mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels and dire wolves were around, and likely other large animals. Given the setting, there must have been a large variety of other animals and also plants," Holliday added. The climate was markedly different than today, with cooler summers and the area receiving significantly more precipitation. "It is important to note that this is a trackway site, not a habitation site," Windingstad said. "It provides us a narrow view of people traveling across the landscape. Where they were going and where they came from is obviously an open question and one that requires the discovery and excavation of sites that are of similar age in the region. So far, these have not been found."
Reuters
19-06-2025
- Science
- Reuters
New research strengthens case for age of ancient New Mexico footprints
June 19 (Reuters) - A new line of evidence is providing further corroboration of the antiquity of fossilized footprints discovered at White Sands National Park in New Mexico that rewrite the history of humans in the Americas. Researchers used a technique called radiocarbon dating to determine that organic matter in the remains of wetland muds and shallow lake sediments near the fossilized foot impressions is between 20,700 and 22,400 years old. That closely correlates to previous findings, based on the age of pollen and seeds at the site, that the tracks are between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. The footprints, whose discovery was announced in 2021, indicate that humans trod the landscape of North America thousands of years earlier than previously thought, during the most inhospitable conditions of the last Ice Age, a time called the last glacial maximum. The age of the footprints has been a contentious issue. Asked how the new findings align with the previous ones, University of Arizona archaeologist and geologist Vance Holliday, the study leader, replied: "Spectacularly well." Homo sapiens arose in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago and later spread worldwide. Scientists believe our species entered North America from Asia by trekking across a land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska. Previous archaeological evidence had suggested that human occupation of North America started roughly 16,000 years ago. The hunter-gatherers who left the tracks were traversing the floodplain of a river that flowed into an ancient body of water called Lake Otero. The mud through which they walked included bits of semi-aquatic plants that had grown in these wetlands. Radiocarbon dating is used to determine the age of organic material based on the decay of an isotope called carbon-14, a variant of the element carbon. Living organisms absorb carbon-14 into their tissue. After an organism dies, this isotope changes into other atoms over time, providing a metric for determining age. "Three separate carbon sources - pollen, seeds and organic muds and sediments - have now been dated by different radiocarbon labs over the course of the trackway research, and they all indicate a last glacial maximum age for the footprints," said Jason Windingstad, a University of Arizona doctoral candidate in environmental science and co-author of the study published this week in the journal Science Advances, opens new tab. The original 2021 study dated the footprints using radiocarbon dating on seeds of an aquatic plant called spiral ditchgrass found alongside the tracks. A study published in 2023 used radiocarbon dating on conifer pollen grains from the same sediment layers as the ditchgrass seeds. But some scientists had viewed the seeds and pollen as unreliable markers for dating the tracks. The new study provides further corroboration of the dating while also giving a better understanding of the local landscape at the time. "When the original paper appeared, at the time we didn't know enough about the ancient landscape because it was either buried under the White Sands dune field or was destroyed when ancient Lake Otero, which had a lot of gypsum, dried out after the last Ice Age and was eroded by the wind to create the dunes," Holliday said. Today, the landscape situated just west of the city of Alamogordo consists of rolling beige-colored dunes of the mineral gypsum. "The area of and around the tracks included water that came off the mountains to the east, the edge of the old lake and wetlands along the margins of the lake. Our dating shows that this environment persisted before, during and after the time that people left their tracks," Holliday said. The area could have provided important resources for hunter-gatherers. "We know from the abundant tracks in the area that at least mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels and dire wolves were around, and likely other large animals. Given the setting, there must have been a large variety of other animals and also plants," Holliday added. The climate was markedly different than today, with cooler summers and the area receiving significantly more precipitation. "It is important to note that this is a trackway site, not a habitation site," Windingstad said. "It provides us a narrow view of people traveling across the landscape. Where they were going and where they came from is obviously an open question and one that requires the discovery and excavation of sites that are of similar age in the region. So far, these have not been found."
