Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.   Get ready to hear the latest weekly batch of top news stories that appeared on Archaeologica!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

An inscribed clay tablet shows that the ancient Babylonians had a firm grasp on geometry a thousand years before Pythagoras.  A submerged city on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt has yielded a trove of pristine artifacts older than Alexandria.  Two small ceramic pots show how the ancient Maya worked out how to make their painted colors last a very long time.  And painted stalagmites in a Spanish cave now are shown to have been applied there by Neanderthals long before modern humans arrived..

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And now, here’s Laura Pettigrew with the Audio News from Archaeologica.  We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day!

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Pettigrew, and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news for the week of August 1st through the 7th, 2021.

Our first story this week comes from Australia, where a team of mathematicians has discovered what may be the oldest known example of applied geometry inscribed on a 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet.

Known as Si.427, the tablet came to light in the late 19th century in what is now Iraq, and depicts a field plan measuring the boundaries of a plot of land.

As reported in The Guardian, the tablet dates from the Old Babylonian period, spanning between 1900 and 1600 BC.  Dr. Daniel Mansfield, a professor from the University of New South Wales, tracked it down in storage at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Mansfield and Norman Wildberger, an associate professor, had previously identified another Babylonian tablet as containing the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table. 

At the time, they speculated that that tablet was likely to have had some practical use, possibly in surveying or construction.

A paper detailing Dr. Mansfield’s research on these mathematical objects from antiquity was recently published by the journal, Foundations of Science.

The first tablet, known as Plimpton 322, described right-angle triangles using what are commonly called Pythagorean triples, consisting of three whole numbers in which the sum of the squares of the first two equals the square of the third.  For example, three squared plus four squared is equal to five squared.

This inscription on Plimpton 322 set Mansfield on a quest to find other tablets from the same period that contained Pythagorean triples, eventually leading him to Si.427.

Mansfield believes Si. 427 contains details relating to a transfer of ownership of land. 

In the cuneiform script, with its characteristic wedge-shaped indentations, the second tablet describes a field containing marshy areas, as well as a threshing floor and nearby tower.  The rectangles depicting the field have opposite sides of equal length, suggesting surveyors of that time period had devised a way to create perpendicular lines more accurately than in previous efforts.

The researchers believe that, together, the tablets demonstrate the development of more sophisticated mathematical systems in response to the Babylonian’s societal needs during a period of increasing private land ownership. 

In ancient times, individuals trying to figure out where their land boundaries were could employ a scribe using Pythagorean triples to document ownership claims.

Although Plimpton 322 and Si.427 both contain Pythagorean triples, their estimated origins predate the famous Greek mathematician Pythagoras by more than 1,000 years.

Next, we go to the submerged ruins of Thonis-Heracleion off the coast of Egypt, where ongoing exploration continues to yield pristinely preserved artifacts dating to the fourth century BC.

Thonis-Heracleion—a combination of the city’s Egyptian and Greek names—was Egypt’s largest port on the Mediterranean for centuries before Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BC.

Sitting at the mouth of the Canopic branch of the Nile, the port city controlled the entrance to Egypt.  The bustling trade hub reached its peak sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries BC.  The Greeks were allowed to settle here during the late Pharaonic period, eventually constructing their own sanctuaries.

The vast site in Aboukir Bay, near Alexandria, was largely forgotten until its re-discovery by the French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio approximately two decades ago.

A recent mission was conducted in close cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities with the support of the Hilti Foundation.  It also included members of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology.

During a 2021 dive along the northeast entrance canal of the submerged city, the team found the remains of a large tumulus, a traditional Greek funerary area. 

The tumulus measures about sixty meters long by eight meters wide, and resembles an island surrounded by channels.  It contains extensive evidence of burning and well-preserved examples of ritual offerings and ceremonial gifts.

As reported by The Guardian, the discoveries here include wicker baskets still filled with fruits along with hundreds of ceramic artifacts and bronze treasures.

Also with the vast collection are mirrors and statuettes made of precious metals, anchors and other weights, and fine imported decorative ceramics.

These pieces have lain untouched since the city sank into the seas during the second century BC, following cataclysmic natural disasters, including earthquakes and tsunamis.  The city’s remains then sank further in the eight century AD, and currently sit at a depth of about ten meters.  

Last month, as we reported here, archaeologists found a well-preserved, second-century BC military vessel in a different part of the city.

The underwater excavation work here can be grueling, as divers are forced to work in low visibility and have to deal with heavy sediments masking potential ruins strewn across the sea floor.

The current finds will be studied and preserved before being put on display in museums.  

Goddio estimates that just three percent of the sunken city has been studied in the twenty years since its rediscovery, and he and other experts hope to uncover more artifacts at the site in the future. 

Our third story this week provides details on how ancient Maya potters were able to blend native plants and minerals to make vibrant and durable paints to decorate their ceremonial ceramic pieces.

The ceramics created by ancient Maya potters are some of the most vibrantly colored objects that survive in the archaeological record of the Americas.  As reported by the Library of Congress Blog, two such examples are held by the Library’s Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology and History of the Early Americas.  These two small ceramic pots, each measuring only a little over four inches tall, are made from red ceramic and display a vivid spectrum of colors.  They were originally discovered in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo (keen-TA-na roh), the western part of the Yucatan peninsula, and have estimated dates of origin between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries AD. 

The subjects of the vessels are diving figures, so called because they are pictured as plummeting headfirst from the sky.  The diving god appears in many forms and in many places in Maya art, including stone carvings, wall paintings and in one of the four surviving Maya books, the Madrid Codex. 

Both pots are painted in the style of Mixteca [mish-TAKE-ah]-Puebla forms found in central Mexico and around the area of Oaxaca.

One of the colors used in the detail contains an important technical innovation.  The bold and distinct blue paint, which is seen on the earspools, is now called Maya blue.  The stability of Maya blue, and the reason it has not faded from ancient ceramics, is due to the presence of palygorskite particles found in the paint’s formulation.  

This was accomplished by mixing plant-based dyes with several types of clays and other additives, known as tempers, to create the final blends for application.  These particles formed a kind of lattice, mixing with and trapping the indigo molecules present in the local Indigofera suffruticosa (in-di-GOH-fer-a sa-FRU-ti-CO-sa) leaves used for this color.  The resulting paint was remarkably resistant to natural bio-corrosion, resulting in the survival of the beautiful blue color we see on the vessels today.

Maya blue, and many of the other colors found painted across ancient Mesoamerica, are striking in their brilliance and composition.  These pieces are a testimony to the artists and craftspeople who experimented with the wide variety of plants, minerals and binders needed to create these colors, and to a society that valued these efforts.

We end this week in Europe, where a new study provides more evidence that ancient cave art in southern Spain was produced by Neanderthals more than 60,000 years ago.

Neanderthals have long been perceived to have been unsophisticated and brutish, and some have questioned if our now extinct cousin species really did paint the colorful stalagmites found here at Cueva de Ardales [KWAY-vah day ar-DOLL-ez], as has been suggested.

As reported by Phys.org, a 2018 paper suggested the alteration was at least 64,800 years old, made at a time when modern humans did not inhabit the continent.  Co-author Francesco d'Errico was trying to determine if the pigments found here were somehow a natural phenomenon, or perhaps a result of iron oxide flows. 

However, recent analysis revealed the composition and placement of the pigments were not consistent with known natural processes.  Instead, the research found evidence that the pigments were applied through splattering and blowing.  The pigments’ textures did not match any natural samples taken from the caves, suggesting that the pigments came from some external source.

Finally, a more detailed dating analysis revealed that the pigments were applied at different points in time, with some samples separated by more than ten thousand years.

This supports the hypothesis that Neanderthals came here on several occasions, perhaps over several thousand years, to mark the cave with pigments.

It is difficult to compare the activity at Cueva de Ardales to wall paintings made by prehistoric modern humans, such as those found in the Chauvet [show-VAY] Cave in France, which are more than 30,000 years old.

However, these new findings add to increasing evidence that Neanderthals, whose lineage went extinct around 30,000 years ago, were not the boorish relatives of modern Homo sapiens they have long been portrayed to be.

The use of pigments can be viewed not as art per se, but rather as graphic behaviors intended to perpetuate the symbolic significance of the space and exhibiting a desire for spiritual understanding.

The act of decorating the natural cave formations found at Cueva de Ardales apparently played a role in the symbolic systems of some Neanderthal communities over time.

That wraps up the news for this week!

For more stories and daily news updates, visit Archaeologica on the World Wide Web at www.archaeologica.org where all the news is history!

I’m Laura Pettigrew and I’ll see you next week!