Cyprus: discovery of old structures of more than 11,000 years

July 13, 2016 By administrator

old village Old structures of more than 11,000 years have been discovered in Cyprus and could represent the oldest village ever discovered in the world, announced Tuesday responsible.

More than 20 round structures were discovered Klimonas, near the southern city of Limassol, said the Antiquities Department, noting that it is “the oldest manifestation of an agricultural lifestyle and villagers ever known to the world. “

According to the Department of Antiquities of this island in the eastern Mediterranean, these structures date from 10,500 to 11,500 years – They were therefore built at least 2,000 years before the oldest known settlement in Cyprus never hitherto Khirokitia (south) , a site registered by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Bones of animals, including cats and dogs, were also discovered at the site, which, according to archaeologists would have covered an area of about 5,000 m².

“The structures were built on small mountainside earthworks facing the sea,” the Department of Antiquities.

The site Klimonas contained stone tools and hunting and agricultural objects similar to those already discovered Neolithic Levant, he says. “While Cyprus was separated from the mainland by more than 70 km of sea, the island was part of the Neolithic developments in the Middle East,” according to a statement from the department.

The excavations were directed by French Briois François and Jean-Denis Vigne, he continued, adding that the people of Klimonas were likely hunters of small birds and wild boars.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016,
Stéphane © armenews.com

Ancient Fortune-Telling Shrines Unearthed in Armenia

February 21, 2015 By administrator

The stone monument was probably the focal point for rituals practiced there 3,300 years ago, archaeologists say.

Three shrines, dating back about 3,300 years, have been discovered within a hilltop fortress at Gegharot in Armenia.

Local rulers at the time probably used the shrines for divination, a practice aimed at predicting the future, the archaeologists involved in the discovery say. report NBC

Each of the three shrines consists of a single room holding a clay basin filled with ash and ceramic vessels. Wide varieties of artifacts were discovered, including clay idols with horns, stamp seals, censers used to burn substances and a vast amount of animal bones with markings on them. During divination practices, the rulers and diviners may have burnt intoxicating substances and drank wine, allowing them to experience altered states of mind, the archaeologists say. [See Images of the Divination Shrines and Artifacts]

“The logic of divination presumes that variable pathways articulate the past, present and future, opening the possibility that the link between a current situation and an eventual outcome might be altered,” Adam Smith and Jeffrey Leon write in an article published recently in the American Journal of Archaeology. Smith is a professor at Cornell University, and Leon is a graduate student there.

Excavations at the shrines are part of the American-Armenian Project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, also known as Project ArAGATS. The shrines were unearthed over a period stretching from 2003 to 2011.

Smith told LiveScience that the region’s rulers probably used Gegharot as an occult center. At the time, writing had not yet spread to this part of Armenia, so the names of the polity and its rulers are unknown.

Smith and Leon found evidence for three forms of divination at Gegharot. One form was osteomancy, trying to predict the future through rituals that involved rolling the marked-up knuckle bones of cows, sheep and goats like dice.

Lithomancy, trying to predict the future through the use of colored pebbles, also appears to have been practiced at Gegharot.

And at one shrine, the archaeologists found an installation used to grind flour. Smith and Leon think that this flour could have been used to predict the future in a practice called aleuromancy. [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

The shrines were in use for a century or so until the surrounding fortress, along with all the other fortresses in the area, were destroyed. The site was largely abandoned after this, Smith said. Although the rulers who controlled Gegharot put great effort into trying to predict and change the future, it was to no avail.

— Owen Jarus, LiveScience

Erdogan, the Muslims discovered America, not Columbus

November 15, 2014 By administrator

The Islamist-rooted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, very confident that the American continent was discovered by Muslims in the twelfth century, and not by the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus more than two centuries later.

“The contacts between Latin America and Islam back to the twelfth century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Columbus, “assured Mr. Erdogan in a televised speech in Istanbul on the occasion of a summit of Muslim leaders of Latin American countries organized by the authorities Turkey.

“Muslim sailors arrived in America in 1178. Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque on a hill along the Cuban coast,” he has said. Its momentum, Erdogan has even expressed willingness to participate in the construction of a mosque in the place cited by the Genoese sailor.

“I would like to tell my Cuban brothers, a mosque would perfectly well on this hill today as well,” added the head of the Turkish state. History books teach that it is the Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus who in 1492 established the first foreign foot on the American continent while looking with its fleet a new sea route to India rally.

Muslim historians and theologians ultraminoritaires have recently questioned the discovery, suggesting an earlier Muslim presence in America, though no vestige of Islamic inspiration there has never been discovered.

In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh had mentioned a passage stories of Columbus in which he refers to a mosque in Cuba. But his colleagues, unanimous, dismissed his hypothesis ensuring that this “mosque” was only a picture to describe the shape of a landscape. Elected president in August, Erdogan reigned over Turkey since 2003.