Archaeological potpourri

[Stan`]

Found this totally by accident: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1118356523659872&set=a.554138156748381

[Gurken Khan]

34 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Found this totally by accident:

Looks interesting. Since Fookbook insists on planting cookies I have no idea what it is.

[Stan`]

Ah my bad “Su Nuraxi in Sardinia is a settlement consisting of a 17th century BC nuraghe, a bastion of 4 corner towers plus a central one, and a village inhabited from the 13th to the 6th century BC, developed around the nuraghe. The 2nd image is what the settlement would have probably looked like”

No credits for the image.

[Gurken Khan]

Here's an interactive online tool with 300,00 km of Roman roads: https://itiner-e.org/

[Gurken Khan]

Yada, yada, yada: APX, Archäologischer Park Xanten, Colonia Ulpia Traiana

https://apx.lvr.de/en/index.html

[Gurken Khan]

7000-Year-Old Sunken Discovery Points to European Megalithic Construction Centuries Earlier Than Previously Thought

Off the western coast of France, archaeologists have discovered a sunken granite Mesolithic wall nine meters below sea level, which evidence suggests was constructed close to 7,000 years ago.

The 120-meter-long structure is one of several prehistoric artificial features of its era that have been found in the region, with other similar structures known to exist nearby. The discovery, which was made near Île de Sein in Brittany, was recently detailed in a study that appeared in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

The 120-meter-long structure is one of several prehistoric artificial features of its era that have been found in the region

Just your average 120-meter long granite block built or carved by some ancient, primitive tribe thousands of years ago.

"Nothing suspicious about this, move along." - Mainstream archeology. 

[Genava55]

3 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

Just your average 120-meter long granite block built or carved by some ancient, primitive tribe thousands of years ago.

"Nothing suspicious about this, move along." - Mainstream archeology. 

I don't see why it should be unbelievable. It looks similar to the Blinkerwall structures in the Baltic Sea which was mostly used to trap animals.

Also the idea that hunter-gatherers were unable to build massive structure should be revised. See the Carnac stones for example.

Edited December 15, 2025 by Genava55

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Genava55 said:

Also the idea that hunter-gatherers were unable to build massive structure should be revised.

I very much agree, but more work and interest should go into these discoveries. And we shouldn't narrow the field by calling the people that built them hunter-gatherers. It's interesting that many massive structures are found in deep waters, while others are buried in sand or sediment.

This indicates that they were standing at least for 12 000 years, even before the last Ice age.

[Genava55]

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

This indicates that they were standing at least for 12 000 years, even before the last Ice age.

Not really, the dating of such structures is clearly falling in the Holocene. They are dating the underwater structures thanks to the dating of the environmental changes, notably a marine transgression in the case of Britanny.

1797401694_Fouquetetal_2025_IJNA.pdf

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

And we shouldn't narrow the field by calling the people that built them hunter-gatherers.

It is not undermining the consideration we have for them. It is simply a description of their lifestyle. Using another label requires proving they are not hunter-gatherers.

Edited December 15, 2025 by Genava55

[blarp123]

On 22/05/2025 at 2:12 PM, Genava55 said:

https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/05/evidence-of-the-use-of-a-polybolos-the-mythical-greek-repeating-weapon-at-pompeii-in-89-bce-discovered/

 Evidence of the Use of a Polybolos, the Mythical Greek Repeating Weapon, at Pompeii in 89 BCE Discovered

A team of Italian researchers has discovered markings on the walls of Pompeii that could be the first known evidence of the use of an ancient and sophisticated weapon of war: the polybolos, a type of automatic crossbow capable of launching multiple arrows without needing to be reloaded, similar to modern machine guns.

Its invention is attributed to Dionysius of Alexandria, a Greek engineer who worked in the arsenal of Rhodes in the 3rd century BCE. It wasn’t a crossbow in the traditional sense but used a torsion mechanism based on bundles of twisted sinew, and we only know about it from the description left by Philo of Byzantium, who wrote between 280 and 220 BCE.

Philo recounts how one of these weapons was found and provided a detailed description of the gears that powered a chain drive to position bolt after bolt into its firing groove. This is the earliest known application of such a mechanism.

The study published in the Nexus Network Journal focuses on a section of the northern wall of Pompeii near the gates of Vesuvius and Herculaneum, where the researchers, led by Adriana Rossi from the University of Campania, found and analyzed small holes in the stones.

These marks are square or diamond-shaped and do not match the impact patterns of stones launched by conventional catapults. Instead, they appear to have been caused by arrows or metal projectiles.

They appear in groups of four or five, as if the projectiles that caused them had been fired in bursts, something difficult to achieve with handheld weapons or traditional crossbows.

The precision and frequency suggest the use of a repeating machine, the researchers assert, believing that they could be the work of a polybolos used during the siege of Pompeii in 89 BCE, when the troops of the Roman general Sulla conquered the city. Although no physical remains of the weapon have been found, the markings on the walls would match its historical description.

To confirm their theory, the team used 3D scanning techniques and digital reconstructions. Through virtual models, they calculated the speed and force of the impacts, estimating that the arrows that could have made the marks reached a speed of around 109 meters per second, a rather surprising speed for the time. They also confirmed that the depth and shape of the holes matched models of Roman arrowheads kept in European museums.
Why Shoot Arrows at the Walls?

But why would the Roman army besieging the city have fired arrows at the stone walls instead of at the defenders? The researchers offer two fairly evident theories.

The first is that they simply missed their shots—that is, they were aiming at soldiers on top of the wall but missed, perhaps because the weapon was hard to handle or simply wasn’t as effective as it should have been.

And the second is that they were simply testing, practicing and calibrating the polybolos before using it against the enemy.

In this regard, an episode of the popular show MythBusters aired in 2010 built and fine-tuned a replica of the polybolos based on Philo’s description, concluding that its existence as a historical weapon was plausible, despite being prone to constant mechanical failures.

The team now plans to analyze more sections of the walls of Pompeii and collaborate with museums to cross-reference their findings. They also hope this discovery will attract interest to Pompeii not just as a city frozen in time, but also as a battlefield where Roman military engineering left its mark.

SOURCES

Rossi, A., Gonizzi Barsanti, S. & Bertacchi, S. Use of Polybolos on the City Walls of Ancient Pompeii: Assessment on the Anthropic Cavities. Nexus Netw J 27, 243–272 (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s00004-024-00803-x

 

Reconstruction of a polybolos. Credit: Diels and Schramm 1919 / AR and archives of Archeotecnica / archeotecnica.com 

I just heard about this from popular mechanics. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a70698814/archeologists-uncovered-evidence-of-a-2000-year-old-machine-gunand-the-damage-it-did/ would be a cool thing to have in the game if it is real.

[Guest]

@blarp123

Quote

• Researchers have uncovered evidence that a weapon known as the polybolos—or multi-thrower—was used during the Roman conquest of Pompeii.

Just a fancy Greek word for bolt shooter. We have them in the game already:

[blarp123]

10 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

@blarp123

Just a fancy Greek word for bolt shooter. We have them in the game already:

Oh lol. I don't play romans that much in the game. Didn't know they already existed

[Thalatta]

On 01/12/2025 at 2:20 AM, Gurken Khan said:

Yada, yada, yada: APX, Archäologischer Park Xanten, Colonia Ulpia Traiana

https://apx.lvr.de/en/index.html

Maybe worth mentioning, here they have the best preserved example in the world of a manuballista mechanism, from the 1st century AD. I always like to visit these weird unique items in museums, we are all familiar with the Roman semi-cylindrical shields, but not everyone knows there's only one remaining, the scutum from Dura-Europos, at the Yale University Art Gallery: https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/5959.

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, Thalatta said:

the best preserved example in the world of a manuballista mechanism

  

http://www.romanarmy.net/xanten.shtml

[Genava55]

A genomic analysis of 85 individuals from the Iron Age shows that elite status was passed down from generation to generation and that women held prominent positions in the nomadic society

The discovery of the Golden Man in the Issyk kurgans in Kazakhstan had become a national symbol and one of the most significant archaeological finds of the Eurasian steppe. But until now, researchers did not know its genetic makeup or its relationship to other high-status individuals found in the region.

An international study combining archaeology, anthropology, and genomics has managed to sequence the complete genome of this emblematic figure, placing it within the genetic variation of Saka individuals from the Iron Age and resolving a decades-old question: it was a male, not a female.

The Issyk kurgans, located about 50 kilometers east of Almaty, are part of a royal burial complex linked to the Saka culture dating to the period 400–300 BCE. The wooden chamber where the Golden Man rested contained more than 4,000 gold ornaments, weapons, a headdress embroidered with golden threads, zoomorphic artifacts, and a silver bowl with an inscription that has not yet been deciphered.

The richness of the funerary goods contrasts with the simplicity of other contemporary burials, where grave goods are almost nonexistent. These stark differences have traditionally been interpreted as an indicator of the growing social inequality characteristic of Iron Age nomadic societies.

[...]

The results obtained by the researchers show that elite individuals were more closely related to each other than to lower-status people found in the same sites. This pattern persisted even when elite burials were located in different cemeteries separated by more than 100 kilometers. 

[...]

A particularly significant aspect of the study is the confirmation that access to elite status was not restricted to males. Almost half of the high-ranking individuals in the sample are women, contradicting the idea that power in these nomadic societies was exclusively male. The significant presence of women in richly adorned tombs, along with the genomic evidence linking elite individuals across different burial sites, indicates that women held high-status positions within Scythian society, explains Ayshin Ghalichi, a researcher at Max Planck and the University of Texas at Austin.

https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/07/dna-analysis-of-the-golden-man-reveals-that-a-few-elite-families-ruled-scythian-nomadic-society-2500-years-ago/

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aef0108

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Genava55