European police have busted an international crime gang involved in trafficking tens of thousands of Greek archaeological artefacts looted from illegal excavations in Italy, law enforcement agencies said Monday.
Credit: Carabinieri TPC
Police from Italy, Britain, France, Germany and Serbia arrested 23 suspects and carried out 103 searches in the investigation that started in 2017, the EU police agency Europol and Eurojust said.
The gang used bulldozers and metal detectors to loot objects as old as 400 BC from the Calabria region -- the "toe" of Italy -- before selling them across Europe.
"Illegal excavations were managed by a well-structured organised crime group... led by two Calabrians" living in the southern province of Crotone, the agencies said in a combined statement.
Credit: Europol
In Calabria "the cultural heritage includes important traces from the Greek and Roman period", Europol said.
Italian media said two Calabrian men aged 59 and 30 were arrested.
The gang also included "fences, intermediaries and mules operating out of different Italian regions" with the looted artefacts then going through contacts in Dijon, Munich, London and Vrsac in northeastern Serbia.
Credit: Carabinieri TPC
Some of the stolen objects is said to date as far back as the fourth and third centuries B.C. and include five terracotta vases and oil lamps, plates depicting animal scenes, brooches and various jewels, Italian media reports said.
The looters used bulldozers to dig craters, before sifting through the earth and passing it through metal detectors, the reports added, quoting police sources.
"The looting carried out over the course of several years caused considerable damage to Italian cultural heritage," Europol and Eurojust added.
Credit: Europol
Coordination between the two agencies enabled "arrests, searches and seizures immediately and simultaneously in the five countries," they added.
Italian and Swiss police in 2016 recovered a haul of archaeological artefacts stolen from Italy and stored by a notorious British antiquities dealer.
The haul, worth nine million euros ($10 million), was discovered in 2014 in a storage unit at the Geneva Freeport rented by Britain's disgraced Robin Symes, a giant in the illegal antiquities trade with ties to Italian tomb raiders.
At the time it was regarded as one of the most important recoveries of the last few decades.
Venice was in a state of crisis on Wednesday due to huge flooding after the high-water mark reached 187cm late on Tuesday, the highest level since the record 1966 flood.
Credit: ANSA/AP
"Venice is on its knees," Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said via Twitter. "St Mark's Basilica has suffered serious damage, like the whole city and the islands... We need everyone's help to get through the next few days that are putting us to the test.". A 78-year-old man was electrocuted due a short circuit, apparently linked to the flooding, at his home on the island of Pellestrina.
Another person also died during the flooding on the lagoon island, although in his case it may have been natural causes.
Credit: ANSA/AP
There is massive damage. Brugnaro estimated that the cost ran into several hundred million euros. Three barges sank, while gondolas and other boats were stripped from their moorings. A fire broke our at the Ca' Pesaro museum because of an electrical malfunction.
Brugnaro said the council was asking central government to declare the city to be in a state of emergency and told local people and businesses to collect photographic and video evidence of the damage suffered for compensation claims. "We are faced with total, apocalyptic devastation," Veneto Governor Luca Zaia told Mediaset television.
Credit: ANSA/AP
"I'm not exaggerating; 80% of the city is under water, the damage is unimaginable". Premier Giuseppe Conte is due to arrive in the city to assess the situation on Wednesday and Zaia said he would stay the night. Infrastructure Paola De Micheli is heading to Venice too.
President Sergio Mattarella called Brugnaro and Raffaello De Ruggieri, the mayor 2019 European Culture Capital Matera, which was badly hit by flooding on Tuesday.
Credit: ANSA/AP
Venice's La Fenice has been temporarily put out of action too. Although the theatre itself is not flooded, water has entered an auxiliary area affecting the electrical and fire-prevention systems.
Pierpaolo Campostrini, a member of St. Mark's management board, said things could have been even worse for the cathedral.
Credit: ANSA/AP
"We came within a whisker of the apocalypse," he said. "The water got into the basilica, it flooded the floor, broke windows and entered the crypt. It is dangerous, not so much because of what is contained in there, but because the water could have caused problems for the columns that hold up the basilica".
The devastation has led to controversy about the fact that the MOSE flood barrier system, which has been hit by delays and a corruption scandal, is still not operative. Environment Minister Sergio Costa linked the situation to the climate crisis.
The acqua alta came down to around 144cm on Wednesday after Tuesday's peak.
In a new excavation project undertaken by German and Italian researchers, LMU archaeologists Paul Scheding and Francesca Diosono have uncovered evidence suggesting that Terracina was the site of the first Hellenistic temple in the region.
Excavations on Monte Sant`Angelo in Terracina [Credit: Paul Scheding/LMU]
High above the ancient city of Tarracina (now Terracina) south of Rome, there was once a large-scale terraced sanctuary that included a small temple. The building afforded a wide prospect over the harbor on one side and the Via Appia, the city's most important link with Rome, on the other.
In the course of an excavation project which is planned to last for three years, Paul Scheding and Francesca Diosono from the Institute for Classical Archaeology at LMU Munich will focus their attention primarily on the small temple.
They have now been able to reconstruct its exact extent, which allowed them to confirm that the structure was built during the second century BC. This makes it the oldest Hellenistic structure of this type in Latium, and perhaps the very first terraced temple in the region.
"The temple underlines the significance of Tarracina at this time," says Scheding. The city was obviously in contact with the most important Hellenistic cities in the Mediterranean, even before the Roman conquest of Latium.
The temple itself and Monte Sant'Angelo, the hill on which it was erected was once reserved for religious ceremonies. The excavations have also confirmed that temple's facade was oriented, not towards the harbor, but towards the Via Appia and the city below.
"On important feast-days, processions left the city and climbed the hill to the temple," says Scheding, and merchants and travelers also visited the temple. The excavators have not yet identified the god to whom the temple was dedicated. The shrine is associated with an unusually large number of cisterns, but what the water was needed for remains unclear.
The excavations have also uncovered traces of a pre-Roman settlement that dates back to the 7th or perhaps even as far as the 9th century BC. Who lived here before the construction of the temple is also unknown as yet.
Literary sources dating to the 6th century BC attest to the presence of the Volsci in the area, but these people have not been definitively associated with any archaeological finds in the area. Further work over the next two years may help to clarify how the shrine on Monte Sant'Angelo developed prior to and following the conquest of the region by the Romans.
The researchers of the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology of the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Salento will study the skeletons recently brought to light in the archaeological site of Roca, near the Grotta della Poesia, located on the Adriatic coast in the Apulian province of Lecce, Southern Italy.
Credit: Universita del Salento
The skeletons are those of an adult male and a child buried together around the middle of the fifth century BC. The date of the burial was determined by the grave goods that were found and, in particular, by a columned krater placed on the right side of the adult's skeleton.
The discovery of this burial, of a rather common type in the archaeological site of Roca, was made in 2008 as part of the excavation campaign then under way under the direction of Professor Cosimo Pagliara (who passed away in 2015), when about 20 Messapian tombs were discovered.
The site is still being investigated with the permission of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and for Tourism, under the direction of Professor Riccardo Guglielmino, professor of Aegean Civilization at UniSalento.
In 2008, after the usual scientific documentation of the discovery, the grave goods were taken but the skeletons, for technical and climatic reasons, were covered with green fabric sunshades, the tomb filled with earth and the three roof slabs repositioned.
Credit: Universita del Salento
At the reopening, a few days ago, the conditions of conservation were perfect, and the recovery of the bones was therefore undertaken. From a preliminary anthropological analysis, the adult individual is male, age at death 35-40 years, the other skeleton is a child of about 6 years.
"We had for some months resumed the study of burials found in 2008, so we decided to complete the excavation in this year", explains Professor Pier Francesco Fabbri, Professor of Physical Anthropology at UniSalento, who now directs the excavations.
"Studying this case will be interesting, since it is rather rare to find two individuals buried at the same time. It will be a matter of subjecting the skeletons to in-depth anthropological and radiological analysis to determine the exact age of death. Through DNA analysis we could also establish if the smaller skeleton belonged to a child, which is not possible to ascertain from the osteological analysis. Several of our students are involved both in the excavation of the medieval necropolis of Roca and in particular in that of this Messapian tomb, and various aspects of the finding will become the subject of graduation theses."
The study, published in Science, focuses on the ancient DNA of individuals from Rome and adjacent regions in Italy, spanning the last 12,000 years. Those genetic data reveal at least two major migrations into Rome, as well as several smaller but significant population shifts over just the last few thousand years.
The excavation of the collective grave. All in all, researchers have collected DNA samples at 29 locations in Rome [Credit: Michaela Lucci]
Notably, DNA analysis revealed that as the Roman Empire expanded around the Mediterranean Sea, immigrants from the Near East, Europe, and North Africa migrated to Rome, significantly changing the face of one of the ancient world's first great cities.
"We did not expect to detect such an extensive genetic diversity already at the time of the origins of Rome, with individuals with ancestries from North Africa, the Near East, and the European Mediterranean regions", says Ron Pinhasi, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Vienna and one of the paper's senior authors along with Jonathan Pritchard, a professor of genetics and of biology and Alfredo Coppa professor of Physical Anthropology at Sapienza University in Rome, that together with Luca Bondioli, of the Museum of Civilizations of Rome, Mauro Rubini, of the Archaeological Superintendence of Lazio, and other anthropologists, conducted the sampling of the examined skeletons. "For the first time a study of this magnitude is conducted on a great classical civilization and is focused on Rome the capital of one of the greatest empires of Antiquity" declares Alfredo Coppa.
Genetic contact
Rome presented an interesting opportunity to use the same ancient DNA techniques the team used in the last decade to fill in details left out of the historical record, Pritchard said. "The historical and archaeological records tell us a great deal about political history and contacts of different kinds with different places - trade and slavery, for example - but those records provide limited information about the genetic makeup of the population."
Aerial view of the Palazzo della Cancelleria. The cemetery has been dug in the central courtyard [Credit: Michaela Lucci]
"Ancient DNA data provides a new source of information which is linked really well to social history of individuals from Rome at different ages", says Ron Pinhasi. Alfredo Coppa adds, "In our study, we used the collaboration and support of a large number of archaeologists, who opened their archives to us, and allowed us to better understand what genetic data was highlighting."
To find out what that makeup looked like, the Stanford team partnered with their collaborators in Rome and Vienna to gather 127 human DNA samples from 29 sites in and around Rome dating from between the Stone Age and medieval times. An analysis of some of the earliest samples more or less comport with what has been found around Europe - an influx of farmers primarily descended from early agriculturalists from Turkey and Iran around 8,000 years ago, followed by a shift toward ancestry from the Ukrainian Steppe somewhere between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. By the founding of Rome, traditionally dated to 753 BCE, the city's population had grown in diversity and resembled modern European and Mediterranean peoples.
Republic, Empire and beyond
But for the authors, the most interesting parts were yet to come. Although Rome began as a humble city-state, within 800 years it had gained control over an Empire extending as far west as Britain, south into North Africa and east into Syria, Jordan and Iraq.
Researchers have collected 127 DNA samples at excavations [Credit: Michaela Lucci]
As the empire expanded, it facilitated the movement and interaction of people through trade networks, new road infrastructure, military campaigns, and slavery. Contemporary accounts and archaeological evidence support tight connections between Rome and all other parts of the empire - in fact, the daily life of Rome relied heavily on trade goods from other parts of the empire to supply its enormous urban center.
The researchers found that the genetic corroborates but also complicates the historical record. There was a massive shift in Roman residents' ancestry, but that ancestry came primarily from the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, possibly because of denser populations there relative to the Roman Empire's western reaches in Europe and Africa.
The next several centuries were full of turmoil: the capital's move to Constantinople and subsequent split of the Empire, disease outbreaks that decimated the population of Rome and a series of invasions, including the Visigoth's sacking of Rome in 410 CE, when, as Saint Jerome put it, "the bright light of all the world was put out." These events left their mark on the city's ancestry, which shifted away from eastern Mediterranean and toward western European. Similarly, the rise and reign of the Holy Roman Empire brought an influx of central and northern European ancestry.
Migration is nothing new
The study shows that the ancient world was perpetually in flux, both in terms of culture and ancestry.
"It was surprising to us how rapidly the population ancestry shifted, over timescales of just a few centuries, reflecting Rome's shifting political alliances over time" Pritchard said.
Another striking aspect was how cosmopolitan the population of Rome was, starting more than 2000 years ago and continuing through the rise and dissolution of the empire. Even in antiquity, Rome was a melting pot of different cultures.
"We now need to think about new studies which look at the interaction between people of different social classes across the Roman Empire, including not only the movements of particular groups from different regions, but also of social mobility in both core regions, and the various provinces" says Ron Pinhasi.
"In addition to better analyzing relations with the pre-Roman peoples of central-southern Italy" adds Alfredo Coppa.
Clues to the final journey of Otzi – a remarkable 5,300-year-old human corpse found frozen in ice in the Italian Alps – have now been revealed through the identification of mosses and liverworts frozen with the Iceman, according to new University of Glasgow research.
Image of the Otzi site [Credit: Jim Dickson]
The study – published in PLOS ONE and in collaboration with the University of Innsbruck – identified at least 75 species of brypophytes – mosses and liverworts – preserved with the Iceman, holding important clues to Otzi’s final surroundings and last moments.
When discovered in 1991, Otzi’s mummified body, melting out of ice high in the Alps (3,210m above sea level), captured the attention of the world. His body was frozen alongside his clothing and gear, as well as an abundance of plants and fungi.
Today, 23 bryophyte species live the area near where Otzi was found, but inside the ice, the researchers identified thousands of preserved bryophyte fragments representing at least 75 species. It is the only site of such high altitude with bryophytes preserved over thousands of years.
Only 30% of the identified bryophytes appear to have been local species, with the rest having been transported to the spot by Otzi’s gut or clothing, or by large herbivores such as the Alpine Ibex whose droppings ended up frozen alongside the Iceman.
The non-local species help to confirm the path Otzi took to his final resting place. Several of the identified moss species thrive today in the lower Schnalstal valley, suggesting that Otzi travelled along the valley during his ascent.
Taphonomic processes. These led to the deposition of flowering plant remains at the Otzi discovery site according to Heiss and Oeggl [Credit: Dickson et al, 2019]
This conclusion is corroborated by previous pollen research, which also pinpointed Schnalstal (a valley in the South Tyrol, Italy) as the Iceman’s likely route of ascent.
The assemblage also included a variety of mosses ranging from low-elevation to high-elevation species, as well as 10 species of liverworts, which are very rarely preserved in archaeological sites.
From these remains, the researchers infer that the bryophyte community in the Alps around 5,000 years ago was generally like that of today.
Emeritus Professor Jim Dickson, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine (and former Professor of Archaeobotany and Plant Systematics), has been studying the world-famous Iceman since 1994.
Professor Dickson said: “Most members of the public are unlikely to be knowledgeable about bryophytes (mosses and liverworts). However, no fewer than 75 species of these important investigative clues were found when the Iceman (aka Otzi) was removed from the ice. They were recovered as mostly small scraps from the ice around him, from his clothes and gear, and even from his alimentary tract. Those findings prompted the questions: Where did the fragments come from? How precisely did they get there? How do they help our understanding of the Iceman?”
“Some of the mosses are important in investigating the precise route of his very last journey. The crucial one is called Flat Neckera, a woodland species, which was found both as a large mass adhering to his clothes and as microscopic pieces in his gut. That discovery and other mosses of similar ecology from low to moderate altitude are as near proof as it is possible to get that the Iceman climbed from south to north up Schnalstal rather than ascending other adjacent valleys.”
The Romans were some of the most sophisticated builders of the ancient world. Over the centuries, they adopted an increasingly advanced set of materials and technologies to create their famous structures. To distinguish the time periods over which these improvements took place, historians and archaeologists typically measure the colours, shapes and consistencies of the bricks and mortar used by the Romans, along with historical sources.
House of the Vestal Virgins, Rome [Credit: WikiCommons]
In new research published in EPJ Plus, Francesca Rosi and colleagues at the Italian National Research Council improved on these techniques through scientific analysis of the materials used to build the Roman Forum's Atrium Vestae. They found that successive phases of modification to the building saw improvements including higher quality raw materials, higher brick firing temperatures, and better ratios between carbonate and silicate building materials.
The team's analysis could offer important supplements to the techniques currently used by historians and archaeologists. It could also help these academics to end long-standing disputes regarding the time periods of certain building techniques. Since the Atrium Vestae was modified in five distinctive building phases spanning several centuries, the study highlighted technological improvements throughout the Roman age in unprecedented levels of detail.
The techniques employed by Rosi and colleagues included optical and electron microscopy, and measurements of how x-rays were diffracted as they passed through the materials. They also determined the molecular fingerprints, or spectra, of the materials. These are based on the characteristic ways in which their molecules vibrate when illuminated by electromagnetic radiation of specific energies.
Using these methods, the team revealed the colours, textures and chemical compositions of Roman building materials on microscopic scales for the first time; clearly revealing technological improvements over the centuries. The findings of Rosi's team are a clear demonstration of the advantages of scientific methods in archaeological analysis. Their techniques could soon be used in future studies to unlock further mysteries concerning the technologies employed by ancient civilisations.
One of the best preserved Roman houses at Herculaneum reopened on Wednesday after more than 30 years, its exquisite paintings brought back to life thanks to a revolutionary new technique.
Herculaneum is much better preserved than its neighbour Pompeii [Credit: Andreas Solaro/AFP]
The three-storey House of the Bicentenary is perhaps the most beautiful noble house so far excavated from under the pyroclastic flow that entombed Herculaneum in the devastating 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius that also destroyed nearby Pompeii.
Although much smaller than its better known neighbour outside the southern Italian city Naples, Herculaneum was a wealthier town with more exquisite architecture, much of which is still to be uncovered.
Herculaneum was buried under at least 15 metres (almost 50 foot) of rock, much more than the around four metres of ash at Pompeii, which for years made Herculaneum less attractive to looters and archaeologists alike.
The archaeological site of Herculaneum in Ercolano was buried under at least 15 metresof rock [Credit: Andreas Solaro/AFP]
The Bicentenary house, which also features stunning mosaics, gets its name from the fact that it was re-discovered in 1938, exactly 200 years after official excavations began at the site under the Bourbon monarchy.
The 600-square-metre (6,400-square-feet) building was closed to the public in 1983 as it began to fall apart, including its priceless wall paintings in the Tablinum, the room traditionally used by the father of the house for business and to receive clients.
Conservators focused on two large mythological scenes, one of Venus and Mars and one of Daedalus and Pasiphae, and paintings of a variety of other Dionysian themes common to the homes of Herculaneum's wealthy inhabitants.
The House of the Bicentenary was closed to the public in 1983 as it began to fall apart [Credit: Andreas Solaro/AFP]
"The reason we chose this room to study and conserve is because the wall paintings here are some of the most beautiful at the site, but also some of the most severely deteriorated," said Leslie Rainer, wall painting conservator from the Getty Conservation Institute.
Black and white photos of the paintings from 1938 show remarkably well-preserved images, but they had almost disappeared before the latest restoration work began.
"The wall paintings are so significant that it was a terrible shame to see them so deteriorated and not to have solutions for how to conserve them properly," Rainer told AFP.
Wax was applied to the artworks to try to preserve them but it was a misguided practice [Credit: Andreas Solaro/AFP]
The house became a laboratory for finding "new innovative treatment methods and materials that can be used here but also applied around the site and in the region for wall paintings that have similar conservation issues," said Rainer.
Not only was the room left exposed to the elements after it was excavated, but wax was applied to the paintings in a well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt to preserve them.
"The combination of the dramatic environmental fluctuations with the wax covering the wall paintings led them to be pulled up and so they were flaking and powdering, so we had to find solutions."
Conservators have found a new method to remove the wax layer while still preserving the paint [Credit: Andreas Solaro/AFP]
After experimenting with different methods to try to preserve the paint and also remove the wax, a non-organic rigid gel solution was found and "we were able to actually remove that wax layer and have a stable paint layer underneath," Rainer said.
The wax method was used widely throughout the region and threatens the survival of many of the artworks it was meant to protect, but the experts working on the Bicentenary House hope this technique can be used to save them once its details are published.
"We hope that professionals can use this method for wall paintings that show similar issues around the whole region," said Rainer, as conservators apply vivid colours to the newly revealed surfaces around her.
The U.S. ambassador to Italy has returned to Italian officials the head of a statue stolen from an archaeological site in Rome in 1968.
Credit: Carabinieri dei Beni Culturali
Ambassador Lewis Eisenberg handed over the marble head of the mythical figure Pan to Culture Minister Dario Franceschini Thursday on the 50th anniversary of a Carabinieri unit dedicated to the recovery of cultural artifacts.
Carabinieri special investigators spotted the marble head in a California auction catalog in 2016 and notified their U.S. counterparts.
U.S. attache Armando Astorga said the piece entered the United States in the mid-2000s, after spending many years in private hands in Europe.
So far, the investigation has not determined the original thief.
U.S. Homeland Security Investigations has repatriated some 12,000 items to over 35 countries since 2007.
The intestinal microbiome is a delicate ecosystem made up of billions and billions of microorganisms, bacteria in particular, that support our immune system, protect us from viruses and pathogens, and help us absorb nutrients and produce energy.
The industrialization process in Western countries had a huge impact on its content. This was confirmed by a study on the bacteria found in the intestine of Otzi, the Iceman who, in 1991, emerged from the ice of the Otztal Alps, where Italy borders with Austria. Scientists of Eurac Research examined samples of the mummy's bacteria, confirming the findings of the researchers of the University of Trento who had analyzed the genome of intestinal microorganisms of over 6500 individuals from all continents.
Previous studies by the University of Trento had demonstrated that there is a connection between the microbiome's bacterial content and the increase, in Western countries, of obesity, autoimmune and gastrointestinal diseases, allergies and other complex conditions. In the study published in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers from Cibio of the University of Trento and Eurac in Bolzano/Bozen demonstrated that the differences between Western and non-Western or prehistoric microbiome lie in the decrease of some types of bacteria that process complex and vegetal fibers in the intestine.
That may have been caused by the Westernization process. Changes in diet, which is now higher in fat and low in fibers, a sedentary lifestyle in an urban setting, the development of new hygiene habits and the widespread use of antibiotics and other medical products have, with no doubt, made our life safer, but impacted the delicate balance of our microbiome.
The scientists of Eurac Research in Bolzano/Bozen sequenced the Iceman's DNA and were able to identify his set of bacteria, while the researchers of the University of Trento compared it with the microbiome of contemporary non-Westernized populations (from Tanzania and Ghana in particular), which are not used to processed food and have non-Westernized hygiene practices and lifestyle. Their findings were surprising.
The study focused, in particular, on Prevotella copri, a microbe that, when is found in our intestine, is usually the most represented. P. copri is present in 30% of Western individuals.
"First of all, we found out that P. copri it is not a monotypic species but is composed of four distinct but similar clades," explained Nicola Segata, coordinator of the study with Adrian Tett of Cibio of the University of Trento. "We then noticed that at least three of these four clades are almost always present in non-Westernized populations, but are much less prevalent in Westernized individuals. And when it is so, there usually is only one of the four clades. We postulated that the complex process of Westernization had a considerable impact on the gradual disappearance of this bacterium. Our hypothesis was confirmed by the analysis of ancient samples of DNA that were made available by Frank Maixner of the Institute for Mummy Studies at Eurac Research. The Iceman's guts contained three of the four clades of P. copri. And the four clades were also co-present in fossilized stool samples from Mexico that are more than one thousand years old. We still do not know what are the biomedical consequences of these changes of the microbiome which has evolved considerably in recent decades while the human body it colonizes has remained genetically practically unchanged for centuries,"
"Through these 'ancient' samples," continued Tett, "we were able to study the evolution of these clades and now we know that they genetically delineated with the human species and before the initial human migrations out of the African continent."
The study is the result of close collaboration with the research group of Albert Zink and Frank Maixner at Eurac Research in Bolzano/Bozen. Their team was responsible for the collection and pre-analysis of the Iceman's DNA samples. "The relation between the evolution of the human species and the diversity of intestinal microorganisms, as a field of research, is still rather unexplored, but can yield important results in the future through the analysis of ancient DNA. For this reason, finding more advanced and less invasive techniques to obtain and analyze DNA from human remains is one of the major areas of research at Eurac" concluded the microbiologist of Eurac Research Frank Maixner.
A vivid fresco depicting an armour-clad gladiator standing victorious as his wounded opponent stumbles gushing blood has been discovered in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, Italy's culture ministry said Friday.
A 'Murmillo' fighter wearing a plumed, wide-brimmed helmet with visor stands victorious holding a large rectangular shield in one hand and a sword in the other. Behind him is his opponent's, known as the Thraex', shield, who stands across suffering from wounds and appears to be falling to the ground [Credit: Pompeii Archaeological Park]
The striking scene in gold, blue and red was uncovered in what experts think was a tavern frequented by gladiators, who fought each other, prisoners and wild animals for the public's entertainment.
"We do not know how this fight ended. Gladiators were killed or shown mercy," Pompeii's director Massimo Osanna said.
A "Murmillo" fighter wearing a plumed, wide-brimmed helmet with visor, holds aloft his large rectangular shield in his left hand, as he grips his short sword in the right.
On the ground next to him lies the shield of the defeated "Thraex", who has suffered deep wounds and is on the point of collapse.
"What is particularly interesting is the extremely realistic representation of the wounds, such as the one on the wrist and chest of the unsuccessful gladiator, from which the blood runs, wetting his leggings," Osanna said.
"The Thraex is gesturing with his hand, possibly asking for mercy," he said.
The fresco was discovered on a wall in what was probably a tavern frequented by gladiators [Credit: Pompeii Archaeological Park]
The fresco—which measures 1.12 metres by 1.5 metres—was found in what excavators believe was a basement room, as the imprint of a wooden staircase can be seen above it.
The building was situated not far from the gladiators' barracks in Regio V, an entire quarter of the site that has recently offered up several impressive archaeological finds but is yet to open to the public.
It was most likely a tavern with an upper floor of rooms used either by the innkeeper or by prostitutes, the ministry said.
The discovery was made during works to secure an area of the north of the archaeological park under the Great Pompeii Project, launched after years of bad maintenance and poor weather caused a series of wall collapses.
Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said the find showed Pompeii was "an inexhaustible mine of research and knowledge for the archaeologists of today and the future".
The ruined city in southern Italy is the second most visited tourist site in the country, after the Colosseum in Rome, with more than 3.6 million visitors in 2018.
Perhaps the most significant find at the Regio V so far has been an inscription uncovered last year that proves the city was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius after October 17, 79 AD and not on August 24 as previously thought.
The most eye-catching one, however, was the skeleton of a man in 2018 whose torso was found protruding from a large stone block which had crushed his head.
He appeared to have survived the initial eruption, and attempted to flee as volcanic ash blanketed the city, but was slowed down by a limp and was probably overcome by lethal gases, experts said.
Three skeletons believed to date back to the time of the Romans have been uncovered by workmen who were at a metro station in central Rome, Italy.
Skeleton of adult male unearthed at the Piramide metro station in Rome [Credit: Soprintendenza di Roma]
The first remains found — that of a largely intact male — has been dubbed the 'Pyramid Mummy' by local media and was unearthed on September 20, 2019.
Two further skeletons — that of a mother and child — were found in the area on September 30, 2019.
Workmen were excavating outside the Piramide metro station on Rome's Line B when they came across the ancient remains on September 20, 2019, local media reported.
The human skeleton — which locals have dubbed the 'Pyramid Mummy', after the name of the metro stop — is believed to be largely intact.
Skeletal remains of mother and child [Credit: Soprintendenza di Roma]
Following the initial find, local authorities immediately moved to cordon off the area so that archaeologists could carefully uncover the bones.
The skeleton dates back to the time of the Roman empire, said a spokesperson for the Special Superintendency for the Archaeological Heritage of Rome.
However, an exact age for the man's remains has yet to be established.
Archaeologists working on the site went on to uncover similar skeletal remains of a woman and a child ten days after the initial discovery.
The little baby bones, probably the ribs, next to the woman[Credit: Soprintendenza di Roma]
Experts believe that the three Romans could have been a family, nothing that the child's remains had been placed between the woman's hip and knee, suggesting that she could have been its mother.
Their burial may have formed part of the Necropolis of Via Ostiense, one of Rome's best-preserved ancient cemeteries.
Both skeletons were found surrounded by metal nails, suggesting that they could have been buried in a wooden coffin that had since eroded away.
Researchers led by the renowned ancient artefacts decoder, Professor Brent Seales, will be using Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility in the heart of Oxfordshire, to examine a collection of world-famous ancient artefacts owned by the Institut de France.
One of the two Herculaneum scrolls from L’Institut de France being scanned at Diamond Light Source by the University of Kentucky, Digital Restoration Initiative team [Credit: Digital Restoration Initiative/University of Kentucky]
Using this powerful light source and special techniques the team has developed, the researchers are working to virtually unwrap two complete scrolls and four fragments from the damaged Herculaneum scrolls. After decades of effort, Seales thinks the scans from Diamond represent his teams best chance yet to reveal the elusive contents of these 2,000-year-old papyri.
Prof Seales is director of the Digital Restoration Initiative at the University of Kentucky (US), a research program dedicated to the development of software tools that enable the recovery of fragile, unreadable texts. According to Seales, “Diamond Light Source is an absolutely crucial element in our long-term plan to reveal the writing from damaged materials, as it offers unparalleled brightness and control for the images we can create, plus access to a brain trust of scientists who understand our challenges and are eager to help us succeed."
Texts from the ancient world are rare and precious, and they simply can not be revealed through any other known process. Thanks to the opportunity to study the scrolls at Diamond Light Source, which has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew Mellon Foundation, we are poised to take a tremendous step forward in our ability to read and visualize this material. The scan session promises to be a key moment in our quest for a reliable pathway to reading the invisible library.”
Herculaneum Scroll fragment from Institut de France being scanned at Diamond Light Source [Credit: Diamond Light Source Ltd]
Over the past two decades, Prof Seales and his team have worked to digitally restore and read the vast amount of material in the “invisible library” of irreparably damaged manuscripts. In 2015 they achieved singular success when they visualized the never-before and never-to-be-seen writing trapped inside five complete wraps of the ancient Hebrew scroll from EnGedi. For the first time ever, a complete text from an object so severely damaged that it could never be opened physically was digitally retrieved and recreated, representing a true technical breakthrough. It is this technology that Seales’ team plans to deploy on the data collected at Diamond.
A long-term goal of Prof Seales has been to reveal the contents of the most iconic items in the invisible library, the Herculaneum scrolls. Buried and carbonized by the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, the scrolls are too fragile to be opened and represent the perfect storm of important content, massive damage, extreme fragility, and difficult-to-detect ink.
These famous papyri were discovered in 1752 in an ancient Roman villa near the Bay of Naples believed to belong to the family of Julius Caesar. As such, they represent the only surviving library from antiquity. The majority of the 1,800 scrolls reside at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, although a few were offered as gifts to dignitaries by the King of Naples and wound up at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the British Library, and the Institut de France.
Last May, Prof Seales headed a small team of undergraduate students in Paris to survey the Institut de France’s Herculaneum collection. They examined two completely intact scrolls, along with four small fragments from scrolls unrolled in the late 1800s. All six items will be scanned at Diamond. Because the four fragments contain many layers and feature visible, exposed writing on the top, they will provide the key data needed to develop the next iteration of the team’s “virtual unwrapping” software pipeline, a machine learning algorithm that will enable the visualization of carbon ink.
“We do not expect to immediately see the text from the upcoming scans, but they will provide the crucial building blocks for enabling that visualization. First, we will immediately see the internal structure of the scrolls in more definition than has ever been possible, and we need that level of detail to ferret out the highly compressed layers on which the text sits. In addition, we believe strongly—and contrary to conventional wisdom—that tomography does indeed capture subtle, non-density-based evidence of ink, even when it is invisible to the naked eye in the scan data."
The machine learning tool we are developing will amplify that ink signal by training a computer algorithm to recognize it—pixel by pixel—from photographs of opened fragments that show exactly where the ink is—voxel by voxel—in the corresponding tomographic data of the fragments. The tool can then be deployed on data from the still-rolled scrolls, identify the hidden ink, and make it more prominently visible to any reader.”
The scanning of these delicate items at the leading science facility, Diamond, will be a mammoth undertaking, for all involved. Because of their extreme fragility, the Seales team fabricated custom-fit cases for the scrolls that enable as little handling as possible. Only highly trained conservators are allowed to handle the samples. The Director of the Bibliotheque at the Institut de France, Mme Francoise Berard will personally pack the scrolls into their special cases for travel to the UK, and after arrival, they will be inserted into the I12 beamline at Diamond. The I12 beamline or JEEP (Joint Engineering, Environmental, and Processing) beamline is a high energy X-ray beamline for imaging, diffraction and scattering, which operates at photon energies of 53-150 keV.
While a handful of the scrolls from Herculaneum have been subjected to physical (and largely disastrous) efforts to open them, no one as yet has managed to reveal complete texts from the hundreds that remain tightly closed. Principal Beamline Scientist on the Diamond I12 Beamline where the experiment will take place, Dr Thomas Connolley, adds; “This is the first time an intact scroll has been scanned in such detail at Diamond Light Source. We are very excited to work with the research team, playing our part in what we hope will be a major step forward in unlocking the secrets that the scrolls contain.”
“It’s ironic and somewhat poetic,” concludes Seales, “that the scrolls sacrificed during the past era of disastrous physical methods will serve as the key to retrieving the text from those survive but are unreadable. And by digitally restoring and reading these texts, which are arguably the most challenging and prestigious to decipher, we will forge a pathway for revealing any type of ink on any type of substrate in any type of damaged cultural artefact.”
An international research team led by Giuseppe Marrama from the Institute of Paleontology at the University of Vienna discovered a new and well-preserved fossil stingray with an exceptional anatomy, which greatly differs from living species. The find provides new insights into the evolution of these animals and sheds light on the recovery of marine ecosystems after the mass extinction occurred 66 million years ago. The study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.
One of the three fossils of Lessiniabatis aenigmatica (MNHN F.Bol.566) from the famous fossil site of Monte Bolca (Italy) preserved as part and counterpart. The specimen is housed in the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris [Credit: Giuseppe]
Stingrays (Myliobatiformes) are a very diverse group of cartilaginous fishes which are known for their venomous and serrated tail stings, which they use against other predatory fish, and occasionally against humans. These rays have a rounded or wing-like pectoral disc and a long, whip-like tail that carries one or more serrated and venomous stings. The stingrays include the biggest rays of the world like the gigantic manta rays, which can reach a "wingspan" of up to seven meters and a weight of about three tons.
Fossil remains of stingrays are very common, especially their isolated teeth. Complete skeletons, however, exist only from a few extinct species coming from particular fossiliferous sites. Among these, Monte Bolca, in northeastern Italy, is one of the best known. So far, more than 230 species of fishes have been discovered that document a tropical marine coastal environment associated with coral reefs which dates back to about 50 million years ago in the period called Eocene.
Two living stingrays: a) Taeniura lymma; b) Neotrygon sp. The specimens are in the collection f the Institute of Paleontology of the University of Vienna [Credit: Giuseppe Marrama]
This new fossil stingray has a flattened body and a pectoral disc ovoid in shape. What is striking is the absence of sting and the extremely short tail, which is not long as in the other stingrays, and does not protrude posteriorly to the disc. This body plan is not known in any other fossil or living stingray. Since this animal is unique and peculiar, the researchers named the new stingray Lessiniabatis aenigmatica, which means "bizarre ray from Lessinia" (the Italian area where Bolca is located).
More than 70 percent of the organisms, such as dinosaurs, marine reptiles, several mammal groups, numerous birds, fish and invertebrates, disappeared during the fifth largest extinction event in the Earth's history occurred about 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous. In marine environments, the time after this event is characterized by the emergence and diversification of new species and entire groups of bony and cartilaginous fishes (sharks and rays), which reoccupied the ecological niches left vacant by the extinction's victims. The new species experimented sometimes new body plans and new ecological strategies.
"From this perspective, the emergence of a new body plan in a 50-million-year-old stingray such as Lessiniabatis aenigmatica is particularly intriguing when viewed in the context of simultaneous, extensive diversification and emergence of new anatomical features within several fish groups, during the recovery of the life after the end-Cretaceous extinction event," states Giuseppe Marrama.
