Oldest known shipwreck

Tech & Science Researchers have reported the discovery of the oldest known drawing in a cave on the southern coast of South Africa, according to a study published in the journal Nature. The drawing, which takes the form of a simple, red, six-by-three line, cross-hatched pattern was found on a small piece of silcrete—a fine-grained rock formed from sand and gravel—unearthed in 73,000-year-old sediments from the Middle Stone Age. Using microscopic and chemical analysis, an international team of researchers has concluded that the pattern was intentionally drawn using a primitive pointed crayon made from red ochre—a natural clay earth pigment. This likely had a tip measuring between 1 and 3 millimeters in width, according to experiments conducted to recreate it. The lines that make up the pattern terminate abruptly at the edges of the silcrete fragment, suggesting that it once covered a larger surface, and may have been more complex, although the researchers can … [Read more...] about 73,000-Year-Old ‘Hashtag’ Found in South African Cave Is the Earliest Known Drawing

Tech & Science International Affairs A “whitish mass” found in an Egyptian tomb could be among the oldest solid cheese found to date, according to a study published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. The tomb, which is located in the vast ancient burial ground of Saqqara, belongs to Ptahmes—mayor of the ancient city of Memphis and a high-ranking official under the 19th Dynasty Pharaohs Sethi I and Ramses II (1290−1213 B.C.). During excavations in 2013-214, researchers found a jar containing the intriguing solidified material wrapped in a canvas fabric, which may have been used to preserve its contents. “The archaeologist suspected it was a kind of food left for the owner of the tomb and they decided to proceed with the chemical analyses,” Enrico Greco, an author of the study from the Department of Chemical Sciences at the University of Catania, Italy, told Newsweek. Recommended Slideshows 67 The Best Pictures Ever Taken in Space 47 … [Read more...] about Ancient Egypt: Did Researchers Just Find the World’s Oldest Cheese?

Tech & Science A layer of fossilized microbes that most likely lived on the floor of an ancient riverbed was discovered in South Africa. These microbes lived about 3.22 billion years ago, according to a new study published in Nature Geoscience. Researchers from the European Institute for Marine Studies discovered the fossilized microbes on what’s thought to be one of the world's oldest shorelines, in the Barberton Makhonjwa Mountains of eastern South Africa, Stefan Lalonde told Live Science. A co-author of the new study, he is a geochemist from the European Institute for Marine Studies in France. The idea that life existed this early in Earth's history has been around for decades, but a lack of hard evidence has persisted, Hugo Beraldi Campesi, a geobiologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Live Science. He was not involved in the new research. "The problem was always the lack of hard evidence — until now," he said. … [Read more...] about Scientists Found Some Of The Oldest Evidence Of Life On Earth In South Africa

Tech & Science Animals Snakes Reptiles Two small chunks of amber contain the first known fossil snakes ever found trapped in the glassy substance, scientists have revealed. Estimated to be almost 100 million years old, one of the honey-colored hunks contains the oldest known baby snake ever discovered. These gleaming globs of amber, scientists reported in the journal Science Advances, can unlock the secrets of the ancient creatures: their evolutionary history and the environment they lived in. Skeletal remains from the Xiaophis myanmarensis snake hatchling are trapped in Burmese amber. Ming BAI/Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Workers unearthed the amber in Myanmar quarries located near the Chinese border. People have collected amber in the country for more than a century, study author Michael Caldwell told Newsweek, but the quarries have only recently started to yield significant numbers of ancient biological treasures. Recommended Slideshows 67 The Best … [Read more...] about 100 Million-year-old Baby Snake Preserved in Amber Is Oldest Ever Discovered