La prima culla del vino: 6.000 a.C.

Earliest evidence 

of wine making 

found in Georgia 

Intensive archaeological excavations currently taking place in Georgia could prove the country was the birthplace of vine cultivation. 

Archaeological excavations currently taking place in Georgia's southern region  could prove the country was the birthplace of vine cultivation  [Credit: Agende News] 

Georgia’s Minister of Culture and Monument Protection Mikheil Giorgadze visited Imiri village in Georgia’s Kvemo Kartli region today where excavations are currently taking place. 
The findings of the dig could prove that ancient people from this site first used wild grapes and vines for health, religious and spiritual reasons, with the vine culture later spreading around the globe. 
Since ancient times in Georgia, the grape vine and wine has been closely related to cult and religious rituals. 
This was true for Georgia in both pagan and Christian times. 
Still today, grapes, grape juice and its products occupy an important place in the diet of the Georgian people. 
In 2014 the National Museum and the National Wine Agency implemented a joint international project to research the history of Georgian wine, which involved an archaeological dig. 
The Government-supported project, titled ‘Research of Georgian Vine and Wine Cultures’, revealed some of the artifacts uncovered in the excavations. 

Excavation works at the Imiri village  [Credit: Agende News] 

Today these findings were presented at Imiri village. 
Some of the findings were grape skins and pips inside old Qvevri (clay) vessels, as well as vessels that contained dusty remains of cultivated vines that date back to the 6th millennium BC. 

The diversity of the wild and indigenous grape varieties, the unique wine vessel (the Qvevri) and the oldest technologies of making wine by Qvevri all confirm that Georgia is truly an ancient wine making country,” said director of the National Museum Davit Lortkipanidze. 

According to archaeological studies the earliest traces of viticulture and wine were found in ancient Neolithic settlements in the neighbourhood of Imiri village. 

Specifically, the archaeological excavations on the territory of Kvemo Kartli saw experts uncover grape seeds that dated back 7-6 thousand years BC. 
It has been confirmed that during the early Neolithic period, people in both eastern and western Georgia were familiar with the culture of wine and wine played an important role 
in the economic life of the local population.

As well as grape seeds and skins, archaeologists also unearthed the remains of cultural wheat and legumes, agricultural implements and pottery, proving that in the Neolithic period, the inhabited humans developed agricultural activities including viticulture and wheat growing. 
Archaeological excavations currently taking place in southern region of Georgia could prove the country was the birthplace of vine cultivation. 
Officials noted Georgia was the only country to have preserved archaic methods of making, keeping and consuming wine, which had been lost in other winemaking centres. 

Excavation works at the Imiri village  [Credit: Agende News] 

The ancient Qvevri vessels that date back to the Neolithic era were discovered during different archaeological excavations. 
Over several digs excavators found cultural vine fossil seeds, tartaric acid remains on the fragments of Qvevri jars and resin from the domesticated use of the grapevine. 
Officials noted the discovery of fragments of the Qvevri clay vessels testified to the fact that as early as the Neolithic period there was not a fledgling, but rather an already well-developed stage of agriculture in Georgia, indicating that these people had started the domestication of the vine on the territory of Georgia even earlier than this period. 

Today, wild grape varieties still spread throughout Georgian territory. 
In the 1980s, the forest vine was included on Georgia’s Red List as an object of state protection. 
Along with wild vine, more than 500 domestic grape varieties are found in Georgia. 

Un filmato (in lingua Inglese):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnWN1XLKjrw

Source: Agende News [May 21, 2015]

Il più antico caso di cancro umano.

Il più antico caso di cancro umano.


Oldest case of human cancer discovered in Siberia 


More than 4,500 years ago, a Siberian man succumbed to a scourge all too familiar to modern humans, a disease that left telltale signs on his bones for Angela Lieverse and her colleagues to read and diagnose. 

In situ photograph of Gorodishche II, Burial 3 

[Credit: Angela Lieverse/ University of Saskatchewan] 

“This represents one of the earliest cases of human cancer worldwide and the oldest case documented thus far from Northeast Asia,” said Lieverse, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Saskatchewan. The findings are published in the journal PLOS ONE.

 Lieverse worked with Baikal– Hokkaido Archaeology Project colleagues Daniel Temple from the U.S. and Vladimir Bazaliiskii from Russia to examine the skeleton of an Early Bronze Age man. 
Exhumed from a small hunter-gatherer cemetery in the Cis-Baikal region of Siberia, he was not in good shape. By the time it took him, the cancer had riddled his bones with holes from head to hip, including his upper arms and upper legs, and virtually all points between. As he lay dying, severe pain and fatigue would have been his constant companions, punctuated by periods of panic as he struggled to breathe. 

Osteolytic and mixed (blastic and lytic) lesions on the left os coxae; a, medial view  of entire element; b, lateral view of ilium; c; posterior view of pubis  

[Credit: Angela Lieverse/University of Saskatchewan] 

When he passed, his community buried him in a fetal position in a circular pit.
 Unlike most men of this period, who would have been buried lying on their back with fishing or hunting gear, he was laid to rest with an ornamental bone and a bone spoon, intricately carved with a winding serpent handle. 
The researchers estimate he would have been between 35 to 40 years old. Lieverse and her team performed a differential diagnosis on the man’s remains, just as if he had died recently. 
After ruling out possibilities such as tuberculosis or fungal diseases, the most likely culprit was metastatic carcinoma, that is, cancer that starts in one part of the body and spreads. “It’s clear the disease had progressed considerably, metastasizing far beyond its original location in the body and contributing to his death,” she said. “His age and sex and the lesions on his bones point to lung cancer or possibly prostate cancer.” 

Diagrammatic representation of skeletal completeness and lesion distribution;  a, anterior view; b, posterior view 

[Credit: Angela Lieverse/ University of Saskatchewan] 

Lieverse explained that ancient skeletons exhibiting signs of cancer are quite rare, sparking the hypothesis that the disease is mostly a recent phenomenon, reflecting various aspects of our modern lifestyle. 

Siberia’s Cis-Baikal is a vast, mountainous region northwest of Lake Baikal. It is the deepest freshwater lake on earth, home to the world’s only freshwater seal, which would have made up part of the man’s diet, along with fish, wild game and seasonal plants—there were certainly no processed foods on the menu. 
These latest findings provide evidence that may help refute this hypothesis, Lieverse said. 

She suspects that, taking into account variables such as longer life expectancies, cancer may have been considerably more common in ancient times than is generally presumed. “As we become more familiar with what metastatic carcinoma looks like in the skeleton, the number of cases identified by bioarchaeological research is likely to increase,” she said. “A related example is scurvy. Once we knew what scurvy does to the skeleton and became familiar with the signs, identification of the disease increased.”


 Source: University of Saskatchewan [December 04, 2014]

L'Idolo di Shigir

Vorrei che si notassero alcuni fattori importanti, in questa notizia:

1) L'Idolo di Shigir (questo è il nome del reperto, un Idolo, in legno di un larice che aveva almeno 159 anni quando fu tagliato) non è un ritrovamento fuori contesto o d'origine dubbia. Fu trovato in uno stagno torbifero nel 1890, in una zona della Siberia Occidentale presso Kirovograd: era sepolto sotto 4 metri di torba e lo scavo in corso era motivato da una miniera d'oro di superficie. Fu ricomposto fino ad un'altezza totale di 2,8 metri da Dmitri Lobanov. Vladimir Tolmachev, nel 1914 rinvenne altri frammenti, per cui pare che inizialmente fosse molto più alto (5,3 metri: vedi i suoi disegni), ma sembra che purtroppo 1,93 mt della sua altezza siano andati persi durante guerre e rivoluzioni russe. Malgrado ciò, si tratta della più alta statua lignea esistente.
2) Gli studiosi che se ne occupano sono internazionalmente noti e non lavorano da soli. Stanno lavorando già dal 1997 in laboratorio.
3) Nessuno fa proclami circa il 'riscrivere la storia'. Certamente, si tratta di un idolo unico, istoriato a tutto tondo, che presenta sette facce e diverse figure ed è di significato incerto.
4) Sono tutti estremamente prudenti nel fare affermazioni riguardo il reperto (i risultati definitivi si avranno tra alcuni mesi). Non formulano neppure ipotesi su come l'idolo stesse in piedi: sembra che non fosse piantato nel terreno.
5) La datazione stessa sarà definita tra breve e si sa che avrà un'approssimazione di circa 50 anni: per ora è provvisoriamente stimata in 9500 anni fa.
6) Si ipotizza che la statua sia stata scolpita nel Mesolitico raschiando il legno con strumenti di pietra e che sia stata ricoperta con un 'codice crittografico' sconosciuto a noi: nessuno ritiene di poterlo decifrare, anche se si ritiene che i segni possano avere avuto un significato.
7) Si ammette unanimamente di trovarsi di fronte ad un'opera d'arte, che è due volte più vecchia delle piramidi (tanto per avere un punto di riferimento della sua antichità).
8) Si ammette trattarsi di un fortunatissimo ritrovamento, che è stato permesso solamente dal fatto che il legno di larice ha proprietà antisettiche, che sono state potenziate dalla torba in cui è affondato il tronco.
9) Qualcuno ha ipotizzato potersi trattare di un'antica scrittura (sarebbe la più antica in assoluto), ma gli scienziati subito avvertono che non vi è Consenso al riguardo.
10) Considera - Pasuco - quanta differenza tra questo modo di procedere, che è serio e scientifico, e ciò che si vede in luoghi più vicini a noi, da parte di persone permalose, che s'offendono terribilmente se le chiami 'ciarlatani'.


9,500 year old 

wooden idol carries 

encoded information 

 The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately 9,500 years ago, and preserved as if in a time capsule in a peat bog on the western fringe of Siberia. 
Expert Svetlana Savchenko, chief keeper of Shigir Idol, believes that the structure's faces carry encoded information from ancient man in the Mesolithic era of the Stone Age concerning their understanding of 'the creation of the world'. 

Scientists close to precise dating of the Shigir Idol, twice as ancient as the  Egyptian Pyramids 

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

German scientists are now close to a precise dating - within five decades - of the remarkable artifact, which is a stunning example of ancient man's creativity. 
The results are likely to be known in late February or early March. 
Now the question is turning among academics to a better understanding of the symbols and pictograms on this majestic larch Idol, one of Russia's great treasures, which is now on display a special glass sarcophagus at its permanent home, Yekaterinburg History Museum, where Savchenko is senior researcher. 
German pre-historian Professor Thomas Terberger said: 'There is no such ancient sculpture in the whole of Europe. 
Studying this Idol is a dream come true. We are expecting the first results of the test at the end of winter, (early) next year.' 

The sculpture was found in 1890 preserved in peat bog on the western  fringe of Siberia [Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

Professor Mikhail Zhilin, leading researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archaeology, explained: 'We study the Idol with a feeling of awe. 
This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force. 
It is a unique sculpture, there is nothing else in the world like this.  
It is very alive, and very complicated at the same time. 
'The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. 
People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.' 
He is adamant that we can draw conclusions about the sophistication of the people who created this masterpiece, probably scraping the larch [[pine]] with a stone 'spoon', even though the detail of the code remains an utter mystery to modern man. 

The sculpture may carry encoded information from ancient man in the Mesolithic  era concerning their understanding of 'the creation of the world'  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

Asked if they lived in permanent fear of mighty forces of mysterious nature, nervously casting around, petrified by danger, he replied: 'Forget it. The men - or man - who created the Idol lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a complicated spiritual world.' 
'It is obvious that the elements of geometrical ornament had some meaning,' stated Savchenko and Zhilin in explaining the Idol's ancient markings. 
'The difficulty of interpretation is the polysemy symbolism of these symbols' - in other words, the possible multiple related meanings. 
According to ethnography, a straight line could denote land, or horizon - the boundary between earth and sky, water and sky, or the borderline between the worlds. 

Aggiungi didascalia

It is believed the sculpture reflects what these people looked like, with straight  noses and high cheekbones 

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

'A wavy line or zigzag symbolised the watery element, snake, lizard, or determined a certain border. In addition, the zigzag signaled danger, like a pike. Cross, rhombus, square, circle depicted the fire or the sun, and so on.' 
Savchenko and other museum staff have postulated that among its purposes was that of an early map, or navigator. 
Straight lines, wave lines and arrows indicated ways of getting to the destination and the number of days for a journey, with waves meaning water path, straight lines meaning ravines, and arrows meaning hills, according to this theory which has yet to be fully researched. Author Petr Zolin, citing scientific work by Savchenko and Zhilin, stated: 'The characters of Idol cannot have an unambiguous interpretation. If these are images of spirits that inhabited the human world in ancient times, the vertical position of figures (one above the other) probably relate to their hierarchy. 

The ancient idol is carved from the trunk of a larch conifer and stands 2.8 metres tall [Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

'Placing images on the front and back planes of the Idol, possibly indicate that they belong to different worlds. If there are depicted myths about the origin of humans and the world, the vertical arrangement of the images may reflect the sequence of events. Ornaments can be special signs which mark something as significant.' 
The Idol reflects what these people looked like, with straight noses and high cheekbones. The impression of the main three-dimensional face, with a gaping mouth, is of an Aztec look, but it is only because the part of the nose of the main face was broken. 
In all there are seven faces, six of which are one dimensional. 

There is no other ancient sculpture like it in the whole of Europe  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

'It is clear that the faces together with the ornament form separate figures,' said Savchenko and Zhilin. 
'On both the front and back of the Idol there are three figures. 
Here they are located one above the other, and the upper seventh figure...connects both sides and crowns the composition.' 
Some have claimed the Idol includes primitive writing, which, if true, would be amongst the first on Earth, but there is no consensus among experts who have studied the Urals statue. 
The Idol was preserved due to a stroke of luck concerning its resting place in the Urals. 

'Placing images on the front and back planes of the Idol, possibly indicate that  they belong to different worlds' says Professor Mikhail Zhilin  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

It happened 'thanks to a combination of antiseptics,' said Professor Zhilin. 
'The idol was made from the Phytoncidic larch, then 'canned' in turf which is an acid anaerobic environment that kills microorganism-destroyers and also has a tanning effect.' The scientists from the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage are using AMS - accelerated mass spectrometry - enabling them to compare analysis of five microscopic samples of the larch from the idol with climate changes data for the past 10,000 years. This will allow them to figure out when exactly the 159 year old larch - from which the Idol is carved - grew. 

The ancient idol is on display in a special glass sarcophagus at its  permanent home in the Yekaterinburg History Museum  

[Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

The tests follow what Professor Terberger called 'a very successful summer trip'  in which 'we worked together with our Russian colleagues from the Yekaterinburg History Museum'. The Idol was originally recovered in January 1890 near Kirovograd; some 2.8 metres in height, it appears to have seven faces. 
It was protected down the millennia by a four metre layer of peat bog on the site of an open air gold mine. 
Lack of funding has, until now, prevented the proper age testing of this Urals treasure. Professor Uwe Hoysner,  from Berlin Archaeological Institute said: 'The Idol is carved from larch, which, as we see by the annual rings, was at least 159 years old. The samples we selected contain important information about the isotopes that correspond to the time when the tree grew.' 

The men - or man - who created the sculpture lived in total harmony  with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a  complicated spiritual world says Mikhail Zhilin  [Credit: Ekaterina Osintseva/Siberian Times] 

The samples used for testing were cut in 1997. 
The Idol was extracted in several parts from the peat bog. Professor Dmitry. I. Lobanov combined the main fragments to reconstitute the sculpture 2.80m high but in 1914 the Siberian archaeologist Vladimir Tolmachev proposed a variant of this reconstruction by integrating previously unused fragments. 
Tragically, some of these fragments were later lost, so only Tolmachev's drawings of them remain.
However, these suggest the original height of the statue was 5.3 metres. 
Some 1.93 metres of the statue did not survive the 20th century's revolutions and wars and it is only visible on his drawings. 

Drawings of the idol by archaeologist Vladimir Tolmachev  
[Credit: Yekaterinburg History Museum] 

But even the size is it now makes it the highest wooden statue in the world. 
One intriguing question debated by Russian scientists is how the Idol - as tall as a two-storey house - was kept in a vertical position. 
Museum staff believe it was never dug into the ground to help it stand upright, and that it was unlikely it was perched against a tree, because it would have covered more than half of its ornaments. 


Author: Anna Liesowska | Source: The Siberian Times [October 23, 2014]

A chi restituire gli ori della Crimea?

E' certamente uno dei problemi minori della presente e confusa situazione, ma sta creando grande imbarazzo fra gli 'addetti ai lavori' del Museo di Amsterdam. 
Gli ori degli Sciti sono in mostra lì e sono costituiti da materiale proveniente da ben cinque musei ukraini, di cui quattro della Crimea. 
Le autorità del Museo olandese - dovendole restituire, alla chiusura della mostra itinerante - si sono rivolte al Ministro degli Esteri olandese, per averne dei lumi. Il problema legale internazionale è allo studio.


Ancient Crimean gold caught in legal limbo 



 Scythian gold and other rare artefacts from Crimea on loan to an Amsterdam museum are in legal limbo after Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. The archaeological museum of the University of Amsterdam has asked the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs for advice and is consulting lawyers about the artefacts, which were due to return to Ukraine when a touring exhibition now at the Allard Pierson Museum closes. 

Objects on view in the exhibition “The Crimea—Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea

 [Credit: University of Amsterdam] 

A spokesman for the university tells The Art Newspaper: “The Allard Pierson Museum considers it extremely important to exercise care in this situation.” 

The objects will remain in the Netherlands for at least the duration of the exhibition, he says, which had been extended from May to August. "Given the complexity of the issue, the manner in which the objects will be returned is currently being investigated by the legal advisers of the university,” he says. 

The artefacts came to the Netherlands based on loan agreements that were concluded prior to the political upheaval in Ukraine and the recent change of power in Crimea. The show opened in Amsterdam in February, having travelled from Bonn in Germany. Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum, told journalists in St Petersburg on Tuesday that it is unclear what will happen to the works on display in the exhibition “The Crimea—Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea”. 

The show features ancient jewellery and armour on loan from five Ukrainian museums, including four in the Crimean peninsula. A controversial referendum in Crimea on 16 March saw a 96% vote in favour of joining the Russian Federation. “The objects from the Kerch museum, which is in Crimea, have been exhibited in Holland and are supposed to return,” Piotrovsky told local media in St Petersburg. 

“A difficult problem arises. On the one hand, legally, everything is against the [Kerch] museum. On the other hand, these objects belong to the museum. We will work out an agreement on how the museum will get them back,” Piotrovsky said. 
The Hermitage was not involved in the exhibition. The St Petersburg museum’s collection includes Scythian gold, however, and it has a branch in Amsterdam. Valentina Mordvintseva, an archaeologist from the Crimean branch of the Institute of Archaeology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, who helped organise the show, says it explores “the interaction and diversity of cultures on the Crimean peninsula in the period from the seventh century BC to the seventh century AD”. 
Highlights include a group of first century AD Chinese lacquer boxes found at a Crimean burial site along with bronze Roman vessels: “This is the westernmost find of Chinese lacquer in the world, which indicates the long-distance contact of various ancient peoples; for all practical purposes, it shows the ties between two great empires—China and Rome.” Mordvtinseva told Russia’s NTV news channel that breaking up Crimea’s collections would be a fatal move. “This is murder, both for the objects and for the museum,” she said. 

Author: Sophia Kishkovsky 

 Source: The Art Newspaper [March 27, 2014]

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