#The Ancient Americas

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Crab Vessel with Double Spout.

Place of origin: Colombia, Calima Region

Period: Ilama Period

Date: 1500 B.C.-A.D. 100

Medium: Ceramics

[salmonella-destroyer-of-worlds]

[vyoru]

Mochis x the Olympics !

Some card art I did for the mochidex ! So glad Im finally able to post these. You should totally get the bot in your server if you haven’t, lots of amazing artists that put their hard work into this event !! super fun

[blueiscoool]

New Mexico Footprints are Oldest Sign of Humans in Americas

Fossil footprints date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, upending previous theory that humans reached continent later.

New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are probably the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew.

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands national park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake – which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.

The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.

The reported age of the footprints challenges the once conventional wisdom that humans did not reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.

“This is a subject that’s always been controversial because it’s so significant – it’s about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world,” said Thomas Urban, an archaeological scientist at Cornell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.

Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he “was a bit skeptical before” but now is convinced.

The new study isolated about 75,000 grains of pure pollen from the same sedimentary layer that contained the footprints.

“Dating pollen is arduous and nail-biting,” said Kathleen Springer, a research geologist at the US Geological Survey and a co-author of the new paper.

Ancient footprints of any kind can provide archaeologists with a snapshot of a moment in time. While other archeological sites in the Americas point to similar date ranges – including pendants carved from giant ground sloth remains in Brazil – scientists still question whether such materials really indicate human presence.

“White Sands is unique because there’s no question these footprints were left by people, it’s not ambiguous,” said Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, who was not involved in the study.

[haridraws]

The 600-year old Birnham Oak

In central Scotland, there are just two trees left standing of the ancient wood named in the witches' prophecies in Macbeth.*

*(They tell him he'll never get vanquished until Birnham wood comes to Dunsinane so he thinks he's invincible but spoilers: he is not.)

I just about managed to get there in an offroad wheelchair, do a drawing of it, and... crawl inside the hollow trunk and perhaps pick up some kind of exciting curse.

(More travel drawings here)

[aphetaliamessages]

APH Nations' First Kiss

Italy: Holy Rome

That one's obvious as hell. We all saw it

Germany: Italy

The only person he's ever kissed. His first kiss as Holy Rome, and again as an adult. He was too awkward for anyone else before him.

His beefcake powers were not stronger than his absolute disaster gay syndrome

Japan: Alfred during Truth or Dare

He hated it. "Friends don't kiss friends! It's FORBIDDEN! And not in a hot way!!"

...Well, that was his first kiss on the mouth 🇬🇷

America: Forbidden kiss during the Cold War

Alfie certainly Became One With Russia that night. It was Russia's first as well

France: Some random guy in 1352

He was 18 in human terms and feeling adventurous. Little did he know the real adventure would begin 300 years later when an 18 year old Pirate England would swashbuckle into his heart

England: France. When Iggy came back as a pirate

He was really only ever meant for one man. No amount of tsunderism can allow him to escape Fate. It was also the day he lost his virginity 😌

China: A soldier

He would smooch the other Chinese soldiers in the tents. When he met Romulus that was all out the window tho

Canada: Cuba

They shared an ice cream like those 50s kids in the movies

Prussia: France

He drunkenly kissed him once, during the 1700s, at a party. Fran tasted like cigarettes, gross.

Ancient Rome: Julius Caesar

Turns out Caesar was even more of a manwhore than Rommy

[swiftiesbuddie]

Marvel once again dropping the ball on casting Romani actors for Romani characters.

EDIT: Also, the fact that in the comics, before Captain Marvel is a White woman, they were a Black woman (at least Mar-vell went from being a White man to a White woman) and the OG Doctor Doom is a Romani man, but in the MCU, our introduction to the characters are both White people. And same goes for the Maximoffs.

And whitewashing Wiccan, Lilia Calderu, the Ancient One, and casting a fairer-skinned actor for America Chavez. Not a good look for them.

(Thanks to everyone for the corrections)

[marykatewiles]

A new installment of Hobbit Houses of America is here!

I've had my eye on Ancient Lore Village for years and I'm so happy to have finally gotten the chance to visit, and that they were so welcoming! Check out. my newest video to get the whole review of this magical place and to go inside three of their different stays there. It really is like no other place on earth!

[pierrotsoup]

debuting the gilgamesh fanart on tumblr🫡🫡 (what dreaming about a meteorite that you love as you love your wife does to a mf)

[blackcat-brazil]

1,500-year-old Ceramic Maya Figurine with Removable Helmet, from El Perú-Waka', Petén, Guatemala.

[lanada]

Ignacio Gómez | El Pachuco / Zoot Suit

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Fish.

Culture: Mezcala

Place of origin: Middle Balsas Basin

Period: Late Preclassic-Late Classic

Date: 500 B.C.-A.D. 900

Medium: Cut, carved and polished stone.

[typhlonectes]

Ancient Amazonians created mysterious ‘dark earth’ on purpose

Soil study suggests today’s Indigenous Amazonians are making new terra preta

Mysterious patches of fertile black soil pepper the verdant Amazon rainforest. They sit in stark contrast with the reddish, eroded soil that dominates the basin. Researchers have long thought this Amazonian dark earth—or terra preta—was created by pre-Hispanic Indigenous civilizations, which have inhabited the region for millennia, but it wasn’t clear how. Now, a multidisciplinary team of scientists and Indigenous partners suggests the ancient Amazonians intentionally created the rich soil thousands of years ago to better foster their crops, and that their modern-day descendants are still making new terra preta today.

Read more: https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-amazonians-created-mysterious-dark-earth-purpose

[banefolk]

Did you know North America has a native lotus? Nelumbo lutea or yellow lotus is one of only two wild lotus species left on the planet. This prehistoric giant produces the largest flower in North America - the size of your head! The leaves average two feet across. It grows from the Great Lakes down to Central America and the Caribbean. It is edible, medicinal, mildly poisonous, and mildly psychoactive. Many Native American tribes believed it had mystical powers.

More info:

• Native American Ethnobotany Database

• Plants for a Future Database

• Wikipedia

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

[neil-gaiman]

Do you remember what the first piece of mythology was that you read?

What is your favorite myth?

and today it is probably "Coyote and the Mouse Girls", a Koryak story I read in Barry Lopez's wonderful "Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with his Daughter, even if the Coyote in it isn't really Coyote but Kutkh, the Koryak Raven-Spirit who sometimes created the world, and who has a lot of back-history with the mice, at least according to the Wikipedia entry.

Tomorrow it will be something else.

[reasonsforhope]

"Beneath 1,350 square miles of dense jungle in northern Guatemala, scientists have discovered 417 cities that date back to circa 1000 B.C. and that are connected by nearly 110 miles of “superhighways” — a network of what researchers called “the first freeway system in the world.”

Scientist say this extensive road-and-city network, along with sophisticated ceremonial complexes, hydraulic systems and agricultural infrastructure, suggests that the ancient Maya civilization, which stretched through what is now Central America, was far more advanced than previously thought.

Mapping the area since 2015 using lidar technology — an advanced type of radar that reveals things hidden by dense vegetation and the tree canopy — researchers have found what they say is evidence of a well-organized economic, political and social system operating some two millennia ago.

The discovery is sparking a rethinking of the accepted idea that the people of the mid- to late-Preclassic Maya civilization (1000 B.C. to A.D. 250) would have been only hunter-gatherers, “roving bands of nomads, planting corn,” says Richard Hansen, the lead author of a study about the finding that was published in January and an affiliate research professor of archaeology at the University of Idaho.

“We now know that the Preclassic period was one of extraordinary complexity and architectural sophistication, with some of the largest buildings in world history being constructed during this time,” says Hansen, president of the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies, a nonprofit scientific research institution that focuses on ancient Maya history.

These findings in the El Mirador jungle region are a “game changer” in thinking about the history of the Americas, Hansen said. The lidar findings have unveiled “a whole volume of human history that we’ve never known” because of the scarcity of artifacts from that period, which were probably buried by later construction by the Maya and then covered by jungle.

Lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging, works via an aerial transmitter that bounces millions of infrared laser pulses off the ground, essentially sketching 3D images of structures hidden by the jungle. It has become a vital tool for archaeologists who previously relied on hand-drawings of where they estimated areas of note might be and, by the late 1980s, the first 3D maps.

When scientists digitally removed ceiba and sapodilla trees that cloak the area, the lidar images revealed ancient dams, reservoirs, pyramids and ball courts. El Mirador has long been considered the “cradle of the Maya civilization,” but the proof of a complex society already being in place circa 1000 B.C. suggests “a whole volume of human history that we’ve never known before,” the study says."

-via The Washington Post, via MSN, because Washington Post links don't work on tumblr for some godawful reason. May 20, 2023.