World War I-Era Training Trenches Found in Ireland

COUNTY DOWN, IRELAND— Archaeologist Heather Montgomery of Queen’s University is investigating the remains of military trenches uncovered in Northern Ireland, near the Ballykinler army base. BBC News reports that many of the men who trained in these trenches went on to fight in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the Battle of Messines in 1917. “The training they did in there, did it actually help them?” asked Tony Canniford, estate manager for Ballykinler. “Is there any history within the bottom of the trenches? Most soldiers drop stuff when they’re training.” Plans to restore the trenches and open to the public are in the works. To read about a well-known World War I battlefield.

Bronze Wing May Have Graced Roman Victory Statuette

GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND—A bronze wing measuring 5.5 inches long has been unearthed in southwestern England. At first it had been thought that the wing, discovered in an earthen bank behind what would have been the Roman city wall, was part of an eagle statue. But Martin Henig of Oxford University has concluded that the wing was actually part of a Roman statuette of Victoria, the goddess of victory. “It would be nice to think a retired Roman soldier, spending his retirement years in Gloucester, had a nice statuette to Victory as thanks for making it through the Roman invasion of Britain in one piece,” Neil Holbrook of Cotswold Archaeology said in a BBC News report.

Solstice Alignments Spotted in Washington, D.C., Garden

TURIN, ITALY—The statues and walkways in a symmetrical nineteenth-century garden in Washington D.C. are aligned to the rising and setting sun on the summer and winter solstices, according to physicist Amelia Sparavigna of Politecnico di Torino. Live Science reports that, using satellite imagery and astronomical software, Sparavigna found that the solstice sun aligns with the statue of President Andrew Jackson that stands in the center of the Lafayette Square garden. Four walkways radiate out from this statue. Standing near the statue of Andrew Jackson, it would appear that on the summer solstice, the sun rises at the northeast end of one path, and sets at the northwest end of the opposite path. On the winter solstice, the sun would appear to rise at the southeast end of another path and set at the southwest end of its opposite. Sparavigna says it is unclear why designer Andrew Jackson Downing aligned the ends of the walkways to the solstice sun.

Scientists Say “Lost City” Formed by Natural Phenomenon

NORWICH, ENGLAND—Scientists from the University of Athens and the University of East Anglia say that what looked like the paved floors, courtyards, and colonnades of a lost city in shallow waters off the coast of the Greek island Zakynthos were actually created by a natural geological phenomenon up to five million years ago. According to a report in Tech Times, Julian Andrews of the University of East Anglia noticed that there wasn’t any pottery or other signs of human activity around the supposed ruins, which were discovered by recreational divers. The researchers took a closer look at the mineral content and texture of the stones with X-rays, microscopy, and stable isotope techniques. They think the column-shaped concretions are the result of mineralization at hydrocarbon seeps along a fault under the seabed. Microbes in the seafloor sediments used the methane and other gases from the fault as fuel, changing the chemistry of the sediment and forming the concretions. Erosion eventually exposed and shaped the concretions. “This kind of phenomenon is quite rare in shallow waters,” Andrews said. “Most similar discoveries tend to be many hundreds and often thousands of meters deep underwater.”

New Thoughts on Dog Domestication

OXFORD, ENGLAND—A genetic study led by Laurent Frantz of the University of Oxford suggests that dogs may have been domesticated separately in Asia and in Europe or the Near East. The researchers obtained DNA from the inner ear bone of a nearly 5,000-year-old dog discovered at Newgrange, a site on the east coast of Ireland, and sequenced its entire genome. They then compared it to the nuclear DNA of 605 modern dogs from around the world and calculated a genetic mutation rate. The analysis revealed a divide between Asian dogs and European dogs between 6,400 and 14,000 years ago, and a sharp decline in the numbers of European dogs. “We never saw this split before because we didn’t have enough samples,” project leader and evolutionary biologist Greger Larson said in a report in Science. Remains of dogs found in Germany have been estimated to be more than 16,000 years old, however, suggesting that dogs could have been domesticated in Europe before migrating Asian dogs might have replaced them. “We don’t know if the dogs that evolved [early] in Europe were an evolutionary dead end, but we can safely say that their genetic legacy has mostly been erased from today’s dogs,” said Frantz.

Maya May Have Tracked Venus From Acanceh Observatory

MÉRIDA, MEXICO—According to a report in Fox News Latino and the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior, Beatriz Quintal Suaste of the Yucatán National Institute of Anthropology and History says that an observatory at the Early Classic Maya site of Acanceh may have helped priest-astronomers track the movement of the planet Venus. The third-brightest object in the sky after the sun and the moon, Venus is thought to have been represented in Maya mythology by a god named Noh Ek. The new study suggests that the southern edge of the observatory aligns with the northernmost position of Venus in the night sky. Three codexes found at the site support the idea that the ancient astronomers would have been able to track Venus’s 584-day cycle through the sky from the observatory.

Kolkata: Discovery of predator fish that resembles an alligator concerns experts

Experts are concerned about the discovery of a predatory fish that can grow up to eight feet from Subhas Sarovar in Kolkata’s eastern fringe of Beliaghata as it can destroy local ecosystem and biodiversity.

A local angler, Shibu Mondol, caught a 3.5-feet long Alligator Gar – a fish that resembles an alligator with long sharp teeth and equally predatory instincts and sometimes known to attack humans – two months ago.

Biodiversity experts, ecologists and anglers say the fish could kill almost every other fish in the lake. The prehistoric relatives of this mega fish inhabited many parts of the world, but today gars live only in North and Central America. Of the seven known species, the Alligator Gar is the largest.

 “It is a highly carnivorous fish. It not only kills other fishes but there are reports of it attacking humans too. The fish’s egg is also poisonous. It has no natural enemies and hence can become invasive in no time destroying the local ecosystem and biodiversity,” Mathe Rajeev Mathew, expert member of the National Biodiversity Authority and the Telangana State Biodiversity Board, said.

Alligator Gar has already become a nuisance in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and reports of the fish spreading fast and becoming invasive in water bodies of Tamil Nadu are also pouring in. In 2015, an Alligator Gar was caught from a well in Dadar in Mumbai.

A group of experts has been called in to tackle the menace.

“This is the first time that this species has been caught in the city. We would like to send a team and collect the specimen. We would also try to explore the lake to check if their population has proliferated and how big is the threat,” KC Gopi, a fish expert of the Zoological Survey of India, said.

Experts say they are usually smuggled into the country to be reared in aquariums. But when the fish starts gaining size and kills other fish, owners often release them in the local water bodies.

“We have had a similar experience with another aquarium fish called the Crocodile fish while working in East Kolkata Wetlands. They are bought by aquarium keepers and then released into wild when they grow big. Crocodile fish are now found in almost every pond and lake in Kolkata and are destroying the local biodiversity,” Dipayan Dey, who heads the city based NGO South Asian Forum for Environment, said.

Mondol – the person who caught the fish - gave a scary account of how he caught the fish as it tried to attack him and snap his finger. Mondol is a member of the West Bengal Angler’s Association and fishes regularly in Subhas Sarovar.

“Unlike a Rohu or Katla fish, which usually tries to drag the rope deep into the pond after it is hooked, this fish was lying idle in the water like a tortoise. When I started pulling it out of the water, I was shocked to see the alligator-like snout. I screamed and local residents soon rushed to the spot. The fish after being pulled out not only made a dart to bite me but also killed a Katla fish which I caught earlier,” Mondol said.

The Alligator Gar that Mondol caught weighed more than five kilos.

One of Mondol’s friends killed the fish and ate its meat that tasted sour. Mondol, however, managed to retain the skin and head and is drying to preserve it.

“We couldn’t cut the fish with a knife. It was so hard that it had to be hacked with an axe,” Mondol said.

World War I–Era Training Camp Excavated in Ohio

CHILLICOTHE, OHIO—The Chillicothe Gazette reports that archaeologist Andy Sewell, members of the Ohio History Connection, and additional volunteers are investigating Camp Sherman, a large World War I–era training site for the Ohio Army National Guard, ahead of the construction of a power distribution center. The team has uncovered sewer pipes and the foundations of several buildings, including one they think might have been a fire station. “Surprises have been finding parts of buildings that don’t match the maps,” Sewell said. “Mainly, the buildings are where they are supposed to be, but there’s a mess hall, for instance, that’s further to the west than it shows on the map, and it kind of matches up with some of the photos that show it in line with another mess hall,” he said. Footprints in the bakery’s concrete could also reflect how quickly the camp was constructed. Charred pages from a ledger, a broken bottle, the base of a toilet, food waste, and burned soil where the bakery ovens may have been located have also been found.

Blade of Ancient Egyptian Dagger Analyzed

MILAN, ITALY—Daniela Comelli of the Polytechnic University of Milan and her team conducted an analysis of the dagger found in the wrappings of Tutankhamun’s mummy by Howard Carter in 1925. The dagger, which dates to the fourteenth century B.C., has a gold handle, a rock crystal pommel, a gold sheath, and an iron blade. But the ancient Egyptians are thought to have developed iron smelting much later, in the eighth century B.C. “The problem is iron working is related to its high melting point,” Comelli said in an Associated Press report. “Because of it, early smiths couldn’t heat ore enough to extract iron and couldn’t forge the iron into weapons.” Using a technique called X-ray fluorescence, Comelli found that Tutankhamun’s metal blade contains ten percent nickel and 0.6 percent cobalt, a composition that is similar to that of known metallic meteorites. The analysis suggests that the dagger could have been hammered from rare meteoritic iron, which is thought to have been considered more valuable than gold.

Texts From the Early Years of Roman Rule Found in London

LONDON, ENGLAND—Excavations at the site of the new European Bloomberg headquarters have yielded 405 Roman writing tablets, 87 of which have been deciphered. According to a report in BBC News, this more than quadruples the number of known Roman writing tablets recovered in London. Romans would have used styluses to write on a layer of blackened beeswax covering such wooden tablets. The wax did not survive on these tablets, but some of the etchings went through the wax to mark the wood, which was preserved for nearly 2,000 years in the mud of the buried Walbrook River. Roger Tomlin, an expert in cursive Latin, deciphered and interpreted the writings with the help of digital photographic methods. The texts include the earliest-known reference to London, an alphabet thought to have been written as practice or to demonstrate literacy, and a financial document dated January 8, A.D. 57. Researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology say it is the earliest intrinsically dated document to have been found in the United Kingdom.