Drought Reveals Sunken Treasures

Mother Nature will always have the last laugh. Sometimes, we can share in it.

That's the situation in Poland, where a record low in the level of water in the Vistula River caused by a recent drought has unveiled a bunch of treasures stolen by Sweden invaders in the 17th Century. Seems the Swedes were eager to get away or too greedy or whatever and they loaded the barge too much and the whole thing sunk to the bottom of the river. They had planned to move the marble up the river from Warsaw to Gdansk and then out through the Baltic Sea, but it wasn't to be. And, not being skilled in dredging (or for some other mysterious reason), the Swedes decided to leave the stuff behind.

 The Vistula, the country's longest river, was a bit of a dumping ground during World War Two as well, as first Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union occupied cities along the river. The same low water levels have revealed artifacts from the 1940s as well, and researchers have said that some recently uncovered Jewish gravestones would be turned over to Warsaw's Jewish Historical Institute.

 The heavy stuff stolen by the Swedes includes large blocks of carved marble that formed part of the foundation and interior of some splendid Polish palaces. It's not exactly lightweight, which is another reason that it has remained on the bottom of the river bed all these years. But, the drop in the water level of the river has effectively brought the marble closer to the surface and so modern technology can, without a supreme effort, get that marble out of the river and onto archaeologists' work tables where it belongs.

Paradoxically, the water level is a bit too low for the floating cranes needed to do the job. Mother Nature, always having the last laugh indeed.

Leaning Tower of Decadence: Colosseum Sinking, Engineers Report

What is it with leaning buildings? You'd think they'd get it right by now. But now comes word that the Colosseum, one of the most famous and recognizable relics of the successes and excesses of the Roman Empire, is on a slant, more than a foot lower on the south side than on the north side. I guess, though, the first serious settling in a couple of millennia is a wonder to behold.


The Romans built things to last: temples, baths, roads, aqueducts. They didn't do so well with less tangible things like the Republic or the Empire, but they sure knew how to use stone to good effect.


You could argue that not too many Roman roads are around anymore, and that is true, in large part because we've found better uses for that land, like building modern roads or settlements. Earthquakes have claimed more than a fair share of temples and aqueducts through the years. Some of the more famous temples are still standing, as are some amazing aqueducts. Other buildings are still wish us, most notably the Colosseum. But it's sinking, the result no doubt of thousands of years of erosion.


You'll remember that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was leaning a little too much in recent decades and had to be closed for a significant period of time while engineers made sure that the Leaning part of the Tower wasn't enough to make it topple on some poor tourists just in for the day. The same thing could well happen to the Colosseum, although closing it for a prolong period of time could well put a dent in Rome's tourism revenue. Still, better safe than sorry, better repairing the big ring instead of letting it topple over on some poor motorists just in for the afternoon.


Speaking of motorists, scientists are studying traffic patterns, to see how much the constant vehicular traffic affects the crack in the Colosseum base that has opened up a fraction in recent years. 


Things aren't urgent. Scientists are happy to wait for a year's worth of scientific studies before recommending any sort of strengthening or straightening. Still, if seeing the Colosseum in person is on your bucket list, then maybe book in a trip in the next year or two, just in case.

'Atlantis' Disappeared Round British Isles

Not to be outdone in the Atlantis sweepstakes, a British museum is displaying artifacts from a long-ago submerged society called Doggerland.

Among the artifacts recovered after a series of deepsea dives at the bottom of the North Sea are hunting tools such as harpoons and fish prongs, as well as fossils of mammoths.

The theory is this Doggerland was a massive bit of land connected to the Continent that stretched Denmark, Scotland, and the Channel Islands. Trade with the European mainland (as we now know it) would have been extensive in those days — those days being the end of the last Ice Age. After that time, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, the rising sea levels slowly put Doggerland underwater, in the process creating the English Channel (as we now know it) and making the British Isles into what they are today.

The good scientists in the U.K. have consulted geophysical surveys and used their handy computers to create three-dimensional versions of what they think Doggerland looked like. The 3D mapping includes topographical differences like peaks and valleys dotted on the landscape, near evidence of lakes and rivers.

As for Atlantis, well no one really knows still where it was, when it was, or if it was. The evidence that we have is so sketchy that many historians have concluded that it is a morality tale only. For others, though, the search goes on.

Greek Subway Dig Unearths Roman Road

Well, this might give the ancient home of democracy a shot in the arm: Digging deep beneath the streets of Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, has revealed the remains of roads built more than 2,000 years ago. Timing is everything in the archaeology business — or is that the advertising business?

The government has made a big show it if nonetheless, with a public display of the marble-paved road that just happens to be decorated with illustrations of children's games and cart wheels. Archaeologists also found lamps and other tools, as well as bases of marble columns, lending an air of authenticity to the whole thing.

The road getting all the attention is the Roman one (naturally), which was laid down 1,800 years ago. But (typically) it is the Greek road that is even older (naturally), by about 500 years. So obviously, these civilizations knew what they were doing when they built certain things to last. They also knew what they were doing when carving out transportation routes, since modern roads more or less parallel (vertically) several ancient roads.

It's all part of a subway project that was begun in 2006, in the afterglow of the Olympics, and has yet to be completed. Part of the delay came when diggers discovered more than 1,000 graves. Some of those graves contained treasure, and that had to be sorted out.

The long-range plan is for the subway system to have 23 stations. That leaves another whole buried world to discover.

Easter Island statues 'walked': new theory

A pair of scientists have announced a new theory for how the monstrous Easter Island statues were transported: they "walked."

An archaeologist from California and an anthropologist from Hawaii have demonstrated their theory by building their own comparatively smaller moai and using really strong ropes and a large group of people. The demonstration featured ropes tied to three of the giant statue's four sides (left, right, and back), and the volunteers moved the ropes ever so slightly back and forth, approximating a "walk."

It's the latest in a series of explanations for how the island's residents were able to move around such large structures without using heavy machinery. One widely regarded theory supposes that the island's residents cut down lots of trees and fashioned sleds on which to transport the statues. That theory, so the story goes, conveniently explains the population decrease because of the antecedent deforestation.

The proponents of this latest "walking" theory propose that the real reason for the dropoff in population on Rapa Nui was a lack of immunity to diseases brought by European "visitors."

Both theories suffer a bit when tightly reviewed, actually. If the islanders "walked" the statues, then they certainly took risks all along the way that the statues would tumble over in transit. The model moai weighed 5 tons, much less than the standing statues, some of which weighed in at 90 tons. Much safer to "sled" the statues around, unless you're eventually wanting to stand them up, which is what happened, at which point the same toppling risk would ensue, just not as much as during a "walk."

Of course, a completely implausible explanation is that the ancient (or alien) civilization that supplied the Egyptians, Sumerians, and half a dozen other peoples who experienced a "sudden and great leap forward in technology" had a giant crane or two spare and that the residents of Rapa Nui borrowed the cranes for a bit. That theory doesn't stand up to even a loose review. 

As to the real story, we might never know. After all, we haven't gotten around to inventing time travel yet. 

Annie Oakley Auction on Target for Big Payday

It's a bull's-eye to the savings account, as a collection of Annie Oakley items goes under the hammer. 


You can spend your hard-saved cash on the legendary yet all-too-real Annie's guns, her Stetson hat, and mundane items like letters and pictures. It's all part of a Heritage Auctions production featuring 100 items put forward by Oakley's descendants.

Tommye Tait and Terrye Holcomb, two of Annie's great-grandnieces, now own the items, and many more like them, having inherited them all from their mother, Billie Butler Serene, who died three years ago. In true family tree fashion, Serene was reared by her grandfather, who was the brother of Frank Butler, Annie Oakley's husband and manager. Turns out that Serene learned how to handle a gun from Annie herself.

The famous Stetson hat is expected to sell for $4,000. That's nothing compared to the even more famous 12-gauge Parker Brothers shotgun, which is expected to go to some lucky collector for $100,000. (If you're gun-inclined but don't have that much walking-around money, you can settle for a Marlin .22-caliber rifle, which could be yours for a mere $22,000.)

See, this is famous stuff, wielded (or worn) by a famous lass, who was larger than life in her day and even more larger than life in the years after her day. It's a marvel, really, that these items haven't been put on public display before. (The hat, the family says, was a treasured item at family dress-up parties.) The family took all-in-the-family to heart and kept all of Annie's stuff close to home. 

The photos should be of special interest to historians because they feature formal portrait of Annie — with her gun. 

This is not the only Oakley-related collection, of course. You can find lots of authentic Annie stuff in various locations around the country, including the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and, of course, the Annie Oakley Center. 

Stone Age Artists Did Animation on Cave Walls, Study Asserts

We're familiar with the Stone Age, right? Fred Flintstone and all of that, not to mention the complete absence of industrial machinery.

Seriously, the Stone Age was a few generations of great progress, just not very fast on the evolutionary scale, as it were. But wait a bit, what about their art?

Not known for its art, the Stone Age is, yet a new study by an artist and an archaeologist concludes that the people who painted some of the images in France's famous Chauvet cave were, in fact, animators. 

How do you like that, Walt Disney? Mickey who?

Well, it's not that serious. Disney's hold on the popular animated imagination is probably secure. But what could be in dispute is the narrative that says that the first animations happened not all that long ago.

After careful study of the paintings on the wall of the Chauvet cave, the artist and archaeologist, Marc Azema and Florent Rivere, some of the art is meant to suggest multiple versions of the same scene — in other words, animation. 

The bison that looks like it has eight legs is merely one image of a bison superimposed on another image of the same bison, to suggest movement. View the image by the flicker of a torch's light, and you see what could very well be the simulation of that bison in motion.

Well, fancy that. Presumably, you could achieve the same effect by shaking your head vigorously from side to side. The predators in the image sure look like multiple versions of the same animal, shown at slightly different times in a slightly different space. So maybe there is something to this idea after all.

The key to remember here is that these images were painted on the wall of that cave 30,000 years ago. The other thing to note is that you can read more about it in the June issue of Antiquity.