Archaeology – September-October 2019

14 ARCHAEOLOGY • September/October 2019

A

rare view of family life some

14 , 000 years ago has been made

possible by recent studies and

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Grotta della Basura in the Liguria

region of northern Italy. The cave was

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an international team of researchers

recently modeled 180 footprints, as

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two adults, one preadolescent, one

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cave. They can be “seen” hugging the

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crawling where the ceiling drops low,

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cave’s narrow chambers. In the chamber

farthest from the entrance, called the

Room of Mysteries, smears of clay

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youngest children.

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he waters of the Tigris River in Iraqi Kurdistan have

receded and revealed the ruins of a 3 , 400 ĥ\HDUĥROGSDOĥ

ace. A team led by Hasan Ahmed Qasim of the Kurdish

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places with bright red and blue murals. They also uncovered a

cuneiform tablet that sugĥ

gests the site was the city of

Zahiku, part of the Mitanni

Empire, which occupied

northern Syria and Mesoĥ

potamia from 1500 to 1350

%& That cuneiform tablet

and nine others are still being translated.

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sites show that while the empire’s rulers used a native

language known as Hurrian, they might have been

descended from people who spoke a version of Old

Indic. Old Indic is the language of the Rigveda, the

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subcontinent sometime before 1000 %& The Mitanni

kings had Old Indic names and worshipped gods that

are mentioned in the Rigveda. A tablet containing a

manual on horse training even shows the Mitanni used

Old Indic terms related to charioteering. This raises

the possibility that the Mitanni aristocracy might have

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drove chariots and usurped a native Hurrian dynasty,

but quickly adopted its language and customs.

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FROM THE TRENCHES

BRONZE AGE PALACE SURFACES

UPPER PALEOLITHIC CAVE LIFE

Bronze Age palace, Iraqi Kurdistan

Painted mural fragments

Grotta della Basura, Liguria, Italy Footprints, Grotta della Basura