Archaeology is one of the world’s favourite past-times. Cavalier aristocrats, hard-nosed scientific geniuses – and no small amount of controversy, deceit and downright quackery. Here are a few fascinating facts to get your archaeological expertise under way.
1. One of the most famous archaeologists of all time is the 18th-19th century Venetian explorer Giovanni Batista Belzoni. By discovering the incredible ‘Young Memnon’ statue of Ramesses the Great and opening Seti I’s magnificent tomb, Batista has nailed down his place as one of Egyptology‘s biggest pioneers. Yet Belzoni spent his early years parading round circuses as a strongman. At 6ft 7in he was a giant, and made many famous appearances in London in 1803 with English wife Sarah Bane.
2. Poo might not be the most glamorous way to make your name as a famous archaeologist, but Canadian academic Eric Ottleban Callen’s pioneering poo process made him a star of the profession. ‘Human Coprolite Analysis’, as Dr Callen’s messy technique was known, involved taking fossilised human faeces and returning it to its former glory, by soaking it in a weak tri-sodium phosphate for two days. Unsurprisingly, Dr Callen carried out much of his ground-breaking work alone.
3. The Cradle of Civilization may have been Mesopotamia‘s Fertile Crescent, but the earliest known human remains were found around the ancient rock formation of Kibish, Ethiopia. A number of early Homo sapiens were found at the site in 2003, including a near-complete skeleton, which date back around 160,000 years. The find gives much weight to the ‘Out of Africa’ theory peddled by experts and pop artists for generations.
5. Britain has had some of the most famous experts and digs in archaeological history – but the largest excavation in the country’s history has more to do with shotputting than Stonehenge – a network of 140 trenches makes the dig on the site of the 2012 London Olympic Park the biggest British archaeological site ever, with a 4,000 year old flint axe its best discovery to date. Let’s hope our athletes can put on as record-breaking a show as our archaeologists in three years’ time.
6. For the deepest ever archaeological dig, travel back to 1870s Turkey. Heinrich Schliermann was one of the discipline’s innovators, but he was also a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Fixated on the Homeric epics, Schliermann and his team burrowed a staggering 53ft into the soil of the coastal town of Hissarlik, using methods employed in the digging of the Suez Canal, bent on finding the legendary city of Troy. He named the collection of pots, weapons and vases he unearthed ‘Priam’s Treasure’, after the mythical king – yet rumours of forgery remain strong to this day.
7. Many people think the Great Sphinx, one of the enduring icons of ancient Egypt, is contemporary of the Great Pyramids, at around 2,500 BC. Yet many scientists believe the water erosion apparently present on its body shows that it was in fact created a staggering 2,500 before the pyramids. The ‘riddle’ rages on, with opponents arguing no 5,000 BC civilization could possibly have had the nous or tools to create what is still the world’s largest stone statue.
8. Think Hungry Hippos gets boring after a while? Try occupying yourself with the Royal Game of Ur, the Mesopotamian game discovered in the 1920s by Sir Charles Leonard Woolley. Its highly decorated instruments are reckoned to comprise the oldest ever set of board game pieces. Players can be either black or white, and roll pyramidal dice to get to the other end of an ‘H’ shaped board. The game is thought to be an early predecessor to backgammon; though the Royal Game never had X-Box 360s to contend with.
9. The missing link: Bigfoot? Littlefoot, more like. One of the most incredible archaeological discoveries of the past century saw a team of experts uncover a unique dwarf-like hominid species in 2003. Subsequently nicknamed ‘Hobbit‘, Homo floresiensis – named after the Indonesian island of Flores on which it was found – is thought to have lived as little as 12,000 years ago, meaning it could well have been living in cahoots with our very own Homo sapien ancestors. This doesn’t mean we’re all related to Elijah Wood, thank God.
10. The legend of the mummy’s curse has lived strong in popular culture, ever since Lord Carnarvon dropped dead just five months after bursting into Tutankhamun’s tomb. Rumour has it Carnarvon’s dog died soon after, and that upon the opening of the tomb, Howard Carter‘s canary was swallowed by a cobra. Five of the 26-strong team who worked on the site also met their ends within a decade of the great discovery. Yet experts now point to a mosquito bite Carnarvon incurred during the trip as the reason for his demise, that five of 26 isn’t that many, and that Carter, who surely should have met the full wrath of King Tut, died in 1939 aged 64.
