ARCHÆOLOGY
finds a city revealed by satellite spy photos and an example of bovine trepanation
ANCIENT GREEK CITY Qalatga Darband, a fortified settlement in Iraqi Kurdistan with a thriving wine trade, which is thought to have been founded by Alexander the Great, went unrecorded until its remains were discovered by archæologists examining declassified spy satellite photographs taken by the American government for military purposes in the 1960s but not made public until 1996. The city’s density and complexity were unsuspected until a camera-equipped drone survey in 2016. It is an open site covering roughly 148 acres (60ha), situated on a natural terrace overlooking the Lower Zab River on its northern bank. The outline of a large rectangular building was revealed beneath fields of wheat and barley. There are other buildings along with a fortified wall and stone presses suitable for wine production.
Excavation was not possible until improved security allowed the British Museum to explore the site as a way of training Iraqis who will be asked to rescue sites damaged by Daesh, such as Nineveh, Nimrud and Hatra. The buried city, dated to the first and second centuries BC, was built on the likely route that Alexander took in 331 BC as he was pursuing Darius III of Persia, whom he had defeated in battle at Gaugamela. Statues of Græco-Roman deities and terracotta roof tiles show a strong Greek influence, indicating that its early residents were Alexander’s subjects and those of his successor. One statue depicts a seated female figure who may be Persephone, goddess of vegetation and wife of Hades; the other is a nude that could be Adonis, a divine personification of fertility. Times, 25 Sept 2017. HOLY COW! About 5,000 years ago, humans used crude stone tools to puncture a hole in a cow’s head, making it the earliest known instance of skull surgery in an animal. It’s unclear whether the cow ( Bos taurus) was alive or dead when the operation took place, but if it was alive, the animal didn’t survive for long, given that its skull shows no signs of healing, researchers said in a study for the journal
Scientific Reports. However, the intent of the surgery remains a mystery. If the operation, known as trepanation, was meant to save the cow, it would be the oldest known evidence of veterinary surgery on an animal, said the study’s lead researcher, Fernando Ramirez Rozzi, director of research specialising in human evolution at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research in Toulouse. It’s also possible that Neolithic humans were simply using the cow to practise trepanation, in order to perfect the technique before applying it to humans.
The ancient cow skull was found during an excavation lasting from 1975 to 1985 at the Neolithic site of Champ-Durand in Vendée, a region on the Atlantic coast of western France. A variety of animal bones, pottery, stones and flint tools have been discovered at the site. It was thought to be a meeting place, graveyard and market. An analysis showed that the cow skull dated to sometime between 3400 and 3000 BC, and that the animal was clearly an adult.
When past archæologists first looked at the nearly complete cow cranium, they thought another cow must have caused the gouge. But the hole – which is 2.5in by 1.8in (6.4x4.6 cm) – was so peculiar that one of the original researchers asked Dr Ramirez Rozzi to take a second look at it in 2012. “At that time, we looked, and very quickly, we saw that it was trepanation in the cow skull; it was not a goring at all,” he said. A scanning electron microscope revealed cut marks around the hole that looked eerily similar to scrape marks seen on the skulls of human trepanation patients. If another animal had gored the cow, the violent blow would have caused fractures or splintering around the wound, for which there was no evidence, either internally or externally. Nor does the hole look as if it had been caused by an infectious disease, such as syphilis or tuberculosis.
Trepanned human skulls have been found throughout Europe and South America. Many patients survived the procedure because the bone often healed, but we don’t know why it was done. The earliest evidence of human trepanation dates to the Mesolithic period (c.8000-2700 BC). Archæologists have several ideas about why ancient people would scrape or drill a hole into a skull. Perhaps the technique was meant to solve a medical condition, such as epilepsy or head trauma, or maybe it was part of a ritual. Either way, the Stone Age surgeons became very good at it. In the cow’s case, it’s not clear why Neolithic people would have gone the extra mile to save a cow with some kind of medical disorder; it’s more likely the skull was used for trepanation practice. livescience.com, 19 April; Times, D.Telegraph, 20 April 2018.