Cosmic Glue

  What is it? The Ancient Game Board Found in the Palace of Knossos That No One Knows How Was Played by Antonio García April 23, 2026 The Zatrikion at the Heraklion Museum. Credit: Zde / Wikimedia Commons Arthur Evans found in Knossos a unique piece of ivory, gold, and crystal. Some believe it was a royal pastime; others doubt it was ever used for playing. Archaeology has yet to solve the mystery. In the spring of 1900, the British archaeologist Arthur Evans began the first systematic excavations in the palace of Knossos , the mythical labyrinth of King Minos on the island of Crete . Just a few days after breaking ground, his workers uncovered an object unlike any other. It was broken, buried about 70 centimeters deep, in a corridor of the palace’s northeastern wing. Its fragments of ivory, rock crystal, lapis lazuli, gold, and silver still shone beneath the...

VIA  China: Tarim Basin (West China, Xinjiang) revealed several tattooed mummies of a Western (Western Asian/European) physical type. Still relatively unknown - the Tarim Mummies could date from the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. The world's most spectacular tattooed mummy was discovered by Russian anthropologist Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1948 during the excavation of a group of Pazyryk tombs about 120 miles north of the border between China and Russia. These mummies were found in the High Altai Mountains of western and southern Siberia and date from around 2400 years ago. The tattoos on their bodies represent a variety of animals. The griffins and monsters are thought to have a magical significance but some elements are believed to be purely decorative. Altogether the tattoos are believed to reflect the status of the individual. Three tattooed mummies (c. 300 BCE) were extracted from the permafrost of Altai in the second half of the 20th century ...

by Lauren Liebhaber Field finds of obsidian flakes. Credit: Rebecca Plouffe, Alyssa Hamza, and Todd Kristensen. Allan / Archaeological Survey of Alberta Occasional Paper 43 (2024) 1-7. Volcanic glass has been discovered at more than 500 archaeological sites in western Canada. Geologically speaking, it shouldn't be there. Now, researchers may have answered how these artifacts made of obsidian ended up so far away from their point of origin, according to a March 14 study published by the Archaeological Survey of Alberta. "Finding obsidian at an archaeological site is a bona fide indicator" of long-distance trade among prehistoric populations, study author and archaeologist Tim Allan said. Obsidian was likely traded as part of the "complex and dynamic relationships connecti...