Mostafa Waziri, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters that the two large “embalming workshops” date back to the 30th dynasty (380-343 BC) and the Ptolemaic (305-30 BC) eras.

The discovery was made after a year-long excavation near the sanctuary of the goddess Bastet, which is home to the catacombs of mummified cats in Saqqara, some 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) south of Cairo.

It was the same spot where hundreds of mummified animals and statues were uncovered in 2019.

“We found embalming workshops, one for humans and one for animals. We found all the tools that they used (in mummification) in ancient times,” Waziri said.

Both workshops featured stone beds, clay pots, ritual vessels, natron salt, which is one of the main ingredients for mummification, and linens among other mummification instruments.

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The Saqqara excavations also led to the unearthing of two small 4,400 and 3,400-year-old tombs nearby, belonging to two priests, Ne Hesut Ba of the Old Kingdom’s fifth dynasty and Men Kheber of the late kingdom’s 18th dynasty respectively.

Inscriptions of cultivation, hunting and other daily activities were found on the walls of Ne Hesut Ba’s tomb while “scenes showing the deceased in different positions” were engraved in Men Kheber’s tomb, officials said.

Egypt has carried out extensive digging operations in Saqqara and other ancient locations in recent years, which resulted in a number of high-profile discoveries.

The country plans to inaugurate the Grand Egyptian Museum, a state-of-the-art facility near the Giza Pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo, after construction is completed later this year.

Egypt hopes it can further lure back tourists after the industry started to rebound of late, having been battered by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine.

Tourism revenues climbed to $7.3 billion in the second half of 2022, a 25.7% increase compared with the same period a year earlier, according to recently released central bank data. – Rappler.com

The mummy was probably an adolescent and found in an underground tomb wrapped in a funerary bundle, along with ceramics and rope and including bits of skin and hair.

The mummified adolescent was found in a “good state of conservation,” said archaeologist Yomira Huaman, in charge of the Cajamarquilla research project affiliated with the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

While best known for the mountain-top Inca royal retreat of Machu Picchu, Peru, was home to various pre-Hispanic cultures that thrived in the centuries before the Inca empire rose to power, mainly along the country’s central coast and in the Andes.

The adolescent lived between 1,100 and 1,200 years ago, and might have belonged to the Lima or Ichma cultures. The mummy was discovered about 200 meters (220 yards) from where the first mummy of Cajamarquilla was found, explained Huaman, referring to another mummy found nearby last year.

The archaeological site is also where the remains of eight children and 12 adults, who were apparently sacrificed around 800-1,200 years ago, were found.

The sprawling Cajamarquilla complex features the ruins of four pyramids and other constructions such as walls laid out like a maze. The complex is the second largest mud-brick city in Peru after Chan Chan in the north of the Andean country.

Cajamarquilla was possibly occupied by people from the coast and the Andean highlands, said Huaman. Located in a dusty area about 20km (12 miles) from Lima, the site was believed to be a thriving trading center. – Rappler.com

Researchers said on Wednesday, April 19, they have discovered that parts of the brain region called the motor cortex that govern body movement are connected with a network involved in thinking, planning, mental arousal, pain, and control of internal organs, as well as functions such as blood pressure and heart rate.

They identified a previously unknown system within the motor cortex manifested in multiple nodes that are located in between areas of the brain already known to be responsible for movement of specific body parts – hands, feet and face – and are engaged when many different body movements are performed together.

The researchers called this system the somato-cognitive action network, or SCAN, and documented its connections to brain regions known to help set goals and plan actions.

This network also was found to correspond with brain regions that, as shown in studies involving monkeys, are connected to internal organs including the stomach and adrenal glands, allowing these organs to change activity levels in anticipation of performing a certain action. That may explain physical responses like sweating or increased heart rate caused by merely pondering a difficult future task, they said.

The motor cortex is a part of the brain’s outermost layer, the cerebral cortex.

“Basically, we now have shown that the human motor system is not unitary. Instead, we believe there are two separate systems that control movement,” said radiology professor Evan Gordon of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

“One is for isolated movement of your hands, feet and face. This system is important, for example, for writing or speaking -movements that need to involve only the one body part. A second system, the SCAN, is more important for integrated, whole body movements, and is more connected to high-level planning regions of your brain,” Gordon said.

The findings detail the brain’s mind-body nexus.

“Modern neuroscience does not include any kind of mind-body dualism. It’s not compatible with being a serious neuroscientist nowadays. I’m not a philosopher, but one succinct statement I like is saying, ‘The mind is what the brain does.’ The sum of the bio-computational functions of the brain makes up ‘the mind,'” said study senior author Nico Dosenbach, a neurology professor at Washington University School of Medicine.

“Since this system, the SCAN, seems to integrate abstract plans-thoughts-motivations with actual movements and physiology, it provides additional neuroanatomical explanation for why ‘the body’ and ‘the mind’ aren’t separate or separable,” Dosenbach added.

The researchers set out to use modern brain-imaging techniques to test an influential map established nine decades ago by neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield of the brain areas controlling movement. Their findings showed that Penfield’s map, constrained by the technologies of his time, needed revisions.

The SCAN was identified using precision imaging in seven adults to examine the brain’s organizational features, then verified in larger datasets that when combined spanned thousands of adults. Further imaging identified the SCAN circuit in an 11-month-old and a 9-year-old, while finding it had not yet formed in a newborn. Those observations were validated in larger datasets of hundreds of newborns and thousands of 9-year-olds.

The research underscored how there is more to learn about the human brain.

“Actually, the purpose of the brain is highly debated,” Gordon said. “Some neuroscientists think of the brain as an organ intended primarily to perceive and interpret the world around us. Others think of it as an organ designed to produce the best ‘outputs’ – usually a physical action – to optimize survivability and evolutionary fitness for any given situation.”

“Probably both are correct,” Gordon added. “The SCAN fits most cleanly with the latter interpretation: it integrates goals and planning with whole-body actions.” – Rappler.com

Mummified ewes, dogs, wild goats, cows, gazelles, and mongooses were found in the temple along with the ram heads, which are thought to be votive offerings indicating continuing reverence for Ramses II at the site about 1,000 years after his death, a statement from the tourism and antiquities ministry said.

It added that the discoveries would expand knowledge of the site over a period of more than two millennia up to the Ptolemaic period. The Ptolemaic period spanned about three centuries until the Roman conquest in 30 BC.

Abydos, located in the Egyptian governorate of Sohag about 270 miles (435 kilometers) south of Cairo, is one of Egypt’s major though lesser visited archaeological sites.

It was a necropolis for early ancient Egyptian royalty and a pilgrimage center for the worship of the god Osiris.

Excavations were carried out by a mission from New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

Alongside the mummified animal remains, the team uncovered a large palatial structure with walls approximately five meters thick from the Old Kingdom’s sixth dynasty, in addition to several statues, papyri, ancient tree remains, leather garments, and shoes.

The structure could help “reestablish the sense of the ancient landscape of Abydos before the construction of the Ramses II temple,” the head of the mission, Sameh Iskander, was quoted as saying. – Rappler.com

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(Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to remove paragraphs about the subject’s sentiments on particular officials or agencies, which we may have misconstrued.)

MANILA, Philippines – Kelvin Rodolfo’s lifelong devotion to the field of geology started at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, when, as a young man “too young to be serious,” he took a geology class. 

The class was taught by a “very dynamic” professor, who “made the subject live and breathe.” After that class, the rest of his life followed. “This is what I want to do,” he said.

That was around 70 years ago. Since 1966, he’s been teaching at the University of Illinois Chicago in the United States. Visiting the Rappler newsroom for the first time one afternoon in March, he ate dory and saffron cream pasta from a nearby cafe first before the interview, since landlocked Illinois is perennially wanting for seafood. 

Now he’s back in the Philippines – his homeland that elected the son of a former president Rodolfo and his peers watched get ousted. For Rodolfo, there’s a lot to unpack about witnessing another Marcos get elected into power and hearing talks about reviving the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. He lost steam mid-sentence, drank water, and asked for a break.

“Mahirap tumanda talaga (It’s really hard getting old),” he said.  

Sitting on a black sofa in the studio at 2 pm, with Pasig City’s high-rise buildings in the background, Rodolfo admitted getting surprised by the abundance of towers in the capital where the West Valley Fault line runs. 

He turned to the worst-case scenario: “Kung halimbawa, magka-7.2, maniwala po kayo, ‘yung nakikita nating nangyari sa Turkey, hay nako, this will be even worse.”

(If, for example, we experience a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, Metro Manila will suffer worse consequences than what happened in Turkey.) 

Frustrated, he didn’t mince words about the government’s insistence on reclamation projects and neglect of the resilience of city buildings. People can check for disaster and damage insurance, he said. They can prepare Go Bags. They can also speak out. But once the Big One comes, he said, “Kanya-kanya na (To each his own). You have to take care of yourself, and you have to take care of your family. And that’s basically what it boils down to.”

There’s an air of exasperation when talking about how leaders are failing to listen to sound science. It is also a source of worry for Rodolfo when thinking about the next generation of Filipino scientists. That, and the lack of access to decades’ worth of data on Philippine disasters.

“It’s very hard to be a young person who wants to be a scientist in a country where science is ignored and denigrated,” he said. “Because sometimes, the truth goes against the wishes of the powers that be.” Kind of like journalists, we quipped. 

With seven decades of experience under his belt, Rodolfo has met a lot of interesting individuals, many of whom are now working in key positions in the government. 

We asked him about Rolly Peña. At the mention of his late colleague’s name, he smiled and recalled how they called him the “durable” geologist for having survived as an underground revolutionary in the ’70s and then living to practice science until his death in 2018.

When you’ve seen the years go by the way Rodolfo did, one has a choice between getting soured by the impossibility of things or sticking to hope. Rodolfo chooses the latter. He believes in humanity’s extraordinary capability to love and endure despite a warming world. 

It’s very hard to be a young person who wants to be a scientist in a country where science is ignored and denigrated. Because sometimes, the truth goes against the wishes of the powers that be.

kelvin rodolfo

“People who love science, who love nature despite all of the obstacles, should keep on doing that,” he told us. “Follow your heart’s desire.”

And follow he did, despite the world turning on scientists, journalists, and all who seek to tell the truth. Then the veteran geologist gave another indispensable advice to the youth before the interview concluded: Find your soulmate.

“To suffer is to live. But I will tell you: I have been in a love affair with my best friend and soulmate for 51 years. And that makes up for everything.”

To which, in true Rappler fashion and as the cameras were rolling, we could only say: “Sana all.” – Rappler.com

The discovery within the pyramid, the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, was made under the Scan Pyramids project that since 2015 has been using non-invasive technology including infrared thermography, 3D simulations and cosmic-ray imaging to peer inside the structure.

An article published in the journal Nature on Thursday said the discovery could contribute to knowledge about the construction of the pyramid and the purpose of a gabled limestone structure that sits in front of the corridor.

The Great Pyramid was constructed as a monumental tomb around 2560 BC during the reign of the Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops. Built to a height of 146 metres (479 feet), it now stands at 139 meters and was the tallest structure made by humans until the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889.

The unfinished corridor was likely created to redistribute the pyramid’s weight around either the main entrance now used by tourists, almost seven meters away, or around another as yet undiscovered chamber or space, said Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

“We’re going to continue our scanning so we will see what we can do … to figure out what we can find out beneath it, or just by the end of this corridor,” he told reporters after a press conference in front of the pyramid.

Five rooms atop the king’s burial chamber in another part of the pyramid are also thought to have been built to redistribute the weight of the massive structure. It was possible the pharaoh had more than one burial chamber, Waziri added.

Scientists detected the corridor through cosmic-ray muon radiography, before retrieving images of it by feeding a 6mm-thick endoscope from Japan through a tiny joint in the pyramid’s stones.

In 2017, Scan Pyramids researchers announced the discovery of a void at least 30 metres long inside the Great Pyramid, the first major inner structure found since the 19th century. – Rappler.com

Which of our prehistoric relatives that were walking the African landscape at the time made them? The chief suspect, researchers said on Thursday, February 9, in describing the findings, may be a surprise.

The Nyayanga site artifacts represent the oldest-known examples of a type of stone technology, called the Oldowan toolkit, that was revolutionary, enabling our forerunners to process diverse foods and expand their menu. Three tool types were found: hammerstones and stone cores to pound plants, bone and meat, and sharp-edged flakes to cut meat.

To put the age of these tools into perspective, our species Homo sapiens did not appear until roughly 300,000 years ago.

Scientists had long believed Oldowan tools were the purview of species belonging to the genus Homo, a grouping that includes our species and our closest relatives. But no Homo fossils were found at Nyayanga. Instead, two teeth – stout molars – of a genus called Paranthropus were discovered there, an indication this prehistoric cousin of ours may have been the maker.

“The association of these Nyayanga tools with Paranthropus may reopen the case as to who made the oldest Oldowan tools. Perhaps not only Homo, but other kinds of hominins were processing food with Oldowan technology,” said anthropologist Thomas Plummer of Queens College in New York City, lead author of the research published in the journal Science.

The term hominin refers to various species considered human or closely related.

“When our team determined the age of the Nyayanga evidence, the perpetrator of the tools became a ‘whodunit’ in my mind,” said paleoanthropologist and study co-author Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Human Origins Program. “There are several possibilities. And except for finding fossilized hand bones wrapped around a stone tool, the originator of the early Oldowan tools may be an unknown for a long time.”

The molars represent the oldest-known fossils of Paranthropus, an upright-walker that combined ape-like and human-like traits, possessing adaptations for heavy chewing, including a skull topped with a bony ridge to which strong jaw muscles were attached, like in gorillas.

Other hominins existing at the time included the genus Australopithecus, known for the famous even-older fossil “Lucy.”

“While some species of nonhuman primates produce technologies that assist in foraging, humans are uniquely dependent on technology for survival,” Plummer said.

All later developments in prehistoric technologies were based on Oldowan tools, making their advent a milestone in human evolution, Potts said. Rudimentary stone tools 3.3 million years old from another Kenyan site may have been an Oldowan forerunner or a technological dead-end.

The Nyayanga site today is a gully on Homa Mountain’s western flank along Lake Victoria in southwestern Kenya. When the tools were made, it was woodland and grassland along a stream, teeming with animals.

Until now, the oldest-known Oldowan examples dated to around 2.6 million years ago, in Ethiopia. The species Homo erectus later toted Oldowan technology as far as Georgia and China.

Cut marks on hippopotamus rib and shin bones at Nyayanga were the oldest-known examples of butchering a very large animal – called megafauna. The researchers think the hippos were scavenged, not hunted. The tools also were used for cracking open antelope bones to obtain marrow and pounding hard and soft plant material.

Fire was not harnessed until much later, meaning food was eaten raw. The researchers suspect the tools were used to pound meat to make it like “hippo tartare.”

“Megafauna provide a super abundance of food,” Plummer said. “A hippopotamus is a big leather sack full of good things to eat.” – Rappler.com

One of the mightiest to perish was the Hittite empire, centered in modern Turkey and spanning parts of Syria and Iraq. Researchers on Wednesday, February 8, offered new insight into the Hittite collapse, with an examination of trees alive at the time showing three consecutive years of severe drought that may have caused crop failures, famine and political-societal disintegration.

The Hittites, with their capital Hattusa situated in central Anatolia, were one of the ancient world’s great powers across five centuries. They became the main geopolitical rivals of ancient Egypt during its glittering New Kingdom period.

“In pre-modern times, with none of our infrastructure and technology, the Hittites controlled and ruled a huge region for centuries despite myriad challenges of space, threats from neighbors and entities incorporated into their empire, and despite being centered in a semi-arid region,” said Cornell University professor of arts and sciences in classics Sturt Manning, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

Scholars long have pondered what triggered the fall of the Hittites and broader collapse that also devastated kingdoms in Greece, Crete and the Middle East while weakening the Egyptians. Hypotheses have included war, invasion and climate change. The new study offers some clarity about the Hittites.

The researchers examined long-lived juniper trees that grew in the region at the time and eventually were harvested to build a wooden structure southwest of Ankara around 748 BC that may have been the burial chamber for a relative of Phrygia’s King Midas, who legend holds turned anything he touched into gold.

The trees offered a regional paleoclimatic record in two ways: patterns of annual tree-ring growth, with narrow rings indicating dry conditions; and the ratio of two forms, or isotopes, of carbon in the rings, revealing the tree’s response to water availability.

They detected a gradual shift to drier conditions from the 13th century BC into the 12th century BC. More importantly, both lines of evidence indicated three straight years of severe drought, in 1198, 1197 and 1196 BC, coinciding with the known timing of the empire’s dissolution.

“There was likely near-complete crop failure for three consecutive years. The people most likely had food stores that would get them through a single year of drought. But when hit with three consecutive years, there was no food to sustain them,” University of Georgia anthropology professor and study co-author Brita Lorentzen said.

“This would have led to a collapse of the tax base, mass desertion of the large Hittite military and likely a mass movement of people seeking survival. The Hittites were also challenged by not having a port or other easy avenues to move food into the area,” Lorentzen added.

Hattusa, enclosed by a monumental stone wall with gates adorned with lions and sphinxes, was burned and abandoned. Texts written on clay tablets using the cuneiform script common in the region – detailing Hittite society, politics, religion, economics and foreign affairs – went silent.

It was a sudden end. Less than a century earlier, the Hittites under king Muwatalli II and the Egyptians under pharaoh Rameses II fought the famous and inconclusive Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC – waged with thousands of chariots in Syria – and subsequently reached history’s first recorded peace treaty.

“I think this study really shows the lessons we can learn from history. The climate changes that are likely to occur for us in the next century will be much more severe than those the Hittites experienced,” Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and study co-author Jed Sparks said. “And it begs the questions: What is our resilience? How much can we withstand?” – Rappler.com

Researchers on Wednesday, February 2, unwrapped the results of biochemical examinations of 31 ceramic vessels that once held embalming substances at the archaeologically-rich Saqqara site near Cairo, deciphering the chemistry of the mummification practice used for millennia to prepare Egypt’s dead for the afterlife.

The ancient Egyptians viewed preservation of the body after death as crucial to secure a worthy existence in the afterlife. Various substances, with roughly a dozen identified in this study, were applied to preserve human tissue and prevent decomposition stench – long before any understanding of microbial biology – before the body was wrapped.

For the past two centuries, scientists could only speculate about certain embalming ingredients mentioned in ancient texts. But this workshop, discovered in 2016 by the late Egyptian scientist Ramadan Hussein near the ruins of the even-older pyramid of Unas and step pyramid of Djoser, held beakers and bowl-shaped vessels labeled with the ancient names of their contents, sometimes bearing instructions such as “to put on his head.”

The researchers analyzed chemical residue in the containers.

“Most of the substances originated from outside Egypt,” said archaeologist Philipp Stockhammer of the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich in Germany, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

Many came from the eastern Mediterranean region, including cedar oil, juniper and cypress oil and tar, bitumen and olive oil. But a real surprise was the presence of substances sourced apparently from forests in Southeast Asia thousands of miles away. There was gum from the dammar tree, which grows only in tropical Southeast Asia, and the resin of the elemi tree, which came from Southeast Asia or tropical Africa.

“This points to the fact that these resins were traded over very large distances and that Egyptian mummification was somehow a driver towards early globalization and global trade,” Stockhammer said.

“Embalming was carried out in a well-organized, institutional way,” said biochemist and study co-author Mahmoud Bahgat of the National Research Centre in Cairo.

The underground embalming workshop was accessible through a shaft 40 feet (12 meters) deep. It dates to Egypt’s 26th dynasty, or Saite period, from 664-525 BC at a time of Assyrian and Persian regional influence and waning Egyptian power. This was roughly two millennia after the Giza pyramids were built during the Old Kingdom period and six centuries after pharaoh Tutankhamun – whose mummy and fabulous funerary objects were found in 1922 – reigned during the New Kingdom period.

“There have been countless studies on Egyptian embalming, but our lack of knowledge on which substances are behind the different names and the lack of any practical descriptions have hindered any further understanding,” said study co-author Maxime Rageot, a biomolecular archaeology specialist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “Now, we can provide answers.”

An embalming substance called antiu in ancient texts long had been translated as the resins frankincense or myrrh. This study revealed it as a mixture of cedar oil, juniper and cypress oil, and animal fats.

Three recipes, with ingredients such as elemi resin, pistachio resin, byproducts of juniper or cypress and beeswax, were identified for embalming the head. Other recipes were used for skin softening or body cleaning.

“They knew how to select and mix antimicrobial substances which enabled perfect skin preservation,” Stockhammer said.

“There are still secrets to be unraveled. Due to new methods, it is possible to shed new light on certain aspects, not just using new finds such as the vessels coming from Saqqara, but also objects stored in museums and collections,” added University of Tübingen Egyptologist and study co-author Susanne Beck. – Rappler.com

The census in 2021 was the first in Britain to ask about people’s sexual orientation, and the results are broadly in line with previous, smaller-scale surveys.

The census, conducted by Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), also asked about people’s gender identity for the first time. About 262,000 people – 0.5% of those aged 16 or over – replied that the gender they identified with was different from their sex registered at birth, the ONS said.

The questions about sexual orientation and gender identity were voluntary, and 7.5% of people declined to answer about their sexual orientation, while 6.0% did not answer the question on gender identity.

Overall, 43.4 million people in England and Wales said they were “straight or heterosexual”, while 1.5 million – 3.2% of the population aged 16 or over – identified as gay or lesbian, bisexual, or other.

Some 1.5% of people said they were gay or lesbian and 1.3% were bisexual. Another 0.3% ticked a box for “other sexual orientation”, two thirds of whom called themselves pansexual.

On gender identity, 262,000 people aged 16 or over answered that they were a different gender to the sex they were registered as at birth, the ONS said.

Of those, 48,000 said they now identified as a trans man, 48,000 identified as a trans woman, 30,000 said they were non-binary and 18,000 said they had another gender identity, the ONS added.

The ONS defines a trans man as someone who identifies as a man but was registered female at birth, while trans women were registered as male at birth, but now identify as women.

Census figures for Britain as a whole are not yet available, as Scotland delayed carrying out its census for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A previous, annual UK-wide survey conducted by the ONS showed that in 2020 3.8% of people identified as gay or lesbian, bisexual or other, up from 1.9% in 2014 when same-sex marriage was first allowed in England and Wales.

That survey also gave breakdowns of sexual orientation by age, gender and ethnicity – showing, among other things, that younger people are much more likely to identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

Sex between men aged 21 or over was legalized in England and Wales in 1967. The age of consent was lowered to 18 in 1994 and reduced to 16 – the same as for heterosexual relationships – in 2000.

Census data on sexual orientation by age will be published on January 25, and further details will come later in the year. – Rappler.com