2017 has been significant for archaeology. We have uncovered new discoveries and made sense of ones we found years ago. There is still plenty more to learn (as there always will be), but this year helped give us a better understanding of the world as it was hundreds and thousands of years ago.
In this fascinating list, we discover long lost temples, solve a war-time mystery, explore the myth of Easter Island, as well as unearth ancient settlements, a giant statue, and evidence of the oldest recorded solar eclipse.
10 Giant Colossus Unearthed under Slums of Cairo
According to Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities, Khaled Alnani, 2017 has been “a year of archaeological discoveries,” especially after a stagnation period following the 2011 Arab Spring protests. This year, archaeologists uncovered a Roman-era tomb near the town of Minya, three other ancient graves near Samalut which could be part of a much larger cemetery, and a tomb near the Valley of the Kings belonging to a goldsmith named Amenemhat which contained hundreds of artifacts. But the most headline-grabbing discovery was the giant statue unearthed in March underneath the Cairo suburb of Mataria.
Initially, archaeologists found the three-ton torso of the statue and later discovered the head. Further excavations uncovered the pedestal and two toes, and officials are confident that most, if not all, of the remaining parts will eventually be found in the same place. Based on the size of the torso, the whole statue should be around nine meters (29 ft) tall.
Instant Access to Current Spot Prices & Interactive Charts
What made the discovery particularly intriguing is that, initially, experts believed the statue to represent Ramses the Great, particularly as it was located near the ruins of his temple. However, a subsequent examination uncovered an engraving with the inscription Neb Aa—a title used only by Pharaoh Psamtek I of the 26th Dynasty.[1] This makes the discovery the largest Late Period statue ever found in Egypt.
9 Solving the Mystery of the Hunley
On February 17, 1864, the Confederate submersible H.L. Hunley became the first combat submarine to sink a battleship when it attacked the sloop-of-war USS Housatonic. This success came with a heavy price, though, as the Hunley and its entire crew were lost that same day and remained lost for 130 years. The wreck was discovered in 1995 and raised in 2000. The skeletons of all eight crew members were at their stations, and there were no signs of an escape attempt. This posed a new question—what killed them?
Popular theories suggested that crew of the Housatonic had time to shoot holes into the Hunley before the warship sank, or that the submarine simply collided with another ship on its way home. However, researchers announced earlier this year that they believe they have found the answer after performing scale experiments—the blast from the Hunley’s own torpedo killed the people aboard the craft.[2]
The submarine was armed only with a spar torpedo—a missile which was never intended to detach and, instead, was rammed into the Housatonic. The explosion caused a pressure wave which traveled through the Hunley and was strong enough to kill or incapacitate the crew. If they did not die immediately, the men suffered from blast lung—a condition which would have rendered them unconscious and cause the ship to sink.
8 No Ecocide on Easter Island
A genetic study published this year adds to the growing archaeological evidence which aims to debunk the myth of the Easter Island “ecocide”—the notion that the Rapa Nui people caused their own demise through warfare and deforestation.
Easter Island might be tiny, but it is well-known thanks to its moai statues and has been studied extensively. The more scientists researched this small island, which is now almost barren of resources, the more they believed that it was the natives themselves who caused the ecocide of Easter Island.
This idea stemmed from two claims. First, the island’s population used to number tens of thousands of inhabitants before plummeting to just a couple of thousand by the time the Europeans arrived in the early 18th century. Second, the Rapa Nui people carelessly deforested the land to move and plant moai, leading to increasingly poorer crop yields and a wood shortage which, eventually, caused the warfare that led to the population’s demise.
Archaeologist Carl Lipo was one of the first to contradict the notion of massive warfare between island tribes. He claims that the main evidence for in-fighting comes from oral history which, at this point, is almost 300 years old and hardly reliable. Conversely, only 2.5 percent of human remains from the island which were examined actually showed any signs of injury.[3] As for the trees, the Polynesian rat might have caused the most damage as it ate both palm nuts and saplings.
The new genetic study questions the accepted timeline which states that South Americans made contact with the Rapa Nui centuries before Europeans. It also argues that slave raids, introduced disease, and enforced migration from the 18th century on is what actually caused the population to dwindle.
