"Your Majesty, there's nothing more permanent than a hole!", archaeologist Carl Schuchardt once explained the principle of the #posthole to Emperor Wilhelm II.

Don't be easily satisfied with accepting something to be a mystery no-one knows anything about.

It's not only about "asking questions", but as much about finding answers. 😉

And archaeologists really just love to talk about #RealArchaeology. 👍

We know about the "who" thanks to years of field research, excavations, and analysis - showing that the same designs used for these #geoglyphs are also appearing e.g. on #pottery vessels of the #Nasca:

https://people.umass.edu/proulx/online_pubs/Nasca_Ceramic_Iconography_Overview.pdf

Since with the news about these newly (re-)discovered #Nasca lines a lot of takes about their supposed "mystery" pop up again: Do we really not know who made them? 🤔

Well, ongoing research in #Archaeology could (and does 😀) tell:

📖 https://nationalgeographic.com/science/article/new-nasca-nazca-lines-discovery-peru-archaeology

So, finally: what about the "how" now?

https://www.machutravelperu.com/blog/how-were-the-nazca-lines-made

The longer (and as fascinating) answer he gives in an interview here (original reportage's in German, I just used one of these online translation tools, hope it works):

https://www-deutschlandfunk-de.translate.goog/keine-antike-raketenrampe-100.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Still leaving us with the "why" question - luckily a colleague has, together with international partners, dedicated quite some research to exactly this question.

The short answer is that the #NascaGeoglyphs rather served as stages for activities than as pure images.

And since the #Nasca weren't the only ones leaving such #geoglyphs, but rather joined there predecessors in doing so, we even can see a #chronological development in their complexity:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/reassessing-the-chronology-of-topara-emergence-and-paracas-decline-on-the-peruvian-south-coast-a-bayesian-approach/BEDE7A4161A7E529D0FCBA99D58A5524

#HappyEaster Sunday with St. Schrödinger, the original #Easter apostle.

(Cartoon by Kevin Frank, kevinfrank.net)

From the archaeologist's sketchbook:

"Neanderthinker", as met in Halle's Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte.

Going to die on that hill, but not every ancient #theatre necessarily is an #Amphitheatre. 🤷♂️

"The fires gave the only real illumination. Even the noontime sunlight, filtering through the clouds, darkened. The word I kept hearing the girls say, #jigoku, means hell."

August 9 1945, a second #AtomicBomb was dropped over Japan, on #Nagasaki.

Quote: https://www.historynet.com/michie-hattori-eyewitness-to-the-nagasaki-atomic-bomb-blast

The bomb ("Fat Man", with a blast yield of 21 kt even stronger than "Little Boy's" 14 kt dropped on #Hiroshima 3 days earlier) missed its mark by about 2 km; still destroying half of #Nagasaki, killing 35,000 people, more than 10% of the city's population in less than a second.

"What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The #memory of what happened at #Hiroshima." - John Hersey

📷: Hiroshima ground zero before & after bombing, 6 August 1945.

Wer sich schon immer gefragt hat, wie es eigentlich in einem römischen Keller ausgesehen hat, bekommt im Archäologischen Museum #Frankfurt nun die Gelegenheit!

Dort wird am nächsten Mittwoch, 29.05., nämlich der bei Ausgrabungen im antiken #Nida entdeckte #Holzkeller eines Wohnhauses aus dem 1. Jh. n. Chr. präsentiert:

https://archaeologisches-museum-frankfurt.de/index.php/de/programm/praesentation-des-roemischen-holzkellers-aus-nida

This is pretty wild. As in "exciting"! 🏺😲

These new dates of a #RapaNui 🗿 #Rongorongo tablet (S. Ferrara et al., Sci Rep 14, 2794 (2024) 🔓) - before any known contact with literate societies - seems to suggest an *independent* invention of writing on #EasterIsland:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-53063-7

Original study:

J. Geersen et al., A submerged Stone Age hunting architecture from the Western Baltic Sea, PNAS 121(8), 2024. 🔓

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2312008121

English press release by Leibniz-Institut für #Ostseeforschung Warnemünde IOW via @idw_online:

https://idw-online.de/en/news828496

Und dann taucht da plötzlich knapp 10 km vor #Rerik, eine 970 m lange und offenbar 11.000 Jahre alte Steinmauer in der #Ostsee auf ...

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/rostock/Sensationsfund-in-der-Ostsee-11000-Jahre-alte-Mauer-vor-Rerik,ostseefund100.html via @NDR

Um das noch mal ein bißchen einzuordnen: Das ist nicht einfach ein Haufen alter Steine, der da irgendwo am Meeresgrund herumliegt, sondern eine fast 1 km lange und bis zu 1 m hohe gebaute Struktur! 🪨🪨🪨