PAUL DEVEREUX digs up some surprising sights – and smells – from Egypt, Israel and Alabama
HIDDEN GIANTS
Research using 3D photogrammetry has revealed hundreds of Native American mud glyph etchings c.1,500 years old inside a cave in Alabama. (The location is being kept secret and is referred to simply as “19th Unnamed Cave”.) The images had been barely visible to the naked eye due to them being lightly etched in the first place, then being coated over by centuries of slimy mud excretion. An exceptional aspect of the. This must indicate pre-planning. The etchings range through a gamut of images, including abstract linear markings. It will take a while to decipher all of them, but the 11-ft (3.4m) long depiction of a giant rattlesnake and several large anthropomorphs (human-creature hybrids) are causing interest: larger than life-size or nearly life-size, these may represent “either people dressed in regalia to look like spirits, or they are spirits,” suggests Jan Simek, a professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee and lead author of the study. Antiquity
