January/February 2023 Issue

AUSTRALIA: Archaeologists working with Aboriginal communities obtained new information about the Marra Wonga rock shelter in central Queensland. The site contains 15,000 petroglyphs created over thousands of years. Researchers learned that one of the main scenes, which includes starlike designs, snake figures, and human feet, tells the Aboriginal Dreaming story of the Seven Sisters. According to the tale, an Ancestral Being known as Wattanuri pursued the sisters across the Australian landscape, and their altercations led to the creation of many prominent features existing today.

BORNEO: Evidence of the earliest known amputation was recovered from Liang Tebo Cave. The successful surgery was performed on a teenager 31,000 years ago, when the person’s lower left leg was skillfully removed. It is believed that the patient survived the procedure and lived for another 6 to 9 years before succumbing to an unknown cause of death. The individual also displayed signs of a healed neck fracture and clavicle trauma, both of which may have occurred during the same event in which the leg was injured.

INDIA: An archaeological survey covering 65 square miles of central India that had not been explored in almost a century documented hundreds of new sites dating to the 1st millennium A.D. Archaeologists even explored parts of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve—where they occasionally had to dodge wild beasts. The project identified dozens of ritual caves, stupas, inscriptions, and sculptures, along with Buddhist temples. Among the finds was a 20-foot-tall statue of Varaha, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, carved between the 9th and 13th centuries.