Archaeologists have discovered an unusual artifact they say could represent the earliest known use of written numbers ever discovered in Mesoamerica.

The curious clay figurine features eleven small dots carved into its surface, appearing in three columns. Although its exact purpose remains unclear, researchers who report the discovery in Latin American Antiquity believe it could be one of the oldest examples of graphic notation that may have been used for rudimentary calculation or some similar purpose, dating to as far back as around 750 B.C.

Significantly, the researchers behind the recent study argue that this earliest known evidence of numerical writing could offer clues to “the relationship between numeration, bodies, and identity in ancient Mesoamerican worldviews.”

The Enigma of the Tab Figurines

The figurine, roughly the size and shape of a small television remote, was unearthed at an ancient Mesoamerican site located along Guatemala’s Pacific coast, known as La Blanca. It is among a group of similar artifacts archaeologists call tab figurines, and hundreds of these mysterious relics are known from past discoveries at the site.

Named for their unusual slab-like appearance, these figurines also bear anthropomorphic qualities, which include depictions of jewelry and other ornamentation, although the tab figurines do not directly resemble human heads beyond the presence of such ornaments.

A Remarkable Discovery at Ancient La Blanca

While similar past discoveries recognized as tab figurines have been made at La Blanca, the presence of dots appearing in columns makes this one very unique and presents a novel possibility: that the impressions on the statuette may not have been purely decorative.

“The ordered dots on the La Blanca tab figurine’s headdress, of course, raise more questions than they answer,” write authors Julia Guernsey, Stephanie M. Strauss, and Michael Love in their recent study. “This is often the case with unique examples such as this, which cannot be better contextualized within a larger grouping of like objects from La Blanca or elsewhere.”

“Although one might be inclined to dismiss the La Blanca figurine as a curiosity or an isolated addendum to the complicated history of first writing in Mesoamerica,” the authors go on to note, “we believe that it merits this thorough discussion.”

Clues to Unraveling a Mesoamerican Mystery

A clue to the artifact’s purpose may arise from the association between tab figurines and the human head, a region of the body that is traditionally associated with individual identity. This is significant, since archaeologists recognize a potential link between numbers and individual identity in the world of ancient Mesoamerica.

Based on existing archaeological knowledge from the region, it is known that experimentation with numbers had already begun around the time the artifact is believed to have been made. One well-characterized numerical system is known as the dot-and-bar system, which, as the name implies, relies on dots and bars to convey figures of one and five units, respectively.

“In the Mixtec and Aztec codices, one easily becomes accustomed to reading even long strings of single dots and quickly approximating their quantity, a visuo-summation process known as subitizing,” the authors write.

“And no matter what form Mesoamerican numerals took, the vigesimal system was rooted in metaphors/mnemonics of the body: specifically, 10 fingers and 10 toes and concepts of personhood anchored to the number 20,” they add.

Also of significance is the K’iche’ word for person, winik, which is the same word used for the number 20, and for a simple reason: it refers to the ten fingers and ten toes of the human body.

Connections to Mesoamerican Personhood Concepts

Although the connections between the unique figurine unearthed at La Blanca and existing knowledge of Mesoamerican number systems are compelling, the researchers caution against interpreting the artifact solely through the lens of later Mesoamerican writing systems. One main reason why is that scholars think there probably wasn’t ever any single method for recording numbers across the region.

Still, the artifact nonetheless joins a growing body of evidence that could point to the fact that the inhabitants of La Blanca were experimenting with symbolic communication, and at a time centuries before fully developed writing systems emerged in the region.

While the exact meaning of the dots on the statuette remains unknown, the researchers behind the study make a compelling case for why the markings may have represented a name, a date, or another personal identifier. If correct, the placement of the dots may hint at an early connection between numeration, identity, and social expression during a period when some of Mesoamerica’s first urban communities were taking shape.

“Yet a question remains as to whether the identity expressed by the La Blanca tab figurine with its 11 dots was human, supernatural, or a combination thereof,” the authors concede, although concluding that their assessment of the artifact strongly points to the known associations between time, numbers, and the concept of personhood as envisioned in the minds of ancient Mesoamericans.

“Early Mesoamerican conceptualizations of time and the nature of being, perhaps, were not so very different from those of Aristotle for whom Paul Ricoeur noted, ‘Being in time [meant] more than existing when time exists. It [meant] ‘being in number.’”

The study, “Numbers and Bodies: Potential Early Numeration on a Middle Preclassic Figurine from La Blanca, Guatemala,” was published in Latin American Antiquity.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Archaeologists say bones unearthed from an Iron Age burial in Scotland are revealing new insights into how human remains were interred in ancient Europe, in a region with scant evidence for mortuary practices in the archeological record.

Among the new findings, cuts within the skull of a woman’s 2,000-year-old Iron Age remains suggest the removal of her brain prior to burial, along with other evidence of mortuary processing. 

“Manipulation of one skeleton, including the possible removal of the brain, fashioning of long bones into ‘tools’ and reassembly for burial, suggests complex mortuary processing,” write the authors of a new study published in the journal Antiquity. 

Iron Age Remains

The study’s authors report that the woman’s remains, and those believed to have belonged to a teenage boy buried nearby, both had distant origins, adding to the intrigue. Archaeologists discovered the pair buried in a cairn in Sutherland’s Loch Borralie in northwest Scotland, a rare find in such well-preserved condition. 

Due to Britain’s acidic peat soil, few Iron Age human remains have been recovered, leaving many questions about the inhabitants’ funerary practices. This particular corner of Scotland is an exception, with an environment better suited to preserving bone, offering a rare window into this mysterious period.

“To find bodies of this age so well preserved is rare, but to discover evidence of a funeral ritual we previously knew nothing about was such a surprise and very exciting,” said lead author Dr. Laura Castells Navarro.

Unusual Mortuary Practices

“The adult female displayed incisions on the inside of her cranium, suggesting her brain had been intentionally removed after death,” Castells Navarro continued. “We have no other comparison of this type of practice, but we know that the dead were curated and treated carefully in Iron Age Britain, so our understanding is that this bone modification is within that same tradition of care.”

The sharpened bones, which the archeologists suspected were used as tools, included humeri, ulna, and femur. Why Iron Age Britons would have engaged in such elaborate and unusual manipulation of skeletal remains eludes archaeologists, although they note that the care evident in reassembling her skeleton for burial suggests she commanded the respect and reverence of those who laid her to rest.

Analysis techniques used on the bones include isotope testing and DNA mapping, revealing a close kinship suspected to be that of maternal second cousins.

Iron Age Connections

More intriguing than their relationship is the evidence of the distance they had traveled, as isotopic analysis revealed that the pair had grown up 50 miles to the southeast. Genetics pushed this even further, revealing family connections beyond the mainland, spreading out in opposite directions. To the northeast, they had relatives 108 miles away on the Orkney Islands, while to the southwest, they had kin 140 miles away at Applecross.

Archaeologists interpret this to mean that Iron Age Britons were extremely mobile, traversing water in family groups.

“Our research shows that prehistoric maritime communities periodically moved around the north coast and Northern Isles of Scotland, possibly in small groups,” Dr. Castells Navarro said. “This movement allowed for the spread and maintenance of cultural practices and traditions.”

With individuals of shared kinship spread so far, researchers suggest these complex mortuary practices were likely shared across Iron Age Britain, adding an intriguing new wrinkle to our assessment of these ancient people.

“I think we can assume that the Iron Age dead were not forgotten,” Dr. Castells Navarro concluded, “and still had meaning to the living, with a continued interaction between the living and the dead across time and distance.”

The paper, “Reconnecting the Dead in Iron Age Britain: Funerary Processing and Long-Distance Connectivity at Loch Borralie, Scotland,” appeared in Antiquity on June 10, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

Archaeologists believe a site in present-day northern Iraq may preserve the remains of an ancient city whose fall was recorded in texts from ancient Mesopotamia.

While ancient texts described the event, the physical traces were not discovered until recently. Excavations at Kurd Qaburstan in the Kurdistan region have now revealed the clearest archaeological record of Middle Bronze Age siege warfare found in the area.

During the 2024 and 2025 excavation seasons, a team led by Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida and director of the Kurd Qaburstan Project, recovered 20 cuneiform tablets and more than 100 administrative sealings from destruction layers inside the Lower Town East Palace.

A Lost Archive

This collection represents the first substantial group of cuneiform texts found on the Erbil Plain, and their dating is unusually precise. Scribes wrote several tablets within days of one another, clustering around the period recorded as the city’s fall, which allows researchers to closely align the archaeological and historical records.

Epigraphers Paul Delnero and Parker Zane, from Johns Hopkins University and Yale University, are leading the translation effort with art historian Marian Feldman. The texts include palace administrative records and at least one letter that may mention a senior official from the ancient city of Qabra.

Some inscriptions may also correspond to destructions recorded on the Victory Stele of Dadusha, a monument that documents military campaigns in the region from the same period.

Burned Layers

The physical signs of the attack are clear. Collapsed buildings, burned layers, and numerous broken pottery pieces all show signs of a coordinated and sustained assault. The team found two layers of destruction, one above the other, which match the recorded events of Qabra’s conquest.

Within these layers of destruction, bioarchaeologist Andrea Zurek-Ost of Michigan State University identified the remains of 17 people. Several seem to have died where they fell, possibly including palace workers. Archaeologists found one individual face down over a stone basin. Researchers are now using isotopic and ancient DNA analyses to learn more about who these people were, where they came from, and how they might have been related.

Mapping The City Before It Fell

The destruction layers tell the story of the city’s final chapter. A magnetometer survey covering over 80 hectares provides a picture of what the city looked like before its fall.

Led by Andrew Creekmore III at the University of Northern Colorado, the survey detects buried structures by measuring changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. It revealed a monumental wall with bastions surrounding the site, fortifications that match those shown on the Victory Stele of Dadusha and support the identification of Kurd Qaburstan as ancient Qabra.

Researchers also found a preserved street with a drainage system, along with areas used for food processing and textile production. These features indicate that the city was more complex than researchers usually expect in northern Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamian history has often focused on southern cities such as Uruk, viewing the south as the birthplace of urban civilization. The evidence from Kurd Qaburstan challenges that view.

“The evidence from Kurd Qaburstan shows that northern cities could be large, complex, and politically significant, with administrative systems, fortifications, and infrastructure comparable to those of the best-known southern sites,” Earley-Spadoni says.

Findings from the Kurd Qaburstan Project were announced as part of a reports and proceedings release supported by the University of Central Florida and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

Thousands of years ago, Scotland’s early inhabitants were building mysterious artificial islands in lakes throughout the region—and now archaeologists have uncovered evidence that reveals these curious aquatic features to be far older than once thought.

Scattered throughout Scotland’s ancient lochs, these curious structures—known as crannogs—have long intrigued archaeologists and historians, partially due to the questions about their age.

Now, artifacts recovered from these human-built islands are pushing back the timescales on their construction, causing researchers to have to reconsider the origins of one of the most enigmatic lacustrine features in the British Isles.

The Crannog Enigma

Crannogs have been known to archaeologists for some time, with some of the earliest extensive explorations of these features undertaken beginning more than a century ago by Odo Blundell, a monk at Fort Augustus Abbey.

Constructed mostly from stone and timber, speculations about their creation extend to as early as the Bronze Age, although most scholars believe these curious features were likely to have been an invention of the Iron Age.

However, a surprising recent discovery is now challenging that presumption, revealing that some of these artificial islands date back to more than 5,000 years ago, having been built during Scotland’s Neolithic era.

Older Than Previously Thought

The story began to unfold in 2012 when local diver Chris Murray was exploring a crannog near the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. There, he discovered fragments of ancient pottery that experts at the National Museum of Scotland later examined, revealing an astonishing discovery: the remains of artifacts unequivocally associated with the Neolithic period.

The implication was obvious: for Neolithic pottery to have been found on this crannog would indicate it must have been constructed thousands of years earlier than the past dating of these artificial islands.

The discovery prompted a deeper look at the region’s ancient artificial islands, which soon revealed additional evidence of their Neolithic provenance. During the research, Stephanie Blankshein, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton, and colleagues discovered that organic materials and artifacts from several sites across Scotland’s Outer Hebrides indicated these crannogs were likely built sometime between 4,000 and 2,500 BCE.

At least 11 crannogs in the region, Blankshein and her colleagues say, were created during the Neolithic period, pushing back the date of their construction to as far back as six thousand years ago.

Rethinking the Lives of the Ancient Scots

One of the most intriguing aspects of the team’s findings involves what it reveals about the ingenuity of the early farming communities in the British Isles, since the new dating of these prehistoric artificial islands indicates that they must have been constructed within just a few centuries of when their ancient builders arrived in the region.

Such findings align well with past genetic studies, which indicate that the region’s Neolithic populations likely descended from farmers who made their way from the Near East through Europe, and eventually settled in the British Isles, where they made their new homes by the sea.

It remains unclear, however, whether the construction of crannogs had been an innovation that occurred after they arrived in Britain, or if this had been a much earlier practice these people brought with them.

Discoveries at the Loch Bhorgastail Crannog

Among the most remarkable crannog sites is one found at Loch Bhorgastail on the Isle of Lewis. This artificial island was initially believed to have been primarily built from stone, with some evidence of timber used as reinforcement.

However, underwater excavations by Blankshein and her colleagues soon uncovered something very surprising hidden below the crannog: a massive timber platform supporting the entire structure.

“As excavation advanced, it quickly became apparent that the terrestrial and underwater components formed a single continuous structure spanning both environments and could not be treated separately,” Blankshein and her colleagues write in a recent study detailing their research at the site.

During their underwater surveys, the team discovered that the wooden foundation extended beneath the entire island and dated to between 3500 and 3300 BCE. Measuring approximately 75 feet (23 meters) across, the platform may have originally sat in shallow water or even remained dry during parts of the year.

“Loch Bhorgastail provided a rare opportunity to develop, test, and refine a workflow capable of achieving terrestrial-grade accuracy underwater,” the research team writes. “The site demonstrates the potential of shallow-water archaeology to bridge the land–water interface while elevating the precision and reliability of underwater recording.”

Lingering Questions

A fundamental question that remains about these curious Neolithic constructions has to do with what their purpose was.

One clue may arrive in the form of residues found on the recent pottery discoveries at several of these sites, which indicate they were used to transport food. This may suggest the crannogs were locations where ancient people prepared and consumed meals, possibly during ceremonial gatherings.

However, it is also possible that these ancient structures served multiple purposes, ranging from sites for communal feasting to possible locations for meetings.

Despite the lingering questions about their use by Scotland’s ancient inhabitants, Blankshein and her colleagues saw these marvelous Neolithic structures as an ideal target for high-resolution shallow-water photogrammetry, which became the focus of her team’s recent research.

“Coastal, riverine, and lacustrine environments have played a central role in the development of human societies, yet locating and documenting this record of activity in littoral environments has proven difficult,” the team writes.

As a result of their research, the team’s findings, combined with recent archaeological discoveries from over the last decade or more, help to shed new light on Britain’s ancient past, while advancing the development of new archaeological approaches. This includes groundbreaking methods for creating 3D models of shallow underwater sites, which the team achieved by using paired action cameras.

As investigations continue, Blankshein and her colleagues suspect many more Neolithic crannogs remain hidden beneath the waters of Scotland and Ireland, and with their discovery and investigation, the potential for further advancements in understanding Europe’s earliest farming societies.

The team’s recent paper, “At the Water’s Edge: Photogrammetry in Extreme Shallow-Water Environments,” appeared in Advances in Archaeological Science.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

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