How Baboons Helped Solve the Land of Punt Mystery

Bright Side

Baboons played a surprising role in solving the mystery of the ancient Land of Punt. For years, historians didn’t know exactly where Punt was located, but it was a major trading partner of Egypt, famous for its exotic goods. Some of those goods included baboons, which the Egyptians imported. Researchers studied ancient mummified baboons and compared their chemical makeup to modern baboons. They found that the baboons likely came from an area around present-day Eritrea or Ethiopia. Thanks to these furry creatures, scientists have a much better idea of where Punt was!

Transcript

00:00There once was a kingdom where the ancient Egyptians traveled to buy gifts for pharaohs,

00:05sort of like an ancient shopping mall.

00:07This kingdom, named the Land of Punt, was rich in luxury goods,

00:12including gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory,

00:16and exotic animals like leopards and baboons.

00:19All of these sound like great gift ideas to me.

00:22The Land of Punt was an especially important trading partner for Egypt for over a thousand years.

00:27But if you plan to go there, the bad news is that it hasn't survived to these days,

00:33and nobody knows for sure exactly where Punt was located.

00:37We only know about it from records.

00:39The most famous of them were left on the walls of the temple of Queen Hatshepsut,

00:43who had sent an expedition to Punt.

00:46Scientists have been trying to find the exact location of this rich land for over 150 years.

00:51It could have been southeast of Egypt, in a coastal region south of it along the Red Sea,

00:56Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean,

00:58or it could have covered the Horn of Africa,

01:01and the area across the sea in southern Arabia.

01:04Now researchers were finally able to narrow down the possible locations,

01:09thanks to a study of baboon mummies.

01:12Ancient Egyptians admired baboons,

01:15and even thought they were related to the deity of the moon in wisdom.

01:19One species, the sacred baboon, was often shown in wall paintings,

01:23sitting with its tail curled to the right,

01:26and was mummified in this position.

01:28Another type, the olive baboon, was wrapped up in one giant cocoon.

01:33Both types were found in the tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

01:36But if you remember geography lessons,

01:39baboons just don't wander around Egypt.

01:42So they must have been brought there through trade with other regions.

01:45Primatologists, Egyptologists, geographers, and geochemists

01:49look at the mummified baboons from two different time periods in ancient Egypt.

01:54Some were from the New Kingdom period,

01:56and others were from the Ptomaic period.

01:59The scientists did some more hard work and analyzed tissues

02:02from 155 baboons from 75 separate places in eastern Africa and southern Arabia.

02:09Those were all areas that they thought could be the ancient land of Punt.

02:13They measured oxygen and strontium in the baboon's bodies.

02:16When animals drink water and eat plants,

02:19their teeth, hair, and bones show a geographic signature

02:22of where they've lived, thanks to these elements they contain.

02:26Scientists used a special method called isotopic mapping

02:29and found out that the New Kingdom baboons they analyzed

02:33came from a location in Eritrea, Ethiopia, or Somalia.

02:38Five mummified baboons from the Ptolemaic period

02:40had strontium levels that matched those found in Egypt.

02:44So, ancient Egyptians might have had a special place to breed and keep baboons.

02:49Probably in Memphis, a city in Lower Egypt, not Tennessee.

02:54Meanwhile, paleontologists from New Zealand got lucky,

02:57as some boulders had split open from the tide

02:59and revealed fossils of the largest penguin that has ever lived on Earth.

03:04The scientists used laser scanners to make 3D models of the ancient penguin bones.

03:09They compared these bones to the flipper size of modern penguins

03:12and did some math as to how much the old penguins might have weighed.

03:17Today, the biggest penguins, emperor penguins, weigh between 55 to 100 pounds.

03:23Researchers think that the penguins from the past that they found

03:26weighed around 340 pounds, real giants in the penguin world.

03:31These huge, flightless birds lived in the oceans around New Zealand

03:35more than 50 million years ago, after the dinosaurs went extinct.

03:39They totally took advantage of their big bodies to stay warm in the cold water.

03:44They might have even traveled the world thanks to it.

03:47And they'd scare off any predators.

03:49But they didn't have any.

03:50The asteroid that took down the dinosaurs also got rid of most big marine reptiles.

03:55And the ancestors of seals and whales were still living on land.

04:00Back in 1992, four farmers in China were draining water from their ponds

04:06and accidentally bumped into a ship full of gold and ancient statues worth millions.

04:12Just kidding, they actually found the Longu Caves.

04:15Those are 24 big caves created by people a long, long time ago.

04:20Even though they are so large and well-made,

04:22no one knows who built them, why they were built, or how they were built.

04:27Experts think the caves are at least 2,000 years old.

04:31But they don't understand why these caves aren't mentioned in any historical records.

04:36All of the Longu caverns look the same and are connected to each other.

04:40Each cave has one entrance connected to a vertical shaft with a carved staircase.

04:45Rain and water from the surface can flow into the caves through these stairs.

04:48To manage this water, the caves have special grooves, channels, and a system to catch the water at the bottom.

04:55So it looks like the ancient builders were real pros when it came to drainage and water management.

05:00Maybe my town could learn a lesson from them as it turns into Venice after every heavy shower.

05:05Anyway, the caverns were built below a hill,

05:08named after a bird that is one of the most respected creatures in Chinese mythology and culture.

05:13It symbolizes all the best things, like high virtue, grace, and the union of yin and yang.

05:20Scientists think there could be a connection between the caverns and the bird.

05:24But it's just a theory so far.

05:28Experts from the National Institute of Ocean Technology in India

05:31were doing their routine pollution surveys

05:34when they found some structures that looked like a city underwater.

05:37Using special sonar technology, the team found big geometric shapes on the ocean floor.

05:44They brought up different items from the site,

05:46like pottery, beads, sculptures, parts of walls, and even human bones and teeth.

05:52They thought the ruins belonged to a civilization

05:54older than the Bronze Age-induced valley civilization,

05:58which is the earliest urban culture of the Indian subcontinent that we know of so far.

06:02But not everyone joined in on celebrating this awesome discovery.

06:06Some archaeologists refused to believe it and thought it could be some computer tricks.

06:11And even when they saw hundreds of artifacts from the ocean floor,

06:15they said an ancient river could have brought them there from someplace else.

06:19The team that discovered the underwater site decided to prove they were right.

06:24They chose a piece of wood as their main evidence.

06:27They tested it and found it was 9,500 years old.

06:31That could be the age of the entire site.

06:33Skeptics still insist that we can't rewrite all human history because of one piece of wood.

06:39Even 23 years since the discovery, no one is sure about the final answer.

06:44This is partly because it's hard to explore the site.

06:47It's in extremely dangerous waters with strong currents and riptines.

06:51During the cool Antarctic summer, from late November through January,

06:57geologists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee climbed the frozen slopes of the McIntyre

07:02Promontory in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.

07:06High above the ice fields, they looked through the mountain's gray rocks for fossils from when

07:10the continent had green forests.

07:12By the end of their trip, the geologists found fossil pieces from 13 trees.

07:18These fossils show that the trees are over 260 million years old.

07:23This means the forest grew at the end of the Permian period before the first dinosaurs even appeared.

07:29More than 90% of all species on Earth disappeared back then, including the polar forests.

07:34These trees would have been very tough if they grew in Antarctica and could have survived.

07:39But a huge increase in gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, must have taken them down.

07:45This Antarctic forest is a terrific way for us to see what life was like before the extinction,

07:51and we might even understand what caused it.

07:54It also shows us how plants were different back then from those we are used to now.

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