Archaeologists Discover a Stone Age “Cult” Henge Site and 4,000 Year-old Human Remains

Ancient Origins

A team of archaeologists has discovered a Stone Age “cult” henge site and human remains that are estimated to be nearly 4,000 years old. Experts suggest that the human remains, found near Stratford, could belong to some of south Warwickshire’s earliest residents.

 Henge was Most Likely Used for Rituals
 A group of archaeologists recently discovered a Stone Age “cult” henge site and ancient human remains at a real estate development of residential buildings in Newbold-on-Stour, on fields at Mansell Farm in Stratford. Unlike Stonehenge, the newly found henge is a plain design consisting of a ditch dug into segments and a bank made up of material thrown up from the ditch.

 Archaeology Warwickshire Business Manager Stuart Palmer couldn’t hide his excitement about the discovery and stated as Stratford Observer reports , “This exciting discovery is of national importance as it provides tangible evidence for cult or religious belief in late Stone Age Warwickshire. Amazingly it is the second such find by the team. In 2015 a group of four henges was excavated in Bidford although the burials at this site were all cremated. Prior to this there were no known henges in Warwickshire leading some archaeologists to believe that a different kind of cult was prevalent in the region.”

Excavations at Mansell Farm, Newbold-on-Stour (Credit: Archaeology Warwickshire)

Furthermore, archaeology Warwickshire Project Officer Nigel Page, who excavated the site added as Stratford Observer always reports , “Exactly what the henge was used for is not certain, but it is likely to be have been used for rituals, some of which may have been associated with cosmological events over 4000 years ago. Originally it would have been surrounded by a bank which would probably have been on the outside of the ditch. Unlike other types of site the ditch and bank were not for defense, but were intended to close off the interior of the henge and make it an arena for whatever festivals or rituals were taking place within.”

Human Remains Could Belong to the Earliest Residents of South Warwickshire
As we already mentioned, the findings also included the buried remains of five individuals which survived as complete skeletons, a very peculiar and unusual phenomenon for the area, archaeologists stated. The individuals were buried very carefully as none of the bodies was found to be positioned on top of another. Experts suggest that the buried individuals could be some of the earliest residents in the area and they estimate that the remains are ancient, somewhere around 4,000 years old. Nigel Page tells Stratford Observer “The rare survival of the skeletons will provide an important opportunity to gain a unique insight into the lives of the people who not only knew the henge and its landscape, but who were probably some of the region’s earliest residents”.

Henge burial detail (Credit: Archaeology Warwickshire)

The three middle burials were facing west, out from the henge, while the two in the two opposite corners were facing east, into the henge. The seemingly calculated positioning of the bodies, indicates that the buried individuals possibly belonged to the same group (most likely were members of the same family), while the people who buried them obviously knew that the grave was owned by the specific group or family.

Further Analysis and Examination Will Reveal More Information
The skeletons have now been unearthed from the site and researchers are getting ready to conduct detailed testing and further analysis, in order to discover more details about who those individuals were.

 Nigel Page told Stratford Observer , “The skeletons have been recovered from the site and will undergo scientific analysis to try to answer the many questions that their presence on the site has raised. For example, it is hoped that the sex and age of the people can be established and it may also be possible to determine if there was a family connection between them,” clearly implying that there's more to come from this intriguing discovery.

Top image: Aerial view of circular henge remains and burials (Credit: Archaeology Warwickshire)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

Ruins of luxurious imperial Roman villa to share its majesty once again

Ancient Origins

The ruins of an imperial Roman luxury villa that had heated floors, lavishly decorated rooms and a dramatic marble staircase leading down to a beach, is ready to share its majesty with the world once more.  The ancient villa has reopened to the public after 15 years. The villa, on an island off Tuscany, Italy, has been under renovation since 1989, but red tape has slowed its reopening.
Villa Domitia is on the 4.83 km (3-mile-long) island of Giannutri in the Tuscan Archipelago. Discovery News describes it as a rocky crescent of an island inhospitable to humans because of a lack of water. In ancient times laborers carried water from the mainland to the luxury villa.
"The villa was built on a harsh, uninhabited site," said Paola Rendini, an archaeological superintendent in Tuscany, to Discovery News. "There is no water spring on the island, and raw materials had to be carried from the mainland. It was a huge task. Giannutri was the first island after Ostia, the port of Rome, thus relatively easy to reach. The villa was likely used by the emperors Domitian, Trajan and Hadrian.” These men ruled Rome between 81 and 117 AD.

Map of Tuscan archipelago with Giannutri at the southernmost end. The island has no spring, so in ancient times rainwater was collected in cisterns. Laborers also carried water from land to the Roman aristocracy who visited the villa on the island. (Norman Einstein map/Wikimedia Commons)

Today the island, the southernmost in the Tuscan Archipelago, is still largely privately owned. It is home to seagulls and a small number of villa owners, who catch rainwater in ancient cisterns and carry water from the mainland. The Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage has the villa and its annexes under its control.
“Today the ruins represent a bright yet fragmented evidence of the once sumptuous villa, showing impressive flights of steps, granite columns, intricately-sculpted capitals, pieces of precious marbles and long stretches of thick walls in opus reticulatum (small squared stones laid diagonally to form a net-like pattern). Spreading for about 10 acres, the villa was built on different terraces on a property which most likely belonged to the prominent Domitii Ahenobarbi, Nero’s family,” Discovery wrote.
“Although the villa has been the focus of several restoration and conservation campaigns since 1989, overlapping regulations have basically prevented its opening to the public, slowing procedures and interventions.”

The residence had bedrooms and a large living room with a view of the sea built on three terraces around a courtyard or peristylium. The columns have Corinthian capitals. (Photo by Paola Agazzi / Rossella Lorenzi)

Rendini said it was a luxury or otium (leisure) villa with many comforts, including cisterns that still collect rainwater for the island's residents, a heating system under the floor, two harbors and a facility for salting fish. The complex included slave quarters.
The villa was rediscovered in 1928 when a flight of marble steps going to the sea (see photo at top) was excavated by woman visiting the island and an archaeologist. They also found rooms with frescoes, mosaics and polychrome marbles. One mosaic showed a marine vista with dolphins and another showed the mythological figures Theseus and Ariadne in the minotaur's labyrinth at Knossos. These artworks have been moved to the archaeological superintendency's storerooms, but Rendini wants to open a museum on the island.
The island may be visited by 75 people per day in three groups of 25 at a cost of 8 euros ($9) per person.
Featured image: The Roman port on the island of Giannutri off the coast of Tuscany, where the ruins of a leisure villa owned by Nero's family is being opened to the public. The villa has been under restoration and conservation since 1989, but red tape has slowed the work and prevented the villa's opening to the public. (Photo by Aldo Ardetti/Wikmedia Commons)

Complex Elevator and Trap Door System for Raising Wild Animals into the Colosseum Reconstructed

Ancient Origins

Many thousands of people suffered violent deaths in the gladiatorial contests of the Colosseum and other arenas of the ancient Roman empire. Innumerable animals killed and were killed in the blood-thirsty games, forced into the arena through an advanced system of tunnels, cages, lifts, and trap-doors. Now archaeologists have reconstructed this complex system in Rome’s Colosseum, bringing to life the ingenious equipment used in the gory games of the Roman Empire.
The slaughter of innocent beasts, including lions, tigers, giraffes, bulls, elephants, hippopotami, bears, wolves and jaguars, was so bad that populations of some animals dropped precipitously in some of their ranges. Experts have estimated that up to 1 million large carnivores and other beasts died in the Roman games at various venues over the years.
The incredible system invented by the Romans to raise animals into the arena was reconstructed for the U.S. Public Broadcasting System program titled Colosseum: Roman Death Trap. The lift is made of wood and is 7 meters (23 feet) high. It can winch up a beast weighing as much as 300 kg (660 pounds). Elephants, hippopotami, and other larger animals were delivered to the arena via another ingress.

• The Gladiators of Rome: Blood Sport in the Ancient Empire
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• The legendary Spartacus: Gladiator and leader of slaves against the Romans – Part 1

Reconstructed elevator once used to raise wild animals into the arena of the Colosseum. Screenshot from ‘Colosseum: Roman Death Trap – Releasing the Wolf’.

Reconstructed platform showing how wild animals were once raised into the arena of the Colosseum. Screenshot from ‘Colosseum: Roman Death Trap – Releasing the Wolf’.

To inaugurate the elevator in the week of June 5, 2015, the crew released a wolf into the arena via the lift. It took eight people to crank the shaft and lift the elevator. In ancient Rome, slaves would have been used for this labor.
"It was the first time that a wild animal had been released into the Colosseum in 1,500 years," said the director of the PBS documentary, Gary Glassman. "I would love to have used a lion, but there were obvious safety issues involved. In the end we chose a wolf because it is the symbol of Rome. One of the reasons we are attracted to the Colosseum is because of the incredible violence that went on here," said the director, standing in blazing sunshine as the trap door to the device opened up. The question it poses is, how could such an advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles? The Colosseum is a snapshot in stone, a physical embodiment of the culture of Rome."

 

There were 28 lifts in the arena in ancient times. Hungry, frightened animals would spring out and be faced with either victims, gladiators or gladiator-victims. If the animals were reluctant to fight, they would be goaded into it by men called bestiari.
“The number of lifts here was more than in any other Roman amphitheater and Roman sources talk of 100 lions appearing together,” Rossela Rea, director of the Colosseum, told International Business Times.
Archaeologists rebuilt the lift from ancient texts and clues from the Colosseum itself. They studied bronze fittings, still-visible rope marks on stone and holes carved for wooden posts to see how the ancients built them.

• Commodus – the Outrageous Emperor who Fought as a Gladiator
• Colosseum of Rome, a Condominium in Medieval Times
• Red-painted numbers helped Romans find their seats in the Colosseum

The Colosseum in Rome once sported 28 lifts for raising animals into the grand arena. Source: BigStockPhoto

The Colosseum, the largest amphitheater in the Roman Empire, measures 620 by 513 feet (190 by 155 meters). It was a free-standing structure constructed of stone and concrete. All other Roman amphitheaters were built into hillsides for support. The Emperor Vespasian ordered it built on the site of Nero’s burned palace around 70 to 72 A.D. His son, Emperor Titus, was in power when work on the Colosseum was completed in 80 A.D.
Titus dedicated that the Colosseum would have 100 days of games, feasts, public executions and naval battles for which the arena was temporarily flooded.
The morning it opened, the crowd saw more than 10,000 animals, including wolves, crocodiles, giraffes and hippopotami. They were paraded before the crowd, some dressed as famous people.

Rome’s Colosseum. Source: BigStockPhoto

Gladiatorial contests began in the afternoon. The fights started off semi-fake, like modern professional wrestling matches, with blunt swords or wooden training swords. But soon the matches turned brutal, and the fighters often sustained horrendous injuries. Occasionally, sponsors would pay extra to stage a fight to the death. The crowd drank watered down wine and ate lunch during the games. The carnage was so awful prisoners killed themselves before they were scheduled to fight. Some species of animals were nearly wiped out during the spectacles.
Featured image: Wild carnivorous animals emerge from a trap door into the Colosseum. ‘The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1883. (Wikimedia Commons).

Mystery Deepens Over Rare Roman Tombstone

 

Detail of the mysterious Roman inscription.

Cotswold Archaeology

Discovery News


Mystery has deepened over a Roman tombstone unearthed earlier this year in western England, as new research revealed it had no link with the skeleton laying beneath it.
The inscribed stone was discovered during the construction work of a parking lot in Cirencester.
Made from Cotswold limestone, it was found laying on its front in a grave — directly above an adult skeleton.

Pompeii Couple Reunited in Marble Inscription

 

When it was turned over, the honey colored stone revealed fine decorations and five lines of Latin inscription which read: “D.M. BODICACIA CONIUNX VIXIT ANNO S XXVII,” possibly meaning: “To the shades of the underworld, Bodicacia, spouse, lived 27 years.”
The discovery was hailed as unique since the stone was believed to be the only tombstone from Roman Britain to record the person found beneath.
In fact, while the dedication on the tombstone is to a woman, the skeleton beneath it was that of a male.
Ancient Greek Tombstones Served as Therapy
It turns out the gravestone and skeleton were also laid at different times — the inscribed stone was early Roman, dating to the 2nd century A.D., while the burial was most certainly late Roman, from the 4th century A.D..
“We believe the tombstone to have been re-used as a grave cover perhaps as long as two centuries after it was first erected,” Ed McSloy, Cotswold Archaeology’s finds expert, told Discovery News.
Martin Henig and Roger Tomlin, leading experts in Roman sculpture and inscriptions at the University of Oxford, noted that the back of the stone is very roughly worked, almost unfinished, in strong contrast to the finely sculpted front.

Unlikely to have been a free-standing tombstone, the five-foot-long inscribed stone may have rather been set into walls, possibly those of a mausoleum.

Who the grave belonged to remains a mystery.
“Reading the letters, the most plausible interpretation of the name is Bodicacia, a previously unknown Celtic name,” McSloy said.
Gladiator Chews Out Ref From Grave
Indeed the name appears to be a variant of a Celtic name with same root as Boudicca. This was the rebel queen of the Iceni, a British tribe, who unsuccessfully attempted to defeat the Romans.
Bodicacia’s tombstone was also unique. The pediment, which is the decorated, triangular portion at top of the stone, shows the Roman god Oceanus.
A divine personification of the sea in the classical world, the god was portrayed with a long mustache, stylized long hair, and crab-like pincers above the head.
‘For Allah’ Inscription Found on Viking Era Ring
The image, according to McSloy “is also hitherto unknown in funerary sculpture.”
Most likely, Bodicacia was deprived of her unique tombstone sometime in the fourth century, when her funerary stone was buried in a grave. At the same time or before this date, Oceanus was deliberately defaced.

“The most likely context for this would be early Christian iconoclasm,” McSloy said.

The tombstone will be soon put on permanent display at Cirencester’s Corinium Museum.

New Tattoos Found on Oetzi the Iceman

by Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News

New scans have revealed a total of 61 tattoos on the 5,300-year-old mummified body of Ötzi the Iceman, reigniting the debate on whether the inkings were a form of acupuncture that predates the first recorded use of the practice in China by 2,000 years.
A number of tattoos were noticed on the Iceman ever since his discovery in 1991 in a melting glacier in the Ötztal Alps (hence the name). However, the markings, produced by fine incisions into which charcoal was rubbed, were not easily identifiable because of the dark color of the mummy’s skin.
To accurately determine the exact number and location of the tattoos on the Iceman's body, Marco Samadelli and colleagues from the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Italy used innovative non-invasive multispectral photographic imaging techniques able to capture a range of wavelengths, from IR to UV.
Iceman Mummy 20 Yrs On: Mysteries Remain
The researchers slightly thawed the body in order to eliminate the ice layer wrapping the surface of the Iceman and photographed the body systematically from all directions.
"By covering a range including non-visible and visible light, all possible tattoos could be detected," Samadelli and colleagues wrote in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.
It emerged the mummified body was marked with 61 tattoos divided into 19 groups across various body parts.
"It is an extraordinary result. Finally, we have been able to clarify many doubts on the existence of these tattoos," Samadelli told Discovery News.
The Iceman Suffered Brain Damage Before Death
The majority consisted of linear markings running parallel to each other, between 2 mm (0.07 inches) and 8 mm (0.3 inches) apart. The marks were between 1 mm (0.03 inches) and 3 mm (0.1 inches) thick and between 7 mm (0.2 inches) and 40 mm (1.5 inches) long.
In two locations, on the knee of the right leg and on the ankle of the left foot, the lines formed a perpendicular cross.
The highest concentration of drawings was found in the lower section of the legs, while the longest tattoos were detected around the wrist of the left hand. Visible tattoos, which have been documented before, lay on the back of the lumbar region.
The new imaging technique also allowed the researchers to detect a previously unrecognized group of tattoos.
"It is located in the right lower thoracic region, showing four parallel lines of length varying from 20 mm (0.7 inches) to 25 mm (0.9 inches)," Samadelli and colleagues explained.
"This is of particular interest, as this represents the first tattoo that was detected on the Iceman’s frontal part of the torso," they added.
It was previously believed the tattoos were made as a sort of treatment or diagnosis of health problems, in particular lower back pain and degenerative joint disease of his knees, ankle and wrist. Other studies associated the marking to a primitive form of acupuncture as they were mainly found along acupuncture meridians used to treat back pain.
The Iceman Could Have Used a Dentist
"The newly identified tattoo at the chest of the Iceman seems to contradict the theory, that they were related to lower back pain and degenerative joint diseases, as this mark is not located close to a joint," said the researchers.
However, they noted the Iceman also suffered from conditions that could have also caused pain in the chest area, such as gallbladder stones, worms in his colon, and atherosclerosis.
"Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the Iceman's tattoos were indeed applied as a therapeutic treatment," they concluded.
Living Relatives of Iceman Mummy Found
Samadelli and colleagues now want to use the complete mapping of the Iceman's tattoos in new research into the possible reasons for their application, including their relation to acupuncture points.
"Future comparative studies based on the known health problems of the Iceman as evidenced by radiological investigations and molecular studies, could help to find out whether the tattoos had a therapeutic, diagnostic or more symbolic background," they wrote.

Ancient Pond, Bronze Fingernail Cleaner Hint at Roman Settlement

by Laura Geggel
Live Science

Archaeologists found an ancient Roman Pond in southern England. Credit: Archaeology South-East

An ancient Roman pond, surrounded by bits of Roman pottery, garbage pits and even a bronze fingernail cleaner, was unearthed in Barnham, a village in southern England. The discovery provides evidence that Romans once occupied the region.
The artifacts, uncovered over the past several weeks, date back earlier than A.D. 100. Archaeologists found the pond on the last day of a survey that was required before construction could begin on a new housing development on the site.
"All the archaeological features appear today as filled with pale grey silt, and it is usually easy to see that these must be silted-up ditches, pits and post-holes," John Mills, West Sussex County Council’s senior archaeologist, said in a statement.
But one patch of silt, which formed a round "splodge" on the site, puzzled the archaeologists. On the last day of the excavation, they dug into the silt and found a shallow depression measuring about 1 foot (0.3 meters) deep and about 30 feet (9 m) wide. Although it's not lined with clay, as other Roman ponds were, it likely held water during the rainy seasons, Mills told Live Science. [Image Gallery: Trove of Roman Artifacts]
"It's unlined, so it couldn't have kept water all year round," Mills said. But the site is just a 5-minute walk from "a respectable stream," so the inhabitants likely didn't want for water, he added.
Perhaps the settlement's inhabitants used the pond as a watering source for livestock, such as cattle and sheep, he said. Archaeologists are now testing the soil to see what else they can learn about the site.
And while this was an unexpected find, unearthing ancient ponds is not all that infrequent, at least not on ancient Roman territory.
"In truth, I don't think that ponds are at all unusual on Roman rural settlement sites in Britain," Mills said. "On some Roman rural sites there were also waterholes, literally holes dug through natural clay down to the water table, sometimes with a step or two down to the standing water, to allow someone to pass up a bucket or other container from the surface of the water, just a few feet down."

Pieces of pottery uncovered at the site, such as this Roman cooking pot, give clues about the area's early inhabitants.
Credit: Archaeology South-East

The Romans are known for their sophisticated water management. Archaeologists suspect that the ditches on the site served to drain water. People would have to periodically dig out these ditches as rainwater, and possibly groundwater, caused silt to accumulate in the ditch.
If a ditch could no longer function, people likely dug new ditches alongside the old ones, Mills said.
Although much of the site's drainage system is reminiscent of Roman technology, the settlement may have predated the Roman conquest of Britain in A.D. 43, during the Late Iron Age. Moreover, life in the settlement likely continued until well after A.D. 200, experts said.
Wealthy neighbor
Pottery fragments found at the site in Barnham suggest that the inhabitants got their goods from a variety of places. Their pottery may have been forged in kilns from the local Arun Valley, known for its thriving industry, and other goods may have been acquired from the nearby Rowlands Castle and New Forest areas, the archaeologists said.
Some of the pottery may have come from France, which was also part of the Roman Empire. Anyone who could afford fine tableware pottery likely had money or, at least, affluent connections, Mills said.
"They're not just simple farmers," he said. "Someone with money is somewhere in the background, otherwise the imported pottery wouldn't be there."
The archaeologists also found a decorated fragment of bronze, likely used for manicuring, or cleaning, a person's fingernails.
"[It's] something you wouldn't expect to find on a poor farmer's farmstead," Mills said. "Something is going on at that site. People are using it who have a good bit of leisure time."
Several flue tiles, used for underfloor heating in stone Roman buildings, also hint that an important Roman building was located nearby, possibly a bathhouse or the house of a wealthy person, Mills said.
"It may well be not far away at all," he said. But it's a "site that we haven't yet found."

Skull Model Shows Artistry, But Is It a Leonardo da Vinci?

By Megan Gannon

A researcher thinks this skull model is crafted from an agate-based mixture, or "mistioni," that Leonardo da Vinci was experimenting with in the early 16th century. Credit: Dr K Beckeer

A miniature skull model that a German couple bought in an antique shop three decades ago could be a 500-year-old lost work of art created by the original Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci, a new study claims. But some art historians are wary of the attribution.
About one-third the size of an adult human skull, the handcrafted cranium is missing a lower jaw and a cheekbone, but otherwise, the milky-white model is remarkable for its anatomical detail.
"It's like looking at a car: If you open the hood of a car, you see the quality of the car," Stefaan Missinne, an independent Belgian researcher based in Vienna, told Live Science. Missinne thinks the skull has that kind of under-the-hood quality, clearly made by someone with an intimate knowledge of anatomy.

Leonardo learned anatomy, sometimes by dissection, as a way to improve his drawings and paintings of the human form. But he didn't always get everything right. The great Italian artist clung to some medieval ideas about how the body worked, and Missinne thinks the skull and some of Leonardo's 15th-century anatomical drawings share the same errors, from the skewed sutures to the eye sockets that lead inside the cranium, like windows to the soul.

Leonardo da Vinci made anatomical drawings of the human skull in 1489. These sketches, acquired by English King Charles II, are now housed in Britain's Royal Collection in Windsor.
Credit: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014

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Missinne also argues that the skull shares characteristics with the old men in Leonardo's so-called grotesque drawings, with its bulging forehead and hooked nose. Missing one tooth, the skull has an overall "scurrilous impression," Missinne wrote, perhaps intended to capture the ugliness of old age.
"It may well be that Leonardo, who was known to be melancholic, and seems, as early as 1500, to have been troubled as he got older by the loss of eyesight, as he writes he needs 'occhiali,' meaning glasses and by sorrow, used this miniature skull in his late years as his personal sorrow stone," Missinne wrote in his article published last month in the academic journal Wiener Medizinische Wochenzeitschrift.
Too good to be true?
It makes for a good story, but art historians contacted by Live Science were skeptical of the claims.
Missinne admits in his paper that some of the evidence he presents "may be interpreted as circumstantial." He dated the skull to around 1508, arguing that the presence of iridium in the skull model (revealed through a chemical analysis) suggests that it's not carved from a single stone like alabaster, but rather crafted from an agate-based mixture, or "mistioni," which Leonardo was experimenting with during this time. Missinne also found a mention of a detailed skull in the inventory of Salai, Leonardo's pupil. [Leonardo Da Vinci's 10 Best Ideas]
Michael Kwakkelstein, of the Dutch University Institute for Art History, said he examined the skull in the late 1990s after the owners approached him.
"Although I was impressed by the detailed rendering and anatomical knowledge this miniature skull displays, the problem remains that we cannot compare it to any authentic Leonardo sculpture for the simple reason that none of his works in sculpture have survived," Kwakkelstein wrote in an email.
Leonardo expert Martin Kemp, professor emeritus of the history of art at Oxford University, also said he became aware of this skull and the attempt to attribute it to Leonardo several years ago.
"I was not convinced then, and am even less convinced now," Kemp told Live Science in an email. He said he didn't believe Leonardo would have tried to make an anatomical model intentionally grotesque.

Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote that Leonardo da Vinci was "so delighted when he saw curious heads, whether bearded or hairy, that he would follow anyone who had thus attracted his attention for a whole day, acquiring such a clear idea of him that when he went home he would draw the head as well as if the man had been present." Leonardo drew this caricature around 1495.
Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 84.GA.647

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"Whatever resemblances there are between the skull and Leonardo's drawings of skulls and sectioned skulls from 1489, these are overridden by the absence of the right zygomatic arch [cheek bone] and other asymmetrical deformations," Kemp said. "In his anatomical demonstrations, Leonardo specifically tries to avoid what he called 'monstrous' images."
Missinne argues that Leonardo wanted to know and learn why certain people had monstrous faces.
"Leonardo's interest in human nature, anatomy and any kind of freaky deformation, including facial ones is recorded and proven," Missinne told Live Science.
In the rare instances when works by Leonardo go on sale, they fetch exorbitant prices. In May 2013, Sotheby's brokered a deal to sell a recently attributed Leonardo painting of Christ known as "Salvator Mundi" for between $75 million and $80 million. In general, authentic Leonardo discoveries are uncommon — and often plagued by controversy — though apparently there is no shortage of claims.
"'New discoveries' of works by Leonardo are almost a weekly occurrence: they clutter my email box," one curator, who declined to comment on the paper, wrote in an email.
http://www.livescience.com/46351-skull-model-leonardo-da-vinci.html