Every year, Pasargad Heritage Foundation (PHF) announces its dedicatee of the year. This year, on the eve of the most important Iranian celebrations, Nowruz and the beginning of spring and the new near, PHF proposes and dedicates the coming New Year to the great Zarathustra.

This choice has always been made based on the framework of preservation and the value of Iran’s cultural and historical heritage throughout history. Legacies that have been overshadowed by negligence and ignorance, anti-culturalism, or cultural discrimination, have unfortunately been in greater danger of destruction or annihilation during the Islamic rule than ever before. One of these legacies are those individuals who, due to their exceptional scientific, literary, and cultural backgrounds, have made significant contributions to the history of our land and to human societies, or can be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. This year, the Pasargad Heritage Foundation has decided to name 1401 after the great Zoroaster—philosopher, thinker, and messenger of goodness.

Also known as Zoroaster and Zarathushtra Spitama, Zarathustra’s date of birth and the exact period of his life are not clear. Based on linguistic and cultural evidence, scholars say he was present in the second millennium BC, and some historians consider him a contemporary of Cyrus the Great and Darius I. But what seems clear is that the religion of Zoroaster from the sixth century BC to the seventh century AD was the religion of the Persians and some other peoples. European theologians consider Zarathustra a religious reformer because of his moral teachings and believe that he was able to exert significant influence on other religions such as Judaism and Islam, and especially Christianity. At the same time, many world thinkers and philosophers have named and praised Zarathustra as the first philosopher and thinker in the world. He was the first to call animal sacrifice a sin, and the preservation of nature, water, soil, plants, and animals as a form of worship. Apart from all this, what has further augmented our support and nomination for this year is the effects that the teachings of Zoroaster have had, directly or indirectly, on the lives of Persians then and on today’s Iranians, effects that are far greater than the effects of any other religion or creed.

The ideas of Zarathustra as a philosopher, a humanist thinker, and a great poet and writer in his time have given the foundations for building the cultural foundation that we now call “Iranian culture,” a culture that, with all its antiquity, has been and is completely relevant today. For this reason, the ideas of Zarathustra have been present in the works of Iranian philosophers, poets, and thinkers for centuries and have been placed in the hearts and souls of every Iranian with any religion or creed or in those with no particular religious beliefs. As to this day no religion or ideology has been able to destroy these foundations.

The essence and cultural value that Zarathustra has given us are based on the important and modern principles that “man has will and authority; the choice between evil and good, light and darkness” and emphasizing that the defeat of evil and darkness by man is inevitable.

And it is from the heart of this culture that Nowruz, Mehregan, Yalda, Sadeh, and Espandegan and many other Iranian celebrations were born, as a way to build the resilience of humans who have endured and continue to endure the harsh suffering over centuries.

With regards to the cultural values that Zarathustra has given us, beautiful and magical words have already been written: “Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.”

Pasargad Heritage Foundation, in announcing the year 1401 in the name of the great Zarathustra, congratulates everyone on the beautiful world of this Nowruz and Iranian New Year. Let us start the new year in the name of the great Zoroaster and his humane and enlightened thought, and wish all the people of Iran and the world a year full of peace, freedom, and happiness.

With kindness and best wishes,

Pasargad Heritage Foundation

https://savepasargad.com

On 20 December 2013, at its 68th session, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) proclaimed 3 March – the day of signature of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973 – as UN World Wildlife Day to celebrate and raise awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants. The UNGA resolution also designated the CITES Secretariat as the facilitator for the global observance of this special day for wildlife on the UN calendar. World Wildlife Day has now become the most important global annual event dedicated to wildlife.

World Wildlife Day (WWD) will be celebrated in 2022 under the theme “Recovering key species for ecosystem restoration”. The celebrations will seek to draw attention to the conservation status of some of the most critically endangered species of wild fauna and flora, and to drive discussions towards imagining and implementing solutions to conserve them. All conversations will be inspired by and seek to inform efforts towards the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals 1 (No Poverty), 2 (Zero hunger) 12 (Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns), 13 (Climate Action) 14 (Life Below Water) and 15 (Life on Land).

According to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, over 8,400 species of wild fauna and flora are critically endangered, while close to 30,000 more are understood to be endangered or vulnerable. Based on these estimates, it is suggested that over a million species are threatened with extinction.

Continued loss of species, habitats and ecosystems also threatens all life on Earth, including us. People everywhere rely on wildlife and biodiversity-based resources to meet all our needs, from food, to fuel, medicines, housing, and clothing. Millions of people also rely on nature as the source of their livelihoods and economic opportunities.

In 2022, World Wildlife Day will therefore drive the debate towards the imperative need to reverse the fate of the most critically endangered species, to support the restoration of their habitats and ecosystems and to promote their sustainable use by humanity.

https://wildlifeday.org/

Paris, 24 February 2022

ICOMOS deplores the lives already lost and threatened by the deterioration of the situation in the Ukrainian territory. ICOMOS also fears that serious threats weigh on Ukraine’s heritage. As one of the foremost organisations in the heritage field and Advisory Body to the World Heritage Committee, it reminds all involved of the extreme fragility of the cultural heritage during armed conflict, even to unintentional damage, and the commitments of care they have made under the UNESCO Cultural Conventions – in particular the 1954 Hague Convention and its two Protocols, the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage – and their absolute duty to do everything in their power to preserve all heritage, in all its components and layers, from damage. ICOMOS is at the disposal of its colleagues and the authorities in Ukraine for any support or advice it may be able to give in safeguarding cultural heritage or risk preparedness measures.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—Cosmos Magazine reports that a vertebra unearthed at the site of ‘Ubeidiya, which is located in the Jordan Valley, has been dated to 1.5 million years ago. When compared to the remains of other early humans, the fossil is evidence of human dispersal out of Africa in successive waves, rather than as a single event, according to Alon Barash of Bar-Ilan University. Palaeoanthropologist Ella Been of Ono Academic College suggests that the bone belonged to a male child between six and 12 years of age who stood about 70 inches tall, making him relatively tall when compared to the 1.8-million-year-old remains of early humans found at the Dmanisi site in Georgia. “Due to the difference in size and shape of the vertebra from ‘Ubeidiya and those found in the Republic of Georgia, we now have unambiguous evidence of the presence of [at least] two distinct dispersal waves,” Barash said. The two species also produced different stone tools, and lived in different types of habitats, he added. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports

According to a statement released by the University of Huddersfield, a DNA study of remains unearthed at the Links of Noltland site on the island of Westray indicates that immigrants to Scotland’s Northern Isles in the Early Bronze Age replaced much of the local population. It had been previously thought that the Neolithic cultural center on Orkney became more isolated as Europe entered the Bronze Age. The immigrants, who descended from pastoralists from the steppes north of the Black Sea, likely spoke Indo-European languages. DNA studies of remains in Europe suggest this wave of migration was led by men who mixed with local women. But in Orkney, Martin Richards of the University of Huddersfield and his colleagues found that the newcomers were mostly women who mixed with male lineages from the local Neolithic population. These male Neolithic lineages dwindled during the Iron Age, however, and are very rare today, Richards explained. Archaeologists Graeme Wilson and Hazel Moore suggest that Orkney’s self-sufficient farmsteads may have been stable enough to survive and negotiate with the new arrivals. “This shows that the third-millennium B.C. expansion across Europe was not a monolithic process but was more complex and varied from place to place,” concluded team member George Foody. 

By Jane Recker

Researchers excavating the ancient Egyptian city of Athribis have discovered more than 18,000 ostraca—inscribed pottery shards that essentially served as “notepads,” writes Carly Cassella for Science Alert. Ranging from shopping lists to trade records to schoolwork, the fragments offer a sense of daily life in the city some 2,000 years ago. Per Newsweek’s Robert Lea, the trove is the second-largest collection of ostraca ever found in Egypt.

Ancient Egyptians viewed ostraca as a cheaper alternative to papyrus. To inscribe the shards, users dipped a reed or hollow stick in ink. Though most of the ostraca unearthed in Athribis contain writing, the team also found pictorial ostraca depicting animals like scorpions and swallows, humans, geometric figures, and deities, according to a statement from the University of Tübingen, which conducted the excavation in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A large number of the fragments appear to be linked to an ancient school. Over a hundred feature repetitive inscriptions on both the front and back, leading the team to speculate that students who misbehaved were forced to write out lines—a schoolroom punishment still used (and satirized in popular culture) today.

There are lists of months, numbers, arithmetic problems, grammar exercises and a ‘bird alphabet’—each letter was assigned a bird whose name began with that letter,” says Egyptologist Christian Leitz in the statement.

Around 80 percent of the ostraca are written in demotic, an administrative script used during the reign of Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII (81 to 59 B.C.E. and 55 to 51 B.C.E.). Greek is the second-most represented script; hieratic, hieroglyphics, Greek, Arabic, and Coptic (an Egyptian dialect written in the Greek alphabet) also appear, testifying to Athribis’ multicultural history, per Science Alert.

“We will be able to make a case study of daily life in late Ptolemaic/early Roman time[s] once we have analyzed all the texts or at least a larger part of it, which will take years,” Leitz tells Newsweek.

Tübingen archaeologists began digging at Athribis—located about 120 miles north of Luxor—in 2003. Initially, excavations were focused on a large temple built by Ptolemy to honor the lion goddess Repit and her consort Min. The temple was transformed into a nunnery after pagan worship was banned in Egypt in 380 C.E. More recently, the team has shifted focus to a separate sanctuary west of the temple.

According to the statement, Leitz and his team found the ostraca near a series of “multi-story buildings with staircases and vaults” to the west of the main dig site. Prior to the excavation, reports Science Alert, the only comparable collection of ostraca discovered in Egypt was a cache of medical writings found in the workers’ settlement of Deir el-Medineh, near the Valley of the Kings, in the early 1900s.

“This is a very important discovery because it sheds light on the economy and trade in Atribis throughout history,” Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Egyptian antiquities ministry’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, tells Nevine El-Aref of Ahram Online. “The text reveals the financial transactions of the area’s inhabitants, who bought and sold provisions such as wheat and bread.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-18000-ancient-egyptian-ostraca-180979543/