Researchers Accidentally Discover "Unique" Collection of 'Cave Pearls' in an Ancient Tunnel, Baffles Them
Researchers have recently unearthed a unique collection of 50 cave pearls from an ancient tunnel in the Jerusalem Hills of Israel. Some of these cave pearls were also noted to contain archeological artifacts, stated Newsweek. These 'pearls' are formed when several minerals like stalactites and stalagmites accumulate at one spot. Findings regarding these structures in the ancient tunnel have been published in the journal Archaeometry.
The discovery was conducted by a team led by Dr. Azriel Yechezkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as per PHYSORG. According to estimations, the cave pearl deposit in the Jerusalem Hills is the largest known of its kind in the Southern Levant. These cave pearl deposits are also the first in the world to house man-made objects. Cave pearls have been identified as a form of speleothem, formations that happen due to materials brought by water. The structures make layer upon layer of mineral deposits their focus and build around them, the part is known as central nuclei.
Some conditions are necessary when it comes to the creation of cave pearls. These requirements include saturated water, a flat cave that could contain a shallow pool, central nuclei, steady change in soil compositions, and some form of water movement like drips or slow-flowing water. Cave pearls are distinct from other kinds of speleothem in terms of the duration it takes to complete its formation. Unlike other speleothems that take thousands of years to form, cave pearls finish building in just a few hundred years. They have garnered their name, because of their similarity in appearance to pearls. These formations typically range from 0.1 mm to 30cm in length.
Among the 50 pearls, 14 contained pottery artifacts while two housed ancient plaster. Barring two, all the pottery pieces belonged to the Hellenistic periods (333–63 B.C.E.), Roman (63 B.C.E.–324 C.E.), or Byzantine (330–636 C.E.) periods. Researchers have yet to figure out the purpose of these pottery fragments. "Despite our efforts, we could not definitively identify the remaining pottery fragments embedded in the cave pearls. Nevertheless, it is evident that these fragments span various historical periods and are composed of a range of materials," Dr. Yechezkel added.
Two pottery fragments are noted to have a cobalt coating. Ceramic lamps with such features were made in Cyprus and Ephesus (Turkey) during the second and first centuries B.C.E. They were expensive as evidenced by the presence of similar items in elite Jerusalem houses. The presence of such imported materials could be because they were owned by people who worked in the cave. "It's my hypothesis that the manual labor of excavating and removing the debris was carried out by the workers. Yet, the overall project was undoubtedly overseen by engineers with expertise in hydrology and geology. Evidence of such engineers, though from later time periods, has been discovered in numerous other tunnels both in Israel and internationally. The imported lamp could have belonged to one of these engineers," Dr. Yechezkel stated.
The tunnel in which the cave pearls were uncovered is man-made and was reportedly put into place to extract water from a perched aquifer. It runs around 232m in length and moves northwest into a channel joining the Refaim stream. There are several sections of the tunnel, with the first one being built of hewn stone and having a roof made of stone slabs. The second section, the one where the cave pearls were nestled is carved directly into the bedrock.
The discovery happened completely by accident. "Our initial research focused on mapping and surveying for archaeological artifacts within the spring tunnel. Cave pearls, a rare type of speleothem, were not the primary objective of our investigation. The discovery of these formations, and even more surprisingly, the presence of archeological remains like pottery shards within them, was an unexpected and significant find," Dr. Yechezkel explained.