Buon Compleanno, Roma! The Eternal City May Be Older Than We Thought!

Buon Compleanno, Roma! The Eternal City May Be Older Than We Thought! April 14, 2014

As the city of Rome prepares to celebrate its 2,767th birthday on April 21, archeologists have uncovered evidence that the city may be even older than they thought.

Tradition is that the city of Rome was founded on April 21, 753 B.C. by two brothers, Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a wolf.

But on Sunday, April 13, archeologists reported that they’d unearthed evidence of a wall which had been constructed at least 200 years earlier than that.  Patrizia Fortini, head of the Roman Forum to the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage of Rome, reported that the newly uncovered wall dates to well before the city’s traditional founding, probably to some 900 years before Christ.

According to the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, the limestone structure is composed of volcanic tuff, and seems to have been constructed to channel water from an aquifer under the Capitoline hill that flows into the river Spino, a tributary of the Tiber.  The find is even more spectacular than that:  Beside the remains of the limestone wall, archeologists found pottery shards and remains of food (cereals).

Fortini reported that the wall discovered was resting on gravel sediments which were 7,000 years old, and clay silt deposited around 4,000 years ago.

Besides the potential redating of the founding of Rome, archeologists may eventually rewrite the geological map of the Roman Forum.

 


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