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· Saturday, December 19, 2009 · 31 topics · 2410925 to 2178427 · 732 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 283rd issue. Seems like the storm has subsided somewhat. The keyword chaos has gone into remission. |
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Posted on 07/16/2004 11:27:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
:’) It’ll be arbitrary regardless, but it also should be fairly administered. It isn’t now, and again, I’m not optimistic.
The keyword spamming has often been amusing (like in those Zot topics, the ones posted by lib trolls) and for that matter, copious (again, in those Zot topics). Sometimes they do get under my skin, such as the examples above. In the case of “callingartbell”, I’ve been heartily sick of it for a good while, and in fact, I just put in a preemptive strike against that one in a new topic. When i’ve done the same thing before or after it appeared, I’ve had a few nibbles by the culprits, and that kinda made my day. :’)
But anyway, many thanks, I do appreciate your kind remarks.
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #283 Saturday, December 19, 2009 |
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| Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy | |
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| America's Stonehenge: A Classic Whodunit and Whydunit |
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· 12/16/2009 12:29:56 PM PST · · Posted by BGHater · · 36 replies · · 838+ views · · The New York Times · · 11 Dec 2009 · · JAY ATKINSON · |
Salem, N.H. -- At this leafless and gloomy time of year I traveled, in the spirit of the symbologist Robert Langdon of "The Da Vinci Code," to America's Stonehenge, in this town five miles from the Massachusetts border. Scholars have debated whether the stone cairns and chambers here were built by early American Indians, enterprising colonial settlers or, more controversially, a migrant European culture that visited these woods nearly 4,000 years ago. Determined to plumb these mysteries, I arrived at a rustic information center and gift shop on a cold and gray Sunday morning. Inside I was greeted by the... |
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| Mystery of the Narara caves |
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· 12/18/2009 1:05:16 AM PST · · Posted by BGHater · · 10 replies · · 443+ views · · Fiji Times · · 13 Dec 2009 · · Fred Wesley · |
Thirteen stones sit hidden in the dense jungles of the range of mountains that make up Nakauvadra in Ra. Caves with drawings sit below them. They remain a mystery for the people of Narara Village. Deep in the jungles above the village of Narara in Ra stand 12 stones of similar size and shape. The thirteenth is a little longer then the rest. They stand as monolithic reminders of an era the people of Narara are struggling to understand. It takes about six hours on foot to get to these ancient monuments at the top of the range of mountains... |
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| British Isles | |
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| 4,000-year-old flowers found at Bronze Age dig |
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· 12/17/2009 5:36:03 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 8 replies · · 264+ views · · BBC · · Tuesday, December 15, 2009 · · unattributed · |
Proof that pre-historic people placed bunches of flowers in the grave when they buried their dead has been found for the first time, experts have said. Archaeologists have discovered a bunch of meadowsweet blossoms in a Bronze Age grave at Forteviot, south of Perth... Pollen found in earlier digs had been thought to have come from honey, or the alcoholic drink mead but this find may finally rule that theory out. Dr Kenneth Brophy, from the University of Glasgow, said the flowers "don't look very much. Just about three or four millimetres across. But these are the first proof that... |
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| Climate | |
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| Sea rose eight metres in warmer age: study |
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· 12/16/2009 4:39:48 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 46 replies · · 578+ views · · AFP · · Dec 16, 2009 · · Unknown · |
PARIS (AFP) -- Sea levels were likely eight metres higher around 125,000 years ago when polar temperatures were 3-5 degrees C warmer, says a new study published Wednesday to show the effects of global warming. The research by the US universities of Harvard and Princeton was released in the journal Nature as the world's nations met in Denmark to forge a strategy to head off harmful effects of global warming blamed on greenhouse gases. To understand the potential effects of a rise in temperature, the researchers reexamined data about the last interglacial stage -- a warmer period within an ice... |
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| Central Asia | |
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| Genetic studies show modern humans on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau 21,000 years ago |
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· 12/17/2009 5:48:00 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 7 replies · · 279+ views · · Xinhua · · December 14, 2009 · |
...The plateau, with an average altitude above 4,000 meters and known as "the Roof of the World" in southwestern China, is one of the most challenging areas in the world for human settlement due to its environmental extremes, such as extreme cold and low oxygen levels. ...with the drastic drop of temperature on the Earth in the Last Glacial Maximum of the Late Paleolithic Age, about 23,000 years ago, many species could not adapt to the changes and died out... From the perspective of genetic continuity studies, geneticists had also attempted to find out when modern humans settled on the... |
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| Australia and the Pacific | |
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| Evidence of Australia's first human occupation found |
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· 12/17/2009 5:43:33 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 13 replies · · 239+ views · · Times of Malta · · Thursday, December 10th, 2009 · · AFP · |
Evidence of what could be Australia's earliest human occupation has been found on the fringe of desert in the country's remote northwest, according to archaeologists. Peter Veth, of the Australian National University, said an artefact dated at between 45,000 and 50,000 years old found near the shores of Lake Gregory could be the start of a 25-year study into Australia's first humans. "This is the first evidence of human activity ... in the arid northwest of the continent which can be dated to a time before the last great Ice Age," he said in a statement. It was likely to... |
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| Multiregionalism | |
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| French find puts humans in Europe 200,000 years earlier |
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· 12/16/2009 6:22:20 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 15 replies · · 422+ views · · AFP · · Dec 15, 2009 · · Unknown · |
PARIS (AFP) -- Experts on prehistoric man are rethinking their dates after a find in a southern French valley suggested our ancestors may have reached Europe 1.57 million years ago: 200,000 years earlier than we thought. What provoked the recount was a pile of fossilised bones and teeth uncovered 15 years ago by local man Jean Rouvier in a basalt quarry at Lezignan la Cebe, in the Herault valley, Languedoc. In the summer of 2008, Rouvier mentioned his find to Jerome Ivorra, an archaeological researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). The subsequent dig uncovered a large variety... |
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| Diet and Cuisine | |
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| Human Ancestors Were Homemakers |
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· 12/17/2009 12:32:43 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 29 replies · · 372+ views · · Live Science · · Dec 17, 2009 · · Clara Moskowitz · |
In a stone-age version of "Iron Chef," early humans were dividing their living spaces into kitchens and work areas much earlier than previously thought, a new study found. So rather than cooking and eating in the same area where they snoozed, early humans demarcated such living quarters. Archaeologists discovered evidence of this coordinated living at a hominid site at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel from about 800,000 years ago. Scientists aren't sure exactly who lived there, but it predates the appearance of modern humans, so it was likely a human ancestor such as Homo erectus. Yet this advanced organizational skill was... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Was your ancestor a cannibal? And were their victims HAPPY to be eaten? |
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· 12/13/2009 2:22:39 PM PST · · Posted by LibWhacker · · 88 replies · · 1,329+ views · · Daily Mail · · 12/12/09 · · William Napier · |
It's a spine-chilling discovery - hundreds of expertly-butchered human bones that suggest cannibalism was rife among early man.What's even more shocking is that the victims may have been HAPPY to be eaten ...The birds are singing and the forest floor is dappled with sunlight. You can hear the sound of a babbling stream, running into the great river not far off to the east. Sharp ears might hear the drumming of a woodpecker or, high above, the cry of a sparrowhawk. |
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| Supersize Me | |
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| Meat may be the reason humans outlive apes |
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· 12/15/2009 6:44:02 PM PST · · Posted by Mount Athos · · 87 replies · · 997+ views · · livescience · · Dec . 15, 2009 · · Charles Q. Choi · |
Genetic changes that apparently allow humans to live longer than any other primate may be rooted in a more carnivorous diet. These changes may also promote brain development and make us less vulnerable to diseases of aging, such as cancer, heart disease and dementia. These key differences in lifespan may be due to genes that humans evolved to adjust better to meat-rich diets, biologist Caleb Finch at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles suggested. The oldest known stone tools manufactured by the ancestors of modern humans, which date back some 2.6 million years, apparently helped butcher animal bones.... |
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| Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles | |
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| Clues to the mother and father of all genetic mysteries (gene expression depends on parent?) |
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· 12/18/2009 7:08:31 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 6 replies · · 135+ views · · The Times · · Thursday, December 17, 2009 · · Mark Henderson · |
Research has revealed that a genetic variation protects against type 2 diabetes when inherited from a person's father, but increases risk of the same condition when it comes from the mother. It is among five DNA variants with different medical effects that depend on the parent of origin which have been identified by researchers at deCODE Genetics in Iceland... While hundreds of common genetic variations that affect disease risk have been discovered in the past two years, they together explain only a small fraction of the heritable factors that are known to play a part in conditions such as diabetes,... |
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| Navigation | |
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| Davy Jones's lock-up |
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· 12/18/2009 5:43:16 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 3 replies · · 287+ views · · The Economist · · Dec 17, 2009 · · Unknown · |
A SHIPWRECK is a catastrophe for those involved, but for historians and archaeologists of future generations it is an opportunity. Wrecks offer glimpses not only of the nautical technology of the past but also of its economy, trade, culture and, sometimes, its warfare. Until recently, though, most of the 3m ships estimated to be lying on the seabed have been out of reach. Underwater archaeology has mainly been the preserve of scuba divers. That has limited the endeavour to waters less than 50 metres deep, excluding 98% of the sea floor from inspection. Even allowing for the tendency of trading... |
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| Biology and Cryptobiology | |
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| PHOTOS: "Alien" Jellyfish Found in Arctic Deep |
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· 12/15/2009 10:25:34 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 44 replies · · 1,527+ views · · nationalgeographic · · December 11, 2009 · |
In the black depths of the frigid Arctic Ocean, scientists on a 2005 expedition found a splash of color: The brilliant, blood-red Crossota norvegica jellyfish (pictured). The creature was spotted by a remotely operated vehicle 8,530 feet (2,600 meters) underwater during a two-month National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expedition to the Canada Basin, the deepest and least explored part of the Arctic waters. Though C. norvegica is not a new species, several new deep-sea animals were discovered during the expedition--some of which were announced in recent research papers in 2009. |
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| Egypt | |
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| Egypt lifts gate of Isis from underwater |
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· 12/17/2009 5:27:47 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 21 replies · · 518+ views · · Xinhua · · Thursday, December 17, 2009 · · ed by Yan · |
Egypt on Thursday lifted a nine-ton gate of the goddess Isis which carved out of red granite and discovered in the port area on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The gate is one of the rare artifacts discovered in 1998 by an archaeological survey carried out by the Greek archaeological mission in cooperation with the diving team of the Department of the Sunken Antiquities in Alexandria, said the Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni during the ceremony. Hosni noted that a committee of the UNESCO would meet with Egyptian archaeologists to study the establishment of the museum under... |
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance | |
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| Crypt searched for Caravaggio's bones |
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· 12/14/2009 4:36:37 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 10 replies · · 333+ views · · United Press International · · Friday, December 11, 2009 · · unattributed · |
A crypt in the Tuscan town of Porto Ercole, Italy, could contain the 400-year-old bones of artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, anthropologists said. A team from Bologna University and Ravenna University planned to use infrared scanners, CAT scans, DNA analysis and carbon dating to solve the mystery of where Caravaggio, a master of chiaroscuro lighting, was buried, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Friday. The crypt in Porto Ercole was the mostly likely of eight possible burial sites, said Caravaggio expert Maurizio Marini. Local church records said Caravaggio died in the town in 1610. On Wednesday, the anthropologists began sorting... |
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| Shaken, Not Stirred | |
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| Study: Mistress of French King Died From Drinking Too Much Gold |
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· 12/17/2009 8:58:45 AM PST · · Posted by RDTF · · 29 replies · · 1,085+ views · · Fox · · Dec 17, 2009 · |
LONDON -- A British medical journal has published findings saying a mistress of 16th-century French King Henry II may have died from consuming too much drinkable gold. When French experts dug up the remains of Diane de Poitiers last year, they found high levels of gold in her hair. -snip- |
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| Faith and Philosophy | |
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| Burial Cloth Found In Jerusalem Cave Casts Doubt On Authenticity of Turin Shroud [Really?] |
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· 12/15/2009 8:35:30 PM PST · · Posted by Steelfish · · 135 replies · · 2,425+ views · · Daily Mirror (UK) · · December 15th 2009 · |
Archaeologists have discovered the first known burial shroud in Jerusalem from the time of Christ's crucifixion - and say it casts serious doubt on the claimed authenticity of the Turin Shroud. Ancient shrouds from the period have been found before in the Holy Land, but never in Jerusalem. Researchers say the weave and design of the shroud discovered in a burial cave near Jerusalem's Old City are completely different to the Turin Shroud. Discovery: The shrouded body of a man was... |
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| 'Jesus-era' burial shroud found |
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· 12/16/2009 6:53:57 PM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 24 replies · · 969+ views · · bbc · · 16 December 2009 · · Bethany Bell · |
A team of archaeologists and scientists says it has, for the first time, found pieces of a burial shroud from the time of Jesus in a tomb in Jerusalem. The researchers, from Hebrew University and institutions in Canada and the US, said the shroud was very different from the controversial Turin Shroud. Some people believe the Turin Shroud to have been Christ's burial cloth, but others believe it is a fake. The newly found cloth has a simpler weave than Turin's, the scientists say. The body of a man wrapped in fragments of the shroud was found in a tomb... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Charter Colleges? |
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· 12/18/2009 9:16:55 AM PST · · Posted by bs9021 · · 4 replies · · 106+ views · · AIA-FL Blog · · December 18, 2009 · · Deborah Lambert · |
Amid the heavy-handed bureaucracies that dominate our nation's colleges and universities, there are seeds of opportunity. Professor Marvin Olasky noted in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education that a move toward Charter Colleges might be the answer. Dr. Olasky, editor-in-chief of the news magazine World and a journalism professor at the U. of Texas, Austin, hails Rob Koons, "the University of Texas professor removed last fall as head of a UT Western Civilization program, who is proposing that Texas legislators back the creation of charter colleges, as they now support... |
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| Catastrophism and Astronomy | |
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| Kansas scientists probe mysterious possible comet strikes on Earth |
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· 12/14/2009 5:27:46 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 35 replies · · 608+ views · · University of Kansas · · Dec 14, 2009 · · Unknown · |
An investigation by the University of Kansas' Adrian Melott and colleagues reveals a promising new method of detecting past comet strikes upon Earth and gauging their frequency. It's the stuff of a Hollywood disaster epic: A comet plunges from outer space into the Earth's atmosphere, splitting the sky with a devastating shock wave that flattens forests and shakes the countryside. But this isn't a disaster movie plotline. "Comet impacts might be much more frequent than we expect," said Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. "There's a lot of interest in the rate... |
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| Glaciation and the Ice Ages | |
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| Earth Becomes a Snowball...AGAIN? |
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· 12/17/2009 10:11:27 AM PST · · Posted by Huebolt · · 29 replies · · 876+ views · · Harvard · · 1999 · · Hoffman · |
Could the Earth become a "snowball" in future? For the last million years, the Earth has been in its coldest state since the Neoproterozoic. We are now living in a relatively warm episode, some 80,000 years from the next glacial maximum, but some evidence suggests that each successive glaciation over the last several cycles has been getting stronger and stronger. During the most recent glacial event, 20,000 years ago, the deep ocean cooled to near its freezing point, and sea ice reached latitudes as low as 40 to 45 degrees north and south, still far from the critical threshold needed... |
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| Catch the Wave | |
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| Going vertical: Fleeing tsunamis by moving up, not out |
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· 12/14/2009 6:42:37 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 12 replies · · 406+ views · · Stanford University · · Dec 14, 2009 · · Unknown · |
In the minutes after a strong earthquake struck offshore of the Indonesian city of Padang on Sept. 30, fears of a tsunami prompted hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate the coastal city. Or try to. The traffic jam resulting from the mass exodus kept most of them squarely in the danger zone, had a tsunami followed the magnitude 7.6 temblor. Stanford researchers who've studied the city have concluded that fleeing residents would have a better chance of surviving a tsunami if instead of all attempting an evacuation, some could run to the nearest tall building to ride out the... |
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| Dinosaurs | |
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| Good dentistry may have saved the dinosaurs |
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· 12/14/2009 1:55:11 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 18 replies · · 306+ views · · Faculty of 1000: Biology and Medicine · · Dec 14, 2009 · · Unknown · |
Infectious diseases can be transmitted by sneezing, touching, or -- for Tasmanian devils -- biting each other on the face, a habit that may have driven the dinosaurs to extinction through the transmission of a protozoan parasite. Jacqueline Upcroft, a member of f1000 Biology, highlights the 'paleobiological detective work' of David Varricchio and colleagues published in PLoS One. This led them to deduce that a protozoan parasite was to blame for the diseased jaw bones seen in many tyrannosaurid fossils. The parasite's modern-day equivalent, which infects birds, eats away at the jawbone and can cause ulcers so severe that the... |
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| Permian-Triassic | |
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| Toxic Gases Caused World's Worst Extinction |
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· 02/04/2009 1:26:44 PM PST · · Posted by NormsRevenge · · 38 replies · · 1,547+ views · · Discovery News · · 2/4/09 · · Michael Reilly · |
Feb. 4, 2009 -- An ancient killer is hiding in the remote forests of Siberia. Walled off from western eyes during the Soviet era and forgotten among the endless expanse of wilderness, scientists are starting to uncover the remnants of a supervolcano that rained Hell on Earth 250 million years ago and killed 90 percent of all life. Researchers have known about the volcano -- the Siberian Traps, for years. And they've speculated that the volcanic rocks, which cover an area about the size of Alaska, played a role in runaway global warming that led to the end -- Permian... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Previously undiscovered ancient city found on Caribbean sea floor |
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· 12/15/2009 6:55:40 PM PST · · Posted by Abathar · · 107 replies · · 2,866+ views · · Herald de Paris · · 12/9/2009 · · Jes Alexander · |
WASHINGTON, DC (Herald de Paris) - EXCLUSIVE - Researchers have revealed the first images from the Caribbean sea floor of what they believe are the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization. Guarding the location's coordinates carefully, the project's leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, says the city could be thousands of years old; possibly even pre-dating the ancient Egyptian pyramids, at Giza. The site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Russian explorers near Cuba in 2001, at a depth of 2300 feet. "To be... |
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| Early America | |
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| Oldest land-based Jewish Navy chapel rededicated |
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· 12/13/2009 5:32:20 PM PST · · Posted by csvset · · 18 replies · · 331+ views · · The Virginian-Pilot · · December 13, 2009 · · Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer · |
Commodore Uriah P. Levy He left home when he was 10, running away to become a cabin boy, and eventually became the first Jewish commodore in the Navy, the highest rank available at the time. On Sunday, the Jewish chapel at Naval Station Norfolk -- the oldest land-based Jewish chapel in the Navy -- was rededicated to Commodore Uriah P. Levy, 50 years to the day after it was first named after him. Born in Philadelphia in 1792, Levy had a career that spanned pirate-chasing to authorship -- he wrote "A Manual of Internal Rules and Regulations for Men-of-War." It... |
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| Indian College found? [Harvard, 1655 to 1698] |
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· 12/17/2009 6:07:00 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 13 replies · · 328+ views · · Harvard · · Wednesday, December 16, 2009 · · Alvin Powell, Harvard Staff Writer · |
On one of the last of days of digging in Harvard Yard this fall, archaeologists believe they finally found evidence linked to one of the University's earliest buildings, the Indian College that stood on the site from 1655 to 1698. Archaeologists working in a chest-deep hole near Matthews Hall uncovered a narrow strip of dark earth in a lighter, orange-brown layer that marks natural soil. They believe that the dark earth is the bottom of an architectural trench most likely dug for the Indian College, built to house Native American students as part of the University's original mandate to educate... |
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| The Revolution | |
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| Remembering George Washington December 14th. |
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· 12/13/2009 8:52:39 PM PST · · Posted by Ravnagora · · 27 replies · · 384+ views · · www.whitehouse.gov · |
On December 14th 1799, America lost her first president. She needs to revisit what made George Washington the great man and the great President that he was. Remembering George... First U.S. President: 1789-1797On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. "As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent," he wrote James Madison, "it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles." Born... |
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| World War Eleven | |
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| How British PoW swapped uniforms to sneak IN to Auschwitz so his Jewish pal could slip out |
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· 12/14/2009 7:38:38 AM PST · · Posted by MuttTheHoople · · 34 replies · · 1,091+ views · · MailOnline · · 13th December 2009 · · Andy Dolan · |
For 60 years Denis Avey remained too traumatised to talk about the horrors he had witnessed as a prisoner of war at Auschwitz. But when he finally felt able, he revealed an incredible tale of bravery and compassion. |
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| Vietnam | |
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| Search Interactive Vietnam Wall |
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· 05/24/2009 12:46:30 PM PDT · · Posted by Stoat · · 25 replies · · 1,713+ views · · The Washington Times · · May 22, 2009 · |
The Washington Times has partnered with the Internet company Footnote.com on a new project that transforms Washington's Vietnam war memorial wall into an interactive, personal journey on the Web. The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial allows you to search the names on the wall and to drill down into the government's official war records to learn details about each of the 58,000-plus heroes enshrined on the wall. You can also add your own personal stories, remembrances and photographs. Start by clicking on the "Search the Wall" box, where you can select "Search" or "View." Once you find the name... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| New Scientist [magazine] becomes Non Scientist |
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· 12/16/2009 10:57:10 AM PST · · Posted by Varmint Al · · 14 replies · · 514+ views · · JoNova Web Page · · 12/16/2009 · · JoNova · |
This could be humor, but the fraud and cost makes it very serious! JoNova is a freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host. The Skeptics Handbook: 164,000 copies printed. |
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| end of digest #283 20091219 | |
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· Saturday, December 19, 2009 · 31 topics · 2410925 to 2178427 · 732 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 283rd issue. Seems like the storm has subsided somewhat. The keyword chaos has gone into remission. |
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My apologies, I was going to attempt to do the Digest from out here in the country, but didn’t anticipate one kinda big non-FR problem which basically kiboshed the idea. I made a beginning, before midnight on Saturday, but ran into a barrier (not to mention the dialup speed, ick) so please accept my apologies, and look for it sometime during the afternoon or evening tomorrow.
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #284 Saturday, December 26, 2009 |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| November 2010: Too little, too late |
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· 12/27/2009 12:07:05 PM PST · · Posted by American Dream 246 · · 15 replies · · 324+ views · · American Thinker · · 12/27/09 · · John Hunt · |
If conservatives wait until November 2010 we will be: Too little, too late. This is why: The nominations and primary races are shaping up right now. We must nominate conservatives for the November 2010 vote, right now. Deadlines approach soon. GOP county and state organizations are working right now to get their ducks in a row for the 2010 election - and beyond. When conservatives sit back and "wait" - we're saddled with candidates like Dede Scozzafava of the recent RINO insider fiasco in New York, not to mention certain lack-luster candidates for the presidency. Let's look at GOP county... |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? |
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· 12/19/2009 6:02:29 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 62 replies · · 1,003+ views · · Smithsonian magazine · · January 2010 · · Andrew Lawler · |
For his part, Peleg believes Qumran went through several distinct stages. As the morning heat mounts, he leads me up a steep ridge above the site, where a channel hewn into the rock brought water into the settlement. From our high perch, he points out the foundations of a massive tower that once commanded a fine view of the sea to the east toward today's Jordan. "Qumran was a military post around 100 B.C.," he says. "We are one day from Jerusalem, and it fortified the northeast shore of the Dead Sea." Other forts from this era are scattered among... |
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| Nazareth | |
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| Israel: first Jesus-era house found in Nazareth |
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· 12/21/2009 5:51:57 AM PST · · Posted by NYer · · 21 replies · · 714+ views · · Google · · December 21, 2009 · |
Israeli archaeologists say they have uncovered remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus. They say the find sheds a new light on what Nazareth might have been like in Jesus' time -- probably a small hamlet with about 50 houses populated by poor Jews. Archaeologist Yardena Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority says remains of a wall, a hideout and a cistern were found after builders dug up a convent courtyard. Alexandre said Monday archeologists also found clay and chalk vessels used by Galilean Jews of the time... |
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| First Jesus-era house discovered in Nazareth |
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· 12/21/2009 1:45:20 PM PST · · Posted by My Favorite Headache · · 23 replies · · 778+ views · · AT&T Newswire · · 12/21/2009 · |
Just in time for Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what may have been the home of one of Jesus' childhood neighbors. The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood. Archaeologists and present-day residents of Nazareth imagined Jesus as a youngster, playing with other children in the isolated village, not far from the spot where the Archangel Gabriel revealed to Mary that she would give birth to the boy. Today the ornate Basilica of the Annunciation marks that... |
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| Uncovered days before Christmas: Remains of a home in Nazareth that Jesus would have known |
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· 12/21/2009 7:40:42 PM PST · · Posted by bogusname · · 27 replies · · 693+ views · · Daily Mail UK · · December 21, 2009 · · Mail Foreign Service · |
The remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that has been dated back to the time of Jesus have been unveiled - just days before Christmas. The find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy, Israeli archaeologists said. The dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres. It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means who kept camouflaged grottos to hide from... |
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| Star of the East | |
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| The Magi and the Star |
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· 12/21/2009 3:31:25 PM PST · · Posted by NYer · · 16 replies · · 466+ views · · Catholic World Report · · December 21, 2009 · · Michael J. Miller · |
Many balk at this element of the Nativity story, but historical and astronomical evidence tends to corroborate it · During a 2007 BBC radio interview, the archbishop of Canterbury deconstructed elements of the Nativity story. "Stars simply don't behave like that," Rowan Williams said. Asked about the existence of three wise men, he replied, "It works quite well as legend."But years ago Father Walter Brandm¸ller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, published an essay applying the historical-critical method to the question of the Nativity story. (The essay is reprinted without cumbersome footnotes in Light and Shadows: Church... |
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| Faith and Philosophy | |
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| From Roman to Third Reich: anti-Semitism has long history |
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· 12/21/2009 8:40:58 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 14 replies · · 358+ views · · www.nrc.nl · · Monday, December 21, 2009 · · Dirk Vlasbom · |
In 388 AD a Christian mob led by a local bishop destroyed the synagogue of Callinicum, a Greco-Roman city in northern Syria. The attack angered emperor Theodosius I, who had declared Christianity the religion of the Roman state just eight years earlier. As the Jewish community enjoyed a protected status under Roman laws, he ordered the synagogue be rebuilt be rebuilt at bishop's expense. This triggered Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, to write the emperor a letter defending the obliteration of the Jewish temple. What could possibly be wrong with destroying a "house of betrayal and godlessness" where Christ's name... |
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| Dendrochronology | |
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| Ancient Tree (Almost) Older Than Dirt [ 5,000 to 30,000 years old ] |
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· 12/23/2009 6:46:09 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 21 replies · · 1,433+ views · · Discovery · · Wednesday, December 23, 2009 · · Michael Reilly · |
The entire grove of trunks is in fact one plant, a newly discovered Palmer's oak (Quercus palmeri) that researchers estimate is over 13,000 years old, making it one of the oldest plants on Earth... none of its 70 stems get more than a few feet tall, and it grows in a boulder pile that doubles as shelter from the area's buffeting winds. At first glance, the scientists thought it was an isolated grove of trees, but something didn't add up: None of them produced fertile acorns, so the plants couldn't reproduce... Genetic analysis confirmed their suspicion. Each of the 70... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| Rock Art Redefines 'Ancient' [ China Lake CA petroglyphs 16K old ] |
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· 12/19/2009 5:21:27 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 18 replies · · 484+ views · · New York Times · · December 18, 2009 · · David Page · |
With us rode David S. Whitley, an archaeologist and expert on prehistoric rock art and iconographic interpretation. Having visited hundreds of sites all over the world, including Lascaux and Chauvet in France and the CÙa Valley in Portugal, he believes the Coso Petroglyphs to be one of the most important rock art sites on earth. Mr. Whitley estimated that there may be as many as 100,000 images carved into the dark volcanic canyons above the China Lake basin, some as old as 12,000 to 16,000 years, others as recent as the mid-20th century. Floating across a landscape strewn with more... |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Tech anthropologist works to save dying Comanche language |
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· 12/19/2009 6:35:04 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 46 replies · · 610+ views · · Lubbock Online · · Friday, December 18, 2009 · · Matthew Mcgowan · |
The language of the Comanche people, a lifeline of its culture, is fading fast. Its muted vowels and sapient cadence once echoed throughout the fenceless grasslands of the South Plains, but today it can muster barely a whisper... With a recent $215,000 two-year grant from the Administration for Native Americans, they'll shoulder the task on modern technology and a new generation of Comanche students eager to learn their ancestral tongue. "Its important for any language to have its say, to be documented," Williams said. "It's interesting for Comanche because it rose to dominance on the South Plains so quickly, then... |
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| Climate | |
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| UCSB Archaeologist Disputes Common Belief About Collapse of Maya Civilization |
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· 12/19/2009 7:43:25 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 46 replies · · 931+ views · · University of California, Santa Barbara · · December 9, 2009 · · Journal of Ethnobiology UCSB, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara · |
...Anabel Ford, an archaeologist at UC Santa Barbara and director of the university's MesoAmerican Research Center, suggests... that the forest gardens cultivated by the Maya demonstrate their great appreciation for the environment. Her findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Ethnobiology in an article titled "Origins of the Maya Forest Garden: Maya Resource Management." ...The ancient Maya, who farmed without draft animals or plows, and had access only to stone tools and fire, followed what Ford calls the "milpa cycle." It is an ancient land use system by which a closed canopy forest is transformed into... |
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| Ancient Mayans Likely Had Fountains and Toilets |
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· 12/23/2009 6:54:38 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 42 replies · · 566+ views · · LiveScience · · Wednesday, December 23, 2009 · · Charles Q. Choi · |
The ancient Mayans may have had enough engineering know-how to master running water, creating fountains and even toilets by controlling water pressure, scientists now suggest... Scientists investigated the Mayan center at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. At its height, this major site, inhabited from roughly 100 to 800 AD, had some 1,500 structures -- residences, palaces, and temples -- holding some 6,000 inhabitants under a series of powerful rulers. The center at Palenque also had what was arguably the most unique and intricate system of water management known anywhere in the Maya lowlands. These involved elaborate subterranean aqueducts to deal with... |
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| Neandertal / Neanderthal | |
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| 2010 preview: Arise, Neanderthal brother |
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· 12/19/2009 5:35:06 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 25 replies · · 486+ views · · New Scientist · · Thursday, December 17, 2009 · · Ewen Callaway · |
Do we have a little Neanderthal in us? That's not a reference to your behaviour at the end-of-year office party, but to the genes of our extinct cousins. With the imminent publication of the genome sequence of Homo neanderthalis, that question may finally be answered. So far no one has uncovered evidence of any cross-species romps -- at least none that left a trace in our DNA. The 3-billion-nucleotide Neanderthal genome is our best chance yet of finding out. Whether they did or didn't will make the headlines next year, but the importance of the Neanderthal genome reaches much further.... |
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| Diet and Cuisine | |
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| Flintstone's kitchen shown to be accurate for REAL stoneagers |
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· 12/20/2009 7:04:45 AM PST · · Posted by nutsonthebus · · 22 replies · · 515+ views · · http://www.daveweinbaum.com · |
In a stone-age version of "Iron Chef," early humans were dividing their living spaces into kitchens and work areas much earlier than previously thought, a new study found. So rather than cooking and eating in the same area where they snoozed, early humans demarcated such living quarters. Archaeologists discovered evidence of this coordinated living at a hominid site at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel from about 800,000 years ago. Scientists aren't sure exactly who lived there, but it predates the appearance of modern humans, so it was likely a human ancestor such as Homo erectus. |
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| Africa | |
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| Pass the Sorghum, Caveman |
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· 12/19/2009 6:50:32 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 30 replies · · 555+ views · · ScienceNOW Daily News · · Thursday, December 17, 2009 · · Cassandra Willyard · |
Credit: Daniel Georg Dˆhne/Wikimedia Conventional wisdom holds that early humans survived on a diet of meat, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and the occasional tuber. Our love affair with cereals supposedly came later, about 20,000 years ago. But a new study hints that wild cereals were part of the human diet more than 100,000 years ago. Making cereals palatable is hard work. They have to be roasted in a fire or pounded into flour and cooked. Because the process is energy-intensive and requires specialized tools, many archeologists assumed that humans didn't begin consuming mass quantities of cereal until the advent of... |
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| Anatolia | |
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| Ancient seed sprouts plant from the past [ 4000 year old lentils ] |
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· 12/19/2009 8:13:11 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 34 replies · · 672+ views · · Hurriyet Daily News · · Wednesday, December 16, 2009 · · Kutahya: Radikal · |
A 4,000-year-old lentil seed unearthed in an archeological excavation has successfully sprouted after being planted. Project leader and Dumlupınar University archeology faculty Professor Nejat Bilgen said they found the seeds during an excavation undertaken last year in Kütahya province. Bilgen said a layer from the container in which they found the seeds was determined to be from the middle bronze age. He said his team found many seeds, but most had been burnt, adding that they had failed to make the others turn green before the recent success. The excavation team believes they found a silo because there were many... |
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| Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy | |
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| Archaeologists to explore feasting habits of ancient builders of Stonehenge |
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· 12/23/2009 6:29:02 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 5 replies · · 177+ views · · Culture24 · · Monday, December 21, 2009 · · Culture24 Staff · |
The team who worked on the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2009 are to return to their findings to explain the eating habits of the people who built and worshipped at the stone circle over four thousand years ago... the new 'Feeding Stonehenge' project will analyse a range of materials including cattle bones and plant residue... Initial research suggests the animals were brought considerable distances to the ceremonial site.. The original Stonehenge Riverside project, which strengthened the idea that nearby Durrington Walls was part of the Stonehenge complex, yielded a surprisingly wide range of material ranging from ancient tools to animal... |
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| Sámi, How We Love Ya, How We Love Ya | |
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| Before the Fall of the Reindeer People |
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· 12/21/2009 8:32:22 AM PST · · Posted by BGHater · · 41 replies · · 837+ views · · Environmental Graffiti · · 13 Dec 2009 · · EG · |
A Sámi (Lapp) family in Norway around 1900 -- Photo: Library of Congress -- In the freezing far northern reaches of Europe live an indigenous, semi-nomadic people of fishermen, fur trappers and reindeer herders. Like a thin but stubborn sheet of ice, these people have inhabited Sápmi, a large but sparsely populated area covering parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia's Kola Peninsula for thousands of years. They remained closely tied to nature throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, as their clothes, dwellings and other trappings of culture bear witness -- here beautifully frozen in film. These people are the Sámi... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Genetic study clarifies African and African-American ancestry |
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· 12/21/2009 12:41:48 PM PST · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 20 replies · · 919+ views · · University of Pennsylvania · · 21-Dec-2009 · · Jordan Reese · |
The University of PennsylvaniaSarah Tishkoff, professor in the departments of genetics and biology at University of Pennsylvania, is collecting samples in Africa. Collaboration by University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University PHILADELPHIA -- People who identify as African-American may be as little as 1 percent West African or as much as 99 percent, just one finding of a large-scale, genome-wide study of African and African-American ancestry released today. An international research team led by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University has collected and analyzed genotype data from 365 African-Americans, 203 people from 12 West African populations and... |
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| Human genomics: The genome finishers (That pdf link is restricted access.) |
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· 12/20/2009 2:57:19 PM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 5 replies · · 223+ views · · Nature News · · 16 December 2009 · · Elie Dolgin · |
Dedicated scientists are working hard to close the gaps, fix the errors and finally complete the human genome sequence. ...Deanna Church has few distractions from the job that lies before her. On her computer sit 888 open 'tickets', or outstanding problems with the human genome sequence. Although that number fluctuates, it's a not-so-subtle reminder that she and her team at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) have a long way to go... --snip-- By April 2003, the sequencing had surpassed the international project's technical definition of completion -- the sequence contained fewer than 1 error per 10,000 nucleotides and... |
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| Catastrophism and Astronomy | |
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| 'Fried Egg' may be impact crater |
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· 12/20/2009 9:37:16 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 36 replies · · 823+ views · · BBC News · · Friday, December 18, 2009 · · Jonathan Amos · |
Portuguese scientists have found a depression on the Atlantic Ocean floor they think may be an impact crater. The roughly circular, 6km-wide hollow has a broad central dome and has been dubbed the "Fried Egg" because of its distinctive shape. It was detected to the south of the Azores Islands during a survey to map the continental shelf. If the Fried Egg was made by a space impactor, the collision probably took place within the past 17 million years... It lies under 2km of water about 150km from the Azores archipelago. The depressed ring sits roughly 110m below the... |
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| Whale Meat Again, Don't Know How, Don't Know When | |
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| Early Whale Was Dwarf Mud-Sucker, Fossils Hint |
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· 12/23/2009 7:28:17 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 13 replies · · 261+ views · · National Geographic News · · Wednesday, December 23, 2009 · · Carolyn Barry · |
An ancient dwarf whale unearthed in southeastern Australia captured its prey by slurping up mouthfuls of mud, a new study says. The fossil whale, thought to between 25 and 28 million years old, hints that mud sucking might have been a precursor to the filter feeding used by today's baleen whales... The newfound fossil whale, which measures just nine feet (three meters) long, shares the same distinct jaw and skull structures as today's baleens. But the tiny whale also had teeth, said study author Erich Fitzgerald, a paleontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. The odd combination suggests that the... |
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| Dinosaurs | |
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| Poisonous prehistoric 'raptor' discovered by research team from Kansas and China |
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· 12/21/2009 4:02:57 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 19 replies · · 520+ views · · University of Kansas · · Dec 21, 2009 · · Unknown · |
This is the first report of venom in the lineage that leads to modern birds -- A group of University of Kansas researchers working with Chinese colleagues have discovered a venomous, birdlike raptor that thrived some 128 million years ago in China. This is the first report of venom in the lineage that leads to modern birds. "This thing is a venomous bird for all intents and purposes," said Larry Martin, KU professor and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Institute. "It was a real shock to us and we made a special trip... |
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| Tool Time | |
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| Chimps Master First Step in Controlling Fire |
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· 12/26/2009 9:46:45 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 38 replies · · 749+ views · · livescience · · 21 December 2009 · · Charles Q. Choi · |
Chimps remain cool under fire, possessing a near human ability to predict how wildfires spread and react accordingly. This newfound capability of chimpanzees to understand flames might shed light on when and how our distant ancestors first learned to control fire, scientists now suggest. Primatologist Jill Pruetz at Iowa State University in Ames was observing savanna chimpanzees in Senegal in 2006 as people were setting wildfires, an annual tradition that clears land and aids hunting. Most areas within the chimpanzees' home range are burned to some degree. "It was the end of the dry season, so the fires burn so... |
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| Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles | |
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| Abandoned Bones Suggest TB Wiped Out Leprosy In Battle Of Killer Diseases |
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· 12/23/2009 8:01:21 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 10 replies · · 441+ views · · ScienceDaily · · February 19, 2005 · · University College London · |
The spread of tuberculosis may have killed off leprosy in Europe in the Middle Ages, according to research published in the latest issue of the Royal Society Proceedings B. A collaborative study led by University College London (UCL) scientists, following the discovery of a shrouded body in a sealed chamber overlooked by tomb robbers, found evidence of both diseases in a range of archaeological remains dating from the 1st to the 15th centuries. An initial examination of the body, currently under analysis in Israel, revealed signs of co-infection of TB and leprosy in the bone tissue. The collaborative team, led... |
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| Extremophiles | |
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| Yellowstone Discovery Bodes Well for Finding Evidence of Life on Mars |
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· 04/20/2005 2:04:30 PM PDT · · Posted by PatrickHenry · · 37 replies · · 1,111+ views · · National Science Foundation · · 20 April 2005 · · Cheryl L. Dybas and Jim Scott · |
Researchers say a bizarre group of microbes found living inside rocks in an inhospitable geothermal environment at Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park could provide tantalizing new clues about ancient life on Earth and help steer the hunt for evidence of life on Mars. University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) scientists Jeffrey Walker, John Spear and Norman Pace report the finding in the April 21 issue of the journal Nature. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. The CU-Boulder research team reported that the microbes were discovered in the pores of rocks in a highly acidic environment with... |
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| The Revolution | |
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| Happy Clinton Impeachment Day 2009! Impeachment is Forever |
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· 12/18/2009 9:03:50 PM PST · · Posted by kristinn · · 65 replies · · 1,157+ views · · Saturday, December 19, 2009 · · Kristinn · |
Top photo: Jim Robinson leads Free Republic's Clinton Impeachment Rally, aka March for Justice, Washington, D.C. -- October 31, 1998 -- Center: Washington Post front page, December 20, 1998 -- Bottom: AP/World Wide Photo -- For those who are unaware of Free Republic's history making in its early years, please know that Jim Robinson and the Freepers played a key role in getting Bill Clinton impeached. The impeachhment rally was broadcast live on C-SPAN (all four hours!) Founder of the D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com, MrConfettiMan (who has since passed away) wrote his thoughts about the rally back then: Saturday, October 31st, The March for Justice -- I drove into Washington for... |
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| Myths of the American Revolution |
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· 12/19/2009 3:18:21 PM PST · · Posted by BGHater · · 43 replies · · 1,247+ views · · Smithsonian Magazine · · Jan 2010 · · John Ferling · |
A noted historian debunks the conventional wisdom about America's War of Independence We think we know the Revolutionary War. After all, the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it not only determined the nation we would become but also continue to define who we are. The Declaration of Independence, the Midnight Ride, Valley Forge -- the whole glorious chronicle of the colonists' rebellion against tyranny is in the American DNA. Often it is the Revolution that is a child's first encounter with history.Yet much of what we know is not entirely true. Perhaps more than any defining moment in American history,... |
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| Biology and Cryptobiology | |
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| Are there cougars in the Southwest Michigan? |
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· 12/21/2009 7:56:50 AM PST · · Posted by earlJam · · 127 replies · · 2,523+ views · · Kalamazoo Gazette · · 12/21/09 · |
Hundreds of people in Southwest Michigan claim to have seen cougars. Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition, a group started six years ago by local attorney and Van Buren County Commissioner Denise Noble, has catalogued nearly 200 cougar sightings in Allegan, Van Buren, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph counties. Add in Barry, Cass and Berrien counties, and total cougar sightings reported in Southwest Michigan jump to 412. Allegan County had the third highest number of reported cougar sightings in the state, with 62. Van Buren County came in fifth, with 58. Kalamazoo County was seventh in the state, with 54. Noble said... |
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| Pyramids in China | |
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| Mysterious Non-Egyptian Pyramids[China] |
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· 12/21/2009 6:53:31 AM PST · · Posted by BGHater · · 21 replies · · 881+ views · · DRB · · 20 Dec 2009 · · DRB · |
James Gaussman and the Jewelled Pyramid of China Egyptian pyramids? Sure, everyone knows about the ones at Giza - and a few aficionados might know about the 138 others (!) scattered around them. Mesoamerican pyramids? Okay, a lot of folks know about them, too -- or even that the great one at Cholula is considered to be the largest one in the world. (reconstruction of a typical Chinese pyramid - image via) But, unfortunately, not many people know that pyramids have come in other flavors as well, including the mysterious and legendary ones in China. (photo by Santha Falia, ;... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Mystery of golden ratio explained |
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· 12/21/2009 3:53:49 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 55 replies · · 1,410+ views · · Duke University · · Dec 21, 2009 · · Unknown · |
DURHAM, N.C. -- The Egyptians supposedly used it to guide the construction the Pyramids. The architecture of ancient Athens is thought to have been based on it. Fictional Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tried to unravel its mysteries in the novel The Da Vinci Code. "It" is the golden ratio, a geometric proportion that has been theorized to be the most aesthetically pleasing to the eye and has been the root of countless mysteries over the centuries. Now, a Duke University engineer has found it to be a compelling springboard to unify vision, thought and movement under a single law of... |
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| Glaciation and the Ice Ages | |
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| Antarctica- not always so cold and remote |
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· 12/18/2009 10:04:01 PM PST · · Posted by Yollopoliuhqui · · 22 replies · · 853+ views · · Various · · Peter Jupp · |
Antarctica not always so cold and remote.... Antarctica harbours bones of dinosaur sand petrified rain forests. Did continental-drift bring Antarctica to the poles...or was it a shift in the earth's axis that not only caused the death of the Mega fauna, but placed a massive ice sheet on the continent? In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin. Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century. His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish... |
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance | |
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| Jesus-era leper sheds light on Turin shroud mystery |
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· 12/17/2009 4:57:12 AM PST · · Posted by bogusname · · 70 replies · · 1,121+ views · · Haaretz .com · · December 16, 2009 · · Haaretz Service · |
Israel experts said on Wednesday that a burial shroud known as the Turin shroud, assumed to be the type used to wrap the body of Jesus, did not actually originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem. The conclusion was based on excavation discoveries of a first-century C.E. shrouded man found in a tomb on the edge of the Old City of Jerusalem, which also revealed the earliest proven case of leprosy. Along with the DNA of the shrouded man, this was the first time that fragments of a burial shroud have been found from the time of Jesus in Jerusalem, which, unlike the... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| The "Science' Mantra (Thomas Sowell) |
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· 12/21/2009 5:39:05 PM PST · · Posted by jazusamo · · 25 replies · · 1,058+ views · · Jewish World Review · · December 22, 2009 · · Thomas Sowell · |
Science is one of the great achievements of the human mind and the biggest reason why we live not only longer but more vigorously in our old age, in addition to all the ways in which it provides us with things that make life easier and more enjoyable. Like anything valuable, science has been seized upon by politicians and ideologues, and used to forward their own agendas. This started long ago, as far back as the 18th century, when the Marquis de Condorcet coined the term "social science" to describe various theories he favored. In the 19th century, Karl Marx... |
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| end of digest #284 20091226 | |
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· Saturday, December 26, 2009 · 34 topics · 2415871 to 2410988 · 733 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 284th issue. My apologies for the delay on this issue, but I had car trouble, was more or less stranded in the Dialup Puckerbrush (actually it's my favorite place to be, other than the bandwidth) without the usual data I need to edit up this thing. |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #285 Saturday, January 01, 2010 |
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| The Old Piano Roll Blues | |
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| The REAL History of Free Republic, 2009 Edition (c) |
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· 12/30/2009 6:17:52 AM PST · · Posted by Lazamataz · · 129 replies · · 1,746+ views · · Free Republic · · 12/30/2009 · · By Lazamataz · |
What did we all do before Free Republic? Well, it might surprise you to know there never was a time before Free Republic. And as good as the forum is now, it was much then. I remember the Good Old Days of Free Republic. It was the 1970's. You should have been on Free Republic back in the 1970's. It was all different back then. "Clinton's a liar" was named "Kennedy's a perv". Michael Rivero was posting a series debunking the moon landing hoax, and showing how Apollo 13 was likely crippled by a Soviet missile, not some 'center fuel... |
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| Prehistory and Origins | |
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| What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us? [Apes with 150 IQ?] |
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· 12/31/2009 9:53:37 AM PST · · Posted by Fractal Trader · · 49 replies · · 1,377+ views · · Discover · · 28 December · · Gary Lynch and Richard Granger · |
In the autumn of 1913, two farmers were arguing about hominid skull fragments they had uncovered while digging a drainage ditch. The location was Boskop, a small town about 200 miles inland from the east coast of South Africa. These Afrikaner farmers, to their lasting credit, had the presence of mind to notice that there was something distinctly odd about the bones. They brought the find to Frederick W. Fitz Simons, director of the Port Elizabeth Museum, in a small town at the tip of South Africa. The scientific community of South Africa was small, and before long the skull... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| DNA analysed from early European |
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· 01/01/2010 3:19:58 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 20 replies · · 421+ views · · BBC · · Jan 1, 2010 · · Paul Rincon · |
Scientists have analysed DNA extracted from the remains of a 30,000-year-old European hunter-gatherer. The researchers were able to assign the Kostenki individual to haplogroup "U2", which is relatively uncommon among modern populations. U2 appears to be scattered at low frequencies in populations from South and Western Asia, Europe and North Africa. Despite its rarity, the very presence of this haplogroup in today's Europeans suggests some continuity between Palaeolithic hunters and the continent's present-day inhabitants, argue the authors of the latest study. |
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| Using modern sequencing techniques to study ancient modern humans |
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· 12/31/2009 9:25:55 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 4 replies · · 200+ views · · Cell Press · · Dec 31, 2009 · · Unknown · |
DNA that is left in the remains of long-dead plants, animals, or humans allows a direct look into the history of evolution. So far, studies of this kind on ancestral members of our own species have been hampered by scientists' inability to distinguish the ancient DNA from modern-day human DNA contamination. Now, research by Svante Pääbo from The Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, published online on December 31st in Current Biology -- a Cell Press publication -- overcomes this hurdle and shows how it is possible to directly analyze DNA from a member of our own species who... |
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| Fertile Crescent | |
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| From Ur's Royal Tombs |
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· 12/30/2009 9:01:56 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 21 replies · · 283+ views · · Wall St Journal · · December 28, 2009 · · Julia M. Klein · |
Crammed into a single large gallery, the Penn Museum show -- filled with delicate cylinder seals and alabaster pots, and glittering strings of gold, carnelian and lapis lazuli beads -- is at once frustratingly old-fashioned and deliberately retro in its design. Musical selections from the expedition's record collection play in the background. The texts are well-written but long and somewhat dense. They are supplemented by archival and contemporary images of the site and computer terminals displaying the exhibition's Web site and other Web resources and offering visitors a chance to "live blog" about the show. |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Mayan glyphs detail priest's life, blood sacrifices |
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· 12/30/2009 8:53:47 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 14 replies · · 339+ views · · Yahoo! · · Monday, December 28, 2009 · · AFP · |
Experts are studying the first Mayan hieroglyphic script dealing with the life of a high priest, his blood sacrifices and acts of penance, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said. The text consists of 260 glyphs carved into a series of seashell earrings and manta ray stingers found inside a burial urn. The urn, which also contained the remains of an important Maya priest, wrapped in bright red cloth, was uncovered during excavations 11 years ago in Comalcalco, in southeastern Tabasco state, the institute said in a statement. "It is the longest Maya hieroglyphic script ever found to... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| Honduran ruins predate Mayans |
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· 01/01/2010 2:32:32 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 9 replies · · 329+ views · · Tiscali · · May 13, 2003 (what's the rush?) · · Reuters · |
Ruins of a pre-Columbian city built before the rise of the Maya civilisation have been discovered in a remote region of eastern Honduras, the Institute of Anthropology and History says. The so-called City of Encounters, in the wilderness of Botaderos mountain about 120 miles northeast of the capital, includes vestiges of three rectangular plazas, various mounds and small stone-encrusted pillars. It appears to have been built in the pre-Classical or early Classical period between 300 B.C. and 300 A.D., said Mexican anthropologist Victor Heredia, an investigator for the institute. "It's a pre-Hispanic city, a complex site. It has a well-defined... |
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| China | |
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| China says discovers tomb of famed general Cao Cao |
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· 12/27/2009 4:19:23 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 31 replies · · 542+ views · · Reuters · · Dec 27, 2009 · · Reporting by Beijing Newsroom · · Writing by Lucy Hornby · · Editing by Sugita Katyal · |
Chinese archeologists have unearthed a large third-century tomb, which they say could be that of Cao Cao, the legendary politician and general famous throughout East Asia for his Machiavellian tactics. The tomb, discovered in Xigaoxue village near the ancient Chinese city of Anyang, Henan Province, has an epitaph and inscription that appear to refer to Cao Cao, Central China Television said on Sunday. A Chinese proverb, "speak of Cao Cao and he appears," is the equivalent of "speak of the devil" in English. |
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| Egypt | |
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| Threshold to Cleopatra's mausoleum discovered off Alexandria coast |
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· 01/01/2010 12:23:02 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 23 replies · · 671+ views · · Guardian · · Wednesday, December 23, 2009 · · Helena Smith · |
A team of Greek marine archaeologists who have spent years conducting underwater excavations off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt have unearthed a giant granite threshold to a door that they believe was once the entrance to a magnificent mausoleum that Cleopatra VII, queen of the Egyptians, had built for herself shortly before her death. They believe the 15-tonne antiquity would have held a seven metre-high door so heavy that it would have prevented the queen from consoling her Roman lover before he died, reputedly in 30BC... Tzalas believes the discovery of the threshold sheds new light on an element... |
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| Romans | |
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| Archaeological dig to reveal mystery Roman building in Chester |
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· 01/01/2010 10:44:59 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 11 replies · · 364+ views · · Chester Chronicle · · Thursday, December 24, 2009 · · unattributed · |
Archaeologists are investigating a mystery Roman building underneath the Dewa Roman Experience premises in the city centre. They will tunnel through the brickwork and sandstone blocks above the Roman foundations of the secret building and into the void behind... Archaeologist Mike Emery said: "It's something substantial but we don't know that is. It has been suggested it might be Roman hospital but no-one quite knows. We will be literally tunnelling into the dark." The Dewa Roman Experience, popular for school visits, already features exposed archaeological trenches from 1991 including remnants of the Roman fortress, plus Saxon and medieval remains including... |
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| Diet and Cuisine | |
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| Alcohol's Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization |
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· 12/30/2009 9:14:41 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 20 replies · · 424+ views · · Der Spiegel · · Frank Thadeusz · |
Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern thinks so. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops... Here is how the story likely began -- a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending... |
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| Biology and Cryptobiology | |
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| World's Weirdest Fish? |
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· 12/28/2009 1:05:36 PM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 48 replies · · 1,523+ views · · nationalgeographic · |
Seahorses are truly unique, and not just because of their unusual equine shape. Unlike most other fish, they are monogamous and mate for life. Rarer still, they are among the only animal species on Earth in which the male bears the unborn young. Found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world, these upright-swimming relatives of the pipefish can range in size from 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters) to 14 inches (35 centimeters) long. Male seahorses are equipped with a brood pouch on their ventral, or front-facing, side. When mating, the female deposits her eggs into his pouch, and the... |
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| Climate | |
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| Arctic Could Face Warmer and Ice-Free Conditions (Pliocene projections - USGS) |
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· 12/29/2009 8:37:20 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 61 replies · · 880+ views · · U.S. Geological Survey · · Dec 29, 2009 · · Unknown · |
There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions and much warmer temperatures in the future. Scientists documented evidence that the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas were too warm to support summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 to 3 million years ago). This period is characterized by warm temperatures similar to those projected for the end of this century, and is used as an analog to understand future conditions. The U.S. Geological Survey found that summer sea-surface temperatures in the Arctic were between 10 to 18°C (50 to 64°F) during the mid-Pliocene, while current... |
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| Glaciation and the Ice Ages | |
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| Soils give clean look at past carbon dioxide: It could take less of the greenhouse gas to reach a... |
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· 12/31/2009 6:51:49 PM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 47 replies · · 682+ views · · Nature News · · 30 December 2009 · · Richard A. Lovett · |
It could take less of the greenhouse gas to reach a particular level of warming. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have been lower in warm eras of the Earth's distant past than once believed, scientists reported this week. The finding raises concern that carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning may, in the near future, be closer to those associated with ancient hothouse climates. More immediately, the work brings one line of palaeoclimate evidence -- that deduced from ancient soils -- into agreement with other techniques for studying past climate. "It makes a major revision to one of the most... |
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| Catastrophism and Astronomy | |
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| North Magnetic Pole Moving East Due to Core Flux |
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· 12/28/2009 4:21:56 PM PST · · Posted by NYer · · 89 replies · · 2,343+ views · · National Geographic · · December 28, 2009 · · Richard A. Lovett · |
Earth's north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles (64 kilometers) a year due to magnetic changes in the planet's core, new research says. The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field. But researchers can infer the field's movements by tracking how Earth's magnetic field has been changing at the surface and in space. Now, newly analyzed data suggest that there's a region of rapidly changing magnetism on the core's surface, possibly being created by a mysterious "plume" of magnetism arising from deeper in the core. And it's this region that... |
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance | |
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| Wonders of the World: Chartres Cathedral, France |
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· 01/01/2010 7:36:59 PM PST · · Posted by Steelfish · · 19 replies · · 356+ views · · Telegraph(UK) · · January 01st 2010 · |
The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Chartres is a French gothic masterpiece, writes Emily Craig. The 13th century Chartres Cathedral, the largest cathedral in France, is one of the finest examples of French high Gothic art. Several cathedrals stood on this site from the 10th century onwards, but the building we see today was completed in 1260. It includes several architectural inventions pioneered at Chartres, such as flying buttresses. The cathedral is surmounted by a pair of spires, one Gothic in style, the other an example of... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| William Shakespeare and Fulke Greville |
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· 12/27/2009 3:00:15 AM PST · · Posted by crypt · · 18 replies · · 395+ views · · The Mail · |
The mystery surrounding Lord Brooke Fulke Greville and William Shakespeare is creating huge interest around the World,with many people questioning if William Shakespeare really was the poet Fulke Greville or at the very least Shakespeares Master. |
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| Scotland Yet | |
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| [Battle of] Bannockburn |
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· 01/01/2010 9:55:48 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 1 replies · · 3+ views · · MacBRAVEHEART homepage · · prior to 2010 · · unattributed · |
The battle of Bannockburn was undoubtedly of one of the most spectacular battles of the Scottish Wars of Independence. Although the struggle against the English was to continue for some 13 years more, the Scottish victory was of enormous importance as it secured the future of the throne for Robert Bruce, King of Scots. To avoid confusion, at this point it should be noted that Robert Bruce, shown as a traitor in the film Braveheart, was no such thing. Never on any occasion did Bruce betray Wallace, since in actual fact, Wallace's support lay with the restoration of John Baliol... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Historical Colonization Was by Countries with Smaller GDP |
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· 12/31/2009 4:02:11 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 9 replies · · 170+ views · · Next Big Future · · Dec 30, 2009 · · Brian Wang · |
China and India and other nations had larger GDP but it was Spain, Portugal, France, Netherlands and Britain that were the players in colonizing the Americas. |
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| The Civil War | |
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| When legerdemain is used to pass an unpopular bill |
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· 12/24/2009 12:15:15 AM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 16 replies · · 671+ views · · Washington Examiner · · December 23, 2009 · · Michael Barone · |
It's time to blow the whistle on two erroneous statements that opponents and proponents of the health care legislation being jammed through Congress have been making. Republicans have been saying that never before has Congress passed such an unpopular bill with such important ramifications by such a narrow majority. Barack Obama has been saying that passage of the bill will mean that the health care issue will be settled once and for all. The Republicans and Obama are both wrong. But perhaps they can be forgiven because the precedent for Congress passing an unpopular bill is an old one, and... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| On the Trail of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid |
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· 01/01/2010 1:05:05 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 19 replies · · 591+ views · · Time · · Thursday, December 31, 2009 · · Jean Friedman-Rudovsky · |
The red canyons and parched planes surrounding the new Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid Memorial Museum might make you think you're in the Old West. But the electrical wiring and a searing altitude headache tell you this is not California circa 1900, but high-up the mountains in present day Bolivia. Here in the tiny town of San Vicente (population 800), the world's most famous outlaws are supposed to have been gunned down 101 years ago, days after robbing the payroll of a Bolivian mine. Offing the bandits would seem to have been sufficient revenge but area residents still think the... |
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| end of digest #285 20100101 | |
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· Saturday, January 01, 2010 · 21 topics · 2419358 to 2415665 · 733 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 285th issue. Happy New Year! |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #286 Saturday, January 09, 2010 |
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| Hope and Change | |
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| Berkeley High May Cut Out Science Labs (Benefits white students- "redesigned" to close gap) |
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· 12/27/2009 10:55:23 AM PST · · Posted by civilwar2 · · 57 replies · 1,531+ views · · East Bay Express · · 12-23-09 · · Eric Klein · |
The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.The full plan to close the racial achievement gap by altering the structure of the high school is known as the High School Redesign. It will come before the Berkeley School Board as an information item at... |
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| China | |
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| Vatican Reveals Secret Archives |
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· 01/02/2010 9:42:37 AM PST · · Posted by Steelfish · · 50 replies · 1,692+ views · · Telegraph(UK) · · January 02nd 2010 · · Nick Squires · |
Vatican Reveals Secret Archives A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan's grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican's Secret Archives that has been published for the first time. By Nick Squires in Rome 01 Jan 2010 In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk, pictured, to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan's grandson demands that the Pontiff travel to central Asia in person The Holy See's archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years. High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen... |
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| Navigation | |
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| Unpaving Paradise: Digging Up Taiwan's Ancient Heritage |
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· 01/05/2010 4:28:30 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 5 replies · 188+ views · · The Wild East · · July 16th, 2009 · · Trista di Genova, MSt, Oxford University · |
Evidence of human settlement in Taiwan -- so far -- dates back at least 30,000 years. Where these people originated from is unclear and something for which linguists, geneticists and archaeologists are trying to build a model. There was a "transmission of people" as well as the Austronesian language and culture, into Oceania from Southeast Asia, coming "from Taiwan or nearby areas" according to the author of "The First Human," Ann Gibbons; and Southeast China... The early Tapenkeng culture in Taiwan (6,000 to 5,000 BP before present), characterized by the advent of agriculture, overlapped the late Changpin culture (40,000 to... |
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| English Civil War | |
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| Devizes burial pit mystery [ Battle of Roundway's Bloody Ditch, July 13 1643 ] |
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· 01/03/2010 10:48:19 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 4 replies · 262+ views · · Wiltshire Gazette and Herald · · Friday 1st January 2010 · · Lewis Cowen · |
Devizes pensioner Phil Hancock... is convinced that the 600 Parliamentarian troops, many of them cavalry, who died in the Bloody Ditch on July 13 1643, are buried in an ancient chalk pit close to the site of the battle. Mr Hancock, 85, from Park View, Devizes, has been investigating the mystery of the whereabouts of the bodies for nearly three years. He said: "I read in the Wiltshire Archaeological Society magazine an article dated June 1950 by Mr J M Prest, who said that bones had been found in a chalk pit on the slopes of Roundway. "But no further... |
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| Austin Powers City Limits | |
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| Andes' Formation Was A 'Species Pump' For South America |
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· 01/03/2010 4:31:10 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 8 replies · 305+ views · · ScienceDaily · · January 11, 2009 · · University of Gothenburg via AlphaGalileo · |
South America is the world's most species-rich area. There have been many theories as to why, ranging from animals and plants accompanying the continent when it broke loose from Africa to variations in the extent of the rainforests over millions of years creating new species... South America's unique richness of species has been explained by several hypotheses. One states that animals and plants "accompanied" the South American continent when it broke loose from Africa 100 million years ago. Another proposes that many species were formed when the rainforest shrank into smaller areas during the Ice Ages and then subsequently expanded...... |
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| Hammers, Anvils, Stirrups | |
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| From Jaw to Ear: Transition Fossil Reveals Ear Evolution in Action (Yanoconodon) |
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· 03/16/2007 7:09:54 PM PDT · · Posted by Stultis · · 11 replies · 1,228+ views · · Scientific American · · 14 March 2007 · · David Biello · |
Now hear this: early mammal fossil shows how sensitive ear bones evolved. The mammal ear is a very precise system for hearing -- enabling everything from human appreciation of music to the echolocation of bats. Three tiny bones known as ossicles -- the hammer (malleus), anvil (incus) and stirrup (stapes) -- work together to propagate sound from the outside world to the tympanic membrane, otherwise known as the eardrum. From there, the sound is transmitted to the brain and informs the listener about pitch, intensity and even location. But it has... |
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| Prehistory and Origins | |
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| First Molars Provide Insight Into Evolution of Great Apes, Humans |
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· 01/03/2010 10:10:25 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 111 replies · 759+ views · · ScienceDaily · · Tuesday, December 29, 2009 · · Arizona State University, via EurekAlert · |
The timing of molar emergence and its relation to growth and reproduction in apes is being reported by two scientists at Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins in the Dec. 28 online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). From the smallest South American monkeys to the largest African apes, the timing of molar development and eruption is closely attuned to many fundamental aspects of a primate's biology, according to Gary Schwartz, a researcher at the Institute of Human Origins and an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Viral phenomenon: Ancient microbe invaded human DNA |
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· 01/06/2010 11:18:33 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 16 replies · 499+ views · · AFP · · Jan 6, 2010 · · Unknown · |
PARIS (AFP) -- Humans carry in their genome the relics of an animal virus that infected their forerunners at least 40 million years ago, according to research published Wednesday by the British science journal Nature. The invader is called bornavirus, a brain-infecting pathogen that was first identified in 1970s. Scientists led by Keizo Tomonaga of Japan's Osaka University compared the DNA of a range of mammals, including humans, apes, elephants, marsupials and rodents, to look for tell-tale signatures of bornavirus code. In the human genome, the team found several bornavirus fragments but also in the form of two genes that... |
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| Agriculture and Animal Husbandry | |
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| Evolution caught in the act: Scientists measure how quickly genomes change |
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· 01/02/2010 10:57:44 AM PST · · Posted by Restore · · 66 replies · 801+ views · · Physorg.com · · January 1, 2010 · · Max-Planck-Gesellschaft · |
Mutations are the raw material of evolution. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen, Germany, and Indiana University in Bloomington have now been able to measure for the first time directly the speed with which new mutations occur in plants. Their findings shed new light on a fundamental evolutionary process. They explain, for example, why resistance to herbicides can appear within just a few years. "While the long term effects of genome mutations are quite well understood, we did not know how often new mutations arise in the first place," said Detlef Weigel, director at the... |
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| Payback's a Beeotch | |
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| Early humans faced death from the skies |
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· 01/13/2006 12:34:56 PM PST · · Posted by microgood · · 31 replies · 1,737+ views · · The Seattle PI · · Jan 13, 2006 · · ALEXANDRA ZAVIS · |
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- An American researcher believes he has solved the mystery of how one of the most important human forerunners died nearly 2 million years ago: An eagle killed the 3 1/2-year-old ape-man known as the Taung child. The discovery suggests small human ancestors known as hominids had to survive being hunted not only by large predators on the ground but by fearsome raptors that swooped from the sky, said Lee Berger, a senior paleoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand. "These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Cuz Animals Are People Too, Ya Know? |
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· 12/23/2009 10:05:41 AM PST · · Posted by Mobile Vulgus · · 31 replies · 487+ views · · Publius Forum · · 12/23/09 · · Warner Todd Huston · |
I've always been amazed at liberals when it comes to their absurd penchant for acting as if animals are somehow just like people. This anthropomorphizing of the animal kingdom is fine if you are talking with kids, reading fairy tales, or creating entertainment, but when you are talking like adults about science or generally about animals there is no place for it. Animals are not people. It's just that simple. But apparently we can't tell that to the left-wingers at NPR because on Dec. 22 on the Morning Edition program we got a pretty silly story about baboons and their... |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Archaeologists claim discovery of oldest Hebrew writing |
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· 01/07/2010 1:25:03 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 29 replies · 658+ views · · AFP · · Jan 7, 2009 · · Unknown · |
This undated picture released by the University of Haifa shows an ancient inscription on a piece of pottery in early Hebrew writing. The 3,000 year-old inscription discovered at a site where the Bible says David slew Goliath has been deciphered, showing it to be the earliest known Hebrew writing, Israeli archaeologists said. (AFP/U of Haifa) JERUSALEM (AFP) -- A 3,000 year-old inscription discovered at a site where the Bible says David slew Goliath has been deciphered, showing it to be the earliest known Hebrew writing, Israeli archaeologists said on Thursday. The pottery shard with five lines of text in the... |
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| King David Era Pottery Shard Supports Biblical Narrative |
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· 01/08/2010 10:11:01 AM PST · · Posted by Nachum · · 8 replies · 678+ views · · INN · · 1/8/10 · · Avi Yellin · |
(IsraelNN.com) A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew Scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible books of the Prophets were written. Professor Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign) and has proven the inscription to be ancient Hebrew, thus making it the earliest known example of Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the Biblical scriptures are now proven to have been composed... |
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| Dead Sea Scrolls | |
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| Jordan, PA Claim Dead Sea Scrolls |
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· 01/02/2010 4:59:27 PM PST · · Posted by sofaman · · 58 replies · 1,195+ views · · Arutz Sheva, Israel National News · · Published: 01/02/10, 11:49 PM · · Last Update: 01/02/10, 10:55 PM · · Hillel Fendel · |
The London-based Globe and Mail reports that Jordan has asked Canada to seize Israel's 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls that are currently on display in Toronto. The scrolls are on display until until Sunday at the Royal Ontario Museum. Jordan claims that the scrolls were found in "disputed territory" that Israel captured from Jordanian control in 1967, and asks Canada to hold them until the question of their ownership is settled. Jordan's control of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley - which it called the "West Bank" - from 1948 until 1967, was recognized internationally by only two countries: Great Britain... |
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| Turin Cloth | |
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| Shroud of Turin Not Jesus', Tomb Discovery Suggests |
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· 12/24/2009 10:28:07 AM PST · · Posted by Salman · · 42 replies · 1,127+ views · · National Geographic · · December 17, 2009 · · Mati Milstein · |
From a long-sealed cave tomb, archaeologists have excavated the only known Jesus-era burial shroud in Jerusalem, a new study says. The discovery adds to evidence that the controversial Shroud of Turin did not wrap the body of Christ, researchers say. [ snip ] The weave of the Tomb of the Shroud fabric, the new study says, casts further doubt on the Shroud of Turin as Jesus' burial cloth. The newfound shroud was something of a patchwork of simply woven linen and wool textiles, the study found. The Shroud of Turin, by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in... |
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| Religion of Peace | |
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| Reports: Iraq De-Judaizing Ezekiel's Tomb |
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· 01/05/2010 7:52:40 AM PST · · Posted by stars & stripes forever · · 24 replies · 682+ views · · IsraelNationalNews.com · · Jan. 5, 2010 · · Hillel Fendel · |
IsraelNN.com) Early reports that Iraq plans to retain the Jewish nature of the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel are apparently false. Sources in Baghdad say that the government plans to turn it into a mosque and erase all Jewish markings. Iraq announced earlier this year that it would revamp the ancient burial site, which is located in Al-Kifl, a small town south of Baghdad. The U.S.-backed government announcement implied that its Jewish nature would continue to be emphasized. Since then, however . . . |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Iran warns British Museum over Cyrus cylinder |
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· 01/07/2010 4:40:36 PM PST · · Posted by Texas Fossil · · 59 replies · 826+ views · · Press TV · · Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:50:33 GMT · · NAT/MTM/AKM · |
Tehran will cease cooperation with the British Museum in London until it loans the Cyrus the Great Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran. The clay cylinder is inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform with an account by Cyrus II, king of Persia (559-530 BC). The Cyrus Cylinder is described as the world's first charter of human rights. ....... Iranian officials called on the British Museum to loan the country's ancient cylinder,..... said Hamid Baqaei "If the British Museum continues to make excuses for not loaning the artifact to the National Museum, we will, unfortunately, cease any cooperation with them, including archaeological... |
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| Greece | |
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| Did Unemployed Minoan Artists Land Jobs in Ancient Egypt? |
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· 01/06/2010 8:39:38 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 31 replies · 274+ views · · Heritage Key · · January 5, 2010 · · Owen Jarus · |
Two of those palaces were decorated, for a very short period of time, with Minoan frescoes. These include drawings of bull-leaping scenes -- which are well known from the Palace of Knossos in Crete. Site excavator Manfred Bietak published a book in 2007 that discussed these frescoes and compared them with the more famous scenes at the Palace of Knossos. There is no question that the frescoes at Tell el-Dab'a are Aegean influenced, and it seems likely that the artists are from Crete... Bietak said in his book that the paintings may symbolize the marriage of a Minoan princess into... |
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| Nubia | |
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| Monumental Statue Of Black Egyptian Pharaoh Found [ Taharqa of 25th Dynasty ] |
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· 01/03/2010 11:35:29 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 22 replies · 787+ views · · Digital Journal · · Saturday, January 2, 2010 · · Christopher Szabo · |
Archaeologists have discovered a monumental statue of an ancient black Egyptian pharaoh of the Nubian 25th Dynasty in Dangeil, Sudan, about 350 kilometres northeast of the capital, Khartoum. The granite statue of the warrior pharaoh Taharqa weighs one ton, according to its discoverer, Dr Caroline Rocheleau of the North Carolina Museum of Art... The statues of two other Nubian pharaohs were also discovered... Taharqa was ruler of both Egypt and Nubia (Kush) during the 25th Dynasty, which was based in Nubia, which had a long history of pyramid building, apparently independent of Egypt. His reign is dated from 690 BC... |
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| Egypt | |
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| Largest Saqqara Tomb Discovered [ 26th Dynasty ] |
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· 01/05/2010 5:49:07 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 31 replies · 516+ views · · Discovery News · · Monday, January 4, 2010 · · Rossella Lorenzi · |
An Egyptian team led by Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has unearthed the largest tomb yet discovered in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, also known as the "City of the Dead." Filled with skeletons, coffins and eagle mummies, the tomb was found just near the entrance point of the archaeological site. Simply cut into limestone, the burial, which dates to the 26th Dynasty (664 -525 B.C.), extends from a large rock-hewn hall into a number of corridors and small rooms. Inside, the archaeologists found several coffins, skeletons and pots. At the tomb's northern end, the... |
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| Only Had Eyes for Her | |
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| Cleopatra's stunner make-up cured eye disease as well |
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· 01/07/2010 4:07:08 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 13 replies · 743+ views · · AFP · · Jan 7, 2010 · · Unknown · |
PARIS (AFP) -- Ancient Egypt's stunning eye make-up not only shielded wearers from the dark deeds of the evil eye but also protected them against eye disease, French scientists said Thursday. Ancient Egyptians some 4,000 years ago produced the make-up used to darken and adorn eyes with lead and lead salts in mixtures that sometimes took a month to concoct, said Philippe Walter, who co-headed a team of scientists from the Louvre museum and the CNRS national research institute. "We knew ancient Greeks and Romans too had noted the make-up had medicinal properties, but wanted to determine exactly how," he... |
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance | |
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| Handful of Iron Beads Offer Clues to Solve Mystery of Ancient Iron Forges |
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· 01/02/2010 5:55:31 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 18 replies · 791+ views · · ScienceDaily · · Thursday, December 31, 2009 · · Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) via AlphaGalileo · |
When archaeologist Ruth Iren Øien noticed a cluster of tiny iron beads in the ground, she knew she was onto something. She did not know, however, that her team had stumbled upon Scandinavia's oldest and most complex group of iron forges... The iron beads were first found in November 2008, right at the very end of a highly weather-dependent field season in Norway. With frost about to set in, further investigation had to wait until the summer of 2009. But in July, Øien's team returned to the site. The iron beads that had piqued Øien's interest were only 1 to1.5... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado |
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· 01/06/2010 5:23:56 AM PST · · Posted by TigerLikesRooster · · 15 replies · 908+ views · · Guardian · · 01/05/10 · · Rory Carroll · |
Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado Satellite technology detects giant mounds over 155 miles, pointing to sophisticated pre-Columbian culture Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 January 2010 19.08 GMT An aerial picture of traces of earthworks built by a lost Amazonian civilisation dating to 200AD. Photograph: National Geographic It is the legend that drew legions of explorers and adventurers to their deaths: an ancient empire of citadels and treasure hidden deep in the Amazon jungle. Spanish conquistadores ventured into the rainforest seeking fortune, followed over the centuries by others convinced they would find a lost... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| Fossil tracks record 'oldest land-walkers' |
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· 01/07/2010 8:51:50 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 17 replies · 416+ views · · bbc · · 6 January 2010 · · Jonathan Amos · |
The oldest evidence of four-legged animals walking on land has been discovered in southeast Poland. Rocks from a disused quarry record the "footprints" of unknown creatures that lived about 397 million years ago. Scientists tell the journal Nature that the fossil trackways even retain the impressions left by the "toes" on the animals' feet. The team says the find means that land vertebrates appeared millions of years earlier than previously supposed. "This place has yielded what I consider to be some of the most exciting fossils I've ever encountered in my career as a palaeontologist," said team member Per Ahlberg... |
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| Biology | |
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| 'Lifeless' prion proteins are 'capable of evolution' |
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· 01/07/2010 1:12:54 PM PST · · Posted by OldNavyVet · · 39 replies · 483+ views · · BBC News · · 1 January 2010 · · BBC News / Scripps Research Institute · |
Scientists have shown for the first time that "lifeless" prion proteins, devoid of all genetic material, can evolve just like higher forms of life. The Scripps Research Institute in the US says the prions can change to suit their environment and go on to develop drug resistance. Prions are associated with 20 different brain diseases in humans and animals. |
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| Cryptobiology | |
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| Loch Ness monster death rumours dismissed |
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· 01/07/2010 3:03:32 PM PST · · Posted by Daffynition · · 42 replies · 563+ views · · News.com.au · · January 07, 2010 · · staff reporter · |
RUMOURS Scotland's fabled Loch Ness monster is dead were dismissed by Nessie fans today. Suspicions that the monster, said to have lurked in the deep waters of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands, was extinct were raised as credible sightings last year waned to just one. Gary Campbell, president of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, told the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper that the single sighting, made just off the Clansman Hotel by Loch Ness, Scotland on June 6 2009, was judged by him to have been a credible report. "That's why were so relieved to have heard about... |
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| Flood, Here Comes the Flood | |
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| Relic reveals Noah's ark was circular |
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· 01/02/2010 11:48:34 AM PST · · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · · 45 replies · 1,455+ views · · guardian.co.uk · · Jan. 1, 2010 · · Maev Kennedy · |
That they processed aboard the enormous floating wildlife collection two-by-two is well known. Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then went round and round inside. According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft. The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by... |
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| Catastrophism and Astronomy | |
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| Polar Ice Caps Melting! |
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· 01/02/2010 2:29:54 PM PST · · Posted by annie laurie · · 49 replies · 3,076+ views · · American Thinker · · January 02, 2010 · · Larrey Anderson · |
The Watts Up With That website has a scary story about our melting polar ice caps. John Lockwood from Washington D.C. found an interesting article from the Washington Post. Here are some excerpts: The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports ... all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard of high temperatures in that part of the earth's surface. Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. Dr. Hoel reports that he made a section of the Gulf Stream at 81 degrees north latitude and took soundings to a... |
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| War by Proxy | |
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| No rise in atmospheric carbon fraction over the last 150 years: University of Bristol |
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· 01/05/2010 2:43:42 PM PST · · Posted by Ernest_at_the_Beach · · 12 replies · 346+ views · · Hot Air · · 8:48 am on January 4, 2010 · · Ed Morrissey · |
Science Daily reported on a new study from the University of Bristol released over the holidays that deserves to get wider attention. In contrast to claims from anthropogenic global-warming activists, this new analysis refutes one of the key principles of carbon-driven warming: Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere. To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the... |
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| Climate | |
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| ClimateGate: 30 years in the making ( PDF File with great Detail Avaiable) |
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· 12/24/2009 2:36:41 PM PST · · Posted by Ernest_at_the_Beach · · 32 replies · 1,011+ views · · JoNova · · December 2009 · · Mohib Ebrahim · |
Mohib Ebrahim has created professional timelines for exhibitions, so it must have seemed only natural to him to want to visually piece together the full timeline of ClimateGate, laying out the analysis, graphs, emails and history of the scandal as revealed by dozens of researchers over the past weeks, months and years. Download The PDF (788k)There's a gif version of the poster if you don't like pdf's (1.7Mb)The PDF chart is available in different sizes, each also with the 10 pages of cited references. The full chart is over 2 meters wide (94 in x34 in, or 2 A0 landscape pages) and best... |
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| Climategate and the Migrating Arctic Tree Line |
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· 01/06/2010 10:47:02 PM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 47 replies · 1,048+ views · · American Thinker · · January 07, 2010 · · Dexter Wright · |
One of the more enlightening e-mails to spill out of the Climategate scandal is a report on the progress of Siberian fossilized tree ring work. The report, dated October 9, 1998, focuses on some two thousand samples of fossilized trees thirty-three nautical miles north of the present-day Arctic Circle. The report attempts to correlate the migration, north and south, of the tree line with annual tree ring dating so that an actual year can be assigned to a certain location of the Arctic Circle. The report correctly states that there has been migration of the polar tree line over the... |
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| Glaciation and the Ice Ages | |
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| Northern South America Rainier During Little Ice Age [ that's rainy-er, as in more rainy ] |
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· 01/03/2010 10:21:29 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 12 replies · 217+ views · · ScienceDaily · · Friday, January 1, 2010 · · American Geophysical Union, via EurekAlert · |
During the Little Ice Age (LIA; covering approximately the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries), northern South America experienced about 10 percent more rainfall than during the twentieth century, according to Reuter et al. The authors analyzed two new records of oxygen isotopes (which track precipitation levels) from cave formations in northeastern Peru. They attribute the higher rainfall in northern South America during the LIA to cooler spring sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic. Furthermore, the authors note that some studies have shown that during the twentieth century, a significant amount of rainfall variability in northern South America was... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| Remains Of Early 1900s Plane Found In Antarctica |
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· 01/02/2010 4:32:29 PM PST · · Posted by nickcarraway · · 10 replies · 783+ views · · Discovery News · · 1/2/10 · |
Remains of the first airplane ever taken to Antarctica, in 1912, have been found by Australian researchers, the team announced Saturday. The Mawson's Huts Foundation had been searching for the plane for three summers before stumbling upon metal pieces of it on New Year's Day. "The biggest news of the day is that we've found the air tractor, or at least parts of it!" team member Tony Stewart wrote on the team's blog from Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay. Australian polar explorer and geologist Douglas Mawson led two expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s, on the first one... |
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| War of 1812 | |
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| Prince de Neufchatel - War of 1812 |
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· 01/09/2010 5:08:19 AM PST · · Posted by Jacquerie · · 4 replies · 185+ views · · American Privateer · · unknown · · various · |
The Prince de Neufchatel Adam and Noah Brown's Privateer Schooner -- Built at New York in 1813 this ship was one of the fastest and most successful ships of the War of 1812 (6 prizes in 6 days in the English Channel (1814); chased 17 times by men-of-war that summer, but outran them every time). A large schooner (110' 8", 33.7m length on deck), she was typical in body plan of the American privateers. Very highly thought of by her country (she changed owners in 1814 for $21,000) as well as her enemies. When finally taken, the British copied her. The... |
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| The Revolution | |
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| Our Founding Fathers spirit |
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· 01/03/2010 1:51:22 PM PST · · Posted by syc1959 · · 3 replies · 120+ views · · syc1959 · · Jan 3, 2010 · · syc1959 · |
In the spirit of our Founding Fathers let us recall the words of Israel Putnam. "Patriot, remember the heritages received from your forefathers and predecessors. Protect and perpetuate them for future generations of your countrymen." To those that don't know Israel Putnam, Israel Putnam was born in Salem Village (now Danvers), Mass. to a prosperous farming family. On April 20, 1775, when Putnam received news of the Battle of Lexington that started the day before, he left his plow in the field and rode one hundred miles in eighteen hours, reaching Cambridge the next day, to offer his services to... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| John Dewey and the Philosophical Refounding of America |
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· 01/08/2010 4:45:00 PM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 15 replies · 313+ views · · National Review Online · · December 31, 2009 · · Tiffany Jones Miller · |
The "progressive" label is back in vogue; politicians of the Left routinely use it to describe themselves, hoping to avoid the radical connotations associated with being "liberal" in the post-Reagan era. The irony in this is manifold, especially because the aim of the movement to which the name refers, the late-19th- and early-20th-century progressive movement, was anything but moderate. If the progressive label seems less radical today, it is only because progressivism is less well known than its liberal progeny. It was initially an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics. Particularly in the post-Civil... |
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| World War Eleven | |
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| Pius XII was no saint |
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· 01/03/2010 11:00:10 AM PST · · Posted by Gamecock · · 337 replies · 3,138+ views · · Ottawa Citizen · · January 2, 2010 · · Robert S. Wistrich · |
Ten years ago, on a cold winter morning in New York City, the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, established to investigate Pope Pius XII's response to the Holocaust, met for the first time to discuss its future work. I was the only Israeli historian among the six scholars (three Catholics and three Jews) designated by the Vatican and leading Jewish organizations to study this hotly contested issue. A little under two years later, the project was abandoned as a result of the Holy See's unwillingness to release materials from its own archives that could help clarify issues that our team of scholars... |
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| end of digest #286 20100109 | |
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· Saturday, January 09, 2010 · 36 topics · 2424305 to 2419641 · 735 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 286th issue. My apologies for last week's dating -- I used Jan 1 instead of the correct Jan 2. On Saturday I thought it was Sunday until someone pointed it out to me. I didn't notice the Digest problem until I added seven for this issue and went "huh?" |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #287 Saturday, January 16, 2010 |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Men not so primitive: Study shows macho Y chromosome evolving faster than rest of genetic code |
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· 01/13/2010 7:43:49 PM PST · · Posted by Fractal Trader · · 24 replies · 602+ views · · Canadian Press via Google News · · 13 January 2010 · · Seth Borenstein · |
Women may think of men as primitive, but new research indicates that the Y chromosome - the thing that makes a man male - is evolving far faster than the rest of the human genetic code. A new study comparing the Y chromosomes from humans and chimpanzees, our nearest living relatives, show that they are about 30 per cent different. That is far greater than the 2 per cent difference between the rest of the human genetic code and that of the chimp's, according to a study appearing online Wednesday in the journal Nature. These changes occurred in the last... |
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| Neandertals / Neanderthals | |
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| Neanderthal 'make-up' containers discovered |
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· 01/11/2010 5:09:49 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 32 replies · 524+ views · · BBC · · Jan 9, 2009 · · Unknown · |
Did Neanderthals wear make-up? Scientists claim to have the first persuasive evidence that Neanderthals wore "body paint" 50,000 years ago.The team report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that shells containing pigment residues were Neanderthal make-up containers. Scientists unearthed the shells at two archaeological sites in the Murcia province of southern Spain. The team says its find buries "the view of Neanderthals as half-wits" and shows they were capable of symbolic thinking. Professor Joao Zilhao, the archaeologist from Bristol University in the UK, who led the study, said that he and his team had examined shells that... |
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| Because they were worth it? Research finds Neanderthals enjoyed makeup |
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· 01/11/2010 4:50:51 PM PST · · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · · 13 replies · 321+ views · · guardian.co.uk · · Jan. 11, 2010 · · Sam Jones · |
For decades, our low-browed Neanderthal cousins have been portrayed as dim savages whose idea of seduction was a whispered "ug" and a blow to the cranium. But analysis of pierced, hand-coloured shells and lumps of pigment from two caves in south-east Spain suggests the cavepeople who stomped around Europe 50,000 years ago were far more intelligent -- and cosmetically minded -- than previously thought. In 1985, archaeologists excavating the Cueva de los Aviones in Murcia found cockle shells perforated as if to be hung on a necklace and an oyster shell containing mineral pigments, hinting that the cave's Neanderthal residents... |
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| Prehistory and Origins | |
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| Ancient hominids may have been seafarers |
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· 01/14/2010 4:18:11 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 19 replies · 300+ views · · Science News · · Friday, January 8th, 2010 · · Bruce Bower · |
Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species -- perhaps Homo erectus -- had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island. Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser... |
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| Navigation | |
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| Sailing into antiquity: BU archeologist unearths clues about ancient Egypt's sea trade |
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· 01/14/2010 7:20:32 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 14 replies · 261+ views · · Boston Globe · · Monday, January 11, 2010 · · Colin Nickerson · |
...Boston University archeologist Kathryn Bard and her colleagues are uncovering the oldest remnants of seagoing ships and other relics linked to exotic trade with a mysterious Red Sea realm called Punt... the team led by Bard and an Italian archeologist, Rodolfo Fattovich, started uncovering maritime storerooms in 2004, putting hard timber and rugged rigging to the notion of pharaonic deepwater prowess. In the most recent discovery, on Dec. 29, they located the eighth in a series of lost chambers at Wadi Gawasis after shoveling through cubic meters of rock rubble and wind-blown sand... The reconnaissance of the room and its... |
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| The Vikings | |
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| On a mission to crack the Norse code [ Orkney ] |
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· 01/14/2010 7:37:32 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 6 replies · 392+ views · · Scot Herald · · Monday, January 11, 2010 · · Gavin Francis · |
The guide's voice began to conjure other shadows from the past. The neolithic people crept away as she switched on her torch and began to tell us about the runic writing on the walls, now known to have been written by Norse inhabitants of Orkney some time in the 12th century. The tension dissolved and laughter broke out as she translated: "Ingibjorg the fair widow; many a woman has had to lower herself to come in here, despite her airs and graces." "I bedded Thorni. By Helgi." And then some boasting about how well-travelled these Norsemen were: "These runes were... |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Palestinians find ancient coin hoard in Gaza |
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· 01/14/2010 7:13:26 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 7 replies · 311+ views · · Google hosted news · · Tuesday, January 12, 2010 · · AFP · |
The Hamas-run ministry of tourism and antiquities in Gaza on Monday announced the discovery of ancient artifacts near the Egyptian border town of Rafah. "The most important of the findings are 1,300 antique silver coins, both large and small," said Mohammed al-Agha, tourism and antiquities minister in the Islamist-run government. He said archaeologists had also uncovered a black basalt grinder, a coin with a cross etched on it, and the remains of walls and arches believed to have been built in 320 BC. They also discovered a "mysterious" underground compartment with a blocked entrance that appeared to be a tomb,... |
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| Egypt | |
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| Egypt tombs suggest pyramids not built by slaves |
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· 01/10/2010 6:35:05 PM PST · · Posted by jerry557 · · 30 replies · 701+ views · · Reuters via Yahoo! · · 01/10/2010 · · Marwa Awad · |
CAIRO (Reuters) -- New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday. Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts. "These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement. "If they were slaves, they would... |
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| The Lost Tribes | |
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| Are the Taliban Descended From One of Ten Lost Tribes of Israel? |
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· 01/09/2010 7:56:47 PM PST · · Posted by Shellybenoit · · 46 replies · 846+ views · · The Lid/jpost · · 1/9/09 · · The Lid · |
Every Friday night observant Jews bless their sons by saying, "may you be like Manasseh and Ephraim," the two sons of the biblical Joseph, who were the first Jews, born outside of the Holy Land. The blessing expresses the hope that, just like Joseph's sons, today's Jewish sons will hold fast to their religion despite the fact they live in the diaspora. Manasseh and Ephraim are two of the famous lost ten tribes, who were carted away into exile more than 2,500 years ago. Descendants of the tribe of Manasseh have been found living in India, and many of them... |
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| Taliban may be descended from Jews (Tribe of Ephraim?- DNA testing) |
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· 01/13/2010 10:10:49 AM PST · · Posted by skaro · · 74 replies · 1,250+ views · · Telegraph UK · · 1-11-10 · · Dean Nelson · |
Experts at Mumbai's National Institute of Immunohaematology believe Pashtuns could be one of the ten "Lost Tribes of Israel".According to legend, they are descended from the Ephraim tribe which was driven out of Israel by the Assyrian invasion in around 700BC. The Israeli government is funding a genetic study to establish if there is any proof of the link. An Indian geneticist has taken blood samples from the Pashtun Afridi tribe in Lucknow, Northern India, to Israel where she will spend the next 12 months comparing DNA with samples with those of Israeli Jews. |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Prehistoric building found in modern Israeli city |
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· 01/11/2010 4:23:12 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 32 replies · 494+ views · · Associated Press · · Jan 11, 2009 · · IAN DEITCH · |
JERUSALEM -- Archaeologists have uncovered remains of an 8,000-year-old prehistoric building as well as ancient flint tools in the modern city of Tel Aviv, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Monday. The building is the earliest structure ever found in Tel Aviv and changes what archaeologists previously believed about the area in ancient times. "This discovery is both important and surprising to researchers of the period," said Ayelet Dayan, the archaeologist who led the excavation. "For the first time we have encountered evidence of a permanent habitation that existed in the Tel Aviv region 8,000 years ago," she said. |
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| Biblical Archaeology | |
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| When Was the Bible Really Written? |
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· 01/09/2010 5:55:26 PM PST · · Posted by driftdiver · · 28 replies · 799+ views · · Foxnews · · Jan 9, 2010 · · foxnews · |
By decoding the inscription on a 3,000-year-old piece of pottery, an Israeli professor has concluded that parts of the bible were written hundreds of years earlier than suspected. The pottery shard was discovered at excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Elah valley in Israel -- about 18 miles west of Jerusalem. Carbon-dating places it in the 10th century BC, making the shard about 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea scrolls. ...... English translation of the deciphered text: 1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord]. 2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an] 3'... |
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| Deciphered etching sheds new light on Bible's origin |
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· 01/10/2010 10:16:56 AM PST · · Posted by NYer · · 62 replies · 1,258+ views · · Haaretz · · January 8, 2010 · · Fadi Eyadat · |
Did the writing of the Bible begin as far back as the 10th century B.C.E., during the time of King David? That is four centuries earlier than Biblical scholars currently believe - but an inscription recently deciphered by a scholar at Haifa University indicates that for at least some books of the Bible, the answer may be yes. The inscription, written in ink on clay, is the earliest yet found in Hebrew. It was discovered about 18 months ago in a dig at Khirbet Qeiyafa, near Emek Ha'ela. While it was quickly dated, its language remained uncertain until Prof. Gershon... |
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| Bible Possibly Written Centuries Earlier, Text Suggests |
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· 01/15/2010 10:56:30 AM PST · · Posted by My Favorite Headache · · 88 replies · 1,195+ views · · Yahoo News/Live Science · · 1-15-10 · |
Scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew writing - an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C., during the period of King David's reign. The breakthrough could mean that portions of the Bible were written centuries earlier than previously thought. (The Bible's Old Testament is thought to have been first written down in an ancient form of Hebrew.) Until now, many scholars have held that the Hebrew Bible originated in the 6th century B.C., because Hebrew writing was thought to stretch back no further. But the newly deciphered Hebrew text is about four centuries older, scientists announced this month. "It... |
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| Greece | |
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| Syria's mysterious Dead Cities |
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· 01/14/2010 7:09:52 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 10 replies · 482+ views · · The Guardian · · Saturday January 9, 2010 · · Kevin Rushby · |
The stone window ledge has two rows of seven shallow depressions cut into it, and I am sitting next to them, trying to remember where on earth I've seen this pattern before. Far away, beyond the massive fortifications and the moat, are the white-capped mountains of Lebanon. I had not expected to see so much snow around, but then Syria throws up surprises all the time. Even this 12th-century crusader castle, Krak des Chevaliers, a fabulous place long picked over by archaeologists and historians, is full of mysteries. Like the timeworn inscription I found tucked away in a corner: "Ceso:... |
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| Sunken Civilizations | |
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| Rediscovery of Ancient Bathonea |
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· 01/14/2010 3:36:43 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 11 replies · 493+ views · · www.en400.com · · August 25, 2009 · · Jerry Kelly · |
Imagine sailing across a lake, looking down, and seeing the top of a tower coming up towards you. That's what villagers have been doing for centuries at Lake Kçkçekmece in what is now Turkey. They told archaeologists from Kocaeli University and the Istanbul Prehistoric Research Project that they thought it was the minaret of a sunken mosque. The archaeologists sent divers down and found an ancient lighthouse at the edge of a sunken city. Using documents written by geographers centuries ago, the archaeologists have now identified the city as the ancient Byzantine port of Bathonea. 1600 years ago, the port... |
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| Malta | |
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| Gozo rock holds ancient wine presses [ Malta ] |
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· 01/14/2010 7:33:31 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 7 replies · 157+ views · · Times of Malta · · January 12, 2010 · · Claudia Calleja · |
Centuries ago, come September, galleys would be rowed into Mg'arr ix-Xini harbour and loaded with amphorae filled with wine that had been pressed in the valley. Winemakers would fill shallow basins with grapes and, once pressed, the juice would flow through holes and channels into a deeper collecting holder, all carved into the rock. These wine presses, said to date back to 500 BC, can still be seen embedded in the Gozitan valley and are being studied and documented in a project carried out by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and the Sannat and Xewkija local councils with the support... |
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| Catastrophism and Astronomy | |
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| Aboriginal folklore leads to meteorite crater |
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· 01/12/2010 9:59:26 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 17 replies · 588+ views · · COSMOS · · 07 Jan 2010 · · Aaron Cook · |
SYDNEY: An Australian Aboriginal 'Dreaming' story has helped experts uncover a meteorite impact crater in the outback of the Northern Territory. Duane Hamacher, an astrophysicist studying Aboriginal astronomy at Sydney's Macquarie University, used Google Maps to search for the signs of impact craters in areas related to Aboriginal stories of stars or stones falling from the sky. One story, from the folklore of the Arrernte people, is about a star falling to Earth at a site called Puka. This led to a search on Google Maps of Palm Valley, about 130 km southwest of Alice Springs. Here Hamacher discovered what... |
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| China | |
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| On this rare map, China is the center of the world |
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· 01/12/2010 9:30:36 AM PST · · Posted by stainlessbanner · · 10 replies · 1,049+ views · · AP via yahoo · · 12 January 2010 · · BRETT ZONGKER · |
WASHINGTON -- A rarely seen 400-year-old map that identified Florida as "the Land of Flowers" and put China at the center of the world went on display Tuesday at the Library of Congress.The map created by Matteo Ricci was the first in Chinese to show the Americas. Ricci, a Jesuit missionary from Italy, was among the first Westerners to live in what is now Beijing in the early 1600s. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map in 1602 at the request of Emperor Wanli.Ricci's map includes pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa... |
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| Scotland Yet | |
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| Lost Capital Of Scotland Uncovered |
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· 07/06/2002 4:49:47 PM PDT · · Posted by blam · · 38 replies · 775+ views · · Sunday Herald · · Jennifer Johnston · |
Lost capital of Scotland uncovered Dark Age fort found near Wallace Monument proves Stirling was home of Scottish warlords By Jenifer Johnston Workers laying cables to floodlight the National Wallace Monument have uncovered a 1500-year-old citadel which confirms the site of Scotland's lost capital. Archaeologists believe the ruins establish a much earlier time of sophisticated battles near Stirling. An archaeological report published yesterday reveals that the cliff-top fortification on the volcanic Abbey Craig was a 'Dark Age citadel' occupied between 500 and 780AD. The discovery of entrances, stone walls and timber ramparts provides the first evidence that Stirling was one... |
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance | |
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| Snow and an ancient Sussex church |
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· 01/08/2010 8:11:47 AM PST · · Posted by sussex · · 25 replies · 927+ views · · theagedp.com/ · · 08/01/10 · · The Aged P · |
Unlike many parts of the USA heavy winter snow is a comparatively rare event in our part of England so the last few days have made quite an impact. Fortunately we are both retired and are still relatively well stocked with food -- and gin -- so there is no need to risk the cars on the untreated side roads or our bottoms on the icy pavements. However, to avoid a complete outbreak of stir craziness, we ventured out for a brief airing a couple of times -- hence the pics (taken by The Lovely Mrs P, much more creative... |
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| Farty Shades of Green | |
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| Much of the early methane rise can be attributed to the spreading of northern peatlands |
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· 01/14/2010 6:29:38 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 19 replies · 208+ views · · University of Helsinki · · Jan 14, 2010 · · Unknown · |
The surprising increase in methane concentrations millennia ago, identified in continental glacier studies, has puzzled researchers for a long time. According to a strong theory, this would have resulted from the commencement of rice cultivation in East Asia. However, a study conducted at the University of Helsinki's Department of Environmental Sciences and the Department of Geosciences and Geography shows that the massive expanse of the northern peatlands occurred around 5000 years ago, coincident with rising atmospheric methane levels. After water vapour and carbon dioxide, methane is the most significant greenhouse gas, resulting in about one fifth of atmospheric warming caused... |
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| Climate | |
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| Bering Strait influenced ice age climate patterns worldwide |
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· 01/10/2010 10:33:28 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 27 replies · 492+ views · · National Center for Atmospheric Research/ University Corporation for Atmospheric Research · · Jan 10, 2010 · · Unknown · |
BOULDER--In a vivid example of how a small geographic feature can have far-reaching impacts on climate, new research shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years. The international study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that the repeated opening and closing of the narrow strait due to fluctuating sea levels affected currents that transported heat and salinity in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. As a result, summer temperatures in parts of North America and Greenland oscillated between warmer and... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| Evidence of Ancient Amazon Civilization Uncovered |
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· 01/09/2010 5:52:40 PM PST · · Posted by fishhound · · 30 replies · 1,370+ views · · The Sphere/AOL · · 1/09/2010 · · David Knowles · |
(Jan. 8) -- As a result of the deforestation of the Amazon basin, a startling discovery has been made. Hidden from view for centuries, the vast archaeological remains of an unknown, ancient civilization have been found. A study published in Antiquity, a British archaeological journal, details how satellite imagery was used to discern the footprint of the buildings and roads of a settlement, located in what is now Brazil and believed to span a region of more than 150 miles across. "The combination of land cleared of its rain forest for grazing and satellite survey have revealed a sophisticated pre-Columbian... |
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| "Lost" Amazon Complex Found; Shapes Seen by Satellite |
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· 01/10/2010 10:10:20 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 32 replies · 1,182+ views · · nationalgeographic · · January 4, 2010 · · John Roach · |
Satellite images of the upper Amazon Basin taken since 1999 have revealed more than 200 geometric earthworks spanning a distance greater than 155 miles (250 kilometers). Now researchers estimate that nearly ten times as many such structures -- of unknown purpose -- may exist undetected under the Amazon's forest cover. At least one of the sites has been dated to around A.D. 1283, although others may date as far back as A.D. 200 to 300, said study co-author Denise Schaan, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Par· in BelÈm, Brazil. The discovery adds to evidence that the hinterlands of the Amazon once teemed... |
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| Hope and Change | |
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| Another Bad Idea: ''Diversifying'' Science Faculties: "Science should look like the population" |
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· 01/12/2010 3:56:09 PM PST · · Posted by skaro · · 50 replies · 507+ views · · Minding the Campus · · 1-7-10 · · Roger Clegg · |
Should universities weigh race and ethnicity in deciding whom to hire for their science departments? The American Association for the Advancement of Science thinks so, according to a recent National Journal article. "Science and engineering should look like the rest of the population," says AAAS's Daryl Chubin." The National Journal article says that it wants to "allocate additional slots to U.S. racial and ethnic minorities" and to protect universities from "likely lawsuits by groups seeking color-blind admissions policies." |
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| MIT lags in hiring, promoting black, Hispanic faculty, internal report says |
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· 01/14/2010 9:45:58 AM PST · · Posted by reaganaut1 · · 51 replies · 811+ views · · Boston Globe · · January 14, 2010 · · Tracy Jan · |
MIT must do a better job recruiting and retaining black and Hispanic faculty, who have a significantly more difficult time getting promoted than white and Asian colleagues, according to a frank internal study released today by the university. In some departments, such as chemistry, mathematics, and nuclear science and engineering, no minorities have been hired in the last two decades, according to the report, which was more than two years in the making. MIT's first comprehensive study of faculty racial diversity and the experiences of underrepresented minority professors highlights a national problem across academia: the need to improve the pipeline... |
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| Early America | |
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| A super bowl that eluded patriots |
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· 01/14/2010 12:29:02 PM PST · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 17 replies · 360+ views · · Boston Globe · · January 14, 2010 · · Samuel G. Allis · |
Now 300 years old, the Loring Bowl, as it is known, will be the star of the show at Sotheby's auction of early American silver in New York on Jan. 22. It is, by far, the biggest bowl of its kind and period that Sotheby's has ever handled. Now 300 years old, the Loring Bowl, as it is known, will be the star of the show at Sotheby's auction of early American silver in New York on Jan. 22. It is, by far, the biggest bowl of its kind and period that Sotheby's has ever handled. (Southeby's) Fearing for his... |
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| The Revolution | |
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| Battle of Guilford Courthouse gets its due |
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· 01/10/2010 12:08:49 PM PST · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 71 replies · 718+ views · · News Record (Greensboro, NC) · · January 10, 2010 · · Eddie Huffman · |
From Hollywood to the history shelf, the Civil War was a widescreen epic, while the American Revolution has too often been a footnote. One of the most important battles of the Revolution happened in what is now Greensboro on March 15, 1781, but, over the past century, Americans have treated that war as an afterthought. The Civil War was "Gone with the Wind," "Glory" and 11 hours by Ken Burns. The Revolution, by contrast, was little more than a few forgettable movies, an occasional special on The History Channel and a handful of books (or more often booklets) sold at... |
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| This Day In History, January 14, 1784, The Treaty of Paris was Ratified |
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· 01/14/2010 5:51:46 PM PST · · Posted by mdittmar · · 6 replies · 145+ views · · various · · 1/14/10 · · various · |
Ratified by the Congress of the Confederation on 14 January 1784, the treaty that formally ended the Revolutionary War gave formal recognition to the United States. The three American negotiators, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, proved themselves to be masters of the game, outmaneuvering their counterparts and clinging fiercely to the points of national interest that guaranteed a future for the United States. Two crucial provisions of the treaty were British recognition of U.S. independence and the delineation of boundaries that would allow for American western expansion. The treaty is named for the city in which it was negotiated and... |
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| Test Your Knowledge on the American Revolution and Its Enduring Legacy |
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· 01/13/2010 8:47:26 AM PST · · Posted by Lucky9teen · · 52 replies · 763+ views · · americanrevolutioncenter.org · |
National Survey The American Revolution Center commissioned the first national survey to assess adult knowledge of the American Revolution. The results show that an alarming 83 percent of Americans failed a basic test on knowledge of the American Revolution and the principles that have united all Americans. Results also revealed that 90 percent of Americans think that knowledge of the American Revolution and its principles is very important, and that 89 percent of Americans expected to pass a test on basic knowledge of the American Revolution, but scored an average of 44 percent. The survey questions addressed issues related to... |
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| What's Your Constitution I.Q.? |
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· 01/13/2010 10:28:27 AM PST · · Posted by Lucky9teen · · 30 replies · 712+ views · · constitutionfacts.com · |
Welcome to ConstitutionFacts.com where you'll see the entire text of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence - and much more! You'll find interesting insights into the men who wrote the Constitution, how it was created, and how the Supreme Court has interpreted the United States Constitution in the two centuries since its creation. The Constitution is certainly the most influential legal document in existence. Since its creation some two hundred years ago, over one hundred countries around the world have used it as a model for their own. And it is a living document. It... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Civil War flags losing state budget battles |
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· 01/09/2010 6:27:28 PM PST · · Posted by HokieMom · · 13 replies · 383+ views · · The Washington Times · · January 6, 2010 · · AP · |
ALBANY, N.Y. · · They made it through Shiloh, Antietam and Gettysburg, but many of the Civil War battle flags sitting in the nation's state-owned collections might not survive the budget battles being waged in some statehouses. In New York, home to the nation's largest state-owned collection of Civil War battle flags, money for a preservation project is being cut from Gov. David A. Paterson's proposed budget. Indiana's funding for flag conservation has been returned to the state's general fund. Ohio hasn't provided government funding for its 400-plus Civil War battles flags in nearly a decade... |
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| The Civil War | |
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| Lexington, Virginia, Made a Pact with the Devil |
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· 01/14/2010 10:36:21 PM PST · · Posted by Brian_Baldwin · · 1 replies · 238+ views · · unknown · |
Shocking revelations into historical folktales of Virginia reveal that a long time ago, Lexington was given over in a Pact with the Devil by a blacksmith just prior to the Civil War. It is called folktale, but there are many who can vouch for the historical side of Wicked John and the Devil. As for Wicked John whom you have no doubt heard of if you know anything about the Wiley ways of the Red Demon, can say of John "that critter's so mean the buzzards wouldn't claim him", "Too bad for heaven, too mean for hell". One of those... |
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| Biology | |
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| Unlocking the mystery of the duck-billed platypus' venom (Australia) |
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· 01/13/2010 12:57:24 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 71 replies · 945+ views · · American Chemical Society · · Jan 13, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Abandon any notion that the duck-billed platypus is a soft and cuddly creature -- maybe like Perry the Platypus in the Phineas and Ferb cartoon. This platypus, renowned as one of the few mammals that lay eggs, also is one of only a few venomous mammals. The males can deliver a mega-sting that causes immediate, excruciating pain, like hundreds of hornet stings, leaving victims incapacitated for weeks. Now scientists are reporting an advance toward deciphering the chemical composition of the venom, with the first identification of a dozen protein building blocks. Their study is in the Journal of the American... |
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| Cryptobiology | |
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| Half-Plant, Half-Animal ... Really |
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· 01/13/2010 3:52:51 PM PST · · Posted by lorddoctor · · 32 replies · 640+ views · · Fox News · · 1-13-10 · |
A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant. It's the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll. The sneaky slugs seem to have stolen the genes that enable this skill from algae that they've eaten. With their contraband genes, the slugs can carry out photosynthesis -- the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy. "They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything," said Sidney Pierce, a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Pierce has been studying the unique creatures, officially called Elysia chlorotica, for about 20 years. He |
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| Don't Drink, Don't Smoke, What Do You Do? | |
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| Ant Has Given Up Sex Completely, Researchers Confirm |
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· 01/09/2010 11:04:07 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 21 replies · 893+ views · · sciencedaily · · Jan. 9, 2010 · |
The complete asexuality of a widespread fungus-gardening ant, the only ant species in the world known to have dispensed with males entirely, has been confirmed by a team of Texas and Brazilian researchers. Most social insects -- the wasps, ants and bees -- are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate. Queens of the ant Mycocepurus smithii reproduce without fertilization and... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| Oldest footprints reveal when sea creatures took their first steps on land |
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· 01/10/2010 11:31:50 AM PST · · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · · 27 replies · 527+ views · · dailymail.co.uk · · Jan. 7, 2010 · · Daily Mail Reporter · |
The earliest footprints made by Earth's first four-legged creatures have been unearthed by scientists. The fossilized tracks were left 395 million years ago by several primitive animals up to eight feet long. They are being hailed as a 'missing link' in one of evolution's most spectacular transitions - the shift from water to land. The findings have stunned scientists because the footprints date to 18 million years before four-limbed vertebrates known as tetrapods were known to have existed. The tracks were found in the Holy Cross Mountains in south-eastern Poland, one of the oldest ranges in Europe, and have distinctive 'hand' and... |
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| Dinosaurs | |
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| Alligator Breathing Sheds Light on Rise of Dinosaurs |
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· 01/14/2010 5:23:32 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 19 replies · 277+ views · · Live Science · · Jan 14, 2009 · · Andrea Thompson · |
Alligators breathe like birds, scientists have discovered. "They cannot argue with this data," she said. "I have three lines of evidence. If they don't believe it, they need to get an alligator and make their own measurements." |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Origin of the Species, From an Alien View: WHERE did humankind come from? [ Sitchin ] |
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· 01/13/2010 3:22:05 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 35 replies · 617+ views · · New York Times · · January 8, 2010 · · Corey Kilgannon · |
If you're going to ask Zecharia Sitchin, be ready for a "Planet of the Apes" scenario: spaceships and hieroglyphics, genetic mutations and mutinous space aliens in gold mines. It sounds like science fiction, but Mr. Sitchin is sure this is how it all went down hundreds of thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. Humans were genetically engineered by extraterrestrials, he said, pointing to ancient texts to prove it... He is an apparently sane, sharp, University of London-educated 89-year-old who has spent his life arguing that people evolved with a little genetic intervention from ancient astronauts who came to Earth and... |
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| end of digest #287 20100116 | |
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· Saturday, January 16, 2010 · 40 topics · 2428272 to 2424956 · 736 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 287th issue. |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #288 Saturday, January 23, 2010 |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Mayan Calender Includes Image of Obama ?? |
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· 01/16/2010 9:30:01 PM PST · · Posted by MrDaddyLongLegs · · 21 replies · 1,530+ views · · mrdaddylonglegs · · 16/1/2010 · · mrdaddylonglegs · |
Is that a caricature of President Obama featured in the apocalyptic Mayan calender ? |
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| Hope and Change | |
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| Is Teaching American History Unconstitutional? |
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· 01/17/2010 6:36:21 AM PST · · Posted by RightSideNews · · 39 replies · 1,029+ views · · Right Side News · · January 17, 2010 · · David Barton · |
writing teams of Texas teachers drafted the 2010 proposed standards...The writing teams had recommended the removal of Nathan Hale, Daniel Boone, and General George Patton; they eradicated Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Christmas (but they did add Diwali as a holiday). They also declared that to say there was "an American love of individualism, inventiveness, and freedom" was to express inappropriate "value language," and they also rejected the concept of identifying specific beliefs that contributed to ou "national identity." |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Mysterious Jamestown Tablet an American Rosetta Stone ? |
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· 01/17/2010 6:07:31 PM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 26 replies · 988+ views · · nationalgeographic · · January 13, 2010 · · Paula Neely · |
Slate may show early colonist efforts to communicate with Indians. With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America. Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate -- the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site. With the... |
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance | |
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| Experts may have found bones of 10th-century English princess |
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· 01/20/2010 3:15:37 PM PST · · Posted by Tennessee Nana · · 24 replies · 795+ views · · ChattanoogaTimesFreePress · · January 20, 2010 · · RAPHAEL G. SATTER · |
LONDON -- She was a beautiful English princess who married one of Europe's most powerful monarchs and dazzled subjects with her charity and charm. Now an international team of scientists say they think they've found the body of Princess Eadgyth (pronounced Edith) -- a 10th-century noblewoman who has been compared to Princess Diana. "She was a very, very popular person," said Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at Bristol University in western England. "She was sort of the Diana of her day if you like -- pretty and full of good works." Horton is one of a team of experts working... |
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| Roman Empire | |
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| Ancient Roam [ s/b "Ancient Rome" and c/b "Ancient Roman Statue Used as Garden Gnome"] |
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· 01/18/2010 11:54:42 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 3 replies · 265+ views · · Croatian Times · · Thursday, January 14, 2010 · · Austrian Times · |
A priceless ancient Roman statue has been discovered being used to decorate a flower bed in a housing estate. The headless sculpture of an emperor is believed to have been stolen some time in the 1930s and then used during the construction of a posh private square in Naples, Italy. It is thought to date back to the 2nd century BC and may once have stood in the grand gardens of a local palace. Police have now restored the statue to the city's archaeological museum after a race against time to beat the Mafia to the treasure. "We knew... |
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| Macedonia | |
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| Laminated Linen Protected Alexander the Great |
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· 01/16/2010 8:09:03 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 36 replies · 1,060+ views · · Discovery News · · 11 Jan 2010 · · Rossella Lorenzi · |
Alexander's men wore linothorax, a highly effective type of body armor created by laminating together layers of linen, research finds. A Kevlar-like armor might have helped Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) conquer nearly the entirety of the known world in little more than two decades, according to new reconstructive archaeology research. Presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Anaheim, Calif., the study suggests that Alexander and his soldiers protected themselves with linothorax, a type of body armor made by laminating together layers of linen. "While we know quite a lot about ancient armor made from... |
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| Greece | |
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| Akrotiri Peninsula Excavations |
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· 01/18/2010 10:29:25 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 4 replies · 154+ views · · Cyprus News Agency · · January 11, 2010 · · News in English editor · |
The completion of the... third season of systematic excavations..., conducted at the site of Katalymmata ton Plakoton, of the Akrotiri peninsula, on the south coast, under the directions of the Senior Archaeological Officer of the Department Eleni Procopiou. During this season the excavation of the rest of the western part of what was most probably the narthex of a very important ecclesiastical building of the end of the 6th or the beginning of the 7th century A.D., which began in 2007, was completed. The narthex has a total length of 14m on an E-W axis and a width of 36m... |
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| Here, Kitty Kitty | |
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| Egypt announces find of ancient cat goddess temple |
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· 01/19/2010 5:04:39 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 49 replies · 683+ views · · Associated Press · · Jan 19, 2010 · · HAMZA HENDAWI · |
CAIRO - Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000-year-old temple that may have been dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Tuesday. The ruins of the Ptolemaic-era temple were discovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the heart of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. The city was the seat of the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic Dynasty, which ruled over Egypt for 300 years until the suicide of Queen Cleopatra. The statement said the temple was thought to belong to Queen Berenice, wife of King Ptolemy III who ruled... |
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| Living Image | |
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| Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx |
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· 01/22/2010 7:48:57 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 17 replies · 896+ views · · Smithsonian Mag · · Feb 2010 · · Evan Hadingham · |
After decades of research, American archaeologist Mark Lehner has some answers about the mysteries of the Egyptian colossus When Mark Lehner was a teenager in the late 1960s, his parents introduced him to the writings of the famed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. During one of his trances, Cayce, who died in 1945, saw that refugees from the lost city of Atlantis buried their secrets in a hall of records under the Sphinx and that the hall would be discovered before the end of the 20th century. In 1971, Lehner, a bored sophomore at the University of North Dakota, wasn't planning to... |
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| Too Tightly Wrapped | |
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| Did King Tut's Discoverer Steal from the Tomb? |
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· 01/19/2010 10:57:55 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 7 replies · 682+ views · · Spiegel Online · · 15 Jan 2010 · · Matthias Schulz · |
Howard Carter, the British explorer who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, will forever be associated with the greatest trove of artifacts from ancient Egypt. But was he also a thief? Dawn was breaking as Howard Carter took up a crowbar to pry open the sealed tomb door in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. With shaking hands, he held a candle to the fissure, now wafting out 3,300-year-old air. What did he see, those behind him wanted to know. The archaeologist could do no more than stammer, "Wonderful things!" This scene from Thebes in November, 1922, is considered archaeology's... |
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| Egypt | |
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| The Sacred Bird Of Egypt |
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· 10/25/2009 12:07:35 PM PDT · · Posted by SWAMPSNIPER · · 16 replies · 692+ views · · self · · October 25, 2009 · · swampsniper · |
The Ibis was so venerated in ancient Eygpt that they were even mummified and placed in royal tombs. I think there is a reason. If you are trying to grow crops in a river bottom, in a warm climate, you will be plagued with grubs and bugs and other pests, all trying to eat your veggies. The Ibis is eager to help, they love to eat the pests. Egypt owes a major debt to the Ibis clan. |
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| Hunt for bird mummy in Conn. comes up empty |
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· 01/18/2010 11:11:31 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 3 replies · 126+ views · · PhysOrg · · Sunday, January 17, 2010 · · AP · |
Researchers who examined an Egyptian mummy with the latest imaging technology found no evidence that a packet inside her was an offering to the gods of the ancient world... |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Neglect of the Sanhedrin Tombs in Jerusalem |
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· 01/18/2010 10:36:41 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 1 replies · 176+ views · · Biblical Archaeology Review · · Friday, January 15, 2010 · · unattributed · |
The conservation and maintenance of the tombs of ancient Israel's highest court members, the Great Sanhedrin, located in Jerusalem has been stirring up quite a debate recently. The Second Temple-period tombs have not been officially maintained but locals, some not even followers of Judaism, have taken it upon themselves to step in and clean the area. The municipality of Jerusalem will not help with their efforts but rather have put restrictions on the local residents' attempts to preserve the site. Debate over who has responsibility for maintaining the site is an issue between the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Jerusalem... |
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| Dead Sea Scrolls | |
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| Dead Sea Scroll dating now possible |
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· 01/20/2010 4:23:29 AM PST · · Posted by Schnucki · · 13 replies · 590+ views · · Politiken (Denmark) · · January 20, 2010 · |
After a decade of intense laboratory tests, a Danish archaeochemist has found a way to enable scientists to precisely date the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ownership of which is currently a bone of contention between Israel and Jordan, according to videnskab.dk. The Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient documents were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in caves near the Qumran Wadi northwest of the Dead Sea. Treatment of the rolls has included them being spread out using plant oil, which in turn made precise carbon dating of the scrolls almost impossible. A Danish archaeochemist and an international team of researchers,... |
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| Religion of Peace | |
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| Iraq To Build Massive Mosque Over The Tomb Of The Prophet Ezekiel |
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· 01/05/2010 7:47:26 PM PST · · Posted by Tamar Rush · · 60 replies · 1,356+ views · · The Last Crusade · · Jan. 05, 2010 · · Paul L. Williams, Ph.D. · |
DESECRETAION OF SACRED SITE PROMPTS LITTLE ATTENTION by Paul L. Williams, Ph.D. thelastcrusade.org The Iraqi government plans to convert the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel, one of the most sacred sites for Christians and Jews, into a massive new mosque. What's more, the Iraqis intend to erase all Jewish markings from the tomb so that no indication of its historic significance will remain for future generations. The plan to transform the ancient burial site into a mosque was reported this week by Ur News, the Iraqi news agency, and Shelomo Alfassa, Director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries.... |
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| Iraq Reclaims A Jewish History It Once Shunned [actually the stuff, not the Jews or history] |
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· 01/17/2010 7:25:06 AM PST · · Posted by SJackson · · 14 replies · 347+ views · · WYFF4 · · 1-17-10 · · REBECCA SANTANA · |
BAGHDAD -- It was seized from Jewish families and wound up soaking in sewage water in the basement of a secret police building. Rescued from the chaos that engulfed Baghdad as Saddam Hussein was toppled, it now sits in safekeeping in an office near Washington, D.C. Like this country's once great Jewish community, the Iraqi Jewish Archive of books, manuscripts, records and other materials has gone through turbulent times. Now another twist may be in store: Iraq wants it back. Iraqi officials say they will go to the U.S., possibly next month, to assess the materials found by U.S. troops... |
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| Phoenicians | |
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| Treasure Found Off La Manga [ Phoenician treasure ship ] |
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· 01/18/2010 11:59:53 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 17 replies · 550+ views · · The Leader · · Friday, January 15, 2010 · · Sally Bengtsson · |
Buried beneath shells, rocks and sand, for 2,600 years, ...a treasure of incalculable value has lain just off La Manga...The find appears to be the cargo of a commercial ship carrying ivory from African elephants, amber and lots of ceramic objects. The find has been kept secret for the past three years by the team of divers led by the Spaniard Juan Pinedo Reyes and the American Mark Edward Polzer. The recovery project is being financed by National Geographic, who have reached an agreement with the Spanish Minister of Culture, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and the University A&M of... |
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| Lixus | |
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| Chemical analyses uncover secrets of an ancient amphora |
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· 01/20/2010 7:36:26 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 6 replies · 293+ views · · FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology · · Jan 20, 2010 · · Unknown · |
A team of chemists from the University of Valencia (UV) has confirmed that the substance used to hermetically seal an amphora found among remains at Lixus, in Morocco, was pine resin. The scientists also studied the metallic fragments inside the 2,000-year-old vessel, which could be fragments of material used for iron-working. In 2005, a group of archaeologists from the UV discovered a sealed amphora among the remains at Lixus, an ancient settlement founded by the Phoenicians near Larache, in Morocco. Since then, researchers from the Department of Analytical Chemistry at this university have been carrying out various studies into it... |
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| Navigation | |
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| The battle over Hawaii's history |
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· 01/20/2010 9:24:29 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 14 replies · 565+ views · · LA Times · · 18 Jan 2010 · · Alana Semuels · |
Amateur historian Rick Rogers just knows Europeans visited the islands two centuries before Captain Cook landed in 1778. Trying to prove it and convince professionals, that's another story. In the clear blue water 150 feet down, off Palemano Point on Hawaii's Big Island, Captain Rick Rogers swam along the ocean floor, concentrating on the light white swirls of staghorn reef below him. As tiny bubbles of air escaped from his tank, his black flippers propelled him above the coral, next to schools of reddish mempache and juicy turquoise uhu fish. The scene was breathtaking, but Rogers didn't care about nature.... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| Lost Spanish colony may be found |
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· 01/20/2010 11:12:31 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 16 replies · 453+ views · · The St. Augustine Record · · 19 Jan 2010 · · PETER GUINTA · |
Pottery in St. Augustine may provide clues Three years after St. Augustine was founded, Alvara de Mendana, nephew of the governor of Peru, set out with two ships and 150 soldiers and sailed west to find gold and a new trade route to China. Mendana's 1568 voyage found nothing, so he returned to Peru. But a relentless lust for gold pushed the Spanish to dispatch more colonizing fleets. And one founded a colony somewhere in the Solomon Islands, northeast of Australia. No one knows its exact location or why the colony disappeared, but Martin Gibbs of the University of Sydney's... |
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| Catastrophism and Astronomy | |
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| Cave reveals Southwest's abrupt climate swings during Ice Age |
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· 01/20/2010 2:11:19 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 22 replies · 639+ views · · University of Arizona · · Jan 20, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Ice Age climate records from an Arizona stalagmite link the Southwest's winter precipitation to temperatures in the North Atlantic, according to new research. The finding is the first to document that the abrupt changes in Ice Age climate known from Greenland also occurred in the southwestern U.S., said co-author Julia E. Cole of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "It's a new picture of the climate in the Southwest during the last Ice Age," said Cole, a UA professor of geosciences. "When it was cold in Greenland, it was wet here, and when it was warm in Greenland, it was... |
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| Dendrochronology | |
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| Radiocarbon Daters Tune Up Their Time Machine |
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· 01/18/2010 1:32:41 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 24 replies · 461+ views · · ScienceNow · · Friday, January 15, 2010 · · Michael Balter · |
The basic principle of radiocarbon dating is fairly simple. Plants and animals absorb trace amounts of radioactive carbon-14 from carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere while they are alive but stop doing so when they die... Most experts consider the technical limit of radiocarbon dating to be about 50,000 years, after which there is too little carbon-14 left to measure accurately. ...The amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere varies with fluctuations in solar activity and Earth's magnetic field, and "raw" radiocarbon dates have to be corrected with a calibration curve that takes these fluctuations into account. ...To calibrate the period... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Alpine ice man may have been childless outcast |
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· 02/03/2006 6:43:25 PM PST · · Posted by presidio9 · · 66 replies · 1,373+ views · · Reuters · · Fri Feb 3, 2006 · · Sophie Hardach · |
Stone Age man found frozen in the Alps some 5,300 years after he was murdered under mysterious circumstances may have been a childless social outcast, a new study showed. Italian anthropologist Franco Rollo studied fragments of the DNA belonging to Oetzi, as the mummy has come to be known, and found two typical mutations common among men with reduced sperm mobility, the museum that stores the "iceman" said. A high percentage of men with such a condition are sterile. "Insofar as the 'iceman' was found to possess both mutations, the possibility that he was unable to father offspring cannot be... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Europe's conquering heroes? Likely farmers: study |
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· 01/19/2010 3:44:16 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 15 replies · 253+ views · · Reuters · · Jan 19, 2010 · · Reporting by Maggie Fox · · Editing by JoAnne Allen · |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The conquerors who spread their seed across Europe in ancient times were prosperous farmers who imported their skills from the Middle East, researchers reported on Tuesday. A study of the Y chromosome -- passed down with very little change from father to son -- suggests that the men of Europe are descended from populations that moved into Europe 10,000 years ago from the "Fertile Crescent", which stretches from Egypt across the Middle East into present-day Iraq. "Maybe, back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer," Dr. Patricia Balaresque of Britain's University of Leicester said in... |
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| Bottlenecks | |
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| Genome Study Provides a Census of Early Humans |
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· 01/19/2010 4:21:03 AM PST · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 41 replies · 435+ views · · NY Times (Science Times) · · January 18, 2010 · · NICHOLAS WADE · |
From the composition of just two human genomes, geneticists have computed the size of the human population 1.2 million years ago from which everyone in the world is descended. They put the number at 18,500 people, but this refers only to breeding individuals, the "effective" population. The actual population would have been about three times as large, or 55,500. Comparable estimates for other primates then are 21,000 for chimpanzees and 25,000 for gorillas. In biological terms, it seems, humans were not a very successful species, and the strategy of investing in larger brains than those of their fellow apes had... |
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| Agriculture and Animal Husbandry | |
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| Giant cattle to be bred back from extinction |
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· 01/18/2010 6:38:36 PM PST · · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · · 54 replies · 1,417+ views · · telegraph.co.uk · · Jan. 18, 2010 · · Nick Squires · |
Aurochs were immortalised in prehistoric cave paintings and admired for their brute strength and "elephantine" size by Julius Caesar. But despite their having gone the way of the dodo and the woolly mammoth, there are plans to bring the giant animals back to life. The huge cattle with sweeping horns which once roamed the forests of Europe have not been seen for nearly 400 years. Now Italian scientists are hoping to use genetic expertise and selective breeding of modern-day wild cattle to recreate the fearsome beasts which weighed around 2,200lb and stood 6.5 feet at the shoulder. Breeds of large... |
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| Art History | |
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| Full-Figured Statuette, 35,000 Years Old, Provides New Clues to How Art Evolved |
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· 05/14/2009 10:11:11 AM PDT · · Posted by ETL · · 41 replies · 1,799+ views · · New York Times · · May 13, 2009 · · JOHN NOBLE WILFORD · |
No one would mistake the Stone Age ivory carving for a Venus de Milo. The voluptuous woman depicted is, to say the least, earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitals. Nicholas J. Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, who found the small carving in a cave last year, said it was at least 35,000 years old, "one of the oldest known examples of figurative art" in the world. It is about 5,000 years older than some other so-called Venus artifacts made by early populations of Homo sapiens in Europe. Another archaeologist, Paul Mellars of... |
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| Neandertals / Neanderthals | |
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| Neanderthals Enjoyed Surf and Turf Meals |
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· 01/18/2010 1:38:03 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 41 replies · 443+ views · · Discovery News · · Tuesday, January 12, 2010 · · Jennifer Viegas · |
Recently at Discovery News I told you about Neanderthal-made shell jewelry that suggests these hominids were as smart and creative as modern humans were at the time the jewelry was made, 50,000 years ago. University of Bristol archaeologist Joao Zilhao, who led the project, told me about some other interesting discoveries he and his team made about Neanderthals. One concerns how they harvested shellfish for consumption... Note that the Neanderthals didn't wear their dinner discards, just as we don't today. (Or usually don't. Maybe someone out there has made a necklace out of last night's oyster or lobster remains.) The... |
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| Prehistory and Origins | |
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| Feet hold the key to human hand evolution [ make sure your fire insurance is up to date ] |
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· 01/18/2010 12:06:35 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 23 replies · 340+ views · · BBC News · · Monday, January 18, 2010 · · Victoria Gill · |
Scientists may have solved the mystery of how human hands became nimble enough to make and manipulate stone tools. The team reports in the journal Evolution that changes in our hands and fingers were a side-effect of changes in the shape of our feet. This, they say, shows that the capacity to stand and walk on two feet is intrinsically linked to the emergence of stone tool technology. The scientists used a mathematical model to simulate the changes. Other researchers, though, have questioned this approach. Campbell Rolian, a scientist from the University of Calgary in Canada who led the study,... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| New theory on the origin of primates |
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· 01/19/2010 11:33:29 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 26 replies · 442+ views · · Buffalo Museum of Science · · Jan 19, 2010 · · Unknown · |
A new model for primate origins is presented in Zoologica Scripta, published by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The paper argues that the distributions of the major primate groups are correlated with Mesozoic tectonic features and that their respective ranges are congruent with each evolving locally from a widespread ancestor on the supercontinent of Pangea about 185 million years ago. Michael Heads, a Research Associate of the Buffalo Museum of Science, arrived at these conclusions by incorporating, for the first time, spatial patterns of primate diversity and distribution as historical evidence... |
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| Biology and Cryptobiology | |
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| Early Water on Earth |
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· 02/09/2003 4:22:57 PM PST · · Posted by CalConservative · · 44 replies · 706+ views · · Geotimes · · February 2003 · · Salma Monani · |
Geologists have long thought that Earth's first 500 million years were as hot as Hades, dubbing this time frame the Hadean. The high temperatures would have prevented liquid water from condensing on the surface. But new findings on zircon grains, Earth's oldest known terrestrial materials, suggest that the Hadean might have hosted liquid water. Recovered from the metamorphosed sediments of the Jack Hills in western Australia, the zircon grains are dated to be more than 4 billion years old and are the only geological evidence available to provide insight into the first 500 million years... |
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| Age of Sail | |
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| ..Unlocking the bloody history of the ship made famous by Turner, the Fighting Temeraire |
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· 01/22/2010 11:19:48 AM PST · · Posted by C19fan · · 19 replies · 693+ views · · Daily Mail · · January 22, 2010 · · Sam Willis · |
Struggling to breathe in mouthfuls of air rank with choking gunsmoke, hundreds of men and boys crouched low on the gun decks of His Majesty's Ship Temeraire. In that cramped space, where shouted orders competed with the screams of the injured, blood ran freely through a hull hewn from English oaks. Already the sails high above were riddled with chain shot from the French warships, but it was there, on the crowded gundecks that a brutal slaughter was unfolding. In the hellish tempest of the Battle of Trafalgar, in an act of almost suicidal valour, the Temeraire's captain chose to... |
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| Scotland Yet | |
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| Team drills for century-old Scotch whiskey in Antarctica |
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· 11/16/2009 8:36:45 AM PST · · Posted by buccaneer81 · · 22 replies · 1,511+ views · · The Columbus Dispatch · · November 16, 2009 · · NA · |
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago. The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition. |
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| Pages | |
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| Most harmful books of the 19th & 20th centuries |
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· 01/20/2010 7:26:23 AM PST · · Posted by Responsibility2nd · · 78 replies · 1,120+ views · · San Antonio Express-News · · 01/14/2010 · · Human Events · |
1. "The Communist Manifesto" (Marx and Engels) 2. "Mein Kampf" (Hitler) 3. "Quotations from Chairman Mao" (Mao) 4. "The Kinsey Report" (Kinsey) 5. "Democracy and Education" (Dewey) 6. "Das Kapital" (Marx) 7. "The Feminine Mystique" (Friedan) 8. "The Course of Positive Philosophy" (Comte) 9. "Beyond Good and Evil" (Nietzsche) 10. "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" (Keynes) |
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| Climate | |
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| Melting Himalayan Glaciers Another Fraud by AGW Proponents |
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· 01/18/2010 12:41:54 PM PST · · Posted by ezfindit · · 19 replies · 540+ views · · TimesOnline · · 1/17/2010 · · Jonathan Leake · |
A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based... |
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| Flakey Idea | |
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| First ever snowflake photos go on sale |
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· 01/21/2010 8:35:27 PM PST · · Posted by bruinbirdman · · 20 replies · 1,116+ views · · The Telegraph · · 1/21/2010 · |
Photographs by Wilson A. Bentley, the first person to capture the image of a single snowflake with a camera in 1885, are to be auctioned in New York. The farmer from Vermont became known as Snowman Bentley and The Snowflake Man for his pioneering 19th century images of thousands of jewel-like snowflakes. A four-day sale of his work begins on Thursday, with 26 of his images to be auctioned at the American Antiques Show. Ten of the images are of snowflakes, which he called snow crystals, and are priced at $4,800 (£3,000) each. The others show winter scenes. They are... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Auto on Back of $10 Note is a Composite |
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· 01/20/2010 1:22:25 PM PST · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 48 replies · 961+ views · · Numismaster · · January 19, 2010 · · Alan Herbert · |
What kind of car is pictured on the back of the $10 note? The question of the make and model of the automobile on the back of the U.S. $10 notes has been a regular one virtually ever since the notes first were printed, in 1928. A considerable amount of misinformation has found its way into reference works along with the facts, which are these: The $10 notes in the series 1928 Gold Certificates, 1928 and later Federal Reserve Notes, 1929 Federal Reserve Bank Notes, and 1933, 1934, 1934A, 1934B, 1934C, 1934D and 1953 Silver Certificates all bear the same... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| Edgar Allen Poe traditional birthday grave site visit ended last night. |
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· 01/19/2010 3:15:36 PM PST · · Posted by Freakdog · · 44 replies · 965+ views · · wbal.com · |
The traditional visit by an unknown shadowy figure who has left 3 roses and a half bottle of cognac on Edgar Allen Poes grave,failed to show up last night. |
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| end of digest #288 20100123 | |
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· Saturday, January 23, 2010 · 37 topics · 839466 to 2429873 · 737 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 288th issue. |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #289 Saturday, January 30, 2010 |
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| Africa | |
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| Magnificence on Cave Walls |
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· 01/25/2010 9:46:02 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 11 replies · 622+ views · · WSJ · · 23 Jan 2010 · · Michael Fitzgerald · |
Inanke's prehistoric paintings are a celebration of life The trail to the great cave of Inanke in southern Zimbabwe begins confidently with arrows painted on bare patches of granite and soon vanishes into four miles of often pathless wandering through fields of shoulder-high grass, dense scrub forests and formidable thorn bushes. Without the direction of our guide, the archaeologist Paul Hubbard, our group would never have found this cave containing some of the most magnificent prehistoric paintings in the world. But reach the approximately 30-foot-long frieze of intricately varied paintings and you will find it free of the man-made barriers,... |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Solomon & Sheba, Inc. -- New inscription confirms trade relations between "towns of Judah" and... |
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· 01/24/2010 3:50:06 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 22 replies · 433+ views · · Biblical Archaeology Review · · January/February 2010 · · Andre Lemaire · |
Southern Arabia is 1,200 miles south of Israel. Naturally, skepticism about the reality of trade between South Arabia and Israel in ancient times seems justified. Yet the Bible documents this trade quite extensively -- most famously in the supposed affair between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. And the land of Sheba is referred to two dozen times in the Hebrew Bible. Without addressing the historicity of the personal relations between Solomon and the queen of this South Arabian kingdom (or queendom?), I think it can be shown that the international trade between Judah and southern Arabia very probably... |
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| Art History | |
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| Early copy of the Gospel of Mark is a forgery |
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· 01/28/2010 10:49:09 AM PST · · Posted by NYer · · 15 replies · 683+ views · · The Art Newspaper · · January 27, 2010 · · Emily Sharpe · |
Not what it appears to be: the Archaic Mark LONDON. A clever bit of detective work by US scholars and scientists has proven that one of the jewels of the University of Chicago's manuscript collection is, in fact, a skilled late 19th- or early 20th-century forgery. Although speculation as to the authenticity of the Archaic Mark codex has been rife for more than 60 years, prior to this definitive research many believed it was an early record (possibly as early as the 14th century) of the Gospel of Mark and the closest of any extant manuscript to the world's oldest... |
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| She Was A Sister Who Really Cooked | |
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| Joan of Arc 'Relics' Confirmed to Be Fake |
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· 01/26/2010 6:24:55 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 24 replies · 469+ views · · Discovery News · · Wednesday, January 20, 2010 · · Jennifer Viegas · |
The bottle containing the bones first surfaced at a pharmacy in 1867. Its label read: "Remains found under the pyre of Joan of Arc, maiden of Orleans." Different techniques, including DNA analysis, several forms of microscopy, chemical analysis and carbon dating, were used to examine the bottle's contents. A few years ago, Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at Raymond Poincare Hospital in Garches, France, and his team first determined that the bottle contained an approximately 4-inch-long human rib covered with a black coating. It also housed part of a cat femur covered with the same coating, three fragments of "charcoal"... |
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| Roman Empire | |
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| Two thousand year old Roman aqueduct discovered |
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· 01/25/2010 3:39:35 PM PST · · Posted by bruinbirdman · · 57 replies · 1,255+ views · · The Telegraph · · 1/25/2008 · · Nick Squires in Rome · |
Pair of British amateur archaeologists believe they have found the hidden source of a Roman aqueduct 1,900 years after it was inaugurated by the Emperor Trajan. The underground spring lies behind a concealed door beneath an abandoned 13th century church on the shores of Lake Bracciano, 35 miles north of Rome. Exploration of the site has shown that water percolating through volcanic bedrock was collected in underground grottoes and chambers and fed into a subterranean aqueduct, the Aqua Traiana, which took it all the way to the imperial capital. Prof. Lorenzo Quilici in the Aqua Traiana Centuries later, it provided... |
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| Climate | |
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| The sea level has been rising and falling over the last 2,500 years |
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· 01/26/2010 6:55:04 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 16 replies · 407+ views · · University of Haifa · · Jan 26, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Templar Palace in AcreCaption: Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new," explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research. The Templar palace in Acre, seen here, is one of the sites where this study was carried out. Credit: Amir Yurman, Director of the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies Maritime Workshop at the University of Haifa; Courtesy of the University of Haifa Usage Restrictions: The image may only be used with the... |
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| The Hobbit | |
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| Human Evolution; Is the Hobbit's brain unfeasibly small? |
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· 01/28/2010 1:12:23 PM PST · · Posted by EnderWiggins · · 24 replies · 295+ views · · ScienceDaily · · 1/28/2010 · · EnderWiggins · |
Homo floresiensis, a pygmy-sized small-brained hominin popularly known as 'the Hobbit' was discovered five years ago, but controversy continues over whether the small brain is actually due to a pathological condition. How can its tiny brain size be explained? The commonly held assumption that as primates evolved, their brains always tended to get bigger has been challenged by a team of scientists at Cambridge and Durham. Their work helps solve the mystery of whether Homo floresiensis -- dubbed the Hobbit due to its diminutive stature -- was a separate human species or a diseased individual. The team combined previously published... |
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| Biology and Cryptobiology | |
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| Scientist: Alien life could already be on Earth |
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· 01/26/2010 10:34:14 AM PST · · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · · 39 replies · 744+ views · · Associated Press · · Jan. 26, 2010 · · RAPHAEL G. SATTER · |
LONDON (AP) - For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us -- or maybe even in us. Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times. Davies said the variant life forms -- most likely tiny microbes -- could still be hanging around "right under or noses -- or even in our noses." |
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| That Sucks | |
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| Why Human Blood Drives Mosquitoes Wild |
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· 01/24/2010 4:43:53 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 25 replies · 745+ views · · Live Science · · Jan 24, 2010 · · Marlene Cimons · |
This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. When the time came for chemical ecologist Walter Leal to test whether humans make a natural odor that attracts mosquitoes, Leal himself was the first to volunteer. "I measured my own levels," Leal said. "I thought I would set a good example. If you do it first, then others won't be scared." In truth, there was little if any reason to be frightened. The scientists were looking only for the substance itself, not trying to find out whether the compound would lure the insects... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| Dinosaur Species Vanish! |
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· 01/24/2010 10:47:33 PM PST · · Posted by bruinbirdman · · 24 replies · 772+ views · · Smithsonian · · 1/20/2010 · · Amanda Bensen, Abby Callard · |
from left: Dracorex hogwartsia, Stygimoloch spinifer and Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis Dinosaur Species Vanish! The dinosaurs above have been considered three species. But a new analysis of fossil skulls led by the University of Montana suggests they're different life stages of P. wyomingensis, whose horns disappear and dome head grows over time. The find fuels speculation that up to a third of recognized dinosaur species are in fact juvenile forms of other specicies. |
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| Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time |
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· 01/28/2010 3:58:33 PM PST · · Posted by Nachum · · 18 replies · 774+ views · · National Geographic · · 1/28/10 · · Chris Sloan · |
"Dino fuzz" pigment discovery in feathers may strengthen dinosaur-bird link. Pigments have been found in fossil dinosaurs for the first time, a new study says. The discovery may prove once and for all that dinosaurs' hairlike filaments -- sometimes called dino fuzz -- are related to bird feathers, paleontologists announced today. (Pictures: Dinosaur True Colors Revealed by Feather Find.) The finding may also open up a new world of prehistoric color, illuminating the role of color in dinosaur behavior and allowing the first accurately colored dinosaur re-creations, according to the study team, led by Fucheng Zhang of China's Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology. The team... |
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| All Eggs One Basket | |
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| Ostriches gave up flying when dinosaurs died out |
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· 01/23/2010 12:06:39 PM PST · · Posted by LibWhacker · · 40 replies · 505+ views · · Telegraph · · 1/23/10 · |
Emus and ostriches became fat, flightless birds after dinosaurs died out and were no longer around to chase them, scientists believe.An abundance of food and lack of predators following the mass extinction 65 million years saw previously flighted birds put on so much weight that they had to walk instead, according to research by Australian National University. A molecular dating study revealed that the African ostrich, Australasian emu, South American rhea and New Zealand moa became flightless independently following the disappearance of dinosaurs. |
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| Feathered Dinosaurs Could Glide |
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· 01/27/2010 5:41:25 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 12 replies · 264+ views · · Discovery News · · Tuesday, January 26, 2010 · · Associated Press · |
In an effort to determine the flight abilities of the animals, researchers built models of these early birds and launched them into the air. [University of Kansas] |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Iraq launches project to renovate Ezekiel's shrine |
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· 05/04/2009 4:12:23 PM PDT · · Posted by forkinsocket · · 2 replies · 220+ views · · The Jerusalem Post · · May 1, 2009 · · Staff · |
The Iraqi government has launched a project to renovate the interior of the prophet Ezekiel's shrine in the small town of Kifl, south of Baghdad, and the country's Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities says it hopes to eventually repair and renovate other Jewish sites across the country. "The ministry is concerned with all Iraqi heritage, whether it is Christian or Jewish or from any other religion," ministry spokesman Abdelzahra al-Talaqani told AFP. "The present plans do not include the synagogues in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Fallujah and other places because of lack of funding, but I think they will be included... |
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| Erasing Ezekiel's Jewish identity [aka let's build a Mosque on Ezekiel's tomb!] |
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· 01/29/2010 3:14:10 PM PST · · Posted by SJackson · · 27 replies · 327+ views · · Jerusalem Post · · 1-20-10 · · KSENIA SVETLOVA · |
Iraq removing Hebrew inscriptions from tomb, mosque to be built on grave. For centuries Jews, Christians and Muslims came to Al-Kifl, a small town south of Baghdad, to visit the tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel and pray. The distinctive Jewish character of the Al-Kifl shrine, namely the Hebrew inscriptions and the Torah Ark, never bothered the gentile worshipers. In the 14th century a minaret was built next to the shrine, but the interior design remained Jewish. The vast majority of Iraq's Jewish community left some 60 years ago, but Shi'ites took good care of the holy site. Until now. Recently... |
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| Religion of Peace | |
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| Afghans love to get their (headless) goat in national sport of buzkashi (Olympic sport?) |
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· 01/24/2010 6:59:24 AM PST · · Posted by Libloather · · 31 replies · 623+ views · · LA Times · · 1/03/10 · · Tony Perry · |
Afghans love to get their goat in national sport of buzkashiThe sport, in which players on horseback vie for a headless goat carcass to much crowd enthusiasm, is back in force since the Taliban's overthrow. Some dream of it being in the Olympics. January 03, 2010|By Tony Perry Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -- Leaning far off his horse like a polo player, amid a chaotic-looking scrum of other riders doing the same, the rider snatched the decapitated goat by a foreleg and galloped off. He whipped his heavy-breathing horse for more speed while the others raced in pursuit. As they... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| 1000-Year-Old Monument with Image of Mayan Ruler Found |
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· 01/24/2010 3:33:23 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 22 replies · 689+ views · · Art Daily · · Sunday, January 24, 2010 · · EFE · |
A 1000-year-old stele with the sculpted image of a Mayan ruler was found in the archaeological area of Lagartero in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said. In the bas-relief sculpture the Mayan ruler rises above an individual who lies at his feet, "a scene representing the seizing of power by one Maya group from another," INAH said, adding that the archaeological area of Lagartero will be open to the public this year. INAH experts found the stone monument in late 2009 at the 10th section of Pyramid 4 in Lagartero, the... |
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance | |
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| Leonardo da Vinci's bones to be dug up by Italian scientists |
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· 01/23/2010 8:36:00 PM PST · · Posted by bruinbirdman · · 59 replies · 960+ views · · The Times · · 1/24/2008 · · John Follain · |
Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait. A team from Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie at Amboise castle, in the Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67. Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist, said the project could throw new light on Leonardo's most famous work. "If we manage to find his skull, we... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II |
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· 01/17/2010 1:21:58 AM PST · · Posted by Lucius Cornelius Sulla · · 9 replies · 412+ views · · The Wall Street Journal · · JANUARY 14, 2010 · · A.N. Wilson · |
The travellers trotted on, and as the sun began to sink towards the White Downs far away on the western horizon they came to Bywater by its wide pool, and there they had their first really painful shock. This was Frodo and Sam's own country, and they found out now that they cared about it more than any other place in the world. Many of the houses that they had known were missing. Some seemed to have been burned down. The pleasant row of old hobbit-holes in the bank in the north side of the Pool were deserted,... |
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| Pages | |
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| What Are You Reading Now? (My Quarterly Survey) |
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· 01/12/2010 7:17:29 PM PST · · Posted by MplsSteve · · 279 replies · 2,400+ views · · 1/12/10 · |
OK, it's time for my quarterly What Are You Reading Now? survey. I do this because I like to gauge what Freepers are reading. I believe that the Freeper community are one of the more well-read on the Internet. What are you reading? It can be anything...a classic novel, a NY Times bestseller, a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel - in short, anything. Please do not defile this thread by replying "I'm Reading This Thread". It became unfunny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm reading "Pickett's Charge: A Microstudy" by George R Stewart. It was written in 1959... |
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| Obituaries | |
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| 'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87 |
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· 01/27/2010 6:12:33 PM PST · · Posted by takbodan · · 24 replies · 638+ views · · AP · · 1/27/10 · · Hillel Italie · |
Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" sold a million copies and became an alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87. Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said. The historian was a resident of Auburndale, Mass. Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, "A People's History" was -- fittingly -- a people's best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1... |
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| Hope and Change | |
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| Students Face a Class Struggle at State Colleges |
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· 01/24/2010 4:21:10 AM PST · · Posted by reaganaut1 · · 26 replies · 758+ views · · New York Times · · January 23, 2010 · · Katharine Mieszkowski · |
... Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before. Mr. Macias's experience of truncated offerings, furloughed professors and crowded classrooms is typical. ... Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a [higher education] trade association, confirmed that higher education in California has become akin to navigating an obstacle course. ... In 1960, he added, the state created "the gold standard in high-quality, low-cost public higher education. This year, the... |
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| The Framers | |
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| Madison's Gift to America |
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· 01/26/2010 4:16:12 PM PST · · Posted by Lorianne · · 3 replies · 87+ views · · City Journal · · 15 January 2010 · · Richard M. Reinsch (reviewer) · |
A new study points to the Virginian's emphasis on civic virtue. A book review of: James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government, by Colleen A. Sheehan (Cambridge University Press, 204pp.) In her excellent new study, Colleen A. Sheehan argues that James Madison is preeminent among the Founders in his insistence on the civic cultivation of public opinion. Madison's purposes, seemingly inconsistent at different points of his political career, ultimately cohere, she believes, in his quest to secure republican self-government in the infant nation. She begins with a Madison whose faith in self-government had been shaken after American independence, thanks... |
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| Early America | |
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| Coffin's Emblem Defies Certainty |
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· 01/27/2010 10:03:20 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 9 replies · 582+ views · · The New York Times · · 26 Jan 2010 · · SEWELL CHAN · |
When the remains of hundreds of colonial-era Africans were uncovered during a building excavation in Lower Manhattan in 1991, one coffin in particular stood out. Nailed into its wooden lid were iron tacks, 51 of which formed an enigmatic, heart-shaped design. The pattern was soon identified as the sankofa -- a symbol printed on funereal garments in West Africa -- and it captured the imagination of scholars, preservationists and designers. Ultimately, it was embraced by many African-Americans as a remarkable example of the survival of African customs in the face of violent subjugation in early America. The sankofa was widely... |
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| Agriculture and Animal Husbandry | |
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| Canned Beer Turns 75 |
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· 01/24/2010 12:03:46 PM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 61 replies · 1,271+ views · · livescience · · 23 January 2010 · · Heather Whipps · |
Be sure to crack open a cold one on Jan. 24, the day canned beer celebrates its 75th birthday. New Jersey's Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company churned out the world's first beer can in 1935, stocking select shelves in Richmond, Va., as a market test. The experiment took off and American drinkers haven't looked back since, nowadays choosing cans over bottles for the majority of the 22 gallons of beer they each drink per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Canned brewskies may have only hit shelves in 1935, but the drink's history goes back much further -- at least... |
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| Peaked Too Soon | |
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| Could a Frozen Camera Dethrone Hillary and Norgay as the First to Summit Everest? |
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· 01/28/2010 10:24:39 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 25 replies · 1,027+ views · · Scientific American · · 26 Jan 2010 · · Larry Greenemeier · |
Photo detective work could solve an enigma nearly nine decades old. But will it vindicate Hillary's historic climb or rewrite the record books? On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine left their camp less than a kilometer from the summit of Mount Everest on a mission to be the first mountaineers to ascend the world's highest peak (8,850 meters). They were never to be heard from again. Whether either man reached the summit -- almost three decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's historic 1953 climb -- has been an open question for nearly 86 years. Although more than half a... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| This is the 24th anniversary of the Challenger disaster |
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· 01/28/2010 12:50:25 PM PST · · Posted by free1977free · · 69 replies · 874+ views · · examiner.com · · January 28 · · Jennifer Ellis May · |
Where were you on January 28th, 1986? Were you in a classroom watching the first teacher go into space? Do you remember how you felt when you saw the Challenger explode soon after it left the earth? CNN reports that about 17% of Americans were watching when the disaster occurred. One hour later, 85% had heard the news. It is estimated that 48% of 9-13 year-olds were watching. Teacher Christa Macauliffe was supposed to be the first teacher in space, but she never made it. She died in the explosion along with the six astronauts accompanying her. Most of today's... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Hillary Clinton's ET book discovered |
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· 01/28/2010 7:50:50 PM PST · · Posted by Liberty Tree Surgeon · · 2 replies · 415+ views · · Openminds.tv · · Jan 15, 2010 · · Alejandro Rojas · |
In the 1990's Laurance Rockefeller became interested in paranormal phenomena, especially with UFOs and Extraterrestrial visitation. He funded scientific investigations and organized and funded a briefing document to record the best evidence (Open Minds journalist, Antonio Huneeus was a key contributor to this document). Rockefeller also conferred with the Clintons regarding the release of files by President Bill Clinton. In these famous pictures of Hillary and Rockefeller walking on a wooded path during the visit, Hilary is holding a book. For years researchers have been trying to figure out which book she is holding, to find out if it... |
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| end of digest #289 20100130 | |
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· Saturday, January 30, 2010 · 27 topics · 2244126 to 2435927 · 737 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 288th issue. No idea why, but Scythian has bade us all adieu. No response yet, but I think I'll just drop S from this ping list, and any others if applicable. |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #290 Saturday, February 6, 2010 |
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| Trojan War | |
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| Could museum's gold be from ancient Troy? |
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· 02/02/2010 8:50:18 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 8 replies · 374+ views · · Philadelphia Inquirer · · Sunday, January 31, 2010 · · Tom Avril · |
The scientist had traveled from Germany to examine the ancient items that lay before him on the University of Pennsylvania laboratory table, and he was dazzled. Earrings with cascades of golden leaves. Brooches adorned with tightly coiled spirals. A necklace strung with hundreds of gold ringlets and beads. The jewelry bore a striking resemblance to objects from one of the world's great collections - a controversial treasure unearthed long ago from the fabled city of Troy... The 24 pieces had been purchased from a Philadelphia antiquities dealer more than 40 years ago, and came with no documentation of their origin.... |
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| Egypt | |
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| The most sacred of cities -- review of David O'Connor's "Abydos: Egypt's First Pharaohs and the... |
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· 02/03/2010 4:20:03 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 8 replies · 186+ views · · Al-Ahram Weekly · · 28 January - 3 February 2010, issue #983 · · Jill Kamil · |
Abydos is situated on the western bank of the Nile about seven kilometres west of the town of Balyana in Middle Egypt. It made its debut on the stage of Egypt's ancient history even before the dynastic period, and it retained its aura of sanctity longer than any other site in Egypt. It houses the tombs and mortuary cult enclosures of the rulers of the First Dynasty. It was the cult centre of Osiris, Egypt's most beloved hero and the central figure of the country's most popular myth. And it is an archaeological site that casts light on the origins... |
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| Faith and Philosophy | |
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| An ancient Roman temple, discovered in the chancel of the church of Sant Feliu Girona |
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· 02/02/2010 9:00:54 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 5 replies · 213+ views · · Barcelona Reporter · · February 2010 · · unattributed · |
An ancient Roman temple, discovered following the first excavations in the chancel of the church of Sant Feliu Girona. The temple, with cross-shaped plan, apse, three naves and two side chapels, and several tombs from the sixth and seventh centuries, have appeared. This intervention is part of the European project "Sopra e sotto. Euopea La Città", the culture program involving the City of Brindisi (Italy) as main organizer, with participation as members of L'Ecole Nationale Superiore d ' Architetture of Toulouse (France), the University and the city of Girona. The work that has lasted three weeks have also brought to... |
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| The Non-DaVinci Code | |
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| Lost Roman law code discovered in London [ Codex Gregorianus ] |
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· 01/31/2010 7:36:52 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 25 replies · 655+ views · · Eurekalert · · Tuesday, January 26, 2010 · · Dave Weston, University College London · |
Part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever has been discovered by researchers at UCL's Department of History. Simon Corcoran and Benet Salway made the breakthrough after piecing together 17 fragments of previously incomprehensible parchment. The fragments were being studied at UCL as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded "Projet Volterra" -- a ten year study of Roman law in its full social, legal and political context. Corcoran and Salway found that the text belonged to the Codex Gregorianus, or Gregorian Code, a collection of laws by emperors from Hadrian (AD 117-138)... |
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| Roman Empire | |
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| World's first Swiss Army knife revealed - made 1800 years before today's version (Pics) |
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· 01/30/2010 1:23:35 AM PST · · Posted by bogusname · · 48 replies · 1,750+ views · · Daily Mail · · January 30, 2010 · · Daily Mail Reporter · |
The world's first Swiss Army knife' has been revealed - made 1,800 years before its modern counterpart. An intricately designed Roman implement, which dates back to 200AD, it is made from silver but has an iron blade. It features a spoon, fork as well as a retractable spike, spatula and small tooth-pick. Experts believe the spike may have been used by the Romans to extract meat from snails. |
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| British Isles | |
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| Silver coin dating to 211 BC is oldest piece of Roman money ever found in Britain |
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· 02/02/2010 9:15:34 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 24 replies · 566+ views · · Daily Mail · · Friday, January 29th, 2010 · · Daily Mail Reporter · |
Dating from 211 BC and found near the Leicestershire village of Hallaton, the coin was uncovered with 5,000 other coins, a helmet and a decorated bowl. Unearthed in 2000 by a metal detectorist, staff at the nearby Harborough Museum have only just realised its significance. One side of the coin depicts the goddess Roma wearing her characteristic helmet while mythical twins Castor and Pollux sit astride galloping horses on the reverse. David Sprason, Leicestershire County Council cabinet member for communities and well-being said: 'Leicestershire boasts the largest number of Iron Age coins ever professionally excavated in Britain. 'To also have... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Astronomy Picture of the Day |
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· 01/31/2010 5:41:54 AM PST · · Posted by sig226 · · 37 replies · 912+ views · · NASA · · 1/31/10 · · Yale University, B. E. Schaefer (LSU) · |
The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Credit: Yale University ; Digital Copyright: B. E. Schaefer (LSU) Explanation: The ancient text has no known title, no known author, and is written in no known language: what does it say and why does it have many astronomy illustrations? The mysterious book was once bought by an emperor, forgotten on a library shelf, sold for thousands of dollars, and later donated to Yale. Possibly written in the 15th century, the over 200-page volume is known most recently as the Voynich Manuscript, after its (re-)discoverer in 1912. Pictured above is an illustration from the book... |
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| Catastrophism & Astronomy | |
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| Giant Meteorites Slammed Earth Around A.D. 500? |
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· 02/05/2010 7:31:57 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 21 replies · 563+ views · · National Geographic News · · 03 Feb 2010 · · Richard A. Lovett · |
Double impact may have caused tsunami, global cooling Pieces of a giant asteroid or comet that broke apart over Earth may have crashed off Australia about 1,500 years ago, says a scientist who has found evidence of the possible impact craters. Satellite measurements of the Gulf of Carpentaria (see map) revealed tiny changes in sea level that are signs of impact craters on the seabed below, according to new research by marine geophysicist Dallas Abbott. Based on the satellite data, one crater should be about 11 miles (18 kilometers) wide, while the other should be 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) wide.... |
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| Plato? Socrates? Aristotle? Morons. | |
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| Ancient and modern: First science academy is 350 years old |
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· 01/31/2010 3:49:10 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 12 replies · 271+ views · · AFP · · Jan 31, 2010 · · Richard Ingham · |
Handout photo provided by the Royal Society shows Isaac Newton's 'Death Mask'. The Royal Society, the world's oldest science academy founded on November 20, 1660, celebrates its 350 years throughtout the year. (AFP/Royal Society/Richard Valencia) LONDON (AFP) -- From its classical pillars and porticoed entrance to its oil paintings of great men and women and archives that include the death mask of Sir Isaac Newton, history sits grandly on the Royal Society. Scientists who visit its headquarters overlooking the tree-lined avenue that runs from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace tend to enter the building with the hushed awe of a... |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Saving Endangered Languages from Being Forgotten [Siberian Ob-Ugrian languages Mansi and Khanti] |
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· 01/31/2010 7:24:31 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 16 replies · 296+ views · · ScienceDaily · · Thursday, January 28, 2010 · · University of Vienna, via AlphaGalileo · |
With only 3.000 speakers in Northwest Siberia the Ob-Ugrian language Mansi is on the verge of extinction. Predictions say it will be extinct in ten to twenty years at the latest. The same holds true for Khanti, a member of the same language family. It is for this reason that extensive documentation is so important. Johanna Laakso, professor for Finno-Ugrian Studies at the University of Vienna concerns herself with the documentation of this and other minority languages in the framework of an FWF project and the EU project ELDIA... The documentation of the languages Mansi and Khanti is additionally of... |
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| Early America | |
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| In 1790, Philly "had a fever", today, not so much |
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· 02/03/2010 2:25:19 PM PST · · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · · 4 replies · 270+ views · · wattsupwiththat.com · · Feb. 3, 2010 · |
Steve Goddard reminded me that we've had "220 Years of Global Warming in Philadelphia." Starting in 1790, a prominent Philadelphia resident named Charles Pierce started keeping detailed records of the weather and climate, which has been archived on Google Books. His report from January, 1790 is below: JANUARY. 1790. The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees. This is the mildest month of January on record. Fogs prevailed very much in the morning, but a hot sun soon dispersed them, and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade, at mid-day. Boys were often seen... |
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| Climate | |
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| Maine: Do rings of Herbie the elm have age, climate data? |
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· 01/31/2010 2:55:38 PM PST · · Posted by NormsRevenge · · 19 replies · 477+ views · · AP on Yahoo · · 1/31/10 · · David Sharp - ap · |
YARMOUTH, Maine -- Herbie, the giant American elm tree, is giving his trunk over to science. Since the tree was felled two weeks ago, scientists from Columbia University, the University of Maine and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have contacted the Maine Forest Service about examining Herbie's trunk to see what can be learned about the tree's age and about the climate over the years. Peter Lammert of the Maine Forest Service said his computer has been clogged with e-mails from scientists interested in the stories that Herbie's growth rings might tell. In particular, Herbie's demise is bringing out... |
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| Greece | |
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| Greece: New Underwater Archaeological Site Designated Off Polyaigos Island |
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· 02/02/2010 8:53:40 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 4 replies · 228+ views · · Balkan Travellers · · Monday, February 1, 2010 · |
A shipwreck located off the small uninhabited Cycladic island of Polyaigos in the central Aegean will be designated as an "underwater archaeological site" by Greece's Culture Ministry, the institution's representatives announced recently. The shipwreck, first spotted in 2004, was initially explored by underwater archaeologists in the fall of 2009, the Athens News Agency reported today. These excavations resulted in the discovery of valuable archaeological objects, including amphorae, ceramic vases and fragments of the vessel's anchor. In addition, the shipwreck was photographed and filmed in detail, which allowed the creation of a high-definition photo-mosaic, while procedures have been set in motion... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| Aznalcóllar disaster compared with Cretaceous mass extinction |
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· 02/02/2010 6:52:10 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 10 replies · 249+ views · · FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology · · Feb 2, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) have compared the disaster caused by the Aznalcóllar spillage in the Doñana National Park in Andalusia 11 years ago with the biggest species extinction known to date. What do these two disasters have in common? The scientists say that carrying out comparisons of this kind will make it possible to find out how ecosystems recover following mass extinctions. Until now, scientists used to study the fossil record in order to analyse how organisms responded to major environmental changes in the past, such as the mass extinction of species during the Cretaceous period (65... |
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| Glaciation | |
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| Seabed Scratches Show Icebergs Reached The Tropics |
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· 06/09/2008 12:24:13 PM PDT · · Posted by blam · · 20 replies · 758+ views · · New Scientist · |
Seabed scratches show icebergs reached the tropics 09 June 2008 NewScientist.com news service ICEBERGS often etch out messages on the shallow ocean floor. Now a newly discovered set of scratches suggests bergs from the icy north drifted further south than we thought after the last ice age. The meltdown of North American ice sheets about 15,000 years ago released a flotilla of icebergs into the Atlantic. Gouges left by bergs on the ocean bed have previously been found off New Jersey, close to the southernmost edge of the ice sheet, but it had been thought that looping currents would have... |
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| Practicing without a License | |
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| Stone Age amputee proves Neolithic medics more advanced than previously thought |
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· 01/31/2010 7:01:48 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 26 replies · 678+ views · · Telegraph · · Monday, January 25, 2010 · · By Heidi Blake · |
Early Neolithic surgeons used a sharpened flint stone and rudimentary anaesthetics to amputate the elderly man's left forearm, and treated the wound in sterile conditions, experts believe. Evidence of the early surgery was unearthed by CÈcile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun, both archaeologists, and Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist, during work on a tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles south of Paris... Tests showed that the humerus bone had been severed above the elbow in what scientists described as "an intentional and successful amputation". The patient, who is likely to have been a warrior, is thought likely to have damaged... |
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| Neandertal / Neanderthal | |
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| Polish scientists say 3 Neanderthal teeth found |
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· 02/02/2010 8:56:00 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 8 replies · 197+ views · · Ledger-Enquirer · · Monday, February 1, 2010 · · Vanessa Gera, Associated Press Writer · |
Mikolaj Urbanowski, an archaeologist with Szczecin University and the project's lead researcher... said the teeth were unearthed in the Stajnia Cave, north of the Carpathian Mountains, along with flint tools and the bones of the woolly mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, both extinct Ice Age species. |
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| Prehistory and Origins | |
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| Fight, Fight, Fight: The History of Human Aggression |
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· 02/02/2010 11:44:40 PM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 23 replies · 407+ views · · LiveScience · · January 2010 · · Charles Q. Choi · |
The use of weapons may date back well before the rise of humanity, given evidence that even our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, can use spears to hunt other primates. To see how fighting evolved from hand-to-hand combat to world war, here are 10 major innovations that revolutionized combat. |
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| Forensics is Ten | |
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| Novel studies of decomposition shed new light on our earliest fossil ancestry |
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· 01/31/2010 2:22:45 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 6 replies · 274+ views · · University of Leicester · · Jan 31, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Revelations of rotting fish provide scientists with clearer picture of early life -- Decaying corpses are usually the domain of forensic scientists, but palaeontologists have discovered that studying rotting fish sheds new light on our earliest ancestry. The researchers, from the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester, devised a new method for extracting information from 500 million year old fossils -they studied the way fish decompose to gain a clearer picture of how our ancient fish-like ancestors would have looked. Their results indicate that some of the earliest fossils from our part of the tree of life may have been... |
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| Descended from Beagles | |
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| Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution |
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· 02/01/2010 4:24:31 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 41 replies · 525+ views · · New Scientist · · Jan 26, 2010 · · Mark Buchanan · |
JUST suppose that Darwin's ideas were only a part of the story of evolution. Suppose that a process he never wrote about, and never even imagined, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth's history. It may sound preposterous, but this is exactly what microbiologist Carl Woese and physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believe. Darwin's explanation of evolution, they argue, even in its sophisticated modern form, applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth. At the root of this idea is overwhelming recent evidence for horizontal gene transfer... |
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| Africa | |
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| Hippy apes caught cannibalising their young |
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· 02/01/2010 7:09:36 PM PST · · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · · 19 replies · 580+ views · · newscientist.com · · Feb. 1, 2010 · · Ewen Callaway · |
So much for the "hippy chimp". Bonobos, known for their peaceable ways and casual sex, have been caught in the act of cannibalism. An account of a group of wild bonobos consuming a dead infant, published last month, is the first report of cannibalism in these animals -- making the species the last of the great apes to reveal a taste for the flesh of their own kind. The account comes from a group of primatologists led by Gottfried Hohmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The team has studied bonobos in the wild at... |
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| Biology and Cryptobiology | |
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| New research rejects 80-year theory of 'primordial soup' as the origin of life |
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· 02/02/2010 6:40:58 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 37 replies · 632+ views · · Wiley-Blackwell · · Feb 2, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Earth's chemical energy powered early life through 'the most revolutionary idea in biology since Darwin'For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life. "Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Skeleton of Western man found in ancient Mongolian tomb |
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· 02/01/2010 8:42:29 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 17 replies · 569+ views · · Science News · · Friday, January 29th, 2010 · · Bruce Bower · |
Heading East Excavations several years ago at an ancient cemetery in Mongolia uncovered a man's skeleton, including this skull, that has yielded genetic evidence of Indo-Europeans reaching eastern Asia at least 2,000 years ago.Kim, et al. Dead men can indeed tell tales, but they speak in a whispered double helix... DNA extracted from this man's bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia's Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues... the Xiongnu Empire -- which ruled a vast... |
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| DNA testing on 2,000-year-old bones in Italy reveal East Asian ancestry |
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· 02/01/2010 2:28:11 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 14 replies · 432+ views · · McMaster University · · Jan 1, 2010 · · Unknown · |
HAMILTON, ON, February 1, 2010 -- Researchers excavating an ancient Roman cemetery made a surprising discovery when they extracted ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from one of the skeletons buried at the site: the 2,000-year-old bones revealed a maternal East Asian ancestry. The results will be presented at the Roman Archeology Conference at Oxford, England, in March, and published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology. According to Tracy Prowse, assistant professor of Anthropology, and the lead author on the study, the isotopic evidence indicates that about 20% of the sample analyzed to-date was not born in the area around Vagnari. The mtDNA is... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Mammoth Achievement: Researchers at the forefront of molecular biology |
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· 02/05/2010 1:47:18 PM PST · · Posted by 2ndDivisionVet · · 3 replies · 227+ views · · Physorg · · January 26, 2010 · · David Pacchioli · |
Forget Jurassic Park. By successfully sequencing the DNA of a long-extinct species, Stephan Schuster and Webb Miller have helped push back the boundaries of molecular biology. Stephan Schuster was never all that interested in ancient DNA. As a young genomicist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in his native Germany, his forte had always been bacteria. By deciphering and comparing the genomes -- the genetic blueprints -- of various microbial species, he sought to unlock the secrets of these ubiquitous creatures: how they evolve and interact with the organisms that play them host. Schuster's early work had attracted... |
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| Full House Beats a Flush | |
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| Is Rice Domestication to Blame for Red-Faced Asians? |
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· 02/04/2010 6:31:23 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 37 replies · 601+ views · · ScienceNOW Daily News · · January 20, 2010 · · Michael Balter · |
If your face turns red after drinking just one glass of wine, blame ancient Chinese farmers. Researchers are reporting that the "Asian Flush" mutation cropped up just as rice was first being domesticated, and it may have protected early farmers from the harms of drinking too much. But some other scientists urge caution, saying that the dates may not match up. When you drink, enzymes in the liver known as alcohol dehydrogenases (ADHs) convert alcohol to an organic compound called acetaldehyde; another enzyme then converts acetaldehyde to acetic acid. But about 50% of Asians and 5% of Europeans have mutations... |
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| Megaliths & Archaeoastronomy | |
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| Long lost theory on Silbury Hill is uncovered |
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· 02/02/2010 8:46:49 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 11 replies · 320+ views · · Nigel Kerton · · Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 · · Gazette-Herald (UK) · |
Letters that lay undiscovered in national archives for more than 230 years suggest that Silbury Hill, the enigmatic man-made mound that stands between Marlborough and Beckhampton, may have originally be constructed around some sort of totem pole... A separate excavation found fragments of oak timber within the cavity leading historians to believe that the mound was built around the pole dating from around 2,400 BC... The 18th century letters, written from Edward Drax to Lord Rivers... Drax, a wealthy landowner who lived in Bath, had hired a team of miners to dig a shaft from the top of Silbury Hill,... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| UA archaelogist backtracks on claim about Oxford stone mound |
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· 02/02/2010 9:03:59 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 4 replies · 194+ views · · The Anniston Star, via WHNT · · January 27, 2010 · · Associated Press · |
A University of Alabama archaeologist has contradicted a report he signed last year claiming a stone mound in Oxford was likely made by humans about 1,000 years ago. The Anniston Star reports that Robert Clouse told the Oxford city council Tuesday that erosion and other natural forces likely created the mound. Clouse heads the Office of Archaeological Research at the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama Museums. Clouse was answering questions about the mound behind the Oxford Exchange and the apparent removal of another mound at the historic Davis Farm site. Clouse last year signed a report on... |
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| Agriculture and Animal Husbandry | |
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| Native Americans First Tamed Turkeys 2,000 Years Ago |
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· 02/02/2010 8:42:58 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 12 replies · 188+ views · · Discovery News · · Monday, February 1, 2010 · · Jennifer Viegas · |
Native Americans first domesticated turkeys around 800 B.C. Turkeys weren't initially used for their meat, but rather their feathers. Native American groups may have shared turkey-raising tips... domesticated turkeys twice: first in south-central Mexico at around 800 B.C. and again in what is now the southwestern U.S. at about 200 B.C., according to a new study. The two instances of domestication appear to have been separate, based on DNA analysis of ancient turkey remains. However, the different Native American groups could have been in contact with each other, sharing turkey-raising tips... The scientists combined their efforts for the study, which... |
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| Hope and Change | |
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| Schools: U.S. History Out, Environment In |
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· 02/03/2010 3:51:04 PM PST · · Posted by khnyny · · 45 replies · 856+ views · · Fox News · · February 3, 2010 · · Lee Ross · |
Change often leads to controversy and that is certainly the case in North Carolina where an effort to revamp the state's education system has some people outraged that high school students will not learn enough American history. The formula for teaching American history has been pretty simple. Start at the beginning and go forward. But a new proposal under review in North Carolina threatens to disrupt that standard teaching philosophy. "If our students don't know what happened in world history, and if they don't know what happened in U.S. history from George Washington's presidency all the way up through the... |
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| N.C High Schools to Remove Pre-1877 U.S. History? |
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· 02/03/2010 7:09:53 PM PST · · Posted by phi11yguy19 · · 112 replies · 4,083+ views · · FoxNews.com · · February 3, 2010 · · Molly Henneberg · |
He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. |
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| N.C. high schools to replace U.S. History with environmental issues |
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· 02/04/2010 7:14:55 AM PST · · Posted by aquapub · · 23 replies · 730+ views · · Conservative Examiner · · 2-4-10 · · Robert Moon · |
North Carolina public high schools are trying to erase all early U.S. history from the curriculum, ranging from the Founding Fathers to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War -- in exchange for things like environmental issues... |
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| Modernization or Memory Hole |
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· 02/05/2010 7:14:43 AM PST · · Posted by bs9021 · · 10 replies · 141+ views · · AIA-FL Blog · · February 5, 2010 · · Malcolm A. Kline · |
Modernizing history may be the ultimate oxymoron. "He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877," Molly Henneberg reports on Fox News. "State education leaders say this may help students learn about more recent history in greater depth." It may but here's a few chaps such an approach would leave out:... |
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| Abraham Lincoln | |
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| Honest, Abe? |
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· 02/01/2010 9:16:30 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 12 replies · 262+ views · · Charlotte Observer · · 01 Feb 2010 · · John Bordsen · |
Local folklore has it that this overgrown N.C. hilltop is the real birthplace of Lincoln BOSTIC Note to aspiring saints and office-holders: You'll know you've achieved "legendary" status when whispered tales are attached to your life story with question marks. The higher you rise, the more there are. Consider Abraham Lincoln. There are tales about him in Washington, where the 16th president saved the Union and was assassinated. Likewise in Springfield, Ill., the closest to a normal "home" the self-made Lincoln had. Likewise in this Rutherford County crossroads where some say he was born atop Lincoln Hill, just east of... |
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| Looking for Lincoln |
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· 01/31/2010 9:02:10 AM PST · · Posted by 9422WMR · · 17 replies · 292+ views · · PBS · · 01/29/10 · · Henry Louis Gates · |
Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s quest to piece together Abraham Lincoln's complex life takes him from Illinois to Gettysburg to Washington, D.C., and face-to-face with people who live with Lincoln every day -- relic hunters, re-enactors, and others for whom the study of Lincoln is a passion. |
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| Currency Events | |
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| 15 Things You Never Noticed on a Dollar. |
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· 01/31/2010 5:26:20 PM PST · · Posted by GSP.FAN · · 37 replies · 2,090+ views · · Grandparents.com · · Jan 24 10 · · Grandparents.com · |
We're serious. Did you know a dollar bill has hidden pictures, flecks of color, and mysterious symbols? And that's just the beginning. What do all those seemingly random letters and Latin phrases mean, anyway? |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Our Universal Civilization |
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· 02/04/2010 9:59:38 PM PST · · Posted by Lorianne · · 14 replies · 165+ views · · City Journal · · Summer 1991 · · Sir V.S. Naipaul · |
On October 30, 1990, V S. Naipaul, considered by many to be the greatest living English language novelist, delivered the fourth annual Walter B. Wriston lecture in Public Policy, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute. Mr. Naipaul takes as his subject the "universal civilization" to which the Western values of tolerance, individualism, equality, and personal liberty have given birth. He describes the personal and philosophical turmoil of those who find themselves torn between their native civilizations and the valued of universal civilization. The universal civilization has been a long time in the making. It wasn't always universal; it wasn't always... |
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| World War Eleven | |
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| For 30 minutes, former WWII pilot flies back in time |
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· 01/30/2010 3:47:08 PM PST · · Posted by greatdefender · · 40 replies · 1,081+ views · · St. Petersburg Times · · January 30, 2010 · · Bill Stevens · |
Lt. Nick Radosevich had his orders. Soon he would ship out to England and begin bombing targets deep inside Nazi territory. He sought an edge, a good-luck charm. He met a girl. They had some drinks and dinner. Her cocker spaniel had recently delivered puppies. "That's it,'' the handsome 26-year-old pilot said. He picked out a jet black female and named her Penelope -- Penny for short. He attached a small metal cylinder to her collar that contained contact information in case Penny should get lost. 2/Lt. Nick Radosevich, 734th Squadron, 453rd Bomb Group. For the long trip from March... |
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| The Framers | |
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| Early draft of the Constitution found in Phila. |
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· 02/02/2010 6:20:33 AM PST · · Posted by Danae · · 47 replies · 985+ views · · Philly.com · · Feb 2, 2010 · · Edward Colimore · |
Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler was intrigued by the centuries-old document at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: "We The People. . . ." They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution's framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing. |
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| Patriot's History | |
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| Thanks for all your comments: PHUSA at #19 (and climbing?) |
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· 01/30/2010 5:15:30 PM PST · · Posted by LS · · 26 replies · 507+ views · · Patriot's History of the United States · · 1/30/2010 · · LS · |
Thanks to all for your comments about the Glenn Beck show. I couldn't respond to every single person, but I read them all and am honored that you watched. A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror was #19 on Amazon last I looked, second only to Zinn. It perhaps is fitting that he passed away this week, and maybe this means a changing of the guard. [ Civ's note -- Amazon sez: "#134 in Books... Popular in these categories:.. #2 in Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > Political Doctrines, #2 in Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Political, #8 in Books > History > Americas" ] |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| Ronald Reagan elected 30 years ago ... |
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· 02/05/2010 3:02:34 PM PST · · Posted by opineapple · · 15 replies · 267+ views · · American Thinker · · February 04, 2010 · · Phil Boehmke · |
Saturday, Feb 6, would have marked President Reagan's 99th birthday. And being that it was 30 years ago he was elected president, now -- in the age of THE ONE -- would it not be a good time to reflect on that historic event? Ronald Reagan believed in American exceptionalism. Ronald Reagan believed in the American people who are the wellspring of that exceptionalism. Ronald Reagan unapologetically, unswervingly and unconditionally loved America. In these troubled times there are so many reasons for pessimism. The current administration and their congressional allies have taken our nation down... |
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| end of digest #290 20100206 | |
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· Saturday, February 6, 2010 · 27 topics · 2445368 to 2441276 · 739 members · |
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Saturday |
Last week's 289th issue was marred by my opening with "Welcome to the 288th issue." |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #291 Saturday, February 13, 2010 |
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| Hope and Change | |
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| Memory Hole Gets Crowded |
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· 02/09/2010 6:31:28 AM PST · · Posted by bs9021 · · 12 replies · 468+ views · · Accuracy in Academia · · February 9, 2010 · · Malcolm A. Kline · |
Marxists believe that he who controls the past controls the future. It's hard not to see that philosophy at work in the actions of various state boards of education around the country. Nevertheless, whether by accident or design, students who have not been taught, for example, the Constitution, will find it difficult to label anything unconstitutional. When my stepson was in high school, he was assigned the task of writing his own constitution. I suggested that he cut and paste the original to see if the teacher would notice. He... |
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| Look what they're erasing from U.S. history! |
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· 02/11/2010 7:11:23 AM PST · · Posted by Britt0n · · 278 replies · 4,102+ views · · www.wnd.com · · February 11, 2010 · · Chelsea Schilling · |
A state board of only 15 people will vote on whether to revise U.S. textbooks to omit references to Daniel Boone, Gen. George Patton, Nathan Hale, Columbus Day and Christmas. The Texas State Board of Education will also vote on a proposal to substitute the term "American" with "global citizen." Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, is warning Americans to speak up before only eight people, with a majority vote, have a chance to literally rewrite American history. He appeared on the "Huckabee Show" to explain why the board's vote matters to the rest of America. Staver said... |
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| Epigraphy and Language | |
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| Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies |
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· 02/05/2010 1:17:19 AM PST · · Posted by cold start · · 34 replies · 1,101+ views · · Guardian.co.uk · · 4 Feb 2010 · · Jonathan Watts · |
Death of Boa Sr, last person fluent in the Bo language of the Andaman Islands, breaks link with 65,000-year-old culture The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures. Boa Sr, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo. Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human... |
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| Ancient dialect extinct after last speaker dies |
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· 02/05/2010 7:30:14 PM PST · · Posted by rdl6989 · · 41 replies · 580+ views · · Yahoo News/Reuters · · Feb 5, 2010 · · Sanjib Kumar Roy · |
PORT BLAIR, India (Reuters) -- One of the world's oldest dialects, which traces its origins to tens of thousands of years ago, has become extinct after the last person to speak it died on a remote Indian island. Boa Sr, the 85-year-old last speaker of "Bo," was the oldest member of the Great Andamanese tribe, R.C. Kar, deputy director of Tribal Health in Andaman, told Reuters on Friday. She died last week in Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were hit by a devastating tsunami in 2004. "With the death of Boa Sr and the extinction... |
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| Last member of 65,000-year-old tribe dies, taking one of world's earliest languages to the grave |
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· 02/06/2010 4:06:39 AM PST · · Posted by SkyPilot · · 39 replies · 819+ views · · Mail Online · · 5 Feb 2010 · · Anny Shaw · |
The last member of a 65,000-year-old tribe has died, taking one of the world's earliest languages to the grave. Boa Sr, who died last week aged about 85, was the last native of the Andaman Islands who was fluent in Bo. Named after the tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to the pre-Neolithic period when the earliest humans walked out of Africa.Boa Sr, who died last week aged about 85, was the last native of the Andaman Islands who was fluent in Bo. |
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| Fertile Crescent | |
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| Archaeological Findings: Cuneiform tablets, Seals and Tombs Unearthed in Syria |
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· 02/07/2010 9:33:18 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 6 replies · 406+ views · · Global Arab Network · · Saturday, February 6, 2010 · · Ruaa AL-Jazaeri · |
According to Syrian media, archaeological expeditions working at North-eastern Syria (Hasaka Province) have discovered several collective tombs and parts of seals with different shapes in addition to 27 cuneiform tablets dating back to 2500 BC. Director of Hasska Antiquities Department Abdul-Masih Baghdo... added that the expedition also studied several archaeological findings to find out the location of the buildings dating back to the Babylonian and Mitanni periods. Three... tombs were also unearthed at the site of Tal Majnuna, dating back to the period between 3600 to 3800 BC. The Japanese expedition working at the site of Tal Siker al-Ehmir discovered... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Ancient tooth enamel defects linked with premature death [ Dentistry.co.uk ] |
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· 02/07/2010 9:38:28 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 7 replies · 209+ views · · Dentistry.co.uk · · 5th Feb 2010 · · Evolutionary Anthropology · |
A study reveals ancient human teeth showing evidence that stressful events during early development are linked to shorter lifespans. Anthropologist George Armelagos led a systematic review of defects in teeth enamel and early mortality. He said: 'Prehistoric remains are providing strong, physical evidence that people who acquired tooth enamel defects while in the womb or early childhood tended to die earlier. During prehistory, the stresses of infectious disease, poor nutrition and psychological trauma were likely extreme. The teeth show the impact.' His paper is the first summary of prehistoric evidence for the Barker hypothesis -- the idea that many adult... |
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| Roman Empire | |
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| Ben Hur in Colchester? Race is on to save UK's only Roman chariot racetrack |
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· 02/08/2010 4:39:18 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 17 replies · 311+ views · · Guardian~ · · Sunday, February 7, 2010 · · Maev Kennedy · |
When the white handkerchief dropped, the Ben Hurs of Colchester would have set off down Circular Road North, past the banked tiers of seats, turning left at Napier Road, their iron tyres gouging a deep rut in the track,and back up past St John's gatehouse towards the water-spouting dolphin marking the end of the first lap. Colchester, it seems, was the Formula One track of Roman Britain, with the only chariot racing circus ever found on the island, and the first found in northern Europe for 20 years... The racetrack is still buried under roads, gardens and old army buildings,... |
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| Currency Events | |
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| Staffordshire hoard comes home: 'It's a dream come true' |
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· 02/10/2010 8:12:41 AM PST · · Posted by pillut48 · · 8 replies · 413+ views · · Guardian.co.uk · · Wednesday 10 February 2010 · · Christopher Thomond and Shehani Fernando · |
Video: Deb Klemperer, head of collections at Stoke's Potteries Museum, describes the thrill of striking Anglo-Saxon gold -- and explains why keeping the treasure on Staffordshire soil requires visitors, too, to dig deep |
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| British Isles | |
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| History of England starts at 1700, says university |
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· 02/11/2010 3:19:42 PM PST · · Posted by bruinbirdman · · 59 replies · 963+ views · · The Telegraph · · 2/11/2010 · · Graeme Paton · |
Academics have attacked a decision by a top university to scrap research into English history before 1700. It was claimed that the move by Sussex University risked jeopardising the nation's understanding of the subject and "entrenching the ignorance of the present". Under plans, research and in-depth teaching into periods such as the Tudors, the Middle-Ages, Norman Britain, the Viking invasion and the Anglo-Saxons will be scrapped, along with the Civil Wars. The university will also end research into the history of continental Europe pre-1900, affecting the study of the Napoleonic wars and the Roman Empire. The university said it was... |
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| Butter, No Guns | |
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| Century-old butter found in Scott's Antarctic hut |
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· 12/16/2009 5:43:33 PM PST · · Posted by NormsRevenge · · 28 replies · 1,184+ views · · AFP on Yahoo · · 12/16/09 · · AFP · |
WELLINGTON (AFP) -- Two blocks of butter have been found intact after nearly a century in an Antarctic hut used by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his doomed 1910-12 expedition, a report said. Television New Zealand reported that conservators found the two blocks of New Zealand butter in bags in stables attached to the expedition Hut at Cape Evans in Antarctica. The extreme cold of the polar region has preserved the hut and expedition equipment inside, but recent signs of deterioration had prompted the Antarctic Heritage Trust to launch a preservation project. The trust's Lizzie Meek said the butter... |
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| Whiskey, No Tobacco | |
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| Explorers' century-old whisky found in Antarctic |
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· 02/05/2010 5:57:24 PM PST · · Posted by Redcitizen · · 32 replies · 802+ views · · Associated Press · · Fri Feb 5, 4:49 am ET · · unknown · |
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century. Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles "given liquid can be heard when the crates are moved." |
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| Shackleton's whisky recovered |
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· 02/05/2010 7:52:41 PM PST · · Posted by Pan_Yan · · 20 replies · 683+ views · · Guardian.co.uk · · February 2010 12.20 GMT · · Rick Peters · |
That's the spirit! Cases of Mackinlay's 'Rare Old' scotch whisky have been recovered from the ice outside Shackleton's Antarctic hut. What will it taste like? After some hype and anticipation news has emerged that the crates of whisky long suspected to have been entombed by ice outside Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic hut have finally been recovered. A team from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust have managed to extract five cases, three of Chas Mackinlay & Co's whisky and two containing brandy made by the Hunter Valley Distillery Limited, Allandale (Australia), which were abandoned by the expedition in 1909 as... |
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| Scotch Whisky Meant To Warm Antarctic Explorers Retrieved After Century Locked In Ice |
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· 02/06/2010 9:26:13 AM PST · · Posted by DogByte6RER · · 30 replies · 924+ views · · StarTribune.com · · February 5, 2010 · · AP · |
Scotch whisky meant to warm Antarctic explorers retrieved after century locked in ice Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand - This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century. Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles "given liquid can be heard when the crates are moved." New Zealand Antarctic... |
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| Whisky on (Antarctic) ice: Ernest Shackleton...left a stash at the bottom of the world. |
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· 10/26/2009 6:07:49 PM PDT · · Posted by xzins · · 45 replies · 2,661+ views · · Global Post · · October 26, 2009 · · Emily Stone · |
CAPE ROYDS, Antarctica -- This spit of black volcanic rock that juts out along the coast of Antarctica is an inhospitable place. Temperatures drop below 50° Fahrenheit and high winds cause blinding snowstorms... But if you happen upon the small wooden hut that sits at Cape Royds and wriggled yourself underneath, you'd find a surprise stashed in the foot and a half of space beneath the floorboards. Tucked in the shadows and frozen to the ground are two cases of Scotch whisky left behind 100 years ago by Sir Ernest Shackleton after a failed attempt at the South Pole. Conservators... |
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| Farty Shades of Green | |
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| Bronze brooch rises from the ashes [ medieval Ireland ] |
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· 02/08/2010 4:52:02 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 20 replies · 622+ views · · Irish Times · · Thursday, February 4, 2010 · · Anne Lucey · |
A 1,400-year-old brooch dating from the early Christian period has been discovered in the remnants of a turf fire in a range in north Kerry. It is believed the brooch fastened the cloak of a clergyman and was dropped, probably on a forest road which later became bog. It ended up in a sod of turf in the range of Sheila and Pat Joe Edgeworth at Martara, Ballylongford, near the Shannon estuary. Lands alongside the Shannon are chequered with early Christian ruins and holy wells. The bronze brooch was found shortly before Christmas by Ms Edgeworth when she was cleaning... |
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| Abraham Lincoln | |
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| Happy 201st birthday to Abe Lincoln |
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· 02/12/2010 4:40:20 PM PST · · Posted by La Enchiladita · · 14 replies · 149+ views · · KHQA · · Feb. 12, 2010 · · Staff · |
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - It's Abraham Lincoln's birthday, and Illinois is celebrating by sealing up a time capsule and taking pictures of life across the state. Lincoln would have turned 201 today. To mark the occasion, officials are preparing a time capsule that will be stored at the Lincoln Presidential Library. It will include items such as birthday cards, photos and documents from the celebration of his 200th birthday. The time capsule is supposed to be opened in 2109. The Associated Professional Photographers of Illinois will also help celebrate. They're shooting Lincoln-themed pictures around the state today and will post... |
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| The Civil War | |
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| The Untold History of Nullification: Resisting Slavery |
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· 02/11/2010 5:14:36 PM PST · · Posted by ForGod'sSake · · 43 replies · 624+ views · · Tenth Amendment Center · · Feb 10, 2010 · · Derek Sheriff · |
The Untold History of Nullification: Resisting Slavery by Derek SheriffLast December, when Tennessee Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mount Juliet, said she would introduce legislation which would declare null and void any federal law the state deems unconstitutional, some people were horrified. Rep. Lynn was specifically targeting the health-care reform legislation that was pending at that time. But the reaction that many people had to her language was not an expression of their support for Obamacare.Too many Americans hear the terms "states' rights" or the word "nullification" and immediately think of racial prejudice, Jim Crow laws and school segregation. Honestly, if all... |
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| The Framers | |
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| The Education of John Jay - America's indispensable diplomat |
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· 02/08/2010 12:37:57 AM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 42 replies · 877+ views · · City Journal · · Winter 2010 · · Myron Magnet · |
Few could fathom why 55-year-old John Jay turned down President Adams's nomination to rejoin the Supreme Court when his two terms as New York's governor ended. What would lead him, in the hale prime of life, to retire instead to the plain yellow house he'd just built on a hilltop at the remote northern edge of Westchester County, two days' ride from Manhattan, where visitors were few and the mail and newspapers came but once a week? After 27 years at the forge of the new nation's founding, why would so lavishly talented a man give up his vital role... |
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| Early America | |
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| Bergen's unsung Founding Father (NJ) |
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· 02/11/2010 8:58:52 AM PST · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 12 replies · 197+ views · · Bergen (NJ) Record · · February 11, 2010 · · JIM WRIGHT · |
Jim Wright, a former staff writer for The Record, wrote an essay on John Fell's prison diary for the recently published book "Revolutionary Bergen County: The Road to Independence" (The History Press.) "Last night I was taken prisoner from my house by 25 armed menÖ" THUS BEGINS the Revolutionary War prison diary of John Fell of Allendale, the leader of the Bergen County insurgency against the king of England and his local sympathizers. Fell's 16-page diary, written in secret in the Provost Jail in Lower Manhattan from April 1777 to January 1778, is one of the most significant documents chronicling... |
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| Faith and Philosophy | |
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| Reformation and the Salem Witch Trials |
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· 10/31/2002 10:05:55 PM PST · · Posted by ppaul · · 28 replies · 1,691+ views · · VisionForum e-mail · · 10/31/02 · · Douglas Phillips · |
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS, October 31, 2002 - In the New England town of Salem, once considered the city of peace for the New World and the gateway to a glorious Christian commonwealth, the community prepares for the annual Halloween celebration, viewed by many as a triumph over the narrow-mindedness of Christianity. More than three hundred years after the now-infamous witch trials of 1692, Salem has become a Mecca for witches, as covens and practitioners of the occult arts gather from around the nation each October 31 to glory in paganism and identify with the city whose name has become synonymous with... |
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| The Great War | |
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| Last U.S. veteran of World War I turns 109 |
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· 02/01/2010 2:22:40 PM PST · · Posted by Daffynition · · 19 replies · 501+ views · · CNN · · February 1, 2010 · · Paul Courson · |
Washington (CNN) -- The last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, former Cpl. Frank Buckles, turns 109 on Monday and is still hoping for a national memorial in Washington for his comrades. Buckles is expected to deliver remarks during a quiet celebration Monday afternoon at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia. But the old "Doughboy" -- as World War I American infantry troops were called -- has already been outspoken in recent years, urging congressional lawmakers to give federal recognition and a facelift to a run-down District of Columbia memorial in an overgrown, wooded area along the National... |
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| Winter of '42 | |
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| 60th Anniversary of Japanese Internment by FDR - Executive Order 9066 |
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· 02/18/2002 11:18:08 AM PST · · Posted by CounterCounterCulture · · 10 replies · 3,924+ views · · FDR Executive Order No. 9066, San Jose Mercury News, Seattle Times, University of Arizona Library · · 1942; 1995; 2002 · · FDR et al. · |
Executive Order 9066 Japanese American Internment Order of WWII February 19, 1942 This order from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt enabled the establishment of "internment camps" for 110,000 Japanese Americans and others deemed "enemy aliens". EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 9066 The President EXECUTIVE ORDER AUTHORIZING THE SECRETARY OF WAR TO PRESCRIBE MILlTARY AREAS WHEREAS the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act ... |
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| World War Eleven | |
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| Crumpled map solves mystery of German gun behind D-Day massacre |
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· 01/04/2008 10:08:40 AM PST · · Posted by Stoat · · 94 replies · 2,222+ views · · The Daily Mail (U.K.) · · January 4, 2008 · |
A baffling mystery of the D-Day landings was solved by an amateur historian - after he found a crumpled map at a fair in Stockport. Experts have long disputed the location of the main Nazi gun battery which caused carnage on Omaha Beach, in terrible scenes which were recreated for the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan. The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area while the location of the real guns which blasted the beach, where 2,000 men lost their... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| The fall of Spain, the first global superpower, and the fall of the US |
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· 02/09/2010 8:47:02 AM PST · · Posted by GeorgeSaden · · 41 replies · 802+ views · · American Economic Alert · |
It may be hard for most people to imagine, but Spain was the first global Superpower. It gained this status as the defender of Europe against Muslim armies and by leading the West's exploration of America. In 1492, the same year that Spanish-financed Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, the last Muslim stronghold of Granada was ceded to Ferdinand and Isabella to complete the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula... It controlled rich parts of Italy through Naples and Milan, and Central Europe from the Netherlands through the Holy Roman Empire to Austria. In the 16th century it added the... |
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| Patriot's History | |
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| Beck Sends Freeper LS to #1 on Amazon |
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· 02/08/2010 5:07:26 PM PST · · Posted by LS · · 163 replies · 2,673+ views · · Glenn Beck Show/Amazon · · 2/8/2010 · · LS · |
Truly amazing: the power of Glenn Beck. He mentioned A Patriot's History of the United States today on his radio show, then again on the TV show, and lo and behold, #1. Big stuff happening. Can't tell all yet, but watch our web pages, www.patriotshistoryusa.com and www.rockinthewall.com. Oh, and if anyone knows how to do a screen saver, I'd like to bronze this one. |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| John F. Kennedy's corrupt ascent to power |
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· 02/06/2010 5:19:17 AM PST · · Posted by reaganaut1 · · 22 replies · 978+ views · · A History of the American People · · 1997 · · Paul Johnson · |
The other main area of lying [besides health] centered on [John F. Kennedy's] curriculum vitae. In 1940 his thesis was written for him by a number of people, including Arthur Krock of the New York Times, and Joe's personal speechwriter, who described it as a 'very sloppy job, mostly magazine and newspaper clippings stuck together.' But, processed, it not only allowed Jack to graduate cum laude but also appeared in book form as Why England Slept. Old Joe and his men turned it into a 'bestseller,' partly by using influence with publishers such as Henry Luce, partly by buying 30,000-40,000... |
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| Plato? Socrates? Aristotle? Morons. | |
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| British researcher asks: How many friends can you have? The magic number is 150 |
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· 02/06/2010 4:46:23 AM PST · · Posted by One_Upmanship · · 21 replies · 419+ views · · the star · · Feb 05 2010 · · Debra Black · |
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar says human beings can have no more than 150 friends -- that's the upper limit the brain can absorb. His conclusion comes from studying the social group size of monkeys and apes and how that size might relate to the brain. Initially Dunbar was examining why primates groom each other. If the reason involved sexual bonding, it should correspond to "the social brain hypothesis" that the reason primates have a large brain is because of their social complexity. In other words, you need a large brain to keep track of your relationships. Humans, he says, are... |
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| Biology and Cryptobiology | |
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| Armed stake-out for big cats (in Wales) |
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· 01/08/2003 5:45:53 PM PST · · Posted by gd124 · · 42 replies · 20,479+ views · · BBC · · Tuesday, January 7, 2003 · |
Armed police are continuing to stake out the farm where at least one big cat is thought to have killed a dog. Dyfed-Powys Police sharpshooters have been drafted in to hunt two puma-like animals which struck at the farm at Llangadog, near Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, on Sunday evening. The force is warning the public and farmers not to search for the puma-like cat which attacked the dog within sight of its owner and was then joined by what could have been its cub. Officers armed with high-powered rifles are watching the site of the attack from hides and if the... |
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| Contemporary African Pterodactyls? |
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· 01/21/2003 3:31:15 PM PST · · Posted by vannrox · · 34 replies · 2,310+ views · · Strange ARK · · FR Post 1-20-03 · · M.D.W. Jeffreys, M.A., Ph.D. · |
In September, 1939, the West African Review contained an article "Living Monster or Fabulous.Animal?" Readers will recollect that some years earlier there had been a type of "Challenger Expedition" into Central Africa to search the Iruwuni forests of the Belgian Congo for a huge, mysterious, antedeluvian monster. "Is the Brontosauros still alive in the morasses of the Congo?" were the headlines in some of the London papers. No report of the traces of any such monsters ever appeared, and I was not surprised. I had been... |
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| Sweden's Loch Ness monster possibly caught on camera |
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· 08/29/2008 11:50:50 AM PDT · · Posted by BGHater · · 23 replies · 535+ views · · AFP · · 29 Aug 2008 · · AFP · |
Sweden's own version of the Loch Ness monster, the Storsjoe or Great Lake monster, has been caught on film by surveillance videos, an association that installed the cameras said Friday. The legend of the Swedish beast has swirled for nearly four centuries, with some 200 sightings reported in the lake in central Sweden. "On Thursday at 12:21 pm, we filmed the movements of a live being. And it was not a pike, nor a perch, we're sure of that," Gunnar Nilsson, the head of a shopkeepers' association in Svenstavik, told AFP. The association, together with the Jaemtland province and local... |
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| Dinosaurs | |
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| True-Color Dinosaur Pictures: First Full-Body Rendering - Dino-pecker? |
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· 02/06/2010 11:44:42 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 23 replies · 1,321+ views · · nationalgeographic · |
For the first time, scientists have decoded the full-body color patterns of a dinosaur -- the 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi (pictured) -- a new study in the journal Science says. That may sound familiar, given last week's announcement of the first scientifically verified dinosaur color scheme. But the previous research, published in Nature, had found pigments only on a few isolated parts of dinosaurs (see pictures) -- and had used less rigorous methods for assigning colors to the fossilized, filament-like "protofeathers" found on some dinosaur specimens, say authors of the new report. |
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| Paleontology | |
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| World's Biggest Snake Lived in 1st "Modern" Rain Forest |
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· 10/14/2009 4:43:44 PM PDT · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 3 replies · 4,410+ views · · nationalgeographic · · October 13, 2009 · · Ker Than · |
If it were still alive today, the largest snake ever known to have lived would feel right at home in South America's tropical rain forests. That's because the modern ecosystem contains many of the same plants that grew in the massive serpent's home turf some 60 million years ago, according to a new study detailing the earliest known "modern" rain forest. The study is based on more than 2,000 fossil leaves recently discovered in Colombia's Cerrejón coal mine -- the same place where scientists had found fossils of Titanoboa cerrejonesis earlier this year. Many of the newfound plant fossils are of palm,... |
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| Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming |
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· 10/20/2009 7:12:58 AM PDT · · Posted by snarkpup · · 11 replies · 764+ views · · The Register · · 13th October 2009 12:35 GMT · · Lewis Page · |
Fossil boffins say that dense triple-canopy rainforests, home among other things to gigantic one-tonne boa constrictors, flourished millions of years ago in temperatures 3-5°C warmer than those seen today - as hot as some of the more dire global-warming projections.The new fossil evidence comes from the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia, previously the location where the remains of the gigantic 40-foot Titanoboa cerrejonensis were discovered. The snake's discoverers attracted flak from global-warming worriers at the time for saying that the cold-blooded creature would only have been able to survive in jungles a good... |
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| BIGGEST SNAKE PHOTOS: Prehistoric Giant Discovered |
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· 02/07/2010 7:29:08 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 43 replies · 2,093+ views · · nationalgeographic · · February 4, 2009- · |
Found in a Colombian coal mine, a vertebra from a 45-foot (14-meter) Titanoboa cerrejones dwarfs a similar bone from a 17-foot (5.2-meter) anaconda--currently the world's biggest, if not longest, snake species. (View anaconda pictures and facts.) The ancient snake's giant size suggests that mean year-round temperatures in the tropics were several degrees warmer than they are today, according to a study that analyzed the relationships among a snake's body size, its metabolism, and the outside temperature. "We were able to use the snake, if you will, as a giant fossil thermometer," said biologist Jason Head, lead author of the new... |
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| Neandertal / Neanderthal | |
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| We May Soon Be Able to Clone Neanderthals. But Should We? |
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· 02/11/2010 12:18:13 AM PST · · Posted by 2ndDivisionVet · · 53 replies · 773+ views · · Discover Magazine · · February 10, 2010 · · Andrew Moseman · |
Last year DISCOVER asked the question, "Did We Mate With Neanderthals, or Did We Murder Them?" Now, Zach Zorich at Archaeology magazine is asking another big question about our hominid siblings: Should we bring them back? Thanks to a slew of recent advances, the possibility is getting closer. 80beats reported a year ago that researchers had published the rough draft of the Neanderthal genome. However, that's likely to contain many errors because it's so difficult to reconstruct ancient DNA. Within hours of death, cells begin to break down in a process called apoptosis. The dying cells release enzymes that chop... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Frozen Hair Yields First Ancient Human Genome |
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· 02/10/2010 12:57:13 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 59 replies · 769+ views · · Live Science · · Feb 10, 2010 · · Andrea Thompson · |
A few tufts of hair frozen in the permafrost of Greenland for more than 4,000 years have allowed scientists to sequence the genome of an ancient human for the first time. The hairs belonged to a member of the ancient Saqqaq culture of Greenland, the first humans known to inhabit the icy island. Scientists have long wondered where the Saqqaq came from and whether or not they were the ancestors of today's modern Inuit and Greenlanders. The new findings, detailed in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Nature, have helped to settle that question. The hairs also tell about... |
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| Analysis of hair DNA reveals ancient human's face |
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· 02/10/2010 1:31:13 PM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 25 replies · 716+ views · · bbc. · · 10 February 2010 · |
DNA analysis of human hair preserved in Greenland's permafrost has given clues as to what the owner looked like. A study, published in the journal Nature, says the individual's genome is the oldest to have been sequenced from a modern human. The researchers say the man, who lived 4,000 years ago, had brown eyes and thick dark hair, although he would have been prone to baldness. They say the genome also shows that his ancestors migrated from Siberia. The man has been named Inuk, which means "human" in the Greenlandic language. |
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| Ancient Greenland gene map has a surprise |
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· 02/11/2010 8:24:26 AM PST · · Posted by FredJake · · 37 replies · 1,119+ views · · Yahoo News · · 2/11/10 · · Maggie Fox · |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Scientists have sequenced the DNA from four frozen hairs of a Greenlander who died 4,000 years ago in a study they say takes genetic technology into several new realms. Surprisingly, the long-dead man appears to have originated in Siberia and is unrelated to modern Greenlanders, Morten Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues found. "This provides evidence for a migration from Siberia into the New World some 5,500 years ago, independent of that giving rise to the modern Native Americans and Inuit," the researchers wrote in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Not only can... |
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| Catastrophism & Astronomy | |
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| Rush for iron spurred Inuit ancestors to sprint across Arctic, book contends |
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· 02/10/2010 4:03:00 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 36 replies · 348+ views · · Vancouver Sun · · February 8, 2010 · · Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service · |
One of Canada's top archeologists argues in a new book that the prehistoric ancestors of this country's 55,000 Inuit probably migrated rapidly from Alaska clear across the Canadian North in just a few years -- not gradually over centuries as traditionally assumed -- after they learned about a rich supply of iron from a massive meteorite strike on Greenland's west coast. The startling theory, tentatively floated two decades ago by Canadian Museum of Civilization curator emeritus Robert McGhee, has been bolstered by recent research indicating a later and faster migration of the ancient Thule Inuit across North America's polar frontier... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis | |
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| Extinct Ethnic Group Vestiges Discovered in Chihuahua |
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· 02/08/2010 4:43:32 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 13 replies · 257+ views · · Art Daily · · February 2010 · · unattributed · |
More than a dozen dwelling, ritual and funerary sites, some of them more than 1,000 years old, were located inside shallow caves at Barranca de la Sinforosa (Sinforosa Gully), Chihuahua. According to preliminary studies, vestiges could correspond to Tubar people, an indigenous group that isolated in Tarahumara Mountain Range during Colonial times to avoid evangelization, and extinguished in late 19th century. Nine dwelling sites, 2 ceremonial and 2 of funerary character were found in Ohuivo, Chorogue, Zapuri and G¸erachi localities of Guachochi municipality in Chihuahua... 3 types of sites were identified, which, according to architecture, burial system and regional research... |
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| Mayans | |
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| Wall with Maya Seignior Glyphs Discovered at Archaeological Zone |
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· 02/07/2010 9:46:03 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 7 replies · 222+ views · · Art Daily · |
A wall with a rich glyphic text that includes the complete name of the ruler that founded one of the most important Maya military seigniories was discovered in Tonina Archaeological Zone, in Chiapas. Epigraphists point out that the finding will bring in new information regarding Maya grammar, since it shows linguistic features yet to be deciphered. The discovery adds up to the sarcophagus recently uncovered by specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). The wall dated in 708 AD was detected at El Palacio; a stucco portrait of K'inich B'aaknal Chaahk, the most powerful seignior of the... |
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| Leafing Las Vegas | |
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| A Tree Carving in California: Ancient Astronomers? |
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· 02/09/2010 11:24:31 AM PST · · Posted by Palter · · 40 replies · 1,092+ views · · Time · · 09 Feb 2010 · · Matt Kettmann · |
Though local lore held that the so-called "scorpion tree" had been the work of cowboys, paleontologist Rex Saint Onge immediately knew that the tree was carved by Indians when he stumbled upon it in the fall of 2006. Located in a shady grove atop the Santa Lucia Mountains in San Luis Obispo County, the centuries-old gnarled oak had the image of a six-legged, lizard-like being meticulously scrawled into its trunk, the nearly three-foot-tall beast topped with a rectangular crown and two large spheres. "I was really the first one to come across it who understood that it was a Chumash... |
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| Middle Ages & Renaissance | |
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| Scholar examines reports of solar eclipses in the Middle Ages |
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· 02/09/2010 8:54:25 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 1 replies · 221+ views · · Medieval News 'blog · · Sunday, February 07, 2010 · · medieval news blogger (duh) · |
Hundreds of solar eclipses were recorded by medieval chroniclers, offering historians of astronomy with some vital information about how people in the Middle Ages reacted to this phenomenon. The latest research into this subject has just been published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy. In his article, "Investigation of Medieval European Records of Solar Eclipses," F. Richard Stephenson states he wants to provide "an intriguing insight into the effects of solar eclipses over a wide range of magnitudes on largely untrained and unsuspecting observers." Using chronicles mainly from England, France, Germany and Italy, Stephenson finds hundreds of accounts.... |
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| Megaliths & Archaeoastronomy | |
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| Stonehenge's secret: archaeologist uncovers evidence of encircling hedges |
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· 02/07/2010 9:58:47 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 24 replies · 732+ views · · Guardian · · Thursday, February 4, 2010 · · Maev Kennedy · |
Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric banks. The best guess of the archaeologists from English Heritage, who carried out the first detailed survey of the landscape of the monument since the Ordnance Survey maps of 1919, is that the hedges could have served as screens keeping even more secret from the crowd the ceremonies carried out by the elite allowed inside the stone circle... If the early Bronze Age date is correct,... |
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| Forensics is Ten | |
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| Bog woman given a face |
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· 02/10/2010 6:25:22 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 37 replies · 1,426+ views · · Copenhagen Post · · January 29, 2010 · · Unattributed · |
The female known as the Auning Woman, found in a northeastern Jutland bog 1886, and housed at the Museum for Culture and History in Randers, has finally got a face. Reasonably well-preserved when she popped up from the bog, the woman's 2000-year-old skull was broken into several pieces. But sculptor Björn Skaarup and medical examiner Niels Lynnerup from the Panum Institute in Copenhagen have now reconstructed the Auning Woman's face, using the common forensic clay method first developed by Russian anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov. The finished product was put on display today at the museum. And although the results have shown... |
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| Egypt | |
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| Hey, that mummy is a daddy |
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· 06/25/2009 5:15:52 AM PDT · · Posted by Red Badger · · 21 replies · 1,305+ views · · 6-23-2009 · · BY ERIK BADIA · |
Egyptologists from the Brooklyn Museum and doctors from North Shore University Hospital learned Tuesday through a CT scan that a 2,500-year-old mummy previously thought to be a woman - and named Lady Hor - actually was a man. Dr. Jesse Chusid said that while the mummy's body wrap of linen covered in plaster, called cartonnage, bore the shape of a woman, the body within had the anatomy of a man. |
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| Africa | |
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| Archaeologists stumble on 8,000-year-old skeleton in Kenyir Lake [Malaysia] |
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· 02/07/2010 9:52:18 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 14 replies · 415+ views · · Daily Star (Burma) · · Saturday February 6, 2010 · · Bernama · |
Archaeologists have stumbled upon human skeletal remains believed to be from the Mesolithic Age in the Bewah Cave in the Kenyir Lake area, according to a university professor. The remains, believed to be those of a youth, are estimated to be between 8,000 and 11,000 years old, said Prof Datuk Dr Nik Hasan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman, deputy director of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation (ATMA) of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). The remains were uncovered by archaeologists from UKM, the Museums Department and the Terengganu Museum Board at a depth of 65 to 70 centimetres, he told... |
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| Australia & the Pacific | |
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| Maori canoe unearthed on New Zealand beach |
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· 02/09/2010 9:37:23 PM PST · · Posted by Fred Nerks · · 2 replies · 204+ views · · ablogabout history · · February 9, 2010 · · u/a · |
A canoe used for fishing and river travel, the waka tikai was discovered at the southern end of the beach. It took a couple of days to plan its excavation so that the seven-metre waka would not be damaged. Finding the whole length of a waka is fairly rare, as usually only sections are found, such as the prow or stern. Auckland Regional Council parks staff and locals carefully moved the waka on to a truck, which took it to a temporary home at the regional council depot. "It's difficult to date the waka because it may have been created... |
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| Religion of Pieces | |
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| Islam's golden age comes to life (Major hurl alert) |
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· 12/23/2006 4:44:36 AM PST · · Posted by radar101 · · 76 replies · 1,432+ views · · SacBee · · December 23, 2006 · · Stephen Magagnini · |
Poets and philosophers, merchants and mathematicians, artisans and astronomers re-enacted the Golden Age of Islam at the Al-Arqam Islamic School in south Sacramento on Friday. The artistry, story-telling and role-playing was a creation of 233 students from kindergarten through ninth grade who brought to life the sights, tastes and smells of an Islamic empire that spanned three continents from the eighth to the 13th centuries. From incense to Turkish coffee, dates to oranges, minarets to miniature mosques and castles -- you could find it all at The Islamic Civilization Exhibit and Festival in the school's multipurpose room. Pageantry was accompanied... |
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| Self-Defense | |
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| The Crusades: When Christendom Pushed Back |
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· 02/06/2010 6:37:51 AM PST · · Posted by Paladins Prayer · · 52 replies · 1,133+ views · · The New American · · 2/5/10 · · Selwyn Duke · |
The year is 732 A.D., and Europe is under assault. Islam, born a mere 110 years earlier, is already in its adolescence, and the Muslim Moors are on the march. Growing in leaps and bounds, the Caliphate, as the Islamic realm is known, has thus far subdued much of Christendom, conquering the old Christian lands of the Mideast and North Africa in short order. Syria and Iraq fell in 636; Palestine in 638; and Egypt, which was not even an Arab land, fell in 642. North Africa, also not Arab, was under Muslim control by 709. Then came the year... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Israeli Rabbis Hope to Search Vatican |
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· 01/15/2004 5:26:25 PM PST · · Posted by Alouette · · 150 replies · 14,874+ views · · Associated Press · · Jan. 15, 2004 · · Gavin Rabinowitz · |
JERUSALEM - Israel's chief rabbis, who will meet the pope Friday, said they hope to get permission to search Vatican storerooms for artifacts such as the huge golden menorah that stood in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Vatican officials confirmed the meeting would take place but declined comment on the rabbis' request. Yehuda Metzger and Shlomo Amar are to have an audience with Pope John Paul II, the first by Israel's chief rabbis in the Vatican. The pope met Israel's previous chief rabbis in the Holy Land during his visit in 2000. Amar, spiritual leader of Israel's... |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Israelite priests hold first gathering since Temple era |
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· 07/19/2007 3:59:10 PM PDT · · Posted by Squidpup · · 63 replies · 1,895+ views · · Israel Today · · July 15, 2007 · · staff writer · |
Israelite priests hold first gathering since Temple era Jews belonging to the Tribe of Levi, and particularly the Kohen clan, came together for a mass gathering in Jerusalem on Sunday. It was the first large-scale gathering of biblically-mandated Israelite priests since the time of the Second Temple. The gathering included lectures and seminars on the history and future of the Temple, and culminated with all of the participants declaring the priestly blessing over Israel from the Western Wall. Genetic research over the past several decades has succeeded in isolating a particular DNA signature shared by all members of the Tribe... |
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| Archaeologists find early depiction of a menorah |
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· 09/11/2009 5:04:55 PM PDT · · Posted by madison10 · · 12 replies · 818+ views · · AP on Yahoo · · Sept. 11, 2009 · · Amy Teibel · |
JERUSALEM -- Israeli archaeologists have uncovered one of the earliest depictions of a menorah, the seven-branched candelabra that has come to symbolize Judaism, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Friday. The menorah was engraved in stone around 2,000 years ago and found in a synagogue recently discovered by the Sea of Galilee. Pottery, coins and tools found at the site indicate the synagogue dates to the period of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, where the actual menorah was kept, said archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority. |
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| Court rules against residents near archaeological dig |
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· 10/24/2009 5:05:59 PM PDT · · Posted by Fred Nerks · · 11 replies · 597+ views · · Jewish Tribune · · Tuesday, 20 October 2009 · · U/A · |
JERUSALEM-TORONTO -- The Archaeological Research currently taking place in the "Walls Around the Old City' national park at the City of David in Jerusalem is in the public's best interests, according to an Israeli Supreme Court decision regarding two recent petitions against the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The petitions were submitted by residents living near the excavation site. According to a press release issued by Yaen Vered, the IAA representative in Canada, it is the IAA's opinion that "these residents are being incited by other factors whose considerations are political and improbable." In a telephone conversation with the Jewish Tribune,... |
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| Time Magazine Digging Up Trouble in Jerusalem |
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· 02/11/2010 1:13:47 PM PST · · Posted by Tigen · · 7 replies · 842+ views · · INN · · 2-11-10 · · Hana Levi Julian · |
(IsraelNN.com) The United States-based Time Magazine complained this week that the archaeological activities of the City of David Foundation, also known as "Ir David" or "Elad," are making life difficult for President Barack Obama. |
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| Archaeology in Jerusalem: Digging Up Trouble |
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· 02/12/2010 5:46:50 AM PST · · Posted by SJackson · · 6 replies · 418+ views · · TIME/Arutz Sheva · · 2-12-10 · · Tim McGirk · |
The Jerusalem syndrome is a psychological disorder in which a visit to the holy city triggers delusional and obsessive religious fantasies. In its extreme variety, people wander the lanes of the Old City believing they are biblical characters; John the Baptist, say, or a brawny Samson, sprung back to life. Archaeologists in the Holy Land like to joke that their profession is vulnerable to a milder form of the syndrome. When scientists find a cracked, oversize skull in the Valley of Elah, it can be hard to resist the thought that it might have belonged to Goliath, or to imagine,... |
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| Excavation uncovers evidence supporting mosaic Jerusalem map |
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· 02/12/2010 5:47:58 AM PST · · Posted by SJackson · · 13 replies · 460+ views · · Jerusalem Post · · 2-12-10 · · MARK REBACZ · |
The map, from the Byzantine period, is the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Land of Israel. For the first time the main road of Jerusalem, dated 1,500 years ago, has been discovered. An Israel Antiquities Authority archeological excavation in the heart of Jerusalem's old city confirms a description of the road on the Madaba Map -- an ancient mosaic map from the sixth century CE, measuring eight by 16 meters, and located in a church in Madaba, Jordan. The map, from the Byzantine period, is the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Land of Israel. What is... |
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| The Exodus | |
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| Sinai in Arabia |
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· 02/12/2010 8:03:38 AM PST · · Posted by Zionist Conspirator · · 10 replies · 264+ views · · Beliefnet · · 2/11/'10 · · David Klinghoffer · |
Where is Mt. Sinai? And does it matter? The second question is easier to answer than the first. If God's giving the Ten Commandments to Moses there is a historical event then yes, wanting to attach a genuine geographical location to the mountain makes sense. But finding Mt. Sinai presents a problem different from locating the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Unlike those two holy sites, Mt. Sinai's exact location isn't attested by any clear tradition among the people you would expect to be most likely to remember -- that is, the people... |
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| Greece | |
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| Under the Influence: Hellenism in ancient Jewish life |
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· 02/07/2010 9:17:14 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 8 replies · 244+ views · · Biblical Archaeology Review · · Jan/Feb 2010 · · Martin Goodman · |
From the time of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C.E., Jews lived in a world in which Greek culture carried a certain prestige and offered a route to political influence, first within the Hellenistic kingdoms that succeeded Alexander in the third to first centuries B.C.E., and thereafter within the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. During this period -- when Alexander's empire was divided between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, and later when the Romans dominated both the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East -- Greek was the language of government and administration. Native... |
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| Which Greek City-State -- Sparta or Athens |
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· 11/15/2002 7:47:20 PM PST · · Posted by F_L_A · · 12 replies · 918+ views · |
Pick which one you think is right. I'm interested in hear what you think. |
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| Radiometric Dating | |
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| Queen's helps produce archaeological 'time machine' |
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· 02/11/2010 8:35:46 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 4 replies · 192+ views · · Queen's University Belfast · · Feb 11, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Caption: Professor Gerry McCormac and Dr Paula Reimer pictured in the 14 Chrono Centre at Queen's University Belfast. Staff at the Centre have been involved in the creation of a new calibration curve, which extends back 50,000 years. Credit: Queen's University Belfast Usage Restrictions: Only to be used with full caption and reference to Queen's University Belfast. Researchers at Queen's University have helped produce a new archaeological tool which could answer key questions in human evolution. The new calibration curve, which extends back 50,000 years is a major landmark in radiocarbon dating-- the method used by archaeologists and geoscientists to... |
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| end of digest #291 20100213 | |
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